Originally Posted by Jayde

Wonder if there is some silly longer-duration world debuff that lowers your chance to hit with spells? Can faintly remember a few tooltips here and there, but nothing coming to mind.

Originally Posted by Hozz

Hey I have a question that I hope someone can answer and I dont really want to start a new thread on it so this one seems like a decent spot to ask.

Is there a melee crit cap in WoW?

So like if you had crit rating above a certain threshold, its wasted? I seem to remember seeing it described as some base % like 16+your hit %.

Originally Posted by chase

I'm confused when you bring dodge and parry into caster mechanics.

The only outcomes I know of for a spell cast:
Miss
Resist (0%/25%/50%/100%)
Crit
*immune*

I unsure how comparing a melee system to a caster system will bring you closer to a solution.

Glossary of terms:
Miss: This is the chance you have to miss a target. It is ONLY based on the difference in level of you and your target. (also if the target is a player or mob)
Solution: Spell hit rating (formerly +to hit) and buffs/talents to the same effect

Resist: This is the chance you have to resist on a target. It is only based on the built in values for mobs. For players, it is the resistance to the school you are casting. (See Resistance page)
You can have your direct damage spell resisted by 0% (no resist/full damage) 25%/50% or 100% (full resist). Binary spells by name are either on or off, 100% resist (no damage) or 0% resist (full damage)
Solution: Spell penatration gear and buffs/talents or mob debuffs for the same effect. (Gonna leave out talking about caps for resistance on boss mobs)

Note: A full resist and a miss are not the same thing; although they do have the same result.

The only blue post we really have (at least on the american forums) is Tserics old post:


First of all, the binary example can confuse people. (Should never use 50%)

Take the frost example (binary)
50% resist
.89 * .5 = .445
Roll 0 - 1
if < .445 full damage
if >= .445 no damage

80% resist
.89 * .2

[top] .178
Roll 0 - 1
if < .178 full damage
if >

.178 no damage

The second problem is that he never mentions if the +hit is floored for binary spells in the resistance calculation.

e.g.
Fighting a 70 vs 70
You have +7% to hit
You have a 1% chance to miss (floor) (.96 chance to hit for equal level mob/player .96+.7=.99)

Does the resist calculation look like this though?
.96+.07=1.03
Target has 8% resistance to school
1.03*.92=.948
Roll 0-1
if < .948 full hit
if >= .947 full miss

or is the cap in the resistance check

Target has 8% resistance to school
.99 * .92 = .911
Roll 0-1
if < .911 full hit
if >= .911 full miss

This is the whole "breaking the +to hit max on mobs equals a better resist rate" for binary argument.

Anyway, this leads me to the conclusion that it is a two roll system.

Roll 1 (Using the mechanics Tseric mentioned)
Hit (Binary Spell: Include resitance check here)
Miss

Roll 2
If hit, roll crit
(Direct damage spell: Include resistance check here)

From the comment
It seems safe to assume partial resists for direct damage spells is factored in at time of impact, where binary spells get the resitance included in on roll 1.*

*This leads to the whole +to hit for frost mages is better argument. If there is no cap in roll 1 resistance check and the player beats the hit cap than a frost mage could actually beat the "innate" resistance of boss mobs that neither spell pen or CoE and the likes can break. (Although beating the 16% hit cap seems rather hard)

Originally Posted by Rounced

There actually was someone who did prove that there was no cap in roll 1 resistence check for binary spells back before TBC and the new forums (which kinda sucks since the thread was destroyed soon after the experiment was posted). It was part of a sticky thread in the Mage forums attempting to explain +hit and penetration to people.

The experiment was 2 warlocks casting CoR or CoW on each other over and over and tracking how many "misses" they got at varying levels of shadow resistence gear and varying levels of +hit. I think they had over 1000 points of data for each test and they tested the results using Standard Deviation and found them valid. The resulting miss rate proved that hit is capped in the second equation and not in the first so that if you have over the hit cap for a certain mob the additional hit will act as spell penetration. This only applies to Binary spells though.