I've been wondering about this for a long time now, and perhaps someone here knows the answer.

Look at the following four situations. A mage without Ignite (extra damage on crits) casts the following spells on one mob:

A) Five Scorch hits of 400 damage each = 2,000 damage.

B) Two Fireball hits of 1,000 damage each = 2,000 damage.

C) Two Scorch hits of 400 damage each and two Scorch crits of 600 damage each = 2,000 damage.

D) One Scorch hit of 400 damage and one Fireball crit of 1,600 damage = 2,000 damage.

The question is simple: do all these four combinations cause the same amount of total threat? Why (not)?

A) 2000 threat
B) 2000 threat
C) Approximately 2600 threat
D) Approximately 2800 threat

A crit generates, on average, 50% more aggro than you would expect based on damage alone (I believe it is variable... something like a range between 33% and 66% extra threat, but I haven't done remotely enough testing to confirm this).

another perfect example of why I am more of a fan of +damage than crit.

So that means 4 crits of 1,000 each would do the same amount of threat as one crit of 4,000.

How sure are you of this? I have the feeling that the higher the crit, the more extra threat it does. For example, using the formula crit_damage ^ 1.06 (where ^ indicates "to the power of", just to be sure).

This hypothetic formula would mean:

Scorch crit of 600 cause about 880 threat.
Three Scorch crits of 600 cause about 3 * 880 = 2640 threat.

Fireball crit of 1800 cause about 2820 threat.

Hm, not much of a difference as I was hoping. Anyway, my idea was that higher crits might cause more threat that several low crits adding up to the same amount of damage as the high crit.

Perhaps I should do some research about this... could it be that Combustion has a use after all? B)

:laugh:

It seems uncharacteristic that they would do something that complex (any kind of threat going nonlinearly with damage). I doubt there's anything to support it either--although it would be an illusion easily created by the tendency of huge spike threat to pull aggro more easily than a threat gain which is divided in time.

\o

does this apply to melee attacks aswell? our rogues refuse to belive that and my guess is it does but the 0.8 threat modifier makes them not understand it :P

Yes. Just ask Gamblor, he bitches constantly about doing less damage and getting aggro first because he crits too much.

Yes. This is part of why dagger rogues tend to pull aggro more than sword/mace rogues. When a huge chunk of your damage is coming from four-digit crits (backstabs) you are generating a lot of aggro.

It does indeed. We've had instances where two rogues have significantly different critrates, and the one with the higher critrate pulls aggro despite having done less total damage than the one who wasn't critting.

There was also the shortlived experiment with feral druids gearing for crit instead of AP. That was pretty funny. :D

Shamancraft has died.

from [Wodin]: HAHA
to [Wodin]: F U I was doing like 400 DPS before that giant turned around.

Chupid is still experimenting looking for the crit/ap sweet spot. I'm scared to try and am basically AP focused and trying to keep crit at 20% or less.

Wow, Feral Druids can do a sustained 400 DPS? That's pretty impressive.

Sucks that Meow Form doesn't have the 0.8 threat multiplier that Rogues have. :(

And lets keep it that way, shall we? Us rogues are already replacable enough as it is. *grumbles*

:rolleyes:

Heh- good point, but you do have Vanish.

Vanish and feint are about the only thing (besides disarm trap lmao) that keeps rogues desireable over a dps warrior at this point.

Hopefully in 6 months from now or whenever, they'll give rogues some love in the form of a group buff or something that makes them more desirable.

Otherwise we could just replace all dps classes with hunters and be fine.

i'll be shocked if they dont give rogues a raiding buff to make them a little more group-desirable when they do the rogue class review.

Why did you guys change your tag from Just Another Snake Cult? That was a fun name :(

All the original JASC dudes went back to Horde, Nerzhul. I dunno, I haven't seen any of them on for quite a while. The rest of us former Horde, Illidan guys created this guild. But yea, I loved the old name. :(

2 copper to anyone that gets the reference. B)


LFM, MC- 30 spots open, PST!

Heh. I would expect most people playing WoW have seen the Ahnold version of Conan the Barbarian at least once. Good for pure hilarity and drinking games during college.

I meant the new guild name, silly goose! B)


Edit- Though, it's not nearly as cool as the Conan throwback. :(

Edit- Wodin, come up with a cooler guild name for us.

Google says it was a spell in UO, but I wasn't playing MMOs back then. :( I'm not a particularly creative soul when it comes to things like guild names and such, I just appreciate one done well. :)

No, it doesn't apply to heals because Chupid and Shamancraft never heal me anymore because they're stinky, stupid cat druids.

As for actual healers, I think so. I've been playing my priest a lot lately with a 60 rogue for company. I'm pretty sure the crit heals cause the extra threat just like a damage spell. I haven't pulled agro easily with crit heals on party members very often (that's much lower base threat, anyway), but I've managed to pull a really pissed mob off of a high DPS rogue with a big crit heal on myself a number of times that I should have been well safe to heal myself without pulling agro. In the same situation versus the same mobs, a regular heal and even 2 back to back non-crit heals to myself often haven't had that effect, so something has to be tipping the balance.

I still crit a lot on my lock when I'm not resisted, in spite of ditching a lot of my % crit gear. Sometimes, it's pretty annoying. I'd probably die more often due to the sudden lack of druid healing, but I can't get my hands on any of those pretty trinkets that would allow me to instagib alliance people. :(