The quiet death of hit rating..?

There is a lot of information coming out from various sources about the 4.1 patch. Lots of things I'd like to touch on, but for the moment I want to focus on something that I missed on my first skim of the notes.

"Classes: General

• All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities."

Making the case for Hit Rating, kind of

Recently my guild, Shenanigans Inc, downed Heroic Maloriak. During one of our better attempts something happened that was embarrassing and completely preventable. I was in charge of interrupting Arcane Storm and of course the inevitable happened - one of my interrupts missed! So far in Cataclysm I've had relatively good luck with interrupts on my non-hit capped Bear, not so much a few nights ago when I caused this unnecessary wipe. I immediately apologized and reforged a couple of pieces of gear to gain about 1.5% hit rating, putting me above 8%.

Ignoring Hit Rating

Why wasn't I already hit capped? Well hit rating is practically useless past a certain small percent for raiding. Yeah...unless of course you are in charge of interrupting a crucial ability. Sacrificing a fairly large amount of avoidance for a stat that simply increases your threat (and a bit of uptime on Savage Defense) just doesn't seem worth it in the thick of things. When Vengeance gets stacked up a bit and your Mangles are hitting for over 30k threat generation really starts to drop in priority. So I've mostly ignored hit rating (and expertise).

With non-damaging interrupts (aka. Skull Bash) always hitting come 4.1 I'll literally have no use for hit rating except for the first 30 seconds of any given fight. To me it seems with this change Blizzard is really making Hit Rating an option (and a poor option at that) not a requirement. Of course I don't advise running around doing heroic raiding with 0.00% hit, but I'll be dropping the 50 hit enchant from my boots, and reforging most of my hit to Dodge Rating after 4.1 hits live servers.

Problems with ignoring hit

The one big issue with ignoring hit rating is when you are assigned to some form of add tanking in a given encounter. Which is why it's always good to have around a few pieces of gear that can significantly boost your hit rating. For example, pre-4.1 I'm using Fluid Death in one of my trinket slots for a huge hit boost, post-4.1 though you can be sure I'll be going back to either Symbiotic Worm or Lifebound Alchemist Stone paired up with Vial of Stolen Memories.

Honestly if you have a tank in raid that is hit capped and is better at AoE tanking to begin with consider leaving it to them, honestly it's just playing to each others strength, ego need not get involved.

Can't wait for 4.1

Good riddance hit...it was fun while it lasted. Needing hit for taunt (removed chance to miss in 4.0.1), needing hit for threat (end of any tier/expansion when DPS scale up drastically, hello Vengeance), needing hit for interrupts (changing in 4.1), you put up a good fight but you're dead to me. =]