So tanking Heroic Shadow Labyrinth (I almost typed Labs) tonight, I was crit. I found this somewhat unusual, since I haven't been crit in tanking gear...ever in my memory in TBC (once my uncrittable set was established.)

This is where the entire community here chimes in to tell me the multitude of ways in which I am a noob and have missed one of a million possible things that could result in me being crit. Done? Ok. Here's the details -- I think I've been thorough.

1. The mob was level 71, a Malicious Instructor in the 2nd room of SL. Against level 71 mobs, I have a base chance of 5.2% to be crit. We currently assume this is based on the default mob weapon skill of (5 * moblevel) = 5 * 71 = 355, which adds .2% to the base 5% for all mobs.
   
2. I have 132 Defense Rating, which means precisely (132 / 2.4) = +55 Defense, meaning I have a total of 405 Defense. That's (55 * -.04%) = -2.2% chance to be crit.
   
3. I also have 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, meaning a -3% chance to be crit in melee.
   
4. I *also* have 23 Resilience Rating, which means (23 / 39.4) = -.5838% chance to be crit.
   
5. The hit in question was a normal melee hit, not a special ability or anything else crazy.
   
6. I didn't have any unusual debuffs or anything that might reduce my defense skill somehow. The debuff in the combat log is Mark of Malice. I don't think I had it on me when I was crit, but even so, the spell applies no aura (despite the funky tooltip) to reduce defense skill or do anything else strange -- just the damage trigger.
   
7. Personally adding up my Defense Rating gives 132 as well: Neck 13, Shoulders 10, 28 Chest, 24 Weapon, 24 Boots, 17 Ring, 16 Ring. I just logged out in that set of gear so the Armory should have it for your inspection. I also have 16 Resi from shoulders, 3 from the shoulder socket bonus, and 4 from the leg socket bonus, for the listed 23.
   
8. Screenshot verifying this occurence is below. I took the whole thing because people on EJ have been damn picky lately, so you get to enjoy my widescreen. Combat log on the lower left, character sheet on the top left. I c/p'd a clip from another shot of the Resilience tooltip so that both tooltips appear at once, that's the only editing that's been done.
   
9. Random note I just noticed now -- the instructor crit me for approximately 4x what I was taking in damage from a normal melee swing. Strange.

Now, lest you chalk it up to the rumored 1 roll on the melee table reserved for even impossibilities, or to an act of the gods, or a computer error, something caused by the mobs (possibly) higher weapon skill, or as some other manner of fluke...

Later during the run it happened again.

This time it was a different mob, a Cabal Fanatic in Vorpil's room. He was also level 71, and all my gear was the same as before.



What in Zeus' beard is going on here? Someone tell me, because I've got nothin'.

Check point number 3, there's this "vast difference".

Survival of the Fittest, reduces chance to be crit in melee by 3%

So if the mobs start with 5.2% crit, SotF reduces that to 2.2%, his 405 def reduces that to 0%, and his resilience should theoretically be completely unneeded.

Simple explanation; Resilience, talent and defence doesnt add up like you might expect. It's probably multiplicative or something in that order.

It was a mainhand swing that critted you, meanwhile you got hitted by the offhand swings.
As far as I know most dualwieling mobs hit for 100/50 with MH/OH, which would explain why the crit was 4x the hit.

I've tanked those mobs with my warrior at 491 defense, got critter 3 times on a pull. Those mobs are wierd.

It's certainly been put forwards that dual wielding mobs have a higher crit rate than the "default" 5.6% (moroes, romeo are the ones that people have noticed it on).

I have also been crit by instructors a 499 defense. My assumption was that they have higher weapon skill, but that's just a guess.

This is why you got crit by the first mob. Since the DW mobs have the high miss rate (and don't have much hit gear , blizzard seemed to have added crit to them).

Other idea is resilience and Defense are not adding correctly.

I've seen the same discussion on the R&D forums and some people were saying the exact same thing. The only mobs that were critting them were Moroes and the Malicious Instructors. So I guess they have some sort of +crit stats manually implemented in them.

I was levelling up my shaman as elemental this week, and in a fit of drunkenness I picked up both Eye of the Storm (gain a buff that grants uninterruptability when crit) and Elemental Shields (-6% chance to be crit by melee/ranged).

I've been crit (and thus gained Eye of the Storm, making it really obvious) once in three levels now - it was against one of the orcs in the Path of Glory after it enraged.

So my personal theory is that in addition to whatever other explanations there are, certain mob abilities grant a crit bonus. Of course, that's only one data point, but it's a thought.

Didn't they change it a mini-patch or two ago to make it so any attack which WOULD have been a crit still procs things like blessed resillience/eye of the storm/etc even if its made a non-crit by resillience/talents? Either way, it's a pretty weird system.