What exactly is “Mitigation”, and why should Hunters learn about it?
Firstly, in case you’re not familiar with the base word, here is the general definition of “Mitigate” (roughly pronounced MITT-eh-gayt).
mit⋅i⋅gate
| 1. | to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate. |
| 2. | to make less severe: to mitigate a punishment. |
| 3. | to make (a person, one’s state of mind, disposition, etc.) milder or more gentle; mollify; appease. |
| 4. | to become milder; lessen in severity. |
So here we see that when something is mitigated, it is basically made less intense. When we put this in WoW terms, to “Mitigate” damage is to lessen damage, in most cases the actual damage done to a target. According to WoWWiki, Mitigation in the WoW sense is “the reduction of attack effectiveness”, and includes absorb, armor, block, defense, dodge, miss, parry, resilience, and resistance.
There are a few reasons why Mitigation is important to hunters. Firstly, Mitigation can work both ways. Wouldn’t you want to mitigate the damage done to yourself? Hunters mitigate the damage done to them by wearing Armor, increasing their Dodge through Agility, by stacking Resilience (PvP, reduces the chance of you being crit by your opponent) and Resists, and with our ability, Deterrence. There are also a few talents spread throughout the trees which will enhance your personal mitigation, including but not limited to Deflection, Catlike Reflexes, and Combat Experience. Obviously, increasing your Dodge rating or Resilience may not help much in raids, but increasing your Resistance to magic and wearing Armor will certainly keep you from taking as much damage in instances.
Oppositely, you want to decrease the mitigation of your target. Hunters can do this by raising Crit chance, capping their Hit rating, and stacking Armor Penetration rating.
Now that we know what Mitigation is and how it affects hunters, let’s take a quick look at Armor Penetration. This mechanic has been changed several times since it was first implemented, so if you haven’t been on the up-and-up, I suggest reading Drotara’s excellent write-up about ArPen here. Armor Penetration, as Drotara discovered, varies in usefulness for all three specs because of the difference in useage of Physical vs. Magic attacks. While Auto Shot is obviously physical damage, many of our other hunter shots are actually considered schools of magic. For instance, Chimera Shot is actually Nature damage, and Volley is Arcane damage. Knowing this, we can see that the specs with fewer Physical shots will benefit less from ArPen. However, because of this, ArPen is actually the most useful for Marksmanship than any other spec. Beast Mastery comes in at a close second, but because of the pet-centric nature of BM, ArPen isn’t quite as effective as one might think, considering that it does not extend to your pet.
It is a current theory that raising your ArPen rating to a certain amount will actually cause your Steady Shot to out-damage your Arcane Shot, thereby removing the need for Arcane Shot in your rotation entirely. However, the ArPen rating needed to achieve this is very high, a suggested 550-600 or more depending upon when your Steady finally consistantly out-damages your Arcane, even when Arcane is talented for improvement. Some people are even regemming to accomplish this, believing it will net them higher DPS. Fortunately for us, Euripides from OutDPS has done the math here. He explains quite eloquently that theories like this remain theories and must be taken with a grain of salt. Your own personal situation, with every little variable, will inevitably determine whether or not swapping gems is the right move for you. ArPen stacking is certainly beneficial, but not at the expense of Agility in most cases. Regarding the new Shot rotation, also keep in mind that even if Steady Shot slightly out-DPSes your Arcane Shot, you still must be standing still to use it, and we all know that there are many fights during which you rarely get to stand still, and Arcane will easily out-DPS your lack of Steadies, especially if talented properly.
I hope this helps to clear up Mitigation, and to increase your understanding of how hunters can benefit from it.
Tags: agility, arcane shot, armor penetration, mitigation, patch 3.2
The Sunreavers
Venomhide Ravasaur
1000 Stone Keeper's Shards
Boned (10 player)
Epic
Thanks for the link
I’d like to add that currently our pets don’t get expertise from our expertise rating, but from our hit rating. Also, focused aim and the draenei hit aura are not passing expertise to the pet.
Oh shoot, thanks for catching that. I was thinking of the new change to Resilience and somehow connected that in my mind with Expertise. Let me change that quickly. =)
Can you or Euripides talk a little more about resiliance? I’m still seeing people saying it affects more than just damage coming from enemy players, contrary to my understanding. See here for an example: http://hunter-dps.dungeoneer.com/2009/07/my-hunter-pet-tanking-gear.html
Re: Someguy –
Sorry for the extra precaution, but because you’ve used a fake sounding email and name, I placed your comment in spam just in case. If it is not spam, I apologize, but I do not wish to put any of my readers at risk of a keylogger or other such virus.
If you are NOT spam, and you really do want to know more about resilience, I’m afraid I’m not very PvP-oriented and wouldn’t be the best person to discuss this with. I suggest speaking with Drotara from Less QQ, More PewPew for PvP things. =)
Comment has been restored. Thanks for understanding.
#1 way to mitigate damage: don’t get hit
Move out of the fire, move away from the seed grenades, avoid shadow crashes, death rays, falling icicles, missiles, laser barrage, runes of death, eye beams, anything that causes damage. Yes, it is mitigation: not getting hit lessens the severity of the damage by 100% 
BTW, I tried Master’s Call on a Hodir wipe last night. I was wrong: it does NOT work. “Can’t do that while stunned”. Which makes me wonder, how did I get out of it before? Nobody broke me out, I know I was frozen, I hit the MC button…Mysteries of the (WoW)universe
Yes, not getting hit is certainly the preferred form of mitigation. =P
Yes, it’s a nonsense name and email (from wikipedia: example.com, example.net, and example.org are second-level domain names reserved by the Internet Engineering Task Force through RFC 2606, Section 3, for use in documentation and examples. They are not available for registration.); I don’t like to give out my email address if possible. I’ll give you one of my old email addresses if it is absolutely necessary.
Anyway, my question had to do with using resilience as a pve stat, not for pvp. My understanding is that it does nothing unless the damage is coming from other players… but I’m seeing people advocating it as a pve pet tanking stat now that pets get part of the hunter’s resilience. My example link is a post on another hunter blog, and is the top google result for “Example Beastmaster Hunter Pet Tanking Gear for Patch 3.2″, if that helps instead of linking directly to it. So all I’m asking is once and for all whether resilience would mitigate damage (at all) in a pve context, especially for the pet.
Ben (or whoever),
No problem. I understand. And it was mostly the link you sent that I was worried about. =) Anyway, as far as my knowledge runs, using Resilience for PvE is quite silly, because as you said, it does not mitigate damage from NPCs. BUT – since I have not tested this personally, it is possible that there is a glitch at the moment allowing pets to use resilience for PvE, or even that it does and is “working as intended” for some strange reason. There is really no way to know for sure unless you grab some resil and test it. I would love to do this, except for the tiny matter of me having absolutely NO resil gear whatsoever. lol I just don’t PvP enough to gather any gear. Again, I do suggest you ask Drotara, via email or comment, whether it works or not. He’s a very friendly guy and very knowledgeable to boot. =) Best of luck, and let me know what you find out.