Punscho

Exactly. It does not gain the skill points for level 52 (260) when it's still at 51. And how much exp does it gain from hitting a level 54 mob that does not die? Surely you would get a fari amount of recorded hits before it level ups.

 

Olgas

Ah, my last response was confusing... cuz I wasn't being careful enough with the numbers.

If you tame a pet at Level 51. You get him with ZERO experience towards Level 52. It is as though he just hit Level 51.

Think about what happens when you just hit Level 51. At that moment, your Weapon Skill is at the max for a Level 50 character, but you have the potential to start earning 5 more points right away. The moment you hit 51, your Weapon Skill is 250/255. And you start earning 251, 252, 253, etc. as you progress towards reaching Level 52. In fact, you usually get those first few Weapon Skill points pretty quickly in combat.

My hunch is that this is the same thing that happens with a pet. Of course, there's no way to know for certain, because your pet's Weapon Skill is never revealed in the interface. But that again is the fundamental problem.

Basically, what I'm saying (which I admit is definitely not how my last post reads) is that when you tame a Level 51 pet, I assume it only has the max Weapon Skill for a Level 50 character. And it immediately starts to earn new Weapon Skill, just as a newly minted Level 51 character would earn Weapon Skill.

(I just wasn't thinking clearly in my last post and used the wrong Skill numbers, sorry 'bout that.)

 

Xaoc

I take the opposite stance on this. There has never been any indication that pets have a "levels" to their weapon skills. I am almost positive that pets always have a maxed "weapon skill" for their level; similar to PvP encounters. There is no log entry that indicates that your pets increases their weapon skill, and there is no mention of it in the Character page for your pet.

On my warlock, I rarely ever use Succubus. I can pretty much say that I used Imp for a good 8 levels from 62 -> 70. Upon hitting 70, and running SL without a mage, I pulled out the Succy for some minimal CC usage. If what you're saying is true, my Succubus should not be able to attack anything reliably, because she hadn't been used for, at the very least, 10 levels. But, sure enough, when she wasnt seducing mobs, she was helping out with DPS and had very good accuracy. While this is all very anecdotal, I'm pretty sure that if there was any sort of "weapon skill" for pets, my Succubus would have whiffing everything in sight.

 

Webb

So, I've finally chewed through 11 pages of posts, and I can't seem to find an answer that will help me.

Recount tells me I have ~24% glancing blows. That number is way too high. How do I reduce my glancing blows after the patch change? It is stated numerous times, that weapon skill won't reduce your glancing blows, and a lot of very interesting theorycraft of weaponskill vs. hit/crit.

But only one post comes even near the question of reducing the glancing blow/glancing blow damage (where it was suggested that more than 365 weaponskill would reduce, but no one followed up). Is it just widely accepted that it is impossible and at a fixed rate of 18-19%? Why do I get 24% almost on all boss tries? (measured on the first 4 bosses in SSC)

 

Punscho

Well in 2.0 they changed weapon skill from improving glancing damage to reducing the miss rate by some means instead because weapon skill was too damn good. I'm quite sure you can't alter the glancing rate nor the glancing damage penalty by any means at this point in the game, because they remade the design or the stat.

And how is 25% glancing too high? It's won't interfere with your crit chance.

 

sp00n

24% is how it is supposed to be.

 

Webb

Yeah ok, thx for the quick replies. I just look at the cheese-cut diagrams on the Recount (Shift-rightclick) and if the colors are anything but red (crit), i burst out in tears. And now that I've rather successfully killed a fair deal of the ugly green hit-part, there is another very annoying part that reads "Glancing". It's just in that sence it is "too much". Too much out of my total damage, not too much out of the normal glancing rate.

But bleh, guess you'll need your golden 5 weaponskills and stack crit/hit/AP as ever before.

 

Noktelius

(Sorry for my very bad english)

The formula proposed by spoon is indeed continuous :

D = Weapon skill - 355

If your weapon skill < 355 ( D < 0 ), your MissRate is MR1 = 25 - D x 0.6
If your weapon skill > 355 ( D > 0 ), your MissRate is MR2 = 25 - D x 0.1

(Against a lvl 73)

The function is continous : MR1(0) = MR2(0) = 25

But her derive function is not continuous :

MR1' (0)= 0.6
MR2' (0) = 0.1

It will be difficult to find a continuous fonction with a continuous derive function with such a change around 355.

For example, if you want :

Weapon skill = 350 ( D = -5 ) and MR = 28
Weapon skill = 355 ( D = 0 ) and MR = 25
Weapon skill = 365 ( D = 10 ) and MR = 24

Try MR = 24 + exp ( -D / A ) with A = 2.5 / ln 2 = 3.6067... It gives :

Weapon skill = 350 ( D = -5 ) MR = 28
Weapon skill = 355 ( D = 0 ) MR = 25
Weapon skill = 365 ( D = 10 ) MR = 24.0625

But it's only MR = 24.25 instead of 24.5 when D = 5 or weapon skill = 360

 

Olgas

You might be right on this. The problem is that we can't KNOW that you're right, because as you say, there is no mention of it in the Character page for your pet. All we have is conjecture, and I'll freely admit that your conjecture is as likely to be correct as mine. But the problem is we just don't know for sure. The interface doesn't tell us. So, since we can't know for a certainty what the pet's Weapon Skill is, and therefore it is problematic to use it for testing the impact of Weapon Skill.

 

Olgas

You might be right on this. The problem is that we can't KNOW that you're right, because as you say, there is no mention of it in the Character page for your pet. All we have is conjecture, and I'll freely admit that your conjecture is as likely to be correct as mine. But the problem is we just don't know for sure. The interface doesn't tell us. So, since we can't know for a certainty what the pet's Weapon Skill is, and therefore it is problematic to use it for testing the impact of Weapon Skill.

 

Punscho

From levelling up I guess everyone notice how high missrate and avoidance and stuff you get versus a mob 4 levels above you. If the pet indeed "dings" the current level when getting tamed I think you would notice a much much higher miss rate than expected. If you don't see any drastic difference I think we could be quite certain they get maxed skill for their level, since it would be silly to assert somewhere inbetween. Really.

 

Olgas

Yes. But the whole reason this was even brought up was as a proposal to test the impact of Weapon Skill with precision. We're trying to get to the exact percentage here, per level of Weapon Skill.

So, if you're making ASSUMPTIONS about the pet's Weapon Skill -- assumptions that can't themselves be validated or refuted, well the test just won't end up being that valuable.

 

Punscho

We all ASSUME all mobs have their level * 5 in defense, and that all skull mobs act your level + 3.

If the pet have 20 skill less that the mob you'd see terribly awful performance and you can stop right away. If not, we can ASSUME to a high degree they got full skill. But hey if you don't want to do the test, just say so.

Personally I like to have support for a theory from more than one source if possible.

 

stampy

Sorry for a mild derail, but a post in the TF thread made me curious about something, and its definitely less of a derail here than it would be there.

Does anyone have any evidence as to whether weapon skill affects the hit/dodge/crit rates of shield slam? Thinking of it like +hit, it should; but thinking of it like mace skill with an offhand sword, it shouldn't.

Obviously, my gut instinct is that the skill should affect shield slams, as there aren't any +shield skill items; but I don't feel comfortable about that assumption without any data or reason. Is there any out there?

 

Olgas

Actually, these things aren't just assumed.

Blizzard has specifically told us that skull mobs act like your Level +3. (I can't cite the blue post myself, but I know there was one on this.)

And, as for mobs having Level*5 in defense, yes, it is an assumption. But it is an assumption that has a lot of support behind it. There have been a lot of tests and multiple data points that have relied upon this assumption. And the assumption has held valid throughout all that testing. Unfortunately, we don't have anything like that for pets.

So, you see, not all assumptions are equal.

And how would you know how much of that "terribly awful performance" was due to a 20 point difference as compared to a 15 point difference? Exactly how much worse would it have to be? The problem is we just don't know. Because that's in fact what we're trying to test for.

OK. I don't want to do the test.

Let me take one more shot at explaining why I think it'd be a waste of time. I'll use an analogy.

It's like you're trying to measure something with a ruler. Except, you don't know for certain if that ruler is 12 inches long or 11 inches long. And you don't have any data to indicate one way or the other whether the ruler is 12 inches long or 11 inches long. Some people feel very strongly it's 12 inches, but others think it might be 11. Unfortunately, there's just no way to know for sure.

And what's worse about this particular ruler is that, if it happens to be 12 inches long, it will stay 12 inches long. But if happens to be 11 inches long, it will actually start growing towards 12 inches just as soon as you start using it to measure something! We don't know how fast it will grow, or when it will ultimately get to be 12 inches long. We just know that if it starts at 11, then using it to measure something will make it grow, and it will grow "invisibly" to us.

Now, I ask you, if you try to measure something with that ruler, how useful is the result?

 

Punscho

Don't talk to me like I'm an imbecile. I don't appreciate it and it's not even a good analogy.

 

Dontmindme

Well, I originally posed that question based on a limited sample (the only to that point with weapon skill over 365) showing 20-21% glancing. In this topic and related other topics, a number of people posted results with > 365 weapon skill. Looking at all the data together, I do not see any reduction; the average of this data seemed to hover around 24% and as many times as I saw 20-21% there were 26-28% to average them out. I'm personally satisfied that this issue has been resolved. We tried, but 24% seems to be a flat unalterable number that we all have to live with.

 

Trazhenko

Pets are mobs. Why would you expect them to not follow the rules for mobs? Do we assume a level skull boss is hitting our 70 tank with 365 attack skill? Pets don't have weapons, just "paw" or "claw", somewhat like Druids, whose skill is conveniently maxed out for their level automatically.

If someone wants to take a pet and have it attack +3, +2, and +1 targets to determine miss rates, let them do it. At the very least, the data can be used to compare mob and player combat.

Now, if we are testing a player vs. mob mechanic, I'd think that *ideally* we'd want to test it with a player attacking a mob. I'm a rogue, and therefore I selfishly do not care how some hunter pet is doing vs. a raid boss, unless it is allowing the hunter to approach my damage output, then nerf it by all means :P.

Karmon definitely has the right idea in testing for the hit cap using items with oddball (i.e. not multiples of 5) amounts of +skill. I kind of wish I hadn't vendored my Mugger's Belt, but if I were determined enough, I could probably solo farm Krom Krush for a new one. As it is, I have the Hydross shoulders (10 skill rating), Kara gloves (15? rating), Vashj dagger (21 rating), and if I needed to I could buy the lower city ring, which I think has 20 rating.

Unfortunately, these items only give me 2 data points between 0 and 5 skill, and it's further complicated by the fact that we don't know if skill is rounded off in practice or only on the character sheet. For example, the shoulders give me 2 skill on the character sheet, but 10 rating should be about 2.5 skill.

 

Olgas

If you wish to take offense, that's your prerogative. None was intended.

The analogy was just a last attempt to illustrate the problem I see with the proposed pet test. If you don't like it, well, that's OK by me.

I'm not going to engage in this pet discussion anymore. It's getting us nowhere and taking us off-topic anyway.

 

Olgas

Actually, I think it was Sp00n who suggested a really good way to test this. He suggested that a Rogue with Mace Specialization do the test. Because Mace Specialization gives exactly +2 and then +4 Weapon Skill in Maces. So, you don't have to worry about those "fractional" Weapon Skills from gear.

Similarly, a Warrior with Weapon Mastery or a Paladin with Weapon Expertise would also do the trick, since those talents add +Weapon Skill in even increments of +2, also.

Unfortunately, there's not much I can do as a Hunter to test in even increments below +5.

 

◊ Shalas

The pet weapon skill issue seems amazingly trivial to test. Tame a new pet and have it whack a blasted land mob for a few hours. If the glancing rate goes down with time, then pets have player-like weapon skill. Regardless of the result of that, after a few hours of attacking it'll be maxed either way, and you can do the test you originally wanted to do.

 

• frmorrison

No need to test pets, they act like mobs. On 73s they have a 15.6% miss rate and have the same glancing blows as melee (24%). So they have player-like weapon skill most likely.

 

Olgas

We ran Magtheridon's tonight (our first ever attempt, it was ugly, lol).

And, so, I got the chance to test out +127 hit (almost exactly 8%) and no Weapon Skill.

The good news is my results are consistent with what we saw when dual-wielding was tested at exactly 27%. Well, at least consistent in the fact that I was still seeing some missed shots at 8%.

Unfortunately, I DC'd just as we were wrapping up for the evening, and when I relogged I had somehow last all the data in my combat log. (Sometimes the world just conspires against you!)

However, that fact that I saw any misses at all is enough for me. I don't feel the need to repeat that test.

On my next run I'm going to equip 136 hit (8.6%) and see what happens.

 

Olgas

Where did 15.6% come from?

 

Olgas

I know everyone is trying to be helpful with all these suggestions about the pet.

The funny thing is I seem to be the person who is the least interested in the pet's miss rate -- and I'm the only one in the discussion who is a hunter! LOL.

Anyway, there really is a much simpler solution. Every time I go on a raid I am using my pet against Level 73 bosses. This is the best test of all. Level 70 pet with maxed Weapon Skill versus Level 73 boss. All I need to do is start paying more attention to what Recap is saying about my pet's miss rate. No need to spend hours in Blasted Lands.

I'll post information on my pet's misses from my next couple instance runs. My hunch is that it's going to track exactly with the miss rate for any 2h melee. But we'll see...