Is melee hit cap really 9%?

sihyunie · 12/02/08, 2:32 AM

So I, and basically everyone else, thought the hit cap for ranged attacks and non-dual-wielding melee attacks was 9%.
There is a post in hunter forum found here with some pretty convincing tests showing that it is actually 8%.
Since this relates to other classes as well, I thought it might be a better idea to have a thread on main page for everyone else to see.
Feel free to add any data (dummy vs bosses, white hit vs yellow hits, etc) so that we can confirm or deny that 8% is the new hit cap for physical dps.

Rhaegal · 12/02/08, 11:04 AM

Similar data in the druid forum here, with some discussion farther down: Feral Druid Numbers (updated for 3.2.2)

I glanced through the hunter thread, too, and the sample set of people with 8.x% hit and not missing against actual bosses is starting to get to the point where it's hardly believable that the problem is just a flaw in the boss level target dummy mechanics.

Gleithan · 12/02/08, 11:14 AM

Wild speculation here, but perhaps when they removed the inherent 1% resist chance for spells, they lowered the ranged/melee hit cap as well. The data in the hunter thread is indeed convincing; as it is I'll be aiming for 263 hit until someone somewhere reports a miss with over 8% hit.

Exemplar · 12/02/08, 11:28 AM

Paladins have (in various tests) gotten from 1% "ghost hit" (that's what we've been calling it) to 4%.

For some Paladins in raids (not just against test dummies) they're not missing at 8%, but miss if they go lower. Some don't miss at around 6%, some at 5%. It's quite confusing to our class community.

We'd been wondering if there issues when they removed the +hit talents - possibly people who had it before 3.0 still are gaining it. There had been debate if it was from Ret aura.

Seeing various threads along the same lines for multiple classes, I'm inclined to believe hit has changed for +3s.

The question is - did Blizzard intend this or is it in error? DPS was balanced around their assumptions. If we all had 1% (or more) free hit during balance and they fix it later, what does this do to melee DPS?

Rhaegal · 12/02/08, 12:08 PM

Similarly, if there was a 1% change to the "generic" physical miss rate, was there any change to the dual wield miss rate? If not, this would be a small buff to arms warriors/druids/hunters, but won't do anything for rogues, and enhance shaman whose specials will be capped anyway, from needing lots of hit for other things. Not sure how it'll affect fury warriors; with the extra 5% miss on specials, I don't know if they actively ensure soft hit cap anymore or not.

sihyunie · 12/02/08, 9:35 PM

There are some data supporting that 8% is hit cap for not just white attacks, but yellow attacks as well.
It means mut rogues and enhance shaman lose value on their hit rating past 8%, as opposed to 9% before. Unlike arms warrior, druid, and hunters, they still gain some benefit from hit rating past cap, but those stats are better allocated somewhere else (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just saying this still has quite an impact on rogues and enhance shamans as well).
What I really like to see is some data from fury warriors w/ TG. Are their specials capped at 13 or 14%? Are their white hits capped at 27% or 28%? (Only if I had a warrior)

Aerenx · 12/03/08, 2:11 AM

Im currently testing this now, as a Draenei Death Knight, on the Heroic dummy in Ironforge. Im using 7.3% hit, with the additional 1% racial. It was either this, or be slightly under the new theorized cap, so I went with slightly over.

So far, Im at 600 white swings, 300 specials, and 0 misses. Ill update again at 1000 white swings, which should be enough to have atleast one miss, if the cap hasnt changed.

Travor · 12/03/08, 5:07 AM

Originally Posted by sihyunie

There are some data supporting that 8% is hit cap for not just white attacks, but yellow attacks as well.
It means mut rogues and enhance shaman lose value on their hit rating past 8%, as opposed to 9% before. Unlike arms warrior, druid, and hunters, they still gain some benefit from hit rating past cap, but those stats are better allocated somewhere else (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just saying this still has quite an impact on rogues and enhance shamans as well).
What I really like to see is some data from fury warriors w/ TG. Are their specials capped at 13 or 14%? Are their white hits capped at 27% or 28%? (Only if I had a warrior)

The white hit cap for a TG should be 19% (DW malus) + 5% base miss + 5% TG miss + 3% each lvl above + 1% boss -
so 33% overall or 32% when the cap has changed.

But keep in mind that every point of hit beyond 14% (or 13%) is kind of wasted.

Arveram · 12/03/08, 6:51 AM

Yesterday I did some testing on the heroic dummy, here are my results:

No hit on gear and currently specced as resto.

charriu · 12/03/08, 6:58 AM

Originally Posted by Travor

The white hit cap for a TG should be 19% (DW malus) + 5% base miss + 5% TG miss + 3% each lvl above + 1% boss -
so 33% overall or 32% when the cap has changed.

But keep in mind that every point of hit beyond 14% (or 13%) is kind of wasted.

Titan's Grip - Spell - World of Warcraft

Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to that tooltip it doesn't affect white hits, only abilites (special attacks)...

Daronsk · 12/03/08, 2:17 PM

Call me a doubter on this notion but running 10.09% as a TG warrior on monday I was seeing misses. If the 8% was correct then I should never see a miss as 8%(proposed base miss %) + 5% = 13% which I have with 10.09% + 3% from talents = 13.09%.

WWS I'm basing this off...
Wow Web Stats

Rhaegal · 12/03/08, 3:11 PM

Originally Posted by Daronsk

Call me a doubter on this notion but running 10.09% as a TG warrior on monday I was seeing misses. If the 8% was correct then I should never see a miss as 8%(proposed base miss %) + 5% = 13% which I have with 10.09% + 3% from talents = 13.09%.

WWS I'm basing this off...
Wow Web Stats

I don't doubt your numbers, I'm just wondering if this is a real change, how exactly Blizzard implements Titan's Grip miss rate. It's not necessarily the case that they coded in (making up variable names, whee) "TG_Special_Miss_Rate = Melee_Miss_Rate + 5", and changing Melee_Miss_Rate automatically updates TG_Special_Miss_Rate. If melee miss rate was hard coded at 9%, and TG special miss rate was hard coded at 14%, reducing the value of the former wouldn't have any effect on the latter if they overlooked it when making the change.

Skiace · 12/03/08, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by sihyunie

There are some data supporting that 8% is hit cap for not just white attacks, but yellow attacks as well.
It means mut rogues and enhance shaman lose value on their hit rating past 8%, as opposed to 9% before. Unlike arms warrior, druid, and hunters, they still gain some benefit from hit rating past cap, but those stats are better allocated somewhere else (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just saying this still has quite an impact on rogues and enhance shamans as well).
What I really like to see is some data from fury warriors w/ TG. Are their specials capped at 13 or 14%? Are their white hits capped at 27% or 28%? (Only if I had a warrior)

While interesting, this doesn't affect raiding Enhance shaman very much because even after the yellow cap, +hit is still the best stat until the spell hit cap.

• frmorrison · 12/03/08, 5:46 PM

With 0 hit and normal Ret raiding spec, with max weapon skill and 0 hit rating after 2000 attacks I had a 6.5% miss rate.

Since other classes are seeing ghost hit like Shadow Priests, the only way I can make sense is the hit cap is lower and/or hidden hit is being banked into talents.

My wild ass guess for Ret Pallies is the hit cap for 2H melee is 8% and 1.5% hit is being banked in some Ret aura talent.

sihyunie · 12/03/08, 8:58 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

With 0 hit and normal Ret raiding spec, with max weapon skill and 0 hit rating after 2000 attacks I had a 6.5% miss rate.

Since other classes are seeing ghost hit like Shadow Priests, the only way I can make sense is the hit cap is lower and/or hidden hit is being banked into talents.

My wild ass guess for Ret Pallies is the hit cap for 2H melee is 8% and 1.5% hit is being banked in some Ret aura talent.

I know that there are few tests w/ hunters w/ no gear or no talents, and they all seem to agree on 8% hit, for both the hunter and the pet.
Is there any data with naked, no talent pallies, or any other classes?
There seems to be valid point about some hit baked into talents, if pallies are really seeing different miss rate depending on a person or spec. Seeing actual numbers would be great, or just link to other posts (so far I've only seen druid and hunter ones).

As for TG, how does it compared to say when you don't have TG.
Do warriors still get 9% hit cap without TG, or is TG hard coded as 14% miss on yellow attacks?

Whether it is intended or not is unclear, and we probably won't know until next minor content patch.
I doubt they can hot fix this even if it is unintended.

Xerophyte · 12/03/08, 9:29 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

With 0 hit and normal Ret raiding spec, with max weapon skill and 0 hit rating after 2000 attacks I had a 6.5% miss rate.

Since other classes are seeing ghost hit like Shadow Priests, the only way I can make sense is the hit cap is lower and/or hidden hit is being banked into talents.

With that data set you have a standard deviation of about 0.5% and 9% is a little less than five standard deviations away from your result. That is, the probability that an actual miss rate of 9% or more randomly resulted in 6.5% (130) out of 2000 swings missing is around 0.0001%. An actual miss rate of 8% is unlikely at less than 1% probability of yielding your result, but I suppose it's not completely impossible.

A Blelf Paladin guildie of mine just spend half an hour hitting the dummy and got a single miss at 7.2% hit, after doing 700 swings. He's not as rigorous as you and simply verified that he could miss at that level of rating, but based on your results and his I'm inclined to estimate that the actual value is closer to 7.5% base miss than 8% base miss for (Retribution) paladins.

brutalbovine · 12/04/08, 5:10 AM

Originally Posted by Travor

The white hit cap for a TG should be 19% (DW malus) + 5% base miss + 5% TG miss + 3% each lvl above + 1% boss -
so 33% overall or 32% when the cap has changed.

But keep in mind that every point of hit beyond 14% (or 13%) is kind of wasted.

You seem to be assuming TG affects the white hit cap, which it does not.

Titan's Grip only affects yellow hits, so the miss rate for TG specials against a boss is (base 7% + 5% for TG) + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4%, or 14%. This is assuming nothing has changed (which it seems like it has, judging by the above tests).

The hard cap for hit (white) is 28% against a boss. The formula for a mob that has more than 10 defense skill higher than your base weapon skill is 7% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4% (substitute 26% for 7% if dual-wielding), again assuming they haven't modified the formula for WotLK.

Kinmaul · 12/04/08, 8:58 AM

I have done hours upon hours of raiding with my Ret paladin @7.01% hit and out of thousands of attacks the only misses I've seen recored on Recount were a few from Hammer of Wrath. I was specced 3/3 precision before they removed the talent in 3.0, but again no one really knows if that has anything to do with it. Unfortunately given my luck with drops I cannot really go much lower hit-wise unless I want to go find 5-man blues to replace my Naxx epics. Once I get a better selection of gear I plan to continue to drop hit until I start seeing evidence that I've dropped below the cap.

Sydane · 12/04/08, 12:24 PM

One fundamental aspect of the calculation is the assumption of the mob's defense level. Have people done testing using player defense levels to see if the calculation remains the same? Is there any way to test a mob's defense level other than with misses? Perhaps the new diminishing returns calculations on avoidance are actually affecting mob's levels of miss from defense.

Darian_TruBlade · 12/04/08, 12:57 PM

Originally Posted by Gleithan

Wild speculation here, but perhaps when they removed the inherent 1% resist chance for spells, they lowered the ranged/melee hit cap as well. The data in the hunter thread is indeed convincing; as it is I'll be aiming for 263 hit until someone somewhere reports a miss with over 8% hit.

I like wild speculation, but this really doesn't make too much sense. That last 1% resist chance wasn't outright removed, the ability for spell hit to remove that last 1% miss was added. I suppose it's possible.

What's more, or at least equally, likely is that this is related to the change to crushing blows.

Rhaegal · 12/04/08, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

What's more, or at least equally, likely is that this is related to the change to crushing blows.

How? Crushing blows were able to be toggled on and off for specific bosses prior to WotLK, presumably (though there's no hard evidence, and now never will be) without effecting miss rates. Why would turning them off for all bosses effect a (theoretically) independent attribute?

I keep hoping someone will answer my earlier question about whether the DW miss rate seems to have been affected, or if it's still 28%. Unfortunately none of my characters capable of DWing are 80 yet, so I can't test on the boss dummies. If it's still 28%, then what we're seeing is a change/bug with just the 9% physical miss. If it's lower than 28% now, then I'd be more inclined to believe the possibility that Blizzard changed something else and it had some unintended consequence to physical hit. That said, Daronsk's post about having just over 13% hit as a TG warrior and still seeing special misses makes me inclined to think that's not the case... I'd just rather have more than a single report of it.

slipey · 12/04/08, 2:35 PM

I'm curious about this as well, although my findings have been a bit different. Here is a parse from Naxx. The ret pally Bronsson has 296 hit rating, however, he is still getting a significant number of misses on melee swing attacks. What could account for this?

Wow Web Stats

Rhaegal · 12/04/08, 3:02 PM

Originally Posted by slipey

I'm curious about this as well, although my findings have been a bit different. Here is a parse from Naxx. The ret pally Bronsson has 296 hit rating, however, he is still getting a significant number of misses on melee swing attacks. What could account for this?

Wow Web Stats

There's definitely something odd about his data. If you split the report to only include trash, he had melee swing misses on that, too. Considering there's no level 83 trash, either he wasn't wearing the 296 hit rating that he's showing on his armory, or is somehow seeing misses on lvl 80-82 mobs when wearing enough hit to be capped against lvl 83.

• LodeRunner · 12/04/08, 3:12 PM

Here's 3 hours of Sartharion +3 drakes attempts and kill from last night. I was 0.05% under the hit cap, 359 rating instead of 361, and you will see there are misses. I'm inclined to believe it's still 9% for melee.

ithecho84 · 12/04/08, 3:16 PM

Originally Posted by Rhaegal

There's definitely something odd about his data. If you split the report to only include trash, he had melee swing misses on that, too. Considering there's no level 83 trash, either he wasn't wearing the 296 hit rating that he's showing on his armory, or is somehow seeing misses on lvl 80-82 mobs when wearing enough hit to be capped against lvl 83.

Perhaps his weapon skill was not up to par?