Hit Rating for Casters

Just echoing the thought so it’s out there on the internet in yet another place.

And no, not melee hit rating.  Inner Fire no longer adds attack power.  Silly geese.

Spell Hit Rating!  The general sentiment you will get for casters looking to increase their dps in raids is thus:  get hit capped, then stack spell damage.  Yet, I see many casters still ignoring spell hit on gear drops and gemming spell crit.  This is not as efficient!  By far!

Again, just echoing information you could read in any number of places on the internet, just hoping that having it in yet another spot will allow yet more folks out there to be illuminated.

So, say you have a spell.  Let’s assume for now that you have 0% spell crit and 0% additional spell hit.  Say that spell hits for exactly 1000 per hit, and we’re going to cast it at a boss 100 times.  Assuming no resists, no crits, etc, you will deal 100,000 damage.  But, thanks to the resist system, it is not that simple.

A boss is equivalent to a level 73 mob.  As such, this boss will have a 16% chance to resist your spells.  Completely.  Zero damage.  A little “Resist” message shoots up instead of a damage number.

So then, let’s factor that in.  Over 100 casts, 17% of those (wait, didn’t I say 16%?  read more in the next paragraph) will be resisted.  100 casts, 17 resists, 83 hits.  83 x 1000 = 83000.  That’s significantly less damage!

Let’s now throw in some talents and intellect-based spell crit chance.  Let’s go with an easy 15%.  Crits replace hits, so now we have 100 casts: 17 resists, 68 hits, 15 crits.

A little bit on the mechanics of spells first:  by default, when a spell crits, it deals one and a half times as much damage.  Our 1000 hits will become 1500 crits.  (There are talents that change this but we will look at those later.)  Also, there appears to be (after much testing by other players) a 1% chance for a mob to resist your spells, no matter how much spell hit you have.  So that 16% I mentioned before is actually 17%, but there’s just nothing you can do about that final 1% except maybe grumble loudly.  And then I’m not sure what that would do for you, but feel free.

Continuing from there then, 17 resists for 0 damage.  68 hits for 1000 damage each (68,000 total) and 15 crits for 1500 damage each (22,500 total).  90,500 total.  Working our way back up there!  All right, well.  Ignoring talents that increase spell hit for now, and lets take away our spell crit talents as well as they’ve served their purpose for now.  Back to 83000 damage total, 17 resists and 83 hits.

All right.  On this test caster guy who’s casting some random damage spell hitting for 1000, let’s give him a blank piece of loot, say some pants so he’s not completely naked, and it has but one gem slot.  No socket bonus or anything to complicate matters, just a gem slot.  And also suppose that Blizzard decided that all gems except the Gleaming Dawnstone (8 spell crit) and Great Dawnstone (8 spell hit) were overpowered.  So that’s all we have.

Which one should Mr. or Mrs. Caster use for fighting our boss? Let’s assume a base 1% increased chance to hit and crit, so that we don’t end up critting less than 1% of the time.

At level 70, 12.6 spell hit rating is 1% spell hit.  22.1 (or something close) spell crit rating is 1% spell crit.  If we use 8 spell hit, we get 8/12.6 = 0.635% less chance for our spells to be resisted, which would lower it from 16% to 15.365%.  (The math will start to get ugly, but bear with me.)  If we choose the Gleaming Dawnstone instead for 8 spell crit, we will increase our spell crit chance by 0.362%, from our fabled 1% to 1.362%.  Let’s take those numbers and compare!

These are difficult numbers to work with, again. Over 100 casts we will crit 1.362% of the time, which seems silly since it’s a binary system (either you crit or you don’t…there aren’t any fractional crits). But over many successive casts (more than 100, really) this will be how they average out.

Gem	Dmg per Cast	Spell Casts	Resists	Hits	Hit Dmg	Crits	Crit Dmg	Total Dmg
Neither	1000	100	16	83	83,000	1	1500	84,500
+8 Spell Hit	1000	100	15.365	83.635	83,635	1	1500	85,135
+8 Spell Crit	1000	100	16	82.638	82,638	1.362	2043	84,681

In our example here then, we can see that increasing your spell hit rating by 8 will bring Mr. or Mrs. Caster’s total damage done up to 86,135, while 8 spell crit rating will only bring it to 84,681. That’s a difference of 1454!

Now as I mentioned before though, there are talents in many dps caster trees that will increase the critical strike damage bonus of your spells. Most notably, Ruin, in the Destruction Warlock tree, and Ice Shards, in the Mage Frost tree, will both increase the critical strike damage bonus from a 50% increase to a 100% increase. An obvious increase to the value of spell crit! Will these affect our numbers at all? Let’s find out!

Gem	Dmg per Cast	Spell Casts	Resists	Hits	Hit Dmg	Crits	Crit Dmg	Total Dmg
Neither	1000	100	16	83	83,000	1	2000	85,000
+8 Spell Hit	1000	100	15.365	83.635	83,635	1	2000	85,635
+8 Spell Crit	1000	100	16	82.638	82,638	1.362	2724	85,362

Spell hit still wins out! 85,635 compared to 85,362. The crit damage increase closed the gap a bit, but did not overcome spell hit in effectiveness.

Now, there are other values to consider in favor of spell crit. Destruction Warlocks, for instance, have a talent called Improved Shadow Bolt that increases shadow damage dealt to the target for a time after a Shadow Bolt crits, from all sources that deal shadow damage. Fire Mages have one called Master of Elements, which refunds some mana when their spells crit, and Ignite, which causes a Damage over Time effect to occur on their target for a percentage of the damage done after a spell critical strike.

However, from a pure damage per second standpoint, spell hit is the winner.

I’ve linked to this post of Coriel’s before, but I continually reference it personally, and would advise others to do the same for additional information! Hit Caps for Bosses. Also check out Tuna’s post on spell hit here for more info on hit rating and how it works.

In short, capping your spell hit at 16% is highly advisable for casters, because of how “cheap” it is (ie, 12.6 rating per 1% hit vs. 22.1 per 1% crit). Those talents you have that increase your chance to hit with spells are very effective at both increasing your DPS and helping you reach that cap. Past 16% though, the stat will not help, as you cannot remove that final 1%, and it will do nothing additional for you. It is at this point that you stack spell damage, for most casters.

Image courtesy of some guy named “Boeotian.” Found the image on imageshack.us.  Editted because apparently I can’t add or something.  (Thanks, Abudon.)

Math and WoW

When I was in school, math was probably my least favorite subject.  I dislike rote learning, and that’s pretty much how it is learned.  I’m a fan of concepts and their associations.

Once I started WoW, all the mechanics of the game were largely invisible and transparent to me.  However, nowadays, I find myself extrapolating things I’ve learned in WoW to everyday numbers and figures.  I caught myself thinking of my salary like dps once.

This may or may not be because I’m very much in love with the game, but in any case, how did that happen?  Again, I like concepts, and ever since I got into understanding the way things scale in WoW I’ve been hooked on figuring them out on a numbers level.

Figuring out resilience and exactly how much benefit you derive from it.  Learning how best to increase attack power and crit chance, and the balance between intellect, +healing, and spell crit that will also provide the greatest returns in healing longevity.

I mentioned in this post that I was using an experimental formula for calculating the effects of the warrior talent Flurry.  Using averages, I figured out the number of times Flurry would activate (crit chance multiplied by the number of attacks capable of critting).  That number of times, multiplied by 3, told you how many total charges you would have, provided you got to use them all.  However,  you dont…if you crit while flurry is active, you lose the extra charges.  So I figured out, on average, how many charges you would lose, based again on crit chance.  Took that number away from the total, and then divided it by the number of weapon swings you would make.  This provided a percentage which is theoretically how often your white attacks are flurried.  It’s innaccurate in the sense that because of the RNG (random number generator), any crit chance less than 100% will result in you losing Flurry at some point, it’s just less and less unlikely as you get closer to 100%.  Interestingly enough, the formula I used backs up the fact that a slower offhand will result in more dps because it will drain your flurry charges at a slower rate.  Crazy stuff!

I’ve been getting more and more into it as time goes on.  Fueled largely by boredom at work of course.

Image from ualberta.ca.

Warrior DPS – Crit vs. Hit vs. AP vs. Haste vs. ArmorPen vs. Expertise

amg, all these stats…

/EDIT: For more on my take on haste, check out my comparison of dps plate leg items.

Stop the Warrior just posted an excerpt from a post at EJ detailing some of the math behind haste and how it differs for crit for warriors.

From my point of view, Haste is much like Hit, only it works differently.

For a warrior, your first and foremost goal when gearing up is to get your special attacks hit capped. This means 9% hit is needed, and the 3% from the Fury talent precision can indeed be counted in to this. Either 142 (9%) or 95 (6%) hit rating, then. This is the cheapest way to increase your dps, but beyond that, hit rating stops being as effective. Because your special attacks (mortal strike, bloodthirst, heroic strike, what-have-you) are all now incapable of missing, and you are only increasing the chance for your auto-attacks to land. Unless you’re not dual-wielding, in which case your 142 is all you need and hit rating is wasted (your regular attacks and special attacks are incapable of missing because you don’t suffer the 19% dual-wield miss penalty).

Anyway, for many warriors in dps roles, white (auto-attack) damage is approximately 50% of your overall, while yellow (special, non-auto-attack) damage is the rest. Up to that 9%, for every 1% hit you obtain, that is 1% extra damage you do. At 15.7 rating per 1%, it’s also cheap compared to alternatives.  After that, again, you’re either wasting it (if you’re using a 2-handed weapon) or you’re only increasing 50% of your damage (if you’re dual-wielding).

So, you get that done. Now, a vast plethora of stats may be available for you to choose from.

From here, things are a bit more vague than “acquire x of y stat”. The vague idea is to keep your crit high (around 30%) without sacrificing any hit that puts you below your needed 9%, and stack attack power as high as it will go through strength wherever possible (usually gems).

This is because crit and attack power increase the damage of all of your abilities, not just your white damage. This is why crit is more expensive (22.1 per 1%) and why attack power scales a bit more slowly. Also, thanks to Flurry (+25% attack speed for 3 swings after a crit), Rampage (an ability which can only be activated and kept active by achieving critical hits), and Impale (+20% crit damage on abilities), crit is even more valuable.

However, as you start collecting badges and/or higher levels of gear, you start to find even more stats…some more than others. The more common ones right now are Armor Penetration and Haste.

Haste, again, only affects your white damage. Unlike hit, though, it has no cap at which it becomes less useful (well there might be a haste cap, but I’m sure it’s really hard to obtain). However, it costs the same amount as hit, budget wise, while overall having the same effect (1% extra white damage). The one benefit haste might have over hit has to do with rage generation. Sometimes haste will provide more on-demand rage for the warrior because the attacks are landing sooner…however, because those attacks will be subject to the same rules as your other white attacks, they will miss at the same rate, and thus it probably evens out in the end with hit on that end as well.  [/edit: If you're using a 2h weapon though and your hit is capped, haste is potentially more valuable to you because of rage generation.]  Again, because it only increases your white damage, that’s only (approximately) 50% of your damage being affected.

Armor penetration is more difficult to qualify. The more armor your target has, the less benefit a static amount of armor penetration has due to the diminishing returns on the damage reduction provided by armor*. However, against targets with lower amounts of armor, armor pen wreaks havoc, providing much greater returns. This means that, interestingly enough, armor penetration stacks well with itself as well as other stats like crit and ap. In other words, the more armor penetration you have, the more you get out of it per point. This stat will increase the damage of all attacks, white and yellow.

Expertise is an interesting stat, and as mentioned in the article there isn’t much of it to be found currently on most warrior gear. It’s a decent stat, working similarly to hit rating, but instead affecting your opponent’s chance to parry and dodge your attacks. This makes it more of a valuable stat for tanks, or warriors in pvp, as they’re the ones whose attacks are being parried the most often. In pve, melee dps stands behind the mobs in order to reduce the number of parries (both increasing their own dps and lessening the amount of damage dealt to the tank**).

/EDIT: Looks like Expertise is a very handy stat to cap out for all melee dps classes, making the Shard of Contempt one of the best dps trinkets in the game despite the relative low item level.

Looking at item budget and effectiveness, it seems like strength and crit are still the way to go after getting that magical 9% hit due to its greater availability.

* Damage reduction from armor scales on a curve. At lower amounts, armor provides large amount of damage reduction per point (relatively). Up past 7000, you get less and less from it. The cap is 75% damage reduction, somewhere above 30000.

** When you parry, your next attack has its speed increased by 60% if I remember right.

Image from http://www.warcrafter.net.

Skill Points and WoW

If you open up your character’s Skills tab in the character pane, you’ll see three skills at the top.  Each one is eponymous to one of your character’s talent trees and denotes a subset of abilities your character has.

For instance, paladins have three, titled Holy, Protection, and Retribution.  A rogue has Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety.  They dictate the three archetypes of your class and sort of broadly indicate the types of things your character does or is capable of (a rogue is a skilled Assassin, able Combatant in melee, and utilizes Subtlety to achieve his or her goals).

At one point in World of Warcraft’s development, these three things were like your profession skills, and could be raised point by point, allowing you to get better at each subset of abilities.  Not to be confused with talent points (which I guess were introduced later), these ostensibly had some bearing on your success or failure at certain tasks.

This type of system harkens to some other video games, to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in my mind.  Similarly to WoW, every time you would swing a sword you’d have a chance for your skill in swords to go up by one, thereby increasing the chance your next attack would land.  It’s a line of thinking somewhat like how we think the real world works with skills, that being that as you do them more often and practice, you get better.  However, whilst WoW maintained this system in the weapon-based combat systems, they removed it from the magic spell side of the coin.

I however wasn’t around for this stage of the game’s development, and may have been something that was only around during the game’s beta testing.  For anyone that was around then, or otherwise has some insight on the matter, how did that work for spells?  Was there a chance your heal spell would fail to cast, resulting in a dead comrade?  Would some of the early requirements to raid have included “maxed Holy skill”?

If this system were still around, well, it’s hard to imagine, at least for me.  A lot of healing skills would be left by the wayside as characters leveled through this largely soloing game.  If WoW had done more to encourage group play (read: penalizing solo play) at the lower levels this might not have been the case.

When the developers made the decision to make leveling easy for a lone player and move the leveling game away from the forced grouping I hear is found in other MMOs (Everquest particularly), I imagine they realized the imposed gimpification they were applying to the healing skills and decided to do away with them entirely.  They left defense and all the weapon skills in place however.

Why?  It’s an introduction to another timesink for a character who picks up a weapon they’ve not used before (or in a long time), and only important during the leveling process, and that’s really all it seems to be, from a design standpoint.

Now I’m not necessarily griping about it, but that’s because it’s not really something I’m all that worried about.  It’s not something I have to go out of my way to take care of because it builds passively thanks to physical abilities and auto-attack.  But it does seem to be a waste of time and space on our characters at best.  The math these values are used in (calculating whether or not a melee attack lands) can be derived from level instead of how much time you’ve spent on them.  The skills cap out at a value equal to 5x level anyway.

Interestingly enough, when they reduced the time requirements for leveling, they made no initial change to the rate at which these skills increase.  My shaman’s weapon skills have yet to catch up to her, they seem to be perpetually stuck 10-15 points behind her in level.  I think I remember reading that in 2.4 they were evening this out again, but if they would just remove the system altogether such oversight would not have any effect.

Just saying that at this point in the game it seems like more effort than it is worth to keep such a system in place.   Maybe in WoW 3.0 we’ll see the end of it.

More on Spell Crit vs. Intellect vs. Mp5

A couple months back, I wrote a post detailing the relativity of the various paladin healing stats. Today I’d like to introduce a separate school of thought, albeit briefly.

At least…more brief than said previous post :)

This idea is that spell crit is better equated to a larger mana pool (more similar to intellect) than to mana regeneration (a la mp5).

Why? Well, it does make sense. Mp5 works all the time, while spell crit only returns mana if you have mana to cast in the first place. So, is spell crit more like intellect? Does it increase your mana pool, rather than regenerate mana?

When you cast a healing spell, and that spell crits, you get 60% of the mana cost of that spell back. For highest-rank Flash of Light, this is 108 mana, and for Holy Light, 504.

My previous line of thought was of course that this was more like mana regeneration, simply because this is what it looks like and is reported as in a combat log. However, it doesn’t regen anything if you don’t cast, or don’t have the mana to cast. It only behaves like mp5 because a paladin is chain-casting by nature.

Let’s look at an example to demonstrate. Say you only have 1000 mana, but somehow managed to gather up 75% holy spell crit chance, and 0 mp5. (Let’s ignore mana regen from spirit for this example, as it’s not really a factor worthy of consideration to any paladin.) According to my previous post, the spell crit -> mp5 conversion is C*X, where C is your spell crit and X is a number based on the spell you’re casting. That means that with 75% holy spell crit chance, you regenerate 270 mp5 chain casting Flash of Light, and 945 mp5 doing the same with Holy Light.

Let’s try casting a couple Flashes of Light. Many of them will crit (3 for every 4), resulting in 270 mana per 5 seconds returned to you. However, Flash of Light still costs 600 mp5 to chain cast. 600 minus 270 is 330 mp5 that you’re still losing, and you’ll be OOM in approximately 15 seconds (1000 mana / 330 mp5 = 3 (and change), multiplied by 5 seconds = 15), give or take depending on how the RNG (random number generator) favors you that day.

Considering Holy Light, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen here. You’ve got a 1 in 4 chance it won’t crit, and if that happens you’re unable to cast another. Even if it does crit, you’re left with 664 mana, still not enough.

And then, because you have 0 mp5, you’re out of luck. Again, it’s unrealistic, but it serves its purpose.

So, is it better to look at spell crit as a % increase to your mana pool?

You have a % chance (your spell crit value) to cause each spell to have 60% of its cost refunded. The line of thought here, is that after chain casting a bunch of spells, each 60% from each crit is virtually tacked on to your mana total.

Using the above example again, with 1000 mana and 75% crit chance, it’s probably better to look at it that way, because after so many spells you just won’t be able to cast any more, at all, ever (without potions or being able to drink, etc etc) because you have zero real mp5.

What’s the new formula then?

Before, when Illumination returned 100% of the spell’s cost, you could view this as a % increase to your mana pool exactly equal to your spell crit value. If you had 15% spell crit, you could say you had 15% more mana, because you would lose 0 mana on a heal crit, effectively meaning you had that much more mana to begin with.

Nowadays, that number needs to be calculated, thankfully with a simple formula. And that formula is:

C * 0.6

Where C is your spell crit value, in percentage form. The resulting number is another percent, equalling what % extra mana your spell crit is providing.

Back to the example with 1000 mana and 75% spell crit and applying the formula, you end up with 45% as the resulting value. 45% extra mana from spell crit, meaning you virtually have 1450 mana, on average. (Remember it’s still only a % chance for each spell to crit, so while you might get so many crits one time, you might get fewer (or more) the next time you try.)

In Zerei’s case, she has 10800 mana and I think 24% holy spell crit chance in her pvp gear. Applying the formula, that’s 13.8% (0.24 * 0.6) extra mana, or about 1555, totalling 12355.

In her healing gear, and these are guesses because I can’t remember exactly the specific values, I think she has (about) 11810 mana and 18% holy spell crit chance. 10.8% extra mana, or 1275, totalling 13085.

Again, these end mana values are approximate because of the RNG. If the RNG gods are not favoring you one day, you’ll experience slightly worse returns from Illumination.

[/edit: One thing I forgot is that for most Holy Paladins, Holy Light has a 6% increased critical chance from talents. So it ends up being dependent on what spells your casting, and the ratio between them. But the above works as a simple example for just using one spell.]

I’m going to leave the old post there as it is, as I still believe it is valid and provides a basis with which to compare spell crit and mp5 when considering gear upgrades. However, I’m now of the opinion that spell crit as an extension of your mana pool is a more accurate depiction of the statistic. :D

Attack Power! (or stuff I think about when bored)

Sad? Probably.

Anyway, Attack Power is a numeric value attributed to a combination of things, building onto weapon dps. Basically, the more you have, the more damage per hit you do. For every 14 attack power you have, your damage per second is increased by 1.

280 attack power? 20 dps.

As such, it is one of the stats in high demand for physical dps characters. Largely because it is one of the most easily scaled attributes for many classes.

Why is that? There are a number of reasons.

First and foremost, any buff to your character’s stats is a buff to attack power. Attack power is a stat that is at least partially derived from stats. For warriors, paladins, shaman, and druids, 1 strength is 2 attack power (it’s actually more complicated for druids, as it can be dependent on form). For rogues, 1 strength is 1 attack power, and 1 agility is 1 attack power. For hunters, 1 agility is 1 ranged attack power (and 1 strength is 1 melee attack power, but lets pretend that doesn’t exist).

Increase your warrior’s strength by 10% through Blessing of Kings, and you’ve effectively increased the toon’s attack power by 10% as well.

500 str = 1000 ap
550 str (500 + 10%) = 1100 ap

For this reason alone, strength is a powerful stat for those classes that benefit so heavily from it. If they possess a lot of gear that buffs attack power but not strength, Blessing of Kings gives them less than it normally would, because it only buffs attack power by buffing your base stats.

So for warriors, paladins, shaman, and druids, when you’re looking at gear upgrades, you need to factor strength more heavily than it looks. This is especially true when socketing gems. Always go for strength over attack power if you can.

For instance, if a potential gear upgrade looks like this:

Old
36 Strength
34 Stamina
24 crit rating

New
30 Stamina
25 crit rating
74 attack power

74 attack power sounds like a lot, but remember that 36 strength by itself is 72. So the new item is an upgrade right?

Well if attack power is the only consideration, remember that with Kings, your strength is increased by 10%. That 36 strength on the old item becomes 39.6, and thus rounded out at somewhere between 79 and 80 attack power, while the new item’s 72 will remain unchanged.

Of course this all relies on Blessing of Kings, but every raid should have it, if not for this than to also increase all the other stats for more hit points, mana, and mana regeneration!

However, and I’m starting to ramble a bit, but on the subject of blessings, Might is in general a more powerful blessing than Kings, considering attack power alone. You would need something in the range of 1000 strength to come remotely close to getting the same amount of attack power from Kings as you would Might. However, the increased hit points from the increased stamina (and even increased crit chance from increased agility) may let Kings win out, but that decision is, in my experience, up to the paladins.

This is a long way to say to warriors, paladins, and shaman in particular: strength > attack power in gem sockets!

Holy Shock…Batman?

As of right now, pre-2.4’s release, Holy Shock (Rank 5) does the following:

- Damages target opponent for 530-574 holy damage, or…
- Heals target ally for 530-574.

This is an instant spell with a 15-second cooldown.

Once 2.4 is released, the spell remains largely unchanged, but the numbers will be (substantially) larger:

- Damage increased to 721-779
- Healing increased to 931-987

Let me just say, “Wow.” 36% more damage, 74% more healing!

Another holy shock tidbit has to do with the Ornamented healing set. They are changing the 4-piece set bonus from -10 seconds on HoJ’s cooldown to 30% increased healing done with Holy Shock.

Well.

For starters, Holy Shock, being an instant-cast spell, gets 42.8% of your +damage/healing. Zerei is at I think 1575 or so in her pvp gear, 42.8% of that being 674. Add that onto the new healing value for max-rank Holy Shock, and it will now heal for about 1632. (Currently, it’s only healing for about 1215 or thereabouts.)

That’s pretty amazing. Tack on 30% extra for the 4-piece Gladiator’s, and it’s up to 2122, almost double what it was before! That will crit for 3183!

Holy Shock is now pretty damn amazing. Yay for better being able to heal on the move. QQ for no longer having HoJ ready every 35 seconds though XD

As Tack said, a shorter cooldown might have been nicer…soloing is still going to be pretty boring…but a buff’s a buff so I’ll not be complaining much.

Image from one I found in an images.google.com search. I don’t know who to give credit to as its hosted at imageshack.us :(

Warrior PvE DPS: Arms

Delos had posted a need for help with warrior dps. I commented on that post in December, adding my advice and what little I knew about dps as a warrior with a two-handed weapon.

He’s posted again since then, and has found a new resource for the subject.

Skindancer over at Altosis (not to be confused with Altitis) has posted his own take on the subject, and over the course of a number of posts, goes into great detail uncovering the nuances of the spec, ability rotations, and just about everything one would need to know to enter a raid environment as what I call “an MS warrior.”

Also, coincidentally, there is a video up on warcraftmovies.com made by a Tier-6-wearing warrior who does dps in this spec. I apologize that I don’t have a link to it, but the idea is that it does comparable dps to fury, but has an added benefit, and one that I admit I have been overlooking for quite some time now.

And that benefit is Blood Frenzy.

Whenever the warrior with this talent has a bleed effect active on the target (Rend or Deep Wounds), another debuff becomes active called Blood Frenzy, akin to the way Misery and Shadow Embrace for Shadow Priests and Afflication Warlocks, respectively, work (with one debuff triggering another). This debuff increases all physical damage dealt to the target by 4%, with two points in the talent.

So, wow. Let’s start with who deals physical damage.

- Rogues
- Warriors
- Hunters (and their pets)
- Enhancement Shaman
- Retribution Paladins
- Feral Druids

Second, how important is 4%?

Well, it’s pretty much exactly like increasing your hit chance by 4%, except it still works over the hit cap. It’s like increasing your crit chance by 4%, with the exception of that it will not proc things like Flurry nor benefit from +crit damage talents/items.

If you have a rogue in your Kara raid who would have otherwise done 50,000 damage over the course of a fight, just adding in that arms warrior will increase that by 2,000.

If you have 3 rogues doing this, it’s sort of like saying the warrior, by proxy, is doing 6,000 extra damage on top of his own (which, if you manage to find that video I mentioned, is certainly pretty decent…I’ll try to link to it in an edit of this post later).

Consider also that you’re really buffing more than just rogues. All of those classes mentioned above will benefit from this.

Finally, it’s a warrior providing a buff beyond Battle Shout for the dps. And a very good one at that.

Another boring day at work, another WoW math spreadsheet

Working on another spreadsheet, this one for fury warrioring. Hopefully I can pull some numbers together like what I did with paladin healing, finding equivalencies and such.

What’s hardest is figuring out how to mathematically consider flurry.

While on that subject, a Holy Paladin talent that increases casting speed after getting a crit heal would be uber leet. Better yet, a hybrid talent that did the same after a melee critical strike.

Found an interesting site, by the way: maxdps.com

Resilience Math

I’ve not seen this done anywhere else, and have been curious about it. Initially stemming from why people are saying weapon specs (those used by warriors and rogues, namely axe/polearm, fist, and dagger specs) are so marginalized by resilience, I set out to do some math on it.

Just using test values, say you’re using a 2.6 speed weapon and hit for 375 on average, thus critting for 750. Say your chance to crit is 25%, and the duration you are attacking is 130 seconds (mainly so that we get an even number of attacks rather than having to round). Also assume 0% chance to miss, for simplicity’s sake.

Attacks: 50
Crits: 13
Hits: 38
Reg Dmg: 14,063
Crit Dmg: 9,375
Total Dmg: 23,438

Now let’s add in resilience. Try a fairly modest 200 resilience, which equates to 5% less chance to be crit and 10% less crit damage taken.

Attacks: 50
Crits: 10
Hits: 40
Reg Dmg: 15,000
Crit Dmg: 6,750
Total Dmg: 21,750

So you take 1687, or about 7.2% less damage.

Say you get a new weapon which does the same amount of damage, has the same speed, but is of a different type. Say from a sword to an axe (and again for simplicity’s sake, say you weren’t using sword spec before), so you respec to pick up the specialization in your talents, changine nothing except going up 5% in your crit chance, to 30%.

Against a target with no resilience:

Attacks:50
Crits: 15
Hits: 35
Reg Dmg: 13,125
Crit Dmg: 11,250
Total Dmg: 24,375

Against 200 resilience:

Attacks: 50
Crits: 13
Hits: 38
Reg Dmg: 14,063
Crit Dmg: 8,438
Total Dmg: 22,500

1875, or 7.69% less.

You do more damage overall, but your opponent’s resilience also becomes more effective at reducing the damage they’re taking, not something I could foresee. This is where your weapon specs that provide crit chance increase fall behind, and those that provide other benefits shine (swords and, more favorably, maces).

For example, picking up 5/5 sword spec (simply because it’s benefits are visible via math, where mace spec’s aren’t so much) and keeping the 25% crit chance instead:

Attacks: 52.5
Crits: 10.5
Hits: 42
Reg Dmg: 15,750
Crit Dmg: 7,875
Total Dmg: 23,625

1125 more damage than picking up 5% crit chance instead, and still 187 more than no sword spec against a target having no resilience at all!

Mind you, the burst damage critical chance provides is still a valuable asset in pvp. It just becomes a less reliable one for doing damage as you go up.

And this is where heavily crit-reliant talent specs are lamented. Mutilate spec for rogues (deep assassination) especially, since Mutilate is one dagger-based rogue ability in particular that does not receive an bonus to crit from other talents (Improved Backstab and Improved Ambush being the ones that do, by fairly hefty amounts).