A guide to Spell hit ratings for Mages

A level 70 player has an 83% chance to hit a mob 3 levels higher than him/her with spells and a 96% chance to hit another player of the same level. You need +16% to be hit capped against level ?? raid bosses (level 73) and +3% to be capped against a Lvl 70 player in PvP. A mob/player will always retain a 1% chance to resist your spells so it should be noted that stacking spell hit past the cap is an absolute and pure waste.

A hit rating of 202 will yield a 16% spell hit rating and 38 will yield 3% but you have talents that help with this.

**A brief note about Spell Hit**

Spell "hit" is a little misleading as spells don't actually "miss" per se but instead get "resisted" and it'll show "Resist" instead of numbers when a spell lands (I'm not going to touch on spell pen and resistance). The only time a spell will not visibly land on the target is when they're evading, and if a boss is evasion bugged chances are your biggest worry wont be about continuing to fight but instead tying to die as close to the door as you can in order to get a rez, lol.

The two mage talents that assist with spell hit are Arcane Focus in the Arcane tree which only affects arcane spells, and Elemental Precision in the Frost tree, which only affects Frost and Fire spells.

3 points into Elemental Precision will give you 3% chance to hit, effectively lowering the hit cap for Frost and Fires spells to 13% or 164 spell hit rating. This applies to all frost and fire spells other than frostbolt.

**A note to Frost mages about Frostbolt**

Elemental Precision, for whatever reason, gives Frostbolts a 6% increased chance to hit instead of just 3% in an effect dubbed as "ghost hit". This effectively reduces the hit cap to 10% for Frostbolts or 126 spell hit rating. On your character screen it'll still show you as having a +10% chance to hit with a rating of 126 but real-world (of warcraft) performance will yield only a 1% resist rate.

--As of patch 2.4.3 ghost hit still exists.

Arcane Focus will reduce the hit cap by 2% for Arcane spells (arcane missiles, counterspell, spell steal, polymorph, etc) for each point put into it up to a max of 10% at 5 points. At max rank, the hit cap for arcane spells is 6% or 76 spell hit rating.

**A note about Draenei's Inspiring Presence**

Draenei Priests, Mages and Shaman have an aura that increases the spell hit chance of all players in that Draenei's party (including his/herself) by 1%.

If you are a Draenei mage and have another Draenei Preist/Mage/Shaman in your group you will recieve 1% from your own aura and another 1% from theirs for a 2% spell hit bonus. This only stacks once so having two other priest/mage/shaman in your group wont give you 3%.

Just in case you have good favor with the raid group comp gods it's worth mentioning that Elemental Shaman can drop a Totem of Wrath that increases the spell hit chance (as well as spell crit chance) of all players in the party and within 20 yards by 3%.

And also, at level 70 it takes approximately 12.6 spell hit to equal 1%.

/e begins to compile the data into a chart!

**********TL;DR PEOPLE START HERE**********

Basically, Arcane mages follow the left column, Fire and Elementalist/Hybrid mages follow the middle one, and Frost mages follow the right column (as Frostbolt is your main nuke).

Non-Draenei with no Draenei aura (no totem):

202 spell hit to cap with no talents

Arcane Spells with Arcane Focus Frost/Fire Spells with EP Frostbolt with EP

1 pt = 177 spell hit to cap 1 pt = 189 1 pt = 177

2 pts = 152 2 pts = 177 2 pts = 152

3 pts = 126 3 pts = 164 3 pts = 126

4 pts = 101

5 pts = 76 ________________________________________________________________________________

Non-Draenei *with* Draenei aura or Draenei *without* the aura (no totem):

189 spell hit to cap with no talents

Arcane Spells with Arcane Focus Frost/Fire Spells with EP Frostbolt with EP

1 pt = 164 spell hit to cap 1 pt = 177 1 pt = 164

2 pts = 139 2 pts = 164 2 pts = 139

3 pts = 114 3 pts = 152 3 pts = 114

4 pts = 89

5 pts = 64 _______________________________________________________________________________

Non-Draenei with no aura (*with* totem):

164 spell hit to cap with no talents

Arcane Spells with Arcane Focus Frost/Fire Spells with EP Frostbolt with EP

1 pt = 139 spell hit to cap 1 pt = 152 1 pt = 139

2 pts = 114 2 pts = 139 2 pts = 114

3 pts = 89 3 pts = 126 3 pts = 89

4 pts = 64

5 pts = 38 _______________________________________________________________________________

Non-Draenei *with* aura or Draenei *without* aura (*with* totem):

152 spell hit to cap with no talents

Arcane Spells with Arcane Focus Frost/Fire Spells with EP Frostbolt with EP

1 pt = 126 spell hit to cap 1 pt = 139 1 pt = 126

2 pts = 101 2 pts = 126 2 pts = 101

3 pts = 76 3 pts = 114 3 pts = 76

4 pts = 51

5 pts = 26 _______________________________________________________________________________

Draenei *with* aura (*with* totem):

139 spell hit to cap with no talents

Arcane Spells with Arcane Focus Frost/Fire Spells with EP Frostbolt with EP

1 pt = 114 spell hit to cap 1 pt = 126 1 pt = 114

2 pts = 89 2 pts = 114 2 pts = 89

3 pts = 64 3 pts = 101 3 pts = 64

4 pts = 38

5 pts = 13 _______________________________________________________________________________

As you can see, having a draenei priest/mage/shaman in group is rather helpful and an elemental shaman even more so! Raid leaders would do well to place a mage in a group with one or both of these as if a raiding mage knows they'll be in a group that will give them a boost to their spell hit then they can gem and gear out of spell hit (which is very limiting) and focus more on crit and haste which will increase their dps much more than spell hit does.

Edit (6/27/2008): As far as raid trash is concerned (up to level 72 mobs) a spell hit rating of 63 or 5% is needed to cap. 3 points into Arcane focus will cover it for arcane spells (useful to know for a 18/0/43 build). 3 points into Elemental Precision will cover it for Frostbolt. 3 points in EP and 23 spell hit will cover it for Fire spells and other Frost spells.

This also applies to Heroics as the bosses are Level 72 as well.

The relevance of this in raids only applies to people who swap out spell hit gear for higher dps gear when clearing trash up to a boss.

edit: added more info on the top