Newly-minted level 70 Warlocks are generally wanting to run Karazhan and Heroics straight away, in order to get “teh phat purp lewtz”. But unless you have been doing your research and gearing for these events in your travels to hit the level cap, you aren’t ready.

It’s been explained in alot of places, by lots of people. WowWiki has a good write up on it, found here. In essence, though, Warlocks are going to want to have a +Spell Hit Rating of 202 to reach the ‘cap’ (Against a level 73 raid boss, you have a 17% chance to miss. 202 HR gives you +16% chance to hit, leaving the unavaiodable 1% to miss). Affliction Warlocks can put 5/5 into Suppression, a Tier-1 Affliction talent, but this only affects Affliction spells (Curses, Corruption, Drains, etc). Now, you can go into Kara without having hit this cap, but you should gear for spell hit first and foremost, because it does most definately improve your DPS; whatever spec you may be.

I have been striving to hit the cap, gemming everything I have that has a socket with +8 Spell hit gems, and slowly obtaining gear that brings me up. On Friday night, I got the last piece of gear that brings me to the lofty peaks of Spell Hit Rating.

Moroes was kind enough to drop Brooch of Unquenchable Fury, which has a healthy +spell hit rating of 15. Combined with my gems and my Jewel of Infinite Possibilities, I now have 206 spell hit rating (slightly over the cap).

I am not going to be re-gemming my gear anytime soon, because until I get more gear that has +spell hit, if I take out a +8 spell hit gem, then I go below the cap again, and I am worse of than I am now. However, my main focus is now changed to be +spell crit and +spell damage (and maybe +spell haste). My low, low crit rating of 11.30% is shocking, so I won’t be able to try out the Shadow Mage spec just yet, but soon, with some ZA, TK and SSC runs, I could be in a position to start killing off my Succubus.