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

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.