Currently my guild is trying to find more and more ways to crank up the dps for every class. A friend of mine, and I are having an ongoing debate about whether +hit items are better than +crit items. All his views are from a mage perspective and mine are from a warlock perspective.
From everything that I have read regarding the matter (which is limited to the dredges of the wow forums) says that for warlocks at least, every item that has +crit is identical and equal to items with +hit in terms of overall increase in dps. He states otherwise in saying that +hit items are better because every chance to hit is a chance to crit essentially.
This is where my confusion comes in. Under the games current spell mechanics is this true? Is whether a spells lands as a critical determined only after it hits? Or is it a separate roll?
Basically I'm not great at working out the math, especially considering I am confused as to the spell mechanics. If anyone here can provide an explanation as to how this works I would greatly appreciate it!
Originally Posted by Fellwraith
[Y]ou will tank 3 mobs, and only 3 mobs. 5 shalt thou not tank, nor shalt thou tank 4. Thou shalt not tank 2 mobs unless it is on the way to tanking 3 mobs.
But in short, that's not how it works. For a Frost Mage who's not capped on hit and has Ice Shards, 1 hit and 1 crit will contribute identical amounts to your overall DPS. For a Fire Mage, or a Warlock with Ruin and Imp. Shadow Bolt, the crit is better.
For Mage %hit is pretty damn easy to come by, 6% from talents and 2% from ZG enchants puts us at 8% to start with. So Mages only need 8% to hit the 16% cap (17% resist rate, only 99% to hit is possible), while Warlocks need the full +16%.
Then considering that the Tear gives 2% hit (pretty much "standard" gear) and really you can just go for max Crit as a Mage completely disregarding %hit and just picking it up "by accident" to reach the cap (i.e. Tier3 hat, oops, 1% more hit, yay, Wraithblade, oops another 1% hit, oh yea and this AQ40 offhand has another 1% hit, well 3% more to go).
Is whether a spells lands as a critical determined only after it hits? Or is it a separate roll?
From how we know WoW runs, I'd say that it's not a if-then kind of system, but rather just a table with absolute values/possibilities, where when you add something somewhere, another something gets pushed out or down somewhere else, like one of the posters above me suggested (just adding more to it)
+hit --> -miss
+crit --> -hit
+1 hit --> -1 miss
+1 crit --> -1 hit
Note that adding a crit, thus losing one hit, won't bring back a miss up. Your +hit rate will cut into your spell miss rate (full resist) until the point where you can no longer cut into the miss again (minimum miss = 1%, can't ever reach 0%)
So let's say you have 20% crit rate from gear/buffs, and 0% hit, this is what you're looking at:
17% of the spells will "miss" (full resist) (lvl 60 vs. lvl 63 data for resists)
20% of the spells will crit. (your crit rate)
63% of the spells will hit. (what's left)
From this you can draw 2 conclusions, knowing what was first mentioned about how what cuts into where:
Your +hit cap is 16%.
Your crit cap is 83% (not possible to be reached under normal situations, but you can on some fights -- more on this later)
Let's cap you on +hit.
1% of the spells will "miss"
20% of the spells will crit.
79% of the spells will hit.
Not only are you hitting more often, but your effective crit cap was just raised to 99%. I'm not sure how useful this information is, but, I would assume, that +hit gear would be something of a little bit more than just moderate usefulness on Loatheb, where your dps casters are going to be loaded on every consumable known to man, plus fungal bloom, so, I can see a warlock with low/no spellhit being crit-capped on Loatheb, and would only be able to get a better critrate by upping his +hit
Sorry for the big de-rail, I just thought it would be useful to also mention how +hit factors into the crit cap, and actually provide my example with a situation where it would be actually useful.
I personally value hit over crit, even though I'm a fire mage. This is simply because I enjoy the consistency of a) my improved scorch landing 5 times from 5 scorch casts even on a boss (95% of the time with 16% spell hit) and b) ignites rolling once they get started. Adding hit also reduces the amount of mana "wasted" on resists, so that's another plus, but obviously only considering that ignores the amount of mana that forgoes being spent by producing the damage from a crit.
If you don't have ruin, spell hit is better, hands down. If you do have ruin, they're of equal utility, unless warlocks have some sort of critical strike proc that increases damage somehow (my highest warlock is only like 25 and I haven't played him in a year). Anyway, your mage friend is interesting in that he didn't actually know how spell criticals and resists are independent of each other and are derived from the same roll.
If you don't have ruin, spell hit is better, hands down. If you do have ruin, they're of equal utility, unless warlocks have some sort of critical strike proc that increases damage somehow (my highest warlock is only like 25 and I haven't played him in a year). Anyway, your mage friend is interesting in that he didn't actually know how spell criticals and resists are independent of each other and are derived from the same roll.
Yes we do, Improved Shadow Bolt. Which is an amazing talent and one every raiding Warlock should have.
On that link above it shows that builds with IBS value crit% over hit% (up to a point), but the builds without value hit% all the way.
As a mage of course what you would go for depends wholly on your spec.
A frost mage benefits equally from +hit and +crit and thus would be equally well off hogging 16% worth of +hit gear to minimize full resists. If you go frost I'd say try to cap +hit and run full NW for the 8/8 bonus, with equal gear level in all other slots is both an easy and very viable solution.
A fire mage benefits greatly from +crit, while +hit can be considered as an "added bonus". (As has been stated, 8-12% +hit is so easy to come by for mages it can more or less be labeled as the standard). For fire I would basically aim at ridding myself of most set items, with the exception of T3 Hat / Robe / Shoulders, and fill my slots such that I'd total at about 10-12% hit and 18-20% crit. It's entirely possible with the best gear out there.
Warlocks I'll pass to comment much on - but the lower threat reduction they have vs. mages can of course create problems. And again you need to be "the right spec" to benefit fully from +crit over +hit.
The thing is, though, a percentage of the warlock's damage comes from DoTs. How much of a percentage varies from player to player. I know some people who rarely cast Corruption and prefer to only cast Shadow Bolts.
So, if you choose an arbitrary number, say 15% damage comes from DoTs and 85% from Shadow Bolt, even with Ruin that becomes a net 0.85% gain per 1% crit because DoTs cannot crit.
Yea, but Imp Shadowbolt turns that favour again. What Arawethion said about Frosties is correct, there's no difference against lvl 63 for 1 % hit or 1 % crit. (If not hit capped and specced 5/5 Ice shards.) There's one situation though, but that's with 3/8 NW and stuff in which you have a flat less aggro which, I think, is just a reduction at the start. In which case you'd gain less aggro from 1 % hit than you would from 1 % crit. But to take that as an argument, barely. :)
As for Fire, crit is your trump card, but I doubt it needs explanation on that one. I'd take the 4 pieces of Frostfire with crit on them though, they are probably the best in their slot. (Though you can argue the ring.)
With Imp. Shadow Bolt and Ruin crit indeed looks like better option.
Problem with warlock nuke DPS is lack of any talent rising +hit chance (we have only such talents for affliction), so it's rather unreliable in situations when you use it on 63 lev. opponent. In long period of time it equals, as all those resisted spells are countered by crits, but in short time, when you basically want your nuke count, relying only on +crit might be a problem.
Comparing with mages is hard, since they usually benefit from +6% hit chance in tier I talent (which is easy to obtain for fire mages as well), which gives them nice headstart.
I personally value hit over crit, even though I'm a fire mage. This is simply because I enjoy the consistency of a) my improved scorch landing 5 times from 5 scorch casts even on a boss (95% of the time with 16% spell hit) and b) ignites rolling once they get started. Adding hit also reduces the amount of mana "wasted" on resists, so that's another plus, but obviously only considering that ignores the amount of mana that forgoes being spent by producing the damage from a crit.
If you don't have ruin, spell hit is better, hands down. If you do have ruin, they're of equal utility, unless warlocks have some sort of critical strike proc that increases damage somehow (my highest warlock is only like 25 and I haven't played him in a year). Anyway, your mage friend is interesting in that he didn't actually know how spell criticals and resists are independent of each other and are derived from the same roll.
(a) kind of makes sense, although having to cast Scorch one extra time is not a big deal, compared to increasing your overall average damage.
(b) I don't understand. The chance of a successful Ignite extension depends only on crit chance--a resist is not worse than a hit in that regard. This is one of the main reasons for favoring crit over hit for Fire Mages.
And as you said, the comment about "wasted" mana is fallacy.
More important than anything else seems the fact that Fire Mages get 225% crits, making a crit worth 1.25 as much a hit for average DPS, even before rolling Ignites.
I remember comparing my Netherwind Robes to my old RoVP once and realizing I'd actually traded a bit of DPS for some stats. And when we reach Thaddius, the RoVP will be coming right back out.
Crit and hit are determined by the same roll. Both attributes are great because it's much easier to increase spell power from consumables compared to percentages. Which is better?
Most serious raiding builds will have at least ISB if not Ruin. While crit and hit may have equal value for a frost mage, crit is definitely better than hit for a warlock's shadow bolt. Supporters of hit over crit will argue that hit also benefits dots like corruption. For warlocks who are deep into Naxx, what fraction of your damage actually come from dots?
I believe that warlocks should decide on an optimal +hit gear cap like the 10% for mages. Its value should be dependant on the use of corruption and the build. A SM/Ruin warlock has access to 5/5 Suppression for 10% hit to dots. That means +hit beyond 6% won't benefit corruptions and would be much better spent on +crit for shadow bolts. On the otherhand, builds like DS/Ruin or Conflag will have as few as 2/5 in Suppression. When corruption shines during boss encounters with adds level 62 or lower, very little +hit is actually needed given some investment in Suppression.
"But corruption still makes up a significant portion of my damage during single-target boss fights."
Okay, but how does your gear contribute to corruption dps compared to that of shadow bolt. While corruption receives full benefit to spell damage from gear, the actual dps increase/decrease provided by changes to corruption is small. Assuming continuous shadow bolt spam w/out mana issues or lag, 210 spell damage would equate to 180 extra damage per bolt for a 72 dps increase. The increase to dps from a corruption that's constantly refreshed will only be 11.7 for that same amount of spell damage.
Another way to think about it is to assume both corruption and shadow bolt have an 100% hit rate for the sake of the argument. The introduction of a 1% miss rate will noticeably hurt our shadow bolt dps. But what happens if 1 corruption now resists out of every 100? It's really not a big deal in practice because a warlock will recast the spell rather than miss out on all the damage from that 18-second cycle. However, I have no clue what determines partial resists on corruption ticks. If that happens to be entirely from level-based resistances instead of level-based hit disparity, then +hit would indeed be mediocre for a warlock's corruption.
It's hard to avoid picking up +hit because a lot of the better caster gear comes with it. What do other raiding warlocks think about the value of this attribute? I use a MD/Ruin build but even with no points in Suppression I still find it hard to equip my max of 8% hit from gear.
Not to mention those ZG-enchants. Most raiding mages start with +8hit. And since Mage sets have few +hits, it shouldn't be that hard to get +hit near the cap.
One thing I'd like to add: Depending on your playstyle, build and raidsetting, it might be possible that +hit gives a bit bigger bonus than it seems. Your dots and debuffs land more often, leading to a less time spent on applying them. If your Curse / Corr gets resisted, you have to spend another 1.5sec reapplying it. Dots do get +10hit from Affliction talents if you choose so, but +6hit more is still needed to cap it.
I heavily favor crit over hit as a mage who switches between frost and fire quite a bit. The biggest reason, which I'm surprised nobody has mentioned, is because hit almost never "plays." True, they both are very close in value when you're firing at a level 63 mob. Think about how uncommon that is, even for a purely raiding mage. Not only will almost all trash mobs be <63, but for a lot of boss fights you'll be spending a good portion of your time fighting adds which aren't usually level 63. Considering that they're very close in their net effect on your DPS for a portion of your gameplay, but that one has no effect at all during the majority of your time, I don't really see why anyone would choose hit over crit. Of course if you like to PvP, the %hit will have no effect, but the crit will, as an added bonus. :)
Also, as they said above, for a mage it's pretty hard not to get at least 14% hit with any Naxx/AQ gearset.
I couldn't find any experiment or numbers backing up the 1 roll theory, do you have one ?
With enough crit chance (searing pain with talents = 15 base crit) and high enough mob levels (+9 = 83% miss chance), you should see mostyl crits, at least 98% in this case. That's not what I observed.
I couldn't find any experiment or numbers backing up the 1 roll theory, do you have one ?
With enough crit chance (searing pain with talents = 15 base crit) and high enough mob levels (+9 = 83% miss chance), you should see mostyl crits, at least 98% in this case. That's not what I observed.
1 crit does not remove a chance to miss, the crit does instead replace one of your hits with your miss chance being uneffected.
Example #1: +15% crit vs a lvl 63 mob: Roll(100) : 1-15 crit, 16-83 hit, 84-100 miss
Example #2: +15% crit, 5% hit vs a lvl 63 mob: Roll(100) : 1-15 crit, 16-88 hit, 89-100 miss
Example #3: +50% crit, 5% hit vs a lvl 63 mob: Roll(100) : 1-50 crit, 51-88 hit, 89-100 miss
Also for warlocks hit does also affect your shadow vulnerability debuff's chance to stick (binary check) so even on crits you'll also get a hit check which will modify the final dmg.
I myself have been checking http://www.pslam.demon.co.uk/warlock-calc.cpp quite a bit and the calculation he uses to get the total SB dmg modifier [Hit*(1+Crit)*(1+0.2*(1-(1-Hit^2*Crit)^4))] which seems quite accurate, will give you that crit is only more effective untill you reach 10% crit chance, after that it'll alternate between +hit and +crit being better untill you reach the hit cap of +16%.
And because of 10% crit being horrible low (base crit for warlocks is 1,7 + Int/60,6 and also devastation for +5%) hit will almost always be better when looking at gear, unless you ofc already have some really screwed hit:crit ratio.
Exactly Cursedflame, so when you only have a 17% chance to hit, with 16% crit through Spellstone, the Ruin pre-req and improved Searing pain, on a level 49 mob you should have only crits and resists at level 40.
Exactly Cursedflame, so when you only have a 17% chance to hit, with 16% crit through Spellstone, the Ruin pre-req and improved Searing pain, on a level 49 mob you should have only crits and resists at level 40.
Aha, well it should be as you say, i'm however not perfectly clear if there exists a minimum hit chance cap (so that you'll always have a certain hit % that you can't get rid of).
If there in fact does exist a min hit cap that might impact how much +hit you can actually replace with +crit.
That is just me thinking out loud though so i might be complete wrong (will do some testing on it some day).
"* Chance of hit = h (0..1)
* Chance of crit given a hit = c (0..1)
* Chance of hit and crit = h * c
* Chance of hit and crit and vulnerability proc = h * h * c = h^2 * c
...
* Average bolt damage multiplier for crit = 1 + crit * ruin = 1 + c
* and hit = h * (1 + c)"
We've been told many times that it is not the case. A lot of people forget that the debuff can be resisted even after a crit but this author remembers. However,
" * Chance of not proccing = 1 - h^2 * c
* Chance of 4 bolts in a row not proccing = (1 - h^2 * c)^4
* Chance of at least 1 bolt in the last 4 proccing = 1 - (1 - h^2 * c)^4
* Bonus if at laest 1 bolt in the last 4 procced = 0.2
* Therefore, average bonus due to proc = 0.2 * (1 - (1 - h^2 * c)^4)"
The other problem with ISB math is people forgetting that while missed shadow bolts fail to refresh the debuff, they don't really consume charges either. If you get (crit, miss, miss, miss, miss, hit) with the first crit applying the debuff, most formulas would say that the last shot received no benefit. That's completely wrong.
You make a good point that +hit helps make sure that the ISB debuff isn't resisted after a crit, but doesn't that still make +crit better?
09/16/06, 1:41 PM
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