I have read through a lot of what has been posted in this forum and I haven't found anything that quite answers this. Sorry if this has been asked before, but I was hoping to get some insight on where mages and casters in general get bigger bonuses from stats such as %chance to hit, %chance to crit and damage. I believe casters have a ~16-17% chance to hit vs. 63+ mobs and that casters are capped at 99% chance to hit as was established in other posts and that Crit benefits fire mages the most out of all casters due to factors such as ignite (40% of damage in DoT form over 4 seconds) and master of elements (refunding 30% of the mana cost of the spell).

The comparison that I am most interested in is between the %chance to hit and %chance to crit stat and what is more important to look for, however I would be interested as well how much +damage would make up for 1%chance to hit or 1%chance to crit.

Thanks for the help.

Without considering any talents that may benefit from criticals, which of course leaves a gaping hole in theorycrafting that will get me publicly flogged here :),

If you consider 1% to hit, it means that if you're landing 83% or 83 spells out of 100 cast, then 1% hit means you'll be getting 84 spells to land out of 100 cast. So if your bolts hit for 1000, then you'll get an extra 1000 damage every 100 casts, or an average of (1000dmg/100casts = )10 damage per cast.

Thats the hard way to do it. The easy way is to take whatever your spell hits for and multiply it by .01. That's your %hit value.

Crit depends on what talents you have, but the traditional offensive caster has double damage for crits. So, if you cast those 83 successful spells, and 1 extra is critting, that's in essence, an extra bolt, and thus the same bonus as 1% hit.

The tradeoffs become that crit% can be considered more valuable due to certain bonuses you get from criticals (ie: ignite, imp. shadow bolt, MoE), or hit can be considered more valuable if you cast a lot of spells that do not crit (ie: warlocks).

Hit can also be seen as more valuable for classes whose primary role is not nuking. If I'm not mistaken, priests don't have a double damage on crits talent, so a %hit is worth 50% more to them than a %crit when talking about smites and mind blasts.

And don't sign your posts :)

Theorycraft - http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/a...eorycraft.html

Not exactly a spreadsheet, but it's a good in-game way to see what various bonuses will give you. Spreadsheeting mage gear is really easy though, compared to every other class out there. :/

What on earth are you talking about? =P

Anyway, Giving the example of a fire mage, ignoring the benefit of rolling ignites, fire mages get a 40% damage ignite which amounts to a 1.9 modifier on a crit (damage-wise) + returning 30% of the mana which would arguably bring the benefit to 2.2 considering a long fight where mana is an issue. Would this make +crit a better bonus over +hit regardless of the amount?

Ignite makes for 210 % dmg, it's 40 % of the initial 150 % crit, which is 60 % and 60 + 150 = 210 %. So for a Fire mage, one could argue that + crit is worth a lot to a Fire mage. I personally rate it a bit equal to about + 15 dmg, give or take, because of Rolling Ignite chance, Ignite itself and MoE. That, and I like big green numbers in my screen. :P

Still, + hit is very valuable as well. Elemental Precision will get rid of 6 % resists, essentially upping dmg by 6 %. (Or letting you aggro about 6 % earlier. :P), on bosses. A further two can be attained in ZG and there's some gear here and there for even more hit. It's not exactly rocket science in comparison with rogues or hunters to say the least.

Well, some things are obvious: hit is better than crit up to level 63 hit cap, especially if the caster gets 150% crits, but even if the caster gets 200% crit.

The interesting bits are the tradeoff betweet crit/spelldamage. In my opinion, fire mages should slightly overvalue crit due to rolling ignite mechanics, and warlocks should slightly overvalue spelldamage, because spelldamage not only helps their dps but also their efficiency, due to lifetap changes in 1.12.

Well, I am not sure Silya's statement is correct, but on bosses, 1 hit is about 10 more damage per cast. 1 to crit is about 8 damage per cast (depends on gear, but that is the general number).

However, getting crits are fun :), also there are talents that make crits bigger. Also, having more than 4 +hit doesn't help you against 60s, while crit is always helpful.

The closest I can imagine is not being with excellent tanks and getting a famous critstreak. Then again, I haven't seen one of those, including aggro gain, since I ToEP critted 3 Frostbolts in a row with Rallying Cry on our newest warrior in MC. (*bleegh, outdated content*) 1.11 pretty much solved those problems for me, something with Blessing of EZ-mode and Frost Channeling. (And burning soul now.) Essentially boiling down to hit being more 'reliable' in dmg done. And there's always the myth* that crits generate extra aggro.

*Haven't seen it debunked or proven as of yet, and my favorite warrior is on a forced break, so can't test.

If you believe that crits create additional aggro, search the EJ threads. I know there was a thread about two months ago on that topic, and there is a lot of hard evidence that crits do not create "special" aggro.

However, crits at WoW's release did create additional aggro, but that is not the case today.

I'm not the one who believes as such, but at times, a myth like this tends to come up. (Especially with people who have builds without BS or FC. :>) Will check out those threads after having some sleep. :P

Well our MT, while he doesn't have defiance never loses agro with the sole exception of Vael when a Combat dagger rogue pushes 1250 dps, so agro is a non-issue and I am not necessarily needing steady dps over spikes which of course more crit over hit will generate. I currently have 5% chance to hit with gear (21/30/0 spec since I love pvp and dislike a combustion spec for it) and 9% chance to crit on my gear (not including Int, base crit, or talented crit). What I am wanting to know is whether more crit vs hit will pump out more total damage or whether I am gimping myself having such low hit.

A warlock can argue for crit to be worth more based on the composition of a raid. Improved Shadowbolt's charges can all be easily used before the debuff wears off. The debuff also applies to dots like Corruption while it is active, even though ticks of dots will not remove charges. Assuming all Warlocks are doing similar damage, a Shadowbolt critical with Ruin and Improved Shadowbolt contributes at least 280% of a normal Shadowbolt's damage. If the Warlock is less able to use Corruption, Curse of Agony/Doom (lack of Warlocks to put up the extra damage curses, or too many Warlocks resulting in less debuff slots per Warlock), raw spell power begins to lose some value relative to crit.

I think you could more or less limit this discussion to mages. Locks benefit less from crit due to dot use, and would imbalance the discussion a bit. Withotu going into whether shadow priests are useful to a raid - spell crit is more or less useless to them.

For Frost, a hit and a crit run exactly the same. If my Frostbolt hits for 1250 in raids with about 3% miss and 21% crit (WC usually up), a hit/crit is worth 12.5/(0.814*1.18) = 13 +dmg. Assuming you only care about damage against 63's, of course.

For Fire, crits will be worth slightly more due to MoE and Ignite. Ignoring MoE and Ignite rolling, if my Fireball hits for 1650, again with 3% miss and about 22% crit, a crit is worth 16.5*1.1/(1.19) = 15.25 +dmg.

More details about the equal DPS gradients of things like MP5 will hopefully come if I ever work on that spreadsheet a bit more.

Immediate conclusion: I should use my one enchant on Black Blizzard over Festering Swarm.

1 hit is slightly better than 1 crit for alliance frost mages, due to that JoW can't proc on a resist, as far as I know. Pretty minor difference, though.

On single target fights (where at most I'll have Corruption ticking) I actually value crit more highly than a 1% damage increase from +damage or 1% hit, because of how stupidly good Imp. Shadow Bolt is, especially after the patch.

Wow, totally forgot about that.

Hmm? No it's not. If 1250 is my average hit, not averaged over misses/crits, then 1% hit adds 1% of that to my average damage per cast.

Yes, the equivalence ratio between hit/crit and damage changes (that's why I specfied some conditons) but not in the way you describe.

I believe it depends on whether Blizzard is rolling 2 dice or one to determine hit and crit. I've never seen a canonical answer on this from Blizzard, but most people "in the know" claim it's a single roll.

For example, if there is a single roll from 1-100 and it breaks down like this:
N = Miss Chance (as an integer between 1 and 100)
C = Crit Chance (as an integer between 1 and 100)
A = (100 - C)

1 -> N: Miss (Where N is your miss chance)
N+1 -> A: Hit (Where C is your crit chance)
A+1 -> 100: Crit

In this case, then what you describe is correct. However, if it's 2 rolls where one determines hit and the other determines crit, then it's possible that the extra hits you get from +hit results in crits. (Which is impossible in the first case.) In that case you need to factor in crit damage. Basically what this determines is what form the expectation value formula for damage takes.

In case 1 (a single roll) you have:

D = Average Damage on a Hit
C = Crit rate as a number between 0 and 1
M = Miss rate as a number between 0 and 1
H = Hit rate computed as (1 - (C + M))
k = multiplier for crit damage (2 for frost, 2.1 for fire for mages)

EV(Dmg,Crit, Hit) = D * H + k * D * C

Whereas in case 2 (2 separate rolls) you'd have:

D = Average Damage on a Hit
C = Crit rate as a number between 0 and 1
M = Miss rate as a number between 0 and 1
H = Hit rate computed as (1 - M)
k = multiplier for crit damage (2 for frost, 2.1 for fire for mages)

EV(Dmg, Crit, Hit) = (D * (1-C) + k*D*C) * H

Which are quite different functions. You can use the appropriate EV function to derive the +dmg to +hit or +crit equivalencies. As you should see pretty quickly if you attempt that, the transformations are not simply linear and depend on the current values of +crit, +hit and +dmg. (For a post later today: work out the translation for case 1, which is what I believe WoW actually uses.
EDIT: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...&T=1157880&P=1

Looks like somebody else had a hankering to do the same bit of algebra. I generally hate the WoW forums, but his math looks right.)

A lot of people say this, and yet the amount of a Warlock's DPS that Shadowbolt accounts for, along with the Improved Shadowbolt talent, would suggest otherwise. I realize this is a discussion about Mages, but someone brought up Warlocks and said something that I find untrue.

Allow me to quote Sancus

I'm pretty sure on my math here, but please point out a glaring hole that I missed. I'm assuming a 0.2 second delay on casting a spell.

Value of %crit in mana/5 with Master of Elements.

Rank 12 Fireball - 0.01 * (0.3 * 410) = 1.23 mana per Fireball.
1.23/3.2 * 5 = 1.92 mana/5 seconds with chaincasting Fireball per crit%
Rank 7 Scorch - 0.01 * (0.3 * 150) = 0.45 mana per Scorch.
0.45/1.7 * 5 = 1.32 mana/5 seconds with chaincasting Scorch per crit%

And for fun...

Rank 11 Frostbolt = 0.01 * (0.3 * 290) = 0.87 mana per Frostbolt per crit%
0.87/2.7 * 5 = 1.61 mana/5 seconds with chaincasting Frostbolt per crit%