It is superior in a way that makes it immune to becoming obsolete every expansion. Currently blizzard is hacking the combat system to make it work for 60-70. This is clearly obvious in the Armor mitigation formula where there is now a contitional - if boss level > 59, the formula is different. This means combat scaling is special cased for 60-70 and is different from 1-60.
With the current approach, blizzard will have little recourse but to hack the system again next expansion pack, and the magnitude of the changes will depend on how much gear progression players have received in their time at the level cap.

The approach Arawethion suggested would be robust against this kind of mess. Boss skill level will simply keep pace with player skill level at all tiers and level progression. Divorcing the boss skill rating from its level number would allow an arbitrary amount of progression at any level cap, and still allow the progression to continue intuitively when they next raise it.

It's exactly like it was before 60.

You need 20 agility for 1% crit against a level 60 opponent. For a level 65 mob it's not 20agility/crit anymore. Same goes for rating. So when you level up from 60 to 61, you still have the same crit chance againt level 60 mobs, but your agility and crit rating don't have the same value against level 61 mobs anymore, therefor you see a decrease in crit chance on your tooltip.

Blizzard is hacking the combat system for 60 to 70, because they're rebalancing DPS across the board along with the HP change, not because there was anything inherently wrong with combat mechanics. Would you really argue that stamina itemization cost reduction is somehow wrong just because it only applies to 60+? How's the armor mitigation formula change any different from that?

Ok, I see where the confusion is coming from.

I'm not saying Arawethion's system is bad. I'm saying it's not any different from what we already have.

The current system already separates boss skill rating from its level number. The examples I gave before clearly proves it (higher than normal dodge on Postmaster in Strat; higher than normal defense on the elite bugs in Silithus). A level 70 mob might have 350 defense by default, but that's all level number does. Provide a default. Blizzard is free to set it to 400 or whatever. If they did that, the mob would have higher anti-crit. So what's the difference?

They don't do this often, but like I said, that's not a combat mechanic problem. That's an encounter design decision/issue.

The big thing about the rating system is that it allowed the same type of scaling that we saw when we leveled 1-60. They used mostly base stats to drive stuff like crit when we leveled the first time. And as we leveled, we needed more agi to get the same amount of crit. All they are doing is making sure that applies universally to help force gear upgrades.

Except as usual the system is extremely unfair to casters. Melee fighting downranked mobs crit more due to level difference, but this is not true of spells. Our crit permanently goes down as we level.

Ahh, I see... I suppose I saw the increase and crit and made too many assumptions based on that... it makes more sense to attribute the extra crit to the weapon skill though, thanks for pointing that out.

One says against 62, one says against 63.. so I didn't directly contradict myself, but I was still wrong. :P
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So the only real improvement a person gets when leveling is weapon skill and the ability to wear better armor, dps wise? =\

Entire basis of the leveling curve of this game.

Not quite true. Casters definitely have increased crit chance against lower level mobs.

I would like to see some proof or at least a quick parse on that one. I haven't tested it in a long, long time but I saw zero crit chance increase in casual parsing back when I did a test on 50ish boars outside Org (level 8-9ish?) and a few hundred -1 to -8 targets in Azshara. Certainly my crit-rate in Beta seems to match up pretty well with my expected for any sub-MyLevel target.

If you maintain that as a fact, I'll try to work up a control situation and do some real work but frankly I hate to bother until we have a 'gold' patch.

The 1-60 affect is made more extreme now by not only having int/agi decrease in value as you level but ratings too? As the ratings are purely clvl and not enemy level based this surely means someone at 60 who levels to 65 and changes no gear will indeed crit less vs level 60 mobs than they did at 60.

Except you gain free agility as you level, and you gain +weaponskill again as you level which again increases crit rate. Those will compensate somewhat the loss from ratings, perhaps even overcompensate? Some math would be nice.

No, I meant at level 60 you have X weaponskill against a lvl 60 target. At level 65 you have X+25 weaponskill against that same lvl 60 target. And as far as I remember, +weaponskill has now been stated to give an actual increase in crit rating, although please forgive me for not knowing the exact numbers.

I believe +weaponskill rating is only adding crit verses higher level enemies (I'm not 100% though, need to find the blue post), that's assuming added weaponskill functions the same way as base (which judging from orc and human racials it does). I'm sure Kalgan said something about it still being attractive for raid content.

Unless things are vastly different 61 - 70 (I haven't played beta) the amount of agility or int gained per level is trivial compared to the amount of crit lost from recalculated agi/crit ratios. My mage alt was on 8% crit at ~30 and is now on 4% crit at level 45, and thats with plenty of gear upgrades. Ratings will depreicate reasonably slowly but it's going to be damn noticeable for people like fire mages and warriors who rely on stacking +crit rather than int/agi.