Tonight on Loatheb: 108.62% buffed crit rate. Had several Shots that did not crit though.

Even under the assumption of the 4-5% crit "tax", this still doesn't make sense. I am specced 3/3 Focused Aim.

I'm also unclear on how Heart of the Crusader is applied. It either should give me a 111.62% crit chance, or it's possible it has no effect once you're over 100%.

But whichever way you slice it, you should have seen the disappointed look on my face as I watched my poor Kill Shots hit Loatheb without critting despite my char sheet showing 108.62% crit.

Just popping in to say I will continue testing soon, but real life takes priority, especially when it involves making money.

If anyone is at a loss as to what to do to help out in the mean time, it has occurred to me that we need to test individual shots to see if this reduction is happening across all shots. Since Explosive shot has been show to have the capacity to have blocked damage critical strikes, as well as resists, I suspect that only purely physical shots have this crit negating Block mitigation. This means that Chimera Shot, Arcane Shot, and Explosive Shot may not be subject to this pattern. Sizable sets of different test shots would be nice, but I understand it would take longer to collect appropriate test samples to find anything conclusive.

I think Steady Shot would be the easiest to test. I have found that true blocks do occur on our ranged attacks, especially in PVP versus tank classes.

I will get to testing FA soon, and try to conclude this thread. Then we move on to testing if other shots also lose crit based on attacking from the front.

What the combat log says is:

Player's Auto Shot hits for X damage (blocked 76)



It is always 76 for level 83 mobs. With Auto Shot, there is never an instance of:

Player's Auto Shot hits for X damage (critical) (blocked 76)



With Explosive Shot, I have found incidences of:

Player's Explosive Shot hits for X damage (critical) (blocked 76)



I need to duel my prot tank buddy, and see what full blocks show up as, but you can see on WWS that there is a separate report allocation for Full blocks, and block mitigation.

Edit: changed 73 to 83

I am now testing Focused Aim. I am attacking from the rear to get rid of fluctuations in block based crit reduction.
If we assume that the hit (3 percent) from FA does not crit, then the expected loss on 40.20 crit rating will be an additional 1.206 percent on top of the standard 4.80 reduction due to boss level. I had a [Grand Marshal's Bullseye] in the bank and I put a [Heartseeker Scope] to speed the tests up quite a bit. Since this is a smaller loss rate we are testing, I may extend the test to 20,000 shots to reduce the effect of RNG.

40.20 crit, 8 percent hit (164 from gear, 3/3 Focused Aim) Attacking a level 83 Dummy, from the rear.

01: 35.3 crit return --- 4.90 crit loss --- 4.90 average crit loss
02: 34.1 crit return --- 6.10 crit loss --- 5.50 average crit loss
03: 36.0 crit return --- 4.20 crit loss --- 5.07 average crit loss
04: 32.4 crit return --- 7.80 crit loss --- 5.75 average crit loss
05: 34.5 crit return --- 5.70 crit loss --- 5.74 average crit loss

06: 36.4 crit return --- 3.80 crit loss --- 5.41 average crit loss
07: 34.5 crit return --- 5.70 crit loss --- 5.45 average crit loss
08: 35.1 crit return --- 5.10 crit loss --- 5.41 average crit loss
09: 35.0 crit return --- 5.20 crit loss --- 5.38 average crit loss
10: 33.4 crit return --- 6.80 crit loss --- 5.53 average crit loss

So far, the data is falling in between the two thresholds to make a conclusion, thus not really giving us anything conclusive. The expected total crit reduction should be ~6.00 percent, and at 5.53 percent for 10k shots, this is closer to supporting my hypothesis, but at the same time, it is outside of the RNG threshold (0.3 percent) that we have established for these tests. Removing the 2 outliers, we end up with an average of 5.46, so we don't really get any help there. So far the test is inconclusive.

I am going to divide the test runs I have into two sets, to see if it is RNG, and then I will also do a combined average of the two sets. If the results are still inconclusive, I will test on a level 80 dummy from the back, in order to reduce the amount of factors contributing to crit reduction.

01: 36.8 crit return --- 3.40 crit loss --- 3.40 average crit loss
02: 37.2 crit return --- 3.00 crit loss --- 3.20 average crit loss
03: 35.1 crit return --- 5.10 crit loss --- 3.83 average crit loss
04: 33.2 crit return --- 7.00 crit loss --- 4.63 average crit loss
05: 35.2 crit return --- 5.00 crit loss --- 4.70 average crit loss

06: 35.8 crit return --- 4.40 crit loss --- 4.65 average crit loss
07: 33.6 crit return --- 6.60 crit loss --- 4.92 average crit loss
08: 36.3 crit return --- 3.90 crit loss --- 4.80 average crit loss
09: 34.3 crit return --- 5.90 crit loss --- 4.92 average crit loss
10: 35.8 crit return --- 4.40 crit loss --- 4.87 average crit loss

This set is pointing to Focused Aim not effecting crit returns. The total average of both sets is 5.20, just on the threshold of RNG swing, and again it points to FA having no effect. Rosamonde, if you can get the derivatives done for this set, I am pretty sure it will point in the same direction.

If I combine the sets, and remove 1 set of outliers, the average is 5.18, so a little more nudging. Overall it looks like Focused Aim is working properly after all, and the I had observed before is due to block damage shots.

I think we need one more test from the back of a level 80 dummy to confirm, and once this is done, we can conclude this thread and go on to testing which shots suffer from crit reduction due to block mitigation.