Spell Hit vs Spell Penetration... or PVE vs PVP Part Two

For Dps Casters at 70, one of the most frustrating things has to be that horrible word "Resist". Not only does your dps drop for the failed spell but mana has been wasted and must now be regen'd. So naturally when fighting a raid boss of lvl 73 with all the resists popping up the inclination to maximize dps and mana conservation is to mitigate resists. The issue becomes how do we mitigate it though. Well lets look at the stats and figure out what the hell does what when it comes to casting. (You don't have to take my word for it, I'm not currently a caster. http://wowwiki.com has a wonderful discussion on the intricacies of both spell hit and penetration.) First of all we need to accept that this an rpg with the combat system functioning off a roll table just as if it were a pen & paper rpg. That is when you cast a spell it has to do one of four things: Hit; Resist; Elemental Resist; or Crit. Ok so your'e looking at that going wtf resist and elemental resist that doesnt make sense right? Well the thing is that they are two different separate things. When a spell misses a mob or person it counts as a resist. When that same mob or player has enough elemental resistance to the type of spell cast it is an elemental resist. Most mobs with elemental resistance seem to be entirely immune and that is what will show when a spell of a class they are immune to is cast on them. However players can only stack up so much elemental resistance and thus will never be truly immune all though they can become spell crit immune I'm told. This is where penetration comes into play in PVP, not in PVE. In pvp, it is necessary to stack penetration to negate another players elemental resitsances such as mark of the wild, hunter aspect, or pally aura, etc. In pve that is not necessary because you can't stack enough penetration to get past immune period. Now as to basic resists("Misses") in spellcasting, the deal with that is to look back at that table and notice that you have to have one of those options so if you take one of them off the table i.e. "resist/miss" then the others chance will be increased. This is where spell hit comes in. It increases your chance to hit and thus mitigates the chance to be resisted. Thus stacking spell hit is the most beneficial to increasing raid dps as a caster because you will increase your chance to hit the boss that is three whole lvls higher than you. I'm not saying its the only stat to look at; its not. I'm saying you should be striving for your spell hit cap as best you can . You can not have 100% spell hit. 99% is the highest it will go so there will always be some resists but they will be much less often. Here is a link to the spell hit caps and the article that explains this all better than I ever could.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Spell_hit_chance
Take a look and feel free to comment back if you disagree. I value the oppurtunity to discuss and learn everything I can about the combat system because it will make me a better player.