This is a continuation from another thread, since the title of that thread no longer lends itself to the current discussion.

This is the original thread:

Lethal shots not effecting my autoshot or steady shot



Lethal shots was eliminated as a factor, and along this road the 4.8 percent crit reduction versus level 83 mobs was reinforced. This was true if the hunter testing was fully hit capped from gear, and ran a long enough test. In this process I started discovering that if I had Hit from Focused AIM, my crit was lower then the 4.8 (new) standard.

I ran a 10,000 shot test with 164 hit (5.00) percent and 3 percent hit from Focused Aim. There were no misses. I had no other talents allocated.

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...al/10ktest.jpg



My paper doll crit was 21.72, with no crit procs available. My Crit return after 10k Auto shots was 15.72, or exactly 6 percent. This would indicate a 1.2 Percent Crit reduction from gaining Hit from focused aim. AT the point of 7000 shots, the crit only fluctuated between 15.6 - 15 .7, indicating a less then 0.05 margin of error.

My current concern is that I always saw a range of 1.2 to 2 percent crit reduction , but not all the tests were of the same length and even at 5000 shots, I saw some RNR. It may be possible that at higher crit values, there is more reduction, indicating this is somehow scaling with gear.

I have to test at roughly a 30 - 32 crit rating, but currently, the only way I can get that high also puts me at 264+ plus hit, so Focused Aim is eliminated. I may have to talent 5 percent crit and try to switch some gear to get it up to 30 percent.

Well, the talented hit could still impact crit if it overwrites the Hit from gear.

sorry for the noob question, but I seem to be confused about the hit cap figures. I have been under impression that the hit cap for a raidboss (lv83 mob) is 9%. However, your exercise suggests that the cap is 5+3=8%, and the dummy on the picture is the lv83 one. What am I missing?

See the thread in this forum titled "Hit Rating."

yes, I have considered this, and I will run a test at 264+ hit, as well as with Focused Aim, in order to see if the hit from Focused Aim has priority.

The first test took me approx 5 hours, so I need a chunk of time to devote to it.

But since our pets don't get the benefit of FA, isn't it pretty much a waste of points anyway?

For an MM / SV hunter, this trade off for losing pet hit could be advantageous, since 3 percent hit on 80 - 85 percent of your total damage is still effectively 2.4 - 2.55 hit, while for a BM, since the pet is 40 - 50 percent of their damage, it is only a gain of 1.5 - 1.8 percent hit. For MM / SV that is an acceptable lose in exchange for freeing up itemization points on gear.

Basically this talent is less effective for BM hunters, and the additional lose of 1.2 percent crit, would make it a poor use of talent points. The loss of 1.2 percent crit would also make it less attractive for MM / SV hunters.

(percentages range is approximate)

If you look at my screen shot, there were no blocks.
Why would I be behind the dummy at all?

I only tested Auto shot, and your first test supports this in the case of Auto shot.

Did you have any other talents specced?

At 3000 shots (the approx. length of your individual skill tests), I have seen RNR cause fluctuations of 2 percent. Run to at least 8000 - 10000 shots of an individual skill i.e Steady Shot, Auto Shot, in order to reduce the influence of mathematical patterns of low crit and high crit strings.

I prefer to have screen shots posted, to verify gear and other statistics, such as if other points were allocated. Indeed the reason I ran a full untalented test was at Rosamonde's observation that my previous tests had other points allocated. Eliminate all other factors, including proc trinkets, and proc talents.

I have had to consider if Master of Anatomy was effecting my crit returns, but in my previous tests, even with the crit from that talent, at 264+ gear, I was showing 4.8 percent crit reduction only. Even so, Master of Anatomy is only 25 crit rating, or about 0.54 percent crit.

Recount does not record our blocked shots. Watch your logs as you go. You will see that ranged attacks do get blocked by the target dummy when attacking from the front.

You can armory me to see what I'm wearing and my talents. There's no proc trinkets and no talents that would cause any fluctuations in crit or cause a variance between Steady and Auto Shot crit chance. Those tests were done at those numbers because that's when my gun broke. I'm sorry but I don't have a magical method of not having to repair. I don't really care what you 'prefer'. You can take the data as it is or not. These 2 tests combine for 12000 shots with about a 5% reduction in crit. I'm confident that FA is not reducing our crit chance.

To elaborate on this slightly, Recount records blocked shots, but it does not express them as a separate percentage from hit, crit, or miss. If you have a ranged shot that hits but is blocked, it is counted as a "hit" in the pie chart and similar tables. Instead, Recount will show the total amount of damage that was blocked, if you go to a more detailed view with a damage breakdown.

Yes. Sorry if I was unclear. It records blocks as hits. However, I was doing some further research on this topic and it was reported that blocks can also crit. This proves 2 things. There is a 2-roll system. The first being Defensive (dodge, block, miss, etc) and the 2nd being offensive (regular or critical hit). It also proves that blocks count as hits on the 1st roll so they have no effect on crit chance.

That is fine and all, but in my previous thread, Rosamonde pointed out that other talents may be effecting crit returns, and that is why I did the test specced 00 / 03 / 00. Also it may very well be only Auto Shot that is effected this way, that is a possibility. Again you may have 12000 shots, but is is of two different abilities and from two different positions, so each counts as a separate test.

I repaired and restocked on Ammo while testing in order to get 10000 shots. If you have yourself set up in a particular spec, there may be things effecting it. This is not the first tests that have shown me this return.



Here is a test with Focused aim:

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...tFocused83.jpg

Here is a test without Focused Aim.

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...NoLethal83.jpg

This is where I found the original difference. Even though these support my theory, I have eliminated then from my own test sample base, as the test where not long enough. Here is another 10k Auto Shot test:

http://ordure2000.free.fr/10k.jpg

This shows a 6.1 percent crit reduction on 10k auto shots. He has 169 hit from gear, the rest from FA.


There is something while using focused Aim that is reducing crit return, and my test which ISOLATED the talent, showed that I was losing an additional 1.2 percent on top of the 4.8 from level difference. If I hit cap from gear, I am not losing it. I was confident in my original findings, but after scrutiny of my tests, I decided to retest in order to eliminate all factors, including any talents that effect crit (such as lethal shots), in order to be sure of my theory.

This variance in crit returns has been show before, but in all the other tests, there were other factors to cause variance. There is cataloging of anywhere from 2.56 percent crit reduction to 6.34 percent crit reduction, but the length of all these test was not sufficient enough to account for RNR. In your own tests, the crit reduction varies from 6.29 percent to 4.18 percent. that's a 2.09 percent swing.

I appreciate your attempt to test this as well, but you did not go to the same lengths to isolate this talent that I did, including re-gemming and un-talenting, in order to eliminate any direct or indirect effect on crit. I also had to watch the dummy in order to make sure no one was putting a debuff on it that increase crit chance, and to make sure I was not get buffed by people passing by. This is why I test in Darnassus, much less of a chance of that happening.

If I am not losing crit from Focused Aim, then where am I losing it?

Since I made this spot by accident...again, I will show some RNR samples.

I am currently running a 10k, 263 hit from gear test. This is to show the crit variance at intervals. Paper doll crit is 27. 86

Shots-----Crit rate

1000-----22.0

2000-----23.1 --- this means if in my first 1000 shots I crit 22 percent, and in my next 1000 shots, I crit 24.2 percent.
2500-----22.5

3000-----21.8
3050-----22.1 --- this is right after a long crit string. Right before it, I had watched myself get basically 1 crit per 10 shots for a good 200 shots.
3500-----21.9

4000-----22.1

5000-----21.9
5500-----22.1

6000-----22.0

At this point there is less fluctuation, but by this return, I am losing 5.86 crit, which is contradictory to the 4.8 percent excepted crit loss. I am going to start a 2nd series, this time breaking it into 1000 shot blocks in order to see what the variance per 1000 shots is, and why I had such a high spike for 1000 shots.

Right now, in order to reach the standard 4.8 percent reduction, I would have to maintain a crit rate of 24.50 percent over the next 4000 shots.
This is starting to look like a more complex pattern...

Thayer, I think it is interesting that your test with FA showed a 6.0% crit reduction. The BC value was 1.2%, and with full hit cap in WLK we are showing 4.8%, which is four times greater. Your test showed results which are five times greater at ~20% crit. My tests showed a 4.8% crit reduction whether hit capped from gear or from using FA, but I was testing at only 10.0% crit.

The only variable between my test and yours is the crit rate, since yours was 21.72% -- we had the same spec of 0/3/0 and the same hit rate of 5% from gear.

These two links seem to go to the same image. Did you already do a 10K shot test at ~20% crit without FA?

My thought is that we need to run a hit capped 0/0/0 test test at ~20% crit, and also tests at ~30%, and see what happens, as you propose in your initial post.

I am in the process of a 0/0/0 test at 8% hit from gear and 20% paperdoll crit, so if you have already run one, I would be interested to see the results! I'll edit in my results here when the testing is complete, but it may take me another day or two to accumulate enough shots.

Whether the test without FA at 20% shows a 4.8% or a 6.0% crit reduction, it will be interesting information. I don't think I have the gear yet to pull off an untalented 30% crit rate with either 8% or 5% hit. If you can, I hope you will go for it and post the results.

Yes, I have a feeling that the more crit you get, the more crit you lose from FA. If your test show 4.8 percent with FA, then I would have something else going on, with the only apparent possibility being a incompatibility with crit from Master of Anatomy and hit from FA. Are you 400 Skinning as well?




I corrected the links, thank you. I have not run a 10k test without FA. I was actually planning on running an 8 percent hit test along with 3 percent from FA, to see if FA overwrites crit from gear.

This will work fine! I can run a test at 8 percent hit capped from gear at around 27.5 crit with my gear. Yes, 10k worth of Auto Shots can take a while...

Yes, I do have 400 Skinning.

Have we considered the possibility of diminishing returns being inadvertently added to Critical Strike rating?

This would suggest that if 10% is below the DR threshold, you may have varying values between critical strike ratings. With the addition of it to defensive characteristics I don't see it being an impossibility.

This speculation would require a very large sample size, but it seems possible. I can get you some small sample data tomorrow if your current tests are consistent with your first.

That has actually come across my mind. Since I started testing in 1000 shot blocks, I noticed the crit has a tendency to be higher in the beginning of the test for the first few hundred shots, then it starts to come down.

I will post a 200 shot parse here, and go down in parse size if need be. the numbers are the cumulative crit rating.

1: 23.0 crit
2: 21.7 crit
3: 22.8 crit
4: 22.7 crit
5: 21.8 crit (final, crit block 4 in my previous post)

Of course as I start my next 1000 shot block, the first 150 shots were at only 15 percent crit...



Also as I was looking at the combat log, I saw blocked damage, and it was always 76. I am going to go back into my previous 10k test to see what percentage of shots had blocked damage. It described Critical and Blocked in the same space, and I never saw an instance of a blocked Critical.

In my first 10K test I had 496 shots with blocked damage. That is 0.0496 percent of my shots, or approx. 5 percent. If this is a contributor to the reduction of crit returns, then there are three ways I can see it being a factor, one of which should not effect my crit return.



1: in a one roll system, with the blocked shots being at 5 percent, then crit would get its own numerical value, thus blocked shots simply becoming the low rolls.



2: in a two roll system, with the first roll having an option to hit or miss, and the second roll has an option of crit, parry, normal and block, and assuming that there is a set block value, the block would have a scaling effect on crit returns.

If we assume block at 5 percent, as I found in my 10K test, then at 10 percent this would only reduce crit by 0.5 percent, and at 30 percent by 1.5 percent, so it would not be a significant factor. I simply applied crit returns based on 95 percent of shots being available.



3: in a two roll system, with the first roll having an option to hit, miss or crit, and the second roll has an option to block, parry or hit normally, then we would see a scaling effect on crit returns again. This would in effect be the same scaling pattern, as each individual crit would have a chance to be blocked, thus increasing the crit reduction.

For 10 percent crit, 5 percent of that is 0.5, while for 30 percent 5 percent of that is 1.5, the same as before.



If the case was true for 2 and 3 then this could be the cause of the discrepancy, but it could also be something assumed in the 4.8 percent. The scale nature of this would point away from this being the case, but then again, I believe most tests to confirm the 4.8 percent crit return were done at low crit rates.

I will have to look to see if rogue forums have shown an effect on crit returns from expertise, since for melee, there is a much higher dodge, parry, block etc. chance. If at expertise capped, they are still showing blocked damage, then this point is mute.



This may show that the blocked damage shots may indeed be causing crit reduction.

In my first test, since I had to change out gear to drop to 164 hit, my crit was 21.72. Using the formulation above, this would result in a 1.08 percent crit reduction. My return was 1.2 percent, leaving a margin of +0.12 percent for RNR.

In my 6000 shot test, since I did not screen shot my recount, I will assume 5 percent block damage hits for this calculation.

In the 6000 shot test, my crit rating was 27.86, so using the formulation, it would result in a 1.39 percent crit reduction. My 6000 shot test returned only a 5.86 percent crit reduction, leaving only 1.06 percent outside of the 4.8 percent standard. this would create a larger margin for RNR, at -0.33 percent. This would also be counter to the scaling pattern, though at a 5 percent crit difference, this is small fluctuations we are dealing with here.



The 5 percent block value is an assumption off of one test, so I will record the blocked damage percentage in my 1000 shot parses.

This is becoming about a bit more then just FA, though I am still watching for that discrepancy.

I'm currently auto-shotting with a 0/2/0 spec (I normally only put 2 points into FA due to my gear set) and after 1000 shots @ 23.26% crit I have a -4.66% crit rate. I'm planning on letting this run till my gun breaks or I run out of ammo (~3000 shots) and resume it tomorrow when I wake up.

Honestly not seeing the numbers you guys are getting, even on small sample sizes.

edit:

Final Number (because I'm an idiot and forgot to reset my Recount so I have to use a segment when I went to reload.)

Total: 2318
Hits 1913
Crits: 405
Char Sheet Crit: 23.26%
Expected Crit: 18.46%
Actual: 17.47%

Difference: -0.99%

Sample size probably too small, I'll let it run all afternoon tomorrow, but I think theres something here...

If I average my first 6000 shot test with my second parsed tests, at 6000 I get a 6.195 average, which is lending itself to negate the factor of FA effecting crit returns. There is now reason to believe that a higher crit rating may result in lower crit returns. This may be a case of DR on crit, it may be associated with blocked damage shots, or it may be a third factor we are not aware of at this moment.

A 6.165 average - 4.80 standard crit reduction is a additional 1.365 crit reduction. Using my previous formulation on blocked damage shots, I assumed a 1.39 crit reduction, and this would seem to fall in line with a -0.025 percent RNR swing.

Of course all this is subject to change, as all things are. Remember I am operating under the assumption of 5 percent blocked damage shots.

Using the assumed equation we would expect a blocked damage shot crit reduction of 1.16 Percent. This leaves a RNR swing of +0.17 percent. This larger swing is acceptable at the moment because of the size of the sample available.

Using these numbers for Auto shot only, we get a total of 5663 shots fired with 1195 crits, for a crit percentage of 21.1, and a crit reduction of 5.36, resulting in a 0.56 additional crit reduction. Using the assumed formulation, we would presume a 1.05 percent additional crit reduction. This gives us the largest RNR swing of -0.49 percent, over ~6000 shots.

Note: this sample was preformed in conjunction with using Steady Shot, and with all talent points spent.



We would need a much larger test pool at 00 / 00 / 00, or any variant up to 00 / 03 / 00, while hit capped, to solidity any theory stated in this thread.

Last edit for the night, time to sleep.

Are you removing all armor not specifically needed to get the stats you're testing, and firing the [Dalaran Rifle] or something similar?

Nope I need max gear to get the crit high enough. I am fine on gold, it is just an observation.