WotLK Expertise Rating Explained

Expertise rating in WoW can be gained through gear, enchants, gems or even special abilities in the talent tree for some classes. Many people ignore this vital statistic in favour of more obvious choices such as attack power and critical strike chance. However, expertise rating and expertise skill is very important for many World of Warcraft character classes and could make a significant impact on your character.

The expertise skill cap is 26 whole expertise, this translates into roughly 208 expertise rating (Approximately 8 expertise rating per expertise). The expertise you will gain through various gear upgrades, gems and enchants is pure expertise rating and not expertise skill. However, some talent tree abilities and racial passives deal with expertise skill directly for example “Weapon Expertise” 2/2 is a rogue combat talent that provides 5 and then 10 expertise skill.

The reason why characters must obtain 26 expertise skill can vary depending on the role of your character. Generally speaking you should obtain 26 expertise skill in order to prevent mob s from being able to dodge your attacks. If you are a melee DPS (Damage per Second) you should also stand behind your target mob in order to prevent them from being able to parry your attacks. This will significantly improve your successful hit chance and therefore increase your overall DPS. For tanks you will need 26 expertise skill in order to prevent your target from dodging your attacks in order to increase your threat on that target. In addition to this a good amount of expertise also prevents your target mob from becoming parry hasted which in turn prevents you from taking spike damage or massive damage overall. This is why expertise is vitally important for a tank character even before they have started to stack hit rating.

This is why expertise is vitally important to stack before you begin any other stat (barring defence for tanks):

Prevents mobs from dodging your attacks
Increases DPS
Increases threat
Reduces overall damage
Reduces/evens out spike damage

Before you begin enchanting and gemming your gear you should first look at whether or not your character is expertise capped. If you are not yet at the 26 expertise skill mark you should gem and enchant for expertise first until you reach this mark. This should be your main priority for any character before you begin raiding, even if you have to sacrifice additional stats such as agility in order to become expertise capped. This is because the more attack power and critical strike chance you stack without being expertise capped the more you will need to stack in order to make a difference to your DPS. You will quite quickly find that your additional stats no longer make such as huge impact on your DPS and this is because a high amount of attack power is no good to you if you can’t hit the target in the first place. Expertise skill allows you to ensure you are not being dodged by your target at all which will provide much more value to the attack power and critical strike chance you have. Once you have sorted out your expertise rating and expertise skill, you will be able to focus next on your hit rating and then finally on your attack power and critical strike chance. Generally speaking you can always follow this guideline for a general overview of gemming and enchanting priorities:

Defence rating until capped (540 skill) (Tanks only)
Expertise rating until soft capped (26 skill)
Hit rating until capped (Class specific numbers)
Main Stat such as Agility, Strength, Intellect, Spirit (Your main method of improving your character)
Secondary stats such as critical strike chance and attack power (Should never really be required)

As you can see, expertise is highly important on this scale and should be addresses as quickly as possible before thinking about other statistics. Once you have your character expertise capped and hit capped you will be able to concentrate on pure whole stats such as Agility to improve your character. While you have the option of adding additional secondary stats such as pure attack power to your gear it is widely recommended not to do this and to use main stats instead.

Once you have gemmed and enchanted appropriately in order to obtain the expertise cap, you can then work on getting gear upgrades for your character in order to improve your DPS or survivability. You will find that as time progresses and you work your way through Wrath of the Lich King raids you will obtain gear that has naturally high levels of expertise rating on them. As you gain each piece of gear you will find that you can remove an expertise gem or enchant in favour of a main stat such as Agility and remain expertise capped.

This information should really help you through the game. If you are a Horde player, and haven’t checked out Joana’s Horde Levelling Guide, you are really missing out. This guide will help you get to the max level quickly and efficiently as possible, showing you many tricks and tips on the way. If you are a Horde player, you need to see this guide!