Cataclysm Mechanics Testing
 

Before we can do any real theorycraft on Cataclysm specs and gear, there's some basic stuff that needs to be tested so we create an accurate model. Rather than doing this by our usual scatterbrained approach, I figure we should try to get all the information in a centralized location so everyone interested in creating a model has access to it.

Following is a rough pass at listing everything we still need to test/verify. I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, so feel free to bring up anything I've omitted; I've probably also inadvertantly included some things we already know, so feel free to point that out as well.

In the interest of being as thorough as possible about this, please provide testing and/or evidence if you're going to attempt to answer one of these claims. If you flatly state the answer with no evidence to support it you're probably going to get ignored. And possibly infracted.

1. How much armor do bosses have?
2. Are our miss and dodge rates against boss level mobs still 8/17/27/6.5?
3. Is melee crit reduction still 4.8%?
4. How big is spell crit reduction?
5. Mutilate Damage Formula (i.e., does it still add the full bonus damage to both hands?) How is the damage formula affected by Opportunity?
6. Similarly, does the base damage of Backstab/Ambush exhibit the same oddities with respect to Opportunity that it has in previous expansions?
7. How do Opportunity and Improved Ambush stack?
8. How does Assassin's Resolve work? I've been told that it affects autoattacks only. Comfirmation would be nice. Also, does it stack the way you'd expect with Vendetta?
9. How do Vile Poisons and Potent Poisons stack?
10. Verify the IP/WP proc rates. I have no particular reason to believe it's changed, but it's worth verifying. Similarly, verify that the proc rate on ranged attacks (i.e. FoK) is what you'd expect.
11. On a related note: with Vile Poisons, do your melee weapon poisons proc at the melee weapon proc rate or the ranged weapon proc rate?
12. How do Vitality (and Overkill, and Adrenaline Rush, and Blade Flurry) stack with each other, and with haste scaling of energy regen? Partially Answered, see below
13. Does the Venomous Wounds nature damage proc scale with gear, and if so, how?
14. How does Coup de Grace stack with Revealing Strike? What about Executioner (the Subtlety Mastery)? What about Aggression? Partially Answered, see below
15. Has it been verified that Rupture no longer scales with haste?
16. In early beta we saw some odd behavior with Rupture scaling under Revealing Strike. Has this been fixed to always give the full 20% damage bonus?
17. Is Find Weakness a flat 50% armor reduction, or does it obey the same effectiveness cap as Wrath ArPen?
18. Does HAT affect Spell Crit?
19. Is the Eviscerate damage formula we were given in the last patch actually correct? Given that the wowhead damage formula was wrong for all of Wrath, it seems worth verifying.
20. How does Imp SS stack with Aggression? How do these interact with the bonus damage on Sinister Strike?
21. Is FoK normalized?
22. What about KSp?
23. What about Revealing Strike?
24. What is the proc behavior of Blade Twisting?
25. How does the new Vitality damage buff stack with Savage Combat?
26. Does the AR haste stack as expected with Windfury/SnD/Haste Rating?
27. Which finishers count in terms of Restless Blades?
28. Are existing DoTs (DP, Rupture, etc.) boosted by the KSp damage buff?
29. Can someone confirm the mechanics of Bandit's Guile? That is: how many attacks it takes to increase your stack, what the damage gain is at each step, whether the damage gain applies to all moves you do or just some of them, etc.
30. Main Gauche shows up as a yellow attack. Does it use 1H miss rate or DW miss rate? Is it normalized?
31. Glyph of Hemo was exhibiting some buggy behavior during beta. Is this fixed? How does it react to Hemo crits vs regular crits? If you have a Glyph DoT ticking and you hemo again, does it refresh?
32. Has the dodged envenom buff glitch been fixed?
33. What's the proc behavior of Landslide (i.e., proc rate, ICD, does it stack or refresh if you have 2, etc.)?
34. What's the proc behavior of Hurricane (same questions, but also whether poison can proc it as it does say "spells")?
35. Are glancing blows still 24% chance and average-case 25% damage reduction?
36. How do partial resists work? We've always modeled them as a straight 6% average case damage reduction, but with Mutilate getting so much of its damage from spells now it might be worth confirming that that's a good approximation.
37. What is the proc behavior of Darkmoon Card: Hurricane?
38. What is the proc behavior of Left Eye of Rajh?
39. What is the proc behavior of Key to the Endless Chamber?
40. What is the proc behavior of Essence of the Cyclone?
41. What is the proc behavior of Unheeded Warning?
42. What is the proc behavior of Prestor's Talisman of Machination?
43. What is the proc behavior of Grace of the Herald?
44. What is the proc behavior of Heart of the Vile?
45. What is the proc behavior of The Twilight Blade?
46. Do damage procs (Avalanche, DMC: Hurricane) benefit from Bandit's Guile?
47. What is the proc behavior of Avalanche?
48. What is the proc behavior of Swordguard Embroidery?

Partially Answered
12. AR and Vitality apply additively; haste regen is then applied to that sum multiplicatively. Blade Flurry and Overkill still need to be tested. Credit: Lightshadow
14. Coup de Grace, Aggression, and Executioner all apply additively. However, the damage buff of RvS is not yet understood - in the testing in question it only provided a ~4% damage benefit. RvS has now been fixed to give the full 20% benefit; its stacking with the other bonuses should now be verified. Credit: ieatpaperbag, Lightshadow

Confirmed Results
1. Boss armor is 11977.
2. Miss/dodge rates are still 8/17/27/6.5 against boss-level mobs, according to the character sheet. However, testing at level 80 indicates that the expertise value is actually lower than 6.5%; this effect does not appear to extend to level 85, where dodge rates appear to be about the expected 6.5%. Credit: Feist-Mok
3. Crit reduction is still 4.8%. Credit: Ramathor
4. Spell crit reduction is close to 2.1%. Credit: sp00n, Spoonwoman, MrBill
5. Mutilate damage is given by Opportunity * Assassin's Resolve * Poisoned Target * 1.5 * (weapon damage * oh penalty + damage constant). Credit: nextormento
6. Basically a bad question. Don't worry about answering it.
7. Imp Ambush and Opportunity apply additively. Credit: korner
8. Assassin's Resolve boosts all melee attacks and strikes, including autoattacks, weapon strikes, and finishers. It notably does not affect spell damage (i.e. poisons) and ranged attacks (including FoK). It stacks multiplicatively with Vendetta. Credit: Docrev
9. Potent Poisons and Vile Poisons apply additively. Credit: niemann
10. IP proc rate is still 20% * weapon_speed/1.4. WP proc rate is still 50% * weapon_speed/1.4. This applies to both melee and ranged weapons.
11. The proc rate of your melee poisons on FoK via Vile Poisons are based on your melee weapon speed.
13. Venomous Wounds base damage is given by (363+.135*AP) at level 80 and (675+.176*AP) at level 85. It crits at your usual spell crit rate, and benefits from Potent Poisons and the spell damage buff (Master Poisoner or equivalent) but not Vile Poisons. Credit: Docrev, niemann
15. Rupture does not scale with haste. Confirmed by Lightshadow
16. RvS has been fixed to give the full 20% damage benefit on Rupture. Confirmed by Lightshadow
17. Find Weakness is a straight 50% reduction and applies multiplicatively with Expose Armor. Credit: korner
18. HAT does in fact increase spell crit according to the character sheet, despite the wording of the tooltip. Credit: Docrev
20. Aggression and Improved Sinister Strike stack additively, and affect both the base weapon damage and the bonus damage. Credit: ieatpaperbag
21. FoK is not normalized. Credit: Docrev
22. KSp is normalized. Credit: Lightshadow
23. Revealing Strike is not normalized. Credit: ieatpaperbag
24. Blade Twisting procs off of all damaging weapon strikes and has no ICD. Thus, on a single target, it will usually have near-100% uptime.
25. The Savage Combat and Vitality AP buffs apply multiplicatively. Credit: ieatpaperbag
26. AR Haste applies multiplicatively with all other sources of haste. Credit: Lightshadow
27. Only finishers that do damage (Evis/Env/Rupture/Deadly Throw) count towards Restless Blades. Buff/debuff finishers (SnD/Recuperate/EA) do not. Credit: ieatpaperbag
28. Existing DoTs are not buffed by KSp; however, if DP is refreshed during KSp it will gain the damage bonus until it is again refreshed. Credit: ieatpaperbag
29. Bandit's guile mechanics are summarized by Lightshadow here.
30. Main Gauche is a normalized attack that uses the yellow (1H) hit table and cannot glance. Credit: ieatpaperbag, Lightshadow
31. Glyph of Hemo deals 40% of the damage dealt by the Hemo. Hemoing while the previous DoT is up will overwrite the previous one, regardless of relative damage. Reapplying does not reset the tick timer. The DoT does count for purposes of Sanguinary Veins, including buffing its own damage (though not that of the applying Hemo). If there is an existing DoT up, the Hemo will benefit from it, and the proc will also benefit from it, effectively double-passing the benefit of Sanguinary Veins on the DoT. The DoT is also boosted by the Hemo debuff. The DoT can also crit, in addition to the fact that if the Hemo crits the DoT does more damage - hence, the Glyph effectively double-passes your crit as well. The DoT does not benefit from haste. Credit: ieatpaperbag
32. Dodged/Missed envenoms still trigger the Envenom buff. Credit: ieatpaperbag
34. On physical attacks, Hurricane acts like a regular 1 PPM enchant. On spells, it is a 45 second ICD and a 15% proc rate. If a spell proc occurs while a melee proc is active, it will refresh the melee proc. If a spell proc occurs with no melee proc, it will create a separate stack of the buff, potentially resulting in 3 stacks being up at the same time.
35. There is no known evidence that glancing behavior has changed. Confirmed by ieatpaperbag
36. Partial resists appear to have been removed from the game. Credit: Exemplar
38. Left Eye of Rajh has a 30% proc rate and a 50 second ICD Credit: Zeyue, sp00n
39. Key to the Endless Chamber has a 10% proc rate and a 75 sec ICD.
40. Essence of the Cyclone has a 10% proc rate and a 50 second ICD. Credit: nelalas
41. Unheeded Warning has a 10% proc rate and a 50 second ICD. Credit: nelalas
42. Prestor's Talisman of Machination has a 10% proc rate and a 75 second ICD. Credit: Caffeine
43. Grace of the Herald has a 10% proc rate and a 100 second ICD. Credit: Zeyue, sp00n
46. Avalanche does not benefit from Bandit's Guile. It seems likely that DMC does not either. Credit: nelalas
47. Avalanche procs off weapon attacks with a 5 PPM proc rate, and has a 10% chance to proc off Deadly Poison or Rupture ticks. It does not appear to proc off Instant Poison or Venomous Wounds. Triggering ticks can proc an Avalanche enchant on either hand, however it appears that dual-wielding Avalanche does not increase the proc rate.
48. Swordguard Embroidery has a 15% proc rate and a 55 second ICD.

1) According to the New And Improved character sheet, the answer to this is yes. I'll take off all my gear and take a screenshot on the beta once the next build is live.
2) I can't speak to the proc-rate mechanics, but I can say that two independent procs will provide two independent buffs which do stack.

I am relatively certain that Main Gauche is a normalized attack, let me know if you want a larger sample size Combat Spreadsheet for 4.0.1. I am going to have to redo it with a 85 on a boss dummy to determine the miss rate.

Tested using a level 80 undead rogue on the PTR, no equipment except a [Main Gauche] in the main hand, on the level 60 training dummy from behind. Initial testing was done with no talents, no glyphs, and no specialization selected, followed by testing with no talents or glyphs, but with the specialization selected.
White damage baseline:


White damage with Assassin's Resolve:


Sinister Strike baseline:


Sinister Strike with Assassin's Resolve:


I apologize for the small sample size, it's the most I could pull off before someone else would run up and start hitting the dummy. With this small sample, it appears that the minimum and maximum white damage were increased by approximately 14%, while the Sinister Strike minimum and maximum were increased by approximately 15.5% and 14% respectively. The discrepancy between the tooltip value and the observed values is quite possibly due to the small sample size and rounding issues caused by the low damage, but it seems safe to say that Assassin's Resolve affects both white damage and special attacks.

EDIT: Listed the wrong training dummy, corrected.

Interesting. Could you (or someone) additionally check poisons, and non weapon damage based strikes (i.e. Eviscerate/Envenom)?

Tested instant poison and five combo point eviscerates with basically the same setup, with the exception of IP on the Main Gauche and the fact that the level 70 testing dummy was used this time. It also should be noted that I had already trained Mastery on this character. Eviscerate's damage was increased by 13.4% on the low end and 14.3% on the high end. Instant Poison had a 19.5% increase in minimum damage and a 20.2% increase in maximum damage, which corresponds to the expected damage increase from the Mastery. This data, combined with the data from my earlier post, would back the hypothesis of Assassin's Resolve increasing the damage of auto-attacks, weapon damage-based strikes, and non-weapon damage-based strikes, but not poisons.

Eviscerate (no specialization):


Eviscerate (Assassination):


Instant Poison (no specialization):


Instant Poison (Assassination w/ Mastery):

One final question (which I should have asked earlier, but I just thought of it now): what about FoK? I would guess not, but we shouldn't make assumptions at this stage. And while you're add it could you throw a Vendetta up on the dummy and verify whether stacking is additive or multiplicative?

Wasn't crit reduction found to be due to people attacking the target dummy from the front resulting in blocks on the attack table?

No, you're thinking of crit conversion. The whole explanation can be found here for those of you that missed it.

Tested Fan of Knives by equipping my rogue's Shrapnel Star, and didn't see any real difference between the averages with and without Assassin's Resolve with 20 FoKs each, though the distribution was a bit tighter with Resolve (I'm suspecting that's just a testing artifact). As for Vendetta, I had to change my testing setup a bit. Equipped gear was the Main Gauche and the Shrapnel Star, and the spec used was this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
To test it, I hit Vendetta, then auto-attacked the level 70 dummy until just before Vendetta ended, at which point I stopped attacking. After storing the data and resetting Recount, the dummy was then attacked auto-attacked without Vendetta for the same number of strikes. With Vendetta, the minimum auto-attack damage increased by 21% while the maximum increased by 21.7%, which suggests Vendetta is multiplicative with Assassin's Resolve.

FoK baseline:


FoK with Assassin's Resolve:


Melee without Vendetta:


Melee with Vendetta:

I verified that (at least on the PTR) rupture isn't scaling with haste yesterday. A little testing of MG tonight has convinced me that it uses the 1h miss rate rather than the DW miss rate -- with about 10% hit total I got 50 straight MG procs without a miss. (About the expected number of parries/dodges though)

Edit: To clarify about rupture -- no matter how much haste I use the ticks happen exactly 2 seconds apart (for exactly what the tooltip would suggest). That said the new dot refresh mechanic does apply to us. If you Rupture once and let it drop, the rupture falls off at exactly the same time the last tick hits. If you rupture, let it get to 1s, and rupture again though, it adds the remaining time on your old rupture to the new one.

and

Were you testing on the boss-level training dummy and, if so, can you comment on whether it can glance or not?

Yes I was testing vs. the heroic dummy, no none of the MG hits were glancing.

It does appear that you still gain the envenom buff after a dodge on beta.


and after a miss as well.

Tested on the PTR at level 80 with varying values of spell crit, attack power, and mastery.

Attack Power	Spell Crit	Mastery	Average Damage	Crit Percentage	Procs	Mastery%	Damage/(1+Mastery%)
4347	17.62	8.00	1231	17.2	64	20.00%	1025.83
3040	13.70	8.00	1002	24.6	61	20.00%	835.00
2036	7.36	8.00	826	8.9	45	20.00%	688.33
616	0.00	8.00	578	0.0	50	20.00%	481.67
4347	17.62	14.51	1398	32.1	28	36.28%	1025.87
3040	13.70	12.27	1091	20.0	30	30.68%	834.90

When you plot the data in the last column against Attack Power, you get the equation damage = 0.1459*AP + 391.63. This data suggests that Venomous Wounds scales with attack power, mastery, and spell crit chance, though the crit rates are a bit off from expectations in the second, fifth, and sixth trials, though that may be due to the fact that all these tests were done for a fairly small number of procs. Hit, Haste, and Expertise appear not to be factors for Venomous Wounds, as the additional Mastery in the last two trials was obtained by reforging pieces away from these stats, and the increase in damage fits the hypothesis of increased damage from mastery.

EDIT: Here's the raw data, in the order they appear on the table. Also worth noting from these is that the crit damage is 154.5% of the non-crit damage.







EDIT 2: Caught a typo on the table, which slightly adjusts the damage/AP relationship.