Combat Ratings at level 85 (Cataclysm) - Page 10

drumbum · 08/21/08, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

ArP is a stat with a cap (cap varys by target).

If ArP is OP, just change its cost (reducing ArP on existing gear). For a stat with a cap, the shape of its "value" curve is really less important than its magnitude.

Saying ArP is too difficult to model is like saying armor is too difficult to model. Should incoming DPS be linear in armor?

Well, I also think armor penetration is very underpowered when attacking heavy armor targets, which is a little silly because physical classes need the most help against high armor targets, not low armor targets. I'd like to see armor penetration become stronger against high armor targets, but also weaker against low armor targets. This can't be done by just scaling the amount on gear up or down. It doesn't necessarily have to be better against low armor targets than high armor targets (that was just one possible idea -- see below), but I feel the gap should be much smaller than it is now. Basically I think Blizzard is in a situation where they can't balance armor penetration properly because of how wildly different it behaves relative to the target's armor value.

That said, to someone who knew nothing about the game, "armor penetration" as a term sounds like it ought to be superior against heavy armor. In fact, Blizzard actually refers to the stat as "ignores ... armor" everywhere in the game as far as I can recall, never as "armor penetration" -- that is, until the Wrath beta when they added "armor penetration rating" and armor penetration gems. I don't know if this is actually an intentional terminology change or if Blizzard just picked it up from what the playerbase has been calling it. Probably the latter, but it is possible.

Muphrid · 08/21/08, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

ArP is a stat with a cap (cap varys by target).

If ArP is OP, just change its cost (reducing ArP on existing gear). For a stat with a cap, the shape of its "value" curve is really less important than its magnitude.

Saying ArP is too difficult to model is like saying armor is too difficult to model. Should incoming DPS be linear in armor?

I would disagree. The shape is very important; if we feel that armor penetration is ineffective in one situation and must be buffed, we must consider what this will do to the rest of the curve. Simply increasing the effectiveness of armor penetration by a multiplier, for instance, could very well make it overpowered at another point on the curve.

I don't think anyone is saying armor penetration is hard to come up with a model that matches its real behavior; rather it's hard to design a new model (we often use the two meanings interchangeably, but the distinction is important) to accomplish a given goal.

Finally, stats with caps have profound implications for item design. Having a stat be limited by a cap puts an extra burden on itemization, as the same templates that work at a low gear level cannot be scaled up to work at a higher gear level. With Blizzard's item budgeting function, the diminishing proportion of item points spent on a capped stat effectively diminishes the maximum potential that an item could offer. I can only think that, to ensure all classes are fairly affected by items, they would have to somehow ensure that all classes are equally affected by caps.

Erdluf · 08/21/08, 3:18 PM

Originally Posted by drumbum

Well, I also think armor penetration is very underpowered when attacking heavy armor targets, which is a little silly because physical classes need the most help against high armor targets, not low armor targets. I'd like to see armor penetration become stronger against high armor targets, but also weaker against low armor targets. This can't be done by just scaling the amount on gear up or down. It doesn't necessarily have to be better against low armor targets than high armor targets (that was just one possible idea -- see below), but I feel the gap should be much smaller than it is now. Basically I think Blizzard is in a situation where they can't balance armor penetration properly because of how wildly different it behaves relative to the target's armor value.

I disagree with the goal. Armor should be a "rock" to physical DPS's "scissors." A rogue needs more help against a Bear than he does against a Warlock. Perhaps Cloak of Shadows be changed to dispell bleeds instead of magical DoTs?

However the goal does seem easy to achieve. Current (rounded) numbers at 70 are

1k armor = 10% mitigation
16k armor = 60% mitigation

1k ArP could reduce mitigation by 10%. In other words, it removes the "first" 1k of the target's armor, rather than the "last" 1k.

Your damage against that priest goes from 90% to 100%. A boost of 11%.
Your damage against that warrior goes from 40% to 50%. A boost of 25%.

In both cases your DPS increases by the same absolute amount (at least before other forms of mitigation/avoidance). ArP would suffer the same kind of DR that armor suffers (DR in regards to DPS, linear in regards to TTL).

Toskk · 08/21/08, 5:24 PM

The one important stat conversion at level 80 that I haven't seen so far is the Agility-to-Dodge-Chance value for each class. Has anyone been able to derive these values? Druids recently discovered a similar nerf at 70 to that ratio that happened to our crit chance at 70.. this was partially concealed because like how druids were given a higher base crit chance to compensate we were given a higher base dodge chance to compensate for worse agility-to-dodge scaling. It would be very useful to determine precisely the agility-to-dodge chance in WotLK at 70 and at 80 for all classes.

Zade · 08/23/08, 3:16 PM

Any word on what base mana will be at level 80?

• frmorrison · 08/23/08, 5:36 PM

Base mana depends on Class and Race. So it would be a lot of data points to collect, but I am sure people will start hitting 80 soon.

Zade · 08/23/08, 5:53 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

Base mana depends on Class and Race. So it would be a lot of data points to collect, but I am sure people will start hitting 80 soon.

Base mana just depends on class. It's only 10 data points!

Xentropy · 08/23/08, 6:23 PM

Base mana for level 80 mages seems to be 3268, based on data from a lvl 80 mage posting in the mage theorycrafting thread.

Althor · 08/23/08, 7:43 PM

I'm not 80 yet so I can't give you an exact figure for Priests, but there's a fairly consistent trend in the increases so it's probably going to be around 3862 base mana.

Zurgat · 08/26/08, 1:26 AM

Another set of info which would be very useful, would be the dodge gained per agility.
Attributes - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft lists rogues to need 14.5 at level 60 and 20 at level 70 for 1% dodge.
Suposedly the dodge value is getting some change for WotLK though.

Whitetooth · 09/11/08, 4:12 AM

Bugged or intended? Parry, Dodge formula changed.

Beta build: 8926
Class: Death Knight
Race: Draenei
Level: 55
Base defense: 270

TotalParry	ParryRating	Parry%FromRating	+TotalParry	+ParryRating	+Parry%FromRating
6.794743061	27	1.991489329
7.005979061	30	2.212765922	0.211236000	3	0.221276592
7.215241432	33	2.434042514	0.209262371	3	0.221276592
7.422558308	36	2.655319106	0.207316875	3	0.221276592
7.627955914	39	2.876595698	0.205397606	3	0.221276592
7.966093063	44	3.245390018	0.338137150	5	0.368794320
8.033100128	45	3.319148882	0.067007065	1	0.073758864
8.299093246	49	3.614184338	0.265993118	4	0.295035456
8.496476173	52	3.835460931	0.197382927	3	0.221276592
8.692075729	55	4.056737523	0.195599556	3	0.221276592
8.821496010	57	4.204255251	0.129420280	2	0.147517728
9.014177322	60	4.425531843	0.192681313	3	0.221276592
9.205139160	63	4.646808435	0.190961838	3	0.221276592
9.644155502	70	5.163120484	0.439016342	7	0.516312048

Results show that although the rating forumla remains linear, the resulting total parry chance is not.

I'm not sure if its the more +parry you have the less parry each point gives, or if its that your base parry chance changes with the amount of +parry you have.

Tests on dodge chance have also shown a similar effect, that the resulting dodge chance is lower then what it should be if it were linear.

Block chance on the other hand does not have this effect.

At first I thought this may be a way to put a cap on avoidance, until a friend(Monolight) on beta helped me do some testing with a level 80 paladin.

The test was to see if parry from defense has this effect also, we know that each point of defense gives 0.04% parry, results showed it gave more then 0.04%, not less like the death knight.

These results are so weird I don't know if its a bug or an inteaded change.

It would be very helpful if anyone in beta could help collect more data points for analysis.

Commands:
/dump GetParryChance().." "..GetCombatRating(CR_PARRY).." "..GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_PARRY).." "..select(1, UnitDefense("player"))+select(2, UnitDefense("player"))
/dump GetDodgeChance().." "..GetCombatRating(CR_DODGE).." "..GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DODGE).." "..select(1, UnitDefense("player"))+select(2, UnitDefense("player")).." "..select(1, UnitStat("player", 2))

/dump command is provided by AceConsole-2.0 or DevTools, if you have any ace2 addons you can use it.
Another helpful addon is Chatter, it gives you a button at the bottom right corner of your chat frame click on it to copy out your test results.
In addition to the results, please provide your Beta build, Class, Race, Level and Base defense. Its also recommended to do the testing with 0 talent points.

Thank you.

drumbum · 09/11/08, 5:06 AM

Based on the data you gave, the relationship between TotalParry (y) and ParryRating (x) fits a 2nd order polynomial regression with $R^2 = 0.9999998854$ :

$y = -0.0001007295x^2 + 0.0760130295x + 4.8163150115$

Roywyn · 09/11/08, 5:12 AM

Originally Posted by Zurgat

Another set of info which would be very useful, would be the dodge gained per agility.
Attributes - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft lists rogues to need 14.5 at level 60 and 20 at level 70 for 1% dodge.
Suposedly the dodge value is getting some change for WotLK though.

The values scales from 70 to 80 exactly like ratings. So at 80 for 1% dodge, you need (131/63) times the agility of 1% dodge at level 70.

Druid values are ~19.5 agility for 1% dodge at 70, and thus ~40.5 agi at 80. Not sure whether rogues changed.

Whitetooth · 09/12/08, 8:07 AM

First post updated with Armor penetration rating:

All items had the "ignore armor" stat converted to ArP rating with a conversion ratio of 7 ignore armor = 1 ArP rating.
At level 70, 7.4 ArP rating reduces enemy armor by up to 1%.

Rating	Level 60	Level 70	Level 80
Armor Penetration	4.69512177	7.40384579	15.39529991

Modal · 09/12/08, 9:35 AM

Originally Posted by Whitetooth

These results are so weird I don't know if its a bug or an inteaded change.

It would be very helpful if anyone in beta could help collect more data points for analysis.

I've been trying to get people to look into this with me over at the maintankadin boards. We have collected a little data and have a preliminary formula for dodge rating:dodge % ratio.

The formula we came up with is was: Ratio = 0.05465x(0.9994866869)^Rating

But honestly that sort of math is not my forte; you'd have to ask Arcand how he arrived at that from my data.

I won't reproduce all the data here (see the maintankadin thread if you want all the numbers), but what I found for my level 70 draenei paladin was

Dodge Rating     Dodge % per Rating
       38            .0542
      147            .0507
      277            .0471
      338            .0456
      442            .0433
      577            .0406
      742            .0377

Check out the thread here:

Maintankadin :: View topic - Defensive Stats in WotLK (diminishing returns)

I've asked about this a couple times on the beta forums, as well, but have generated virtually no interest and no blue response. Let me know if you make a post asking for confirmation and I'll gladly bump it for you.

Also, our testing shows that the contribution to Block % from both Block Rating and Defense Skill remains as in TBC, however, as you noticed, Defense Skill is contributing more than .04% per point to Dodge and Parry. The numbers are a little weird here, but it appears to average out to about .042% per point.