This is a great test you're doing. Really smart approach. If you can demonstrate that the fractional Weapon Skills get dropped, then it really does open up a lot of other testing capability.

One question, why do you want to the test again at 279? If I did my math right, 279 should give you 23.9927% +hit. Since that is so very close to 24%, I worry that you might have to do a very long test to see the misses that you predict. And I'm not sure that it'd tell us that much more than your 278 test has already shown us.

I think I might jump right into the test at 280. I agree that you'll want to do a lot of swings at 280 to prove you doesn't see misses there.

Again, great test -- can't wait to hear the results.

The great thing about the test Dontmindme is doing, is that it should distinguish between whether the fractional skill is rounded or dropped.

The +15 weapon skill rating he is adding should add 3.805 to his Weapon Skill. Which, if rounded, would round to +4 to his Weapon Skill. But on his test, it seemed to behave as though it was only adding only +3 to his Weapon Skill.

We probably need to do a few more tests at different weapon skill ratings to confirm, but it's very helpful knowledge.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't expect to see any misses at 278 because I thought fractions would carry through. My guess was obviously wrong, but I guess that's why we test it.

Well, the truth is that showing a miss at 278 really says a lot. It seems to eliminate weapon skill rating as is (carrying fractions) or rounding up leaving only the possibility that all fractions just drop as in the tooltip. I'm not sure what testing at 280 really proves at this point. I can think of no reason we would see a miss, thus it would be primarily academic.

Showing a miss at 279 would at least have the benefit of narrowing down the hit rating to the predicted value for all fractions dropped and if I don't get lucky and have an early miss, the few thousand immunes before the miss will show that the miss chance is very small and consistent with expected.

I'm thinking I may try other weapon ratings first, before going through with the 280 testing, unless I get an early miss at 279.

Yeah, I hear you. And I think your reasoning is sound. The only reason I think the test at 280 might be useful is just to confirm that we do NOT see a miss at that point. If we were to see a miss, then it would mean we made a mistake earlier somewhere, in part of our assumptions or analysis. I don't think we did, though.

But totally understand if you want to test other stuff first. Just grateful that your sharing the results. Thanks.

Disclaimer: I know I said I'd be away for a week, but we had trouble with our car so we postponed this for 2 days and are leaving tonight.

So I just tested against Haalum as well.
Wearing [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] with 10 additional skill to daggers and wielding 2 1.3 speed daggers I went up to him.
I had 280 hit rating, 2 WEx and 10 skill rating.

10 skill rating are 10/(2.5*82/52)= 2.537 weapon skill.


(280/(10*82/52))+(10*0.1)+((10/(2.5*82/52))*0.1)+5= 24.00976
With the fractions counting I should have never missed.

(280/(10*82/52))+(10*0.1)+(2*0.1)+5= 23.956
And with weapon skill rating being floored I would have had a very small chance to miss.

And I did miss (Screenshot). Seems I had a lucky roll, since theoretically it would have taken me about 10000 attacks.


On the other hand, I am not so sure that weapon skill *above* the defense skill yields the same benefits as when being below the defense skill. Remember, Haalum is level 70 with a presumed defense of 350, and I was having 362(.5) weapon skill.

It *could* be that weapon skill is offering less or more hit to such targets, just as it is offering a greater benefit when the difference from weapon skill to defense is larger than 10.

To test this, I engaged him again, this time without the 10 additional skill rating and with 283 hit rating. If WEx gives 1% to hit also against level 70 targets, I should have seen a miss with 283 hit rating, but not with 284.
(24-5-1)*(10*82/52)= 283.846

I did miss with 283 hit rating: Screenshot
So we can be pretty sure that weapon skill does not give more hit rating than 0.1% (resp. at least not more than 0.10537%) against a mob with 10 defense less than weapon skill.

As for 284 hit rating, I'm currently working on this, I should see no misses, but it could go on forever so at some point I'm going to abort it.

4173 attacks and no misses, I've stopped now.
So it seems that with 10 more weapon skill, it is still at 0.1% hit per point of skill.
If this holds true, when attacking a level 57 Servant of Razelikh you would need 24-5-(360-(57*5))*0.1)= 11.5 hit or 181.346 hit rating to never miss.

So being in testing mood, I've gone out to do so.
With 181 hit rating, I saw a miss: Screenshot

And another 4000 hits later with 182 hit rating, no misses. I stopped although it was going *so much* faster than against Haalum, because of SnD.

Well, I'm pretty sure now that weapon skill does NOT change its effect on hit chance when you have equal or more weapon skill than the target's defense skill.
Therefore we can also be pretty sure that fractional weapon skill is dropped, i.e. weapon skill is floored to the previous natural number.


Also I'm 100% convinced now that the miss rate is solely dependent on the weapon skill to defense ratio.


// Edit
Just in case somebody wants to see the logs:

Haalum

280 Hit, 362 Skill
Immune: 1846
Miss: 1

283 Hit, 360 Skill
Immune: 1979
Miss: 1

284 Hit, 360 Skill
Immune: 4173
Miss: 0


Servant of Razelikh

181 Hit, 360 Skill
Hit: 463
Crit: 174
Miss: 1
Total: 611

182 Hit, 360 Skill
Hit: 3047
Crit: 1097
Miss: 0
Total: 4144

Yes, I double-checked your math. Theoretically, you are correct. You should not have missed if fractional weapon skill applied, yet you did have a miss. The only correction I have is that your miss rate is about 1 in 2278 for that test not 1 in 10000. Thus, seeing a miss in 1847 attempts is much more plausible.

So, now we have 2 tests that indicate that fractional weapon skill rating gets ignored.

I'm sorry, but this isn't correct. If you read back through this thread a bit. You'll see some pretty good testing has been done on this over the last couple weeks.

There is a good body of evidence to support the conclusion that the base miss rate against different level mobs is as follows:

v. Level 70: 5.0% (24.0%)
v. Level 71: 5.5% (24.5%)
v. Level 72: 6.0% (25.0%)
and
v. Level 73: ~9.0% (~28%)

These have been controlled tests, that have, so far, validated these numbers under different conditions and for different classes.

As for the Level 73 number, we haven't definitively established the 9% and 28% figures as the correct numbers, but we have multiple points of evidence that it is higher than 8.6%/27.6%. And, indeed, we have evidence of Rogues still missing with +hit gear in the 27.8% ranges. So, we think the number is close to 9%/28%, and we are continuing testing on this to nail down the exact number.

It should be noted that if you have at least 5 additional weapon skill the miss rate seems to become much lower. Are you sure the armory gear is what they used in the raid? Did you have a Dranei aura? Did you have Improved Faerie Fire up? Did they buff with a Fire-Toasted Bun?

I'm not sure you can really take a WWS log and compare it to gear as listed in the armory and consider this accurate. Now, those doing the tests are paying close attention to what buffs they are getting to be sure they aren't getting some other special effect.

OK, ran Gruul's tonight with 8.624% +hit (136 hit) and no +Weapon Skill.

As expected, this test confirmed that the base miss rate for Ranged DPS against a Level 73 is greater than 8.6%.

Here were my results for the evening:

Auto Shot: 441 hits, 127 crits, 3 misses (.555% miss)
Steady Shot: 422 hits, 130 crits, 4 misses (.719% miss)
Arcane Shot: 8 hits, 0 crits, 0 misses (0% miss)

Total Shots: 1105 Total Misses: 7 (.633% miss)

So far, Ranged DPS is exhibiting the exact same characteristics as melee DPS. I don't know how to do that 95% confidence range calculation, but it seems to me like this test again supports a base miss rate of around 9% (9.23%)

Even though this sample size was not that big (only 1105 shots), I don't feel the need to repeat it. The important thing is that there were misses at all.

______________________

Meanwhile, I thought I'd also share the results of my pet attacks from tonight's Gruul's run:

Melee: 1339 attacks, 58 misses (4.332%)
Specials (all combined): 919 attacks, 42 misses (4.570%)

Total for Pet: 2258 attacks, 100 misses (4.429%)

As a reminder, my pet has +4% hit from talents. So this test suggests a 8.429% miss rate for the pet, which is a bit lower than our expected 9%.

______________________

For my next test, I'm going to jump up to exactly 9% (142 hit) and see if I see misses at that point. Unfortunately, I won't get the chance to do this in a raid until Monday...

309 weapon skill? I will assume 359 as in the following 2 tests.

This findigs are consitent with the proposed theory:
1) 359 skill, 85 hitratiing : skilldifference ist <= 10 so
5+(365-359)*0.1 = 5.6% missrate
85 hitrating equals 5.39%hit so you have a 0.21% residual miss rate

With 89 hitrating (5.64% hit) you should not see any misses

The 5.6% basemiss from above is the same
93 hitrating equal 5.89% hit
95 hitrating equals 6.02% hit

Both are higher than the 5.6 base miss so you should not see any misses.

Interesting would be number where your weaponskill is between 350 and 354.