Since hitting level 70 with Shastarian, I have been looking forwards to raiding. Having never had to opportunity to raid pre-Burning Crusade, I was very excited about seeing Karazhan: not so much for the loot, but for the chance to see content that some people wouldn’t see. Obviously, Karazhan is no Mount Hyjal or Sunwell Plateau, but still, it was exciting. I didn’t stop giggling from entering the gates for the first time, all the way through downing Attumen and getting my first piece of epic-quality loot, and even through the 4 or 5 wipes on Moroes before calling it, until about 3 days later.

Having been through Karazhan many times since then, and being able to confidently down every boss (save Nightbane) each week, I can still say that going to Kara is just as exciting as it was way back then.

Every gearing guide I have read says that the priority for stats for the raiding Warlock are something like the following (assuming Affliction spec):

Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina > Intellect > Spell Haste > Spirit

Most gearing guides you find will say that you need to hit the “magic” spell hit cap of 202, which gives you a 99% chance to hit mobs 3 levels higher than you (level ?? mobs (raid bosses) are calculated as being 3 levels higher than you). Whenever I got a piece of gear that had sockets, I would gem it with Great Dawnstones (+8 spell hit rating), ignoring the socket bonus. Now, since then I have decided that I need some blue gems to reach both a socket bonus and a meta gem requirement, so I have socketed some epic gems that I won from heroics, but even then, I was focusing on spell hit.

That time … is over.

Karazhan last week (Queen’s Birthday long weekend for (most of) Australia) saw Netherspite offer up his Jewel of Infinite Possibilities trinket, in exchange for his life. After dragging my Mindblade across his neck, I was extremely excited to win the roll on this. It replaces my Orb of the Soul-Eater for boss fights, which means I lose a little bit of spell damage, but I gain stamina, intellect and … spell hit.

This combination of spell hit from gear, gems and enchants puts me at a total spell hit rating of … 199.

I am 3 +spell hit rating away from hitting the cap.

Currently, 199 spell hit gives me approximately 15.77% extra chance to hit, instead of the 16% that 202 spell hit rating gives. be.imba.hu shows me this table:

(as a result of seeing this, and totally forgetting I had those 3 points in Suppression, a respec is in the cards).

Now, I can start to focus more on +spell damage, as well as +spell haste gear.

One last thing. It’s strange, and from the be.imba.hu website. It’s, well, … I’ll put the image below, and see if you can work it out. Just remember, the only raid I have gotten gear from has been Karazhan.

For some reason, be.imba.hu thinks that I should skip Gruuls/Mag, and that I will do well in BT/Mt Hyjal.

LF24M, BT or MH, then GTG