[Edit: I'm a Holy Priest predominantly, so I got the main spell name wrong here, confusing Life Drain and Mind Flay. Thanks for the correction, Ann!]

Back in the Burning Crusade raiding days, one of the common questions each one of us casters had while gearing up to be accepted in the entry-level raids was about the stat called “Spell Hit”.

Mind Flay Spell Misses While SW:P Ticks

It’s described in the tooltip as a stat that “increases your spell chance to hit a target”, which was a fine concept, except that before Patch 3.0.2 which was getting ready for the release of the Wrath of the Lich King, casters would never actually “miss” their targets when they’d cast.

Sure, they’d have their spells resisted, but they never, ever MISSED.

In Patch 3.0.2 or around there, along with the plethora of changes that included combining Healing and Spell Damage into one stat of Spell Power, and Melee Hit and Spell Hit into one common stat of “Hit”, a change came into place which split out Spells Resisted from Spells who Missed their target entirely.

Now it’s easier to explain to casters what the stat is about, and why it’s so important to advance it on a character they want to advance into Heroics and Raiding with in a damage-dealing capacity.

And it looks pretty funny, too, missing with something like a Life Drain You’d think it would cancel itself, much like a resisted spell does…

Ah well, I can pretend I’m a Priest with a Light Saber, if nothing else!