I suspect the optimal solution to that problem (when to envenom) tends to favour envenoming before your DPswitch if your DP OH is weaker (limiting uptime of DP weapon as much as possible), and if you don't have 5/5 RS (energy capping/clipping envenoms is less likely) so you have a greater margin of error to time your envenoms. In these scenarios you'll probably want to delay your swap to <3s (from rough napkin math).
Then again, the cost of the stack dropping is bigger (more time spent with worse OH...), so I may have to play with those numbers.
With 5/5 RS and/or a good DP OH, I suspect envenom timing re: not clipping/capping and pooling to get a mutilate under an envenom buff is more important than timing re: weapon-switch. You can probably adjust swap-times on the fly; if envenom is up, swap at <3s, if envenom is not, ~4s.
I've been under the impression that you would almost always make sure to swap to IP before the envenom, so that you aren't resetting the swing timer during the envenom buff. I was also under the impression that you would make sure to refresh DP before envenom, so you're able to have your IP off hand during the envenom buff.
Swapping your weapon immediately before or after an envenom shouldn't effect the swing timer and either way your IP OH is going to get the effect of the Envenom buff.
I always swap back to refresh DP after an Envenom because that's the time DP starts to fall off during my rotation. I'm not gonna Mutilate at 4 CPs just immediately after hitting my weapon swap macro because that's a waste of 2-3 combo points.
I've double checked my gear selections, and the spreadsheet shows the following:
MH Base Crit Rate 59.43%
White Crit Cap 59.70%
While fully raid buffed and DC trinket proc, my tooltip was showing 65.37% (decimal might be off) during an encounter...is this a tooltip issue on the character page, or am I missing something on the spreadsheet?
So, there's a combination of two things going on here.
First, there is 4.8% crit depression against boss-level mobs. As such, when your tooltip crit rate is 65.37, your actual crit rate (which needs to be compared to the crit cap) is 60.57%.
As for why that disagrees with that the sheet says: it's because I didn't expect anyone to have trouble with the crit cap using agility procs alone (i.e., without using Darkmoon Card), so a number of them (notably Mongoose, but possible DMC:G as well) are averaged in for purposes of "average crit". So, briefly stated: yes, the sheet will disagree with your in-game tooltips. Yes, you're probably crit-capping to some degree, and you may want to put some effort into raising your crit crap.
Thanks, I thought the 4.8% might have something to do with it. Also I meant DC as Death's Choice...since it is not an average crit proc, does the issue lie somewhere else?
Either way, I'll take off some AGI and throw on some EXP to raise my crit cap - I appreciate the help.
Death's Choice is an agi proc, much like Darkmoon Card, and as Agility provides crit rate, averaging out that proc is thus going to misidentify your crit relative to the crit cap.
I should also note that 3% of the crit you get from buffs is a debuff on the boss and thus won't show up on your tooltip - so, upon contemplation, your tooltip crit rate of 65.37% turns into a "real" crit rate of 63.57. So it would appear that you're a good 4% over cap.
Is there a way I can model being over 4% crit cap in the current spreadsheet? Trying to determine if replacing the Mjolnir Runestone for Blood of the Old God would be advantageous instead of trying to replace every agility gem I have with AP.
Your determination looks correct. Here is a breakout of several H Anub fight white hits:
(292 Hit and 3.25% exp)
Use the spreadsheet maybe to answer just that question?
If you are feeling like calculating here you go - Hit - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
The 1-roll system makes so the you can get miss, dodge, glancing, crit or hit and for example the bigger chance to miss is, the less "room" for the others are left so if you have enough miss and huge crit, you can easily get crit capped (i.e. there is like 55% chance left in the table but you have 60% crit, thats 5% wasted).
The problem with crit cap isn't limited to the idea that Crit Cap=1 - percentage of glancing (24 percent) - percentage of miss (your white miss chance)-percentage of dodge (if you are not expertise capped) + 0.048.
Most calculated crit cap assumed a 300 seconds fight duration. Given such a long duration, your glancing will always be around 24 percent. To give a realistic fight as an example, During phase 1 of four beast, my personal glancing on that 2 minute fight was sitting at 27 percent on one attempt 21 percent on another. If I use the dusk shoulder (from 45 emblems) and the greatness deck (I am excluding the 300 agility proc for the time being), I would be sitting at 49 percent crit unbuffed. On paper, I am not crit capped yet, but when I am having a 27 percent glancing due to fight duration being much lower than proposed 300 seconds, depending on the actual critical chance vs the actual glancing on a particular attempt, I could have reached the crit cap. The crit cap shown in the spreadsheet only becomes a realistic standard, and its value only "settles down graphically" if the duration of the fight is long enough (if you draw glancing percentage as a function of time in a fight, its values only settles down to 24 percent given long enough time).
In conclusion, my proposal is just to further stay away (more than just 1-2 percent) from the crit cap because there are many fights where we don't have more than a 3 minute straight up single target dps. When people switch to axe spec, this problem will of course disappear.
On paper, I am not crit capped yet, but when I am having a 27 percent glancing due to fight duration being much lower than proposed 300 seconds, depending on the actual critical chance vs the actual glancing on a particular attempt, I could have reached the crit cap.
The RNG does not affect your crit cap whatsoever. Even if you got unlucky and 100% of your attacks during a short fight were glancing blows that does not change the crit cap.
When we talk about crit cap, we are talking about a situation when crits are pushed out of the table by other outcomes, such as misses, dodges, and glances. On average, when you look at your distribution of white attacks, you expect a certain number of misses, dodges, glances, critical strikes and hits (no parries or blocks as long as you are attacking from behind), and when you hit the cap, the amount of expected critical strikes is lower than what's suggested by your stats. Thus some of your stats are wasted, and by stats I also mean your procs as well as static stats and various buffs and debuffs. The whole analysis of the crit cap is done ex ante, it has nothing to do with actual realizations of crits versus glances or any other attacks.
To understand why actual rates of glances do not matter for your apriori gear choices, consider an event with non-zero probability, where you hit a dummy 50 times and get 50 glance hits in a row. According to your logic, you have hit the crit cap due to RNG because your glances have completely pushed crits out of the table. However such observation does not have any bearing on your choice of gear. It does not mean that you need to lower your critical strike rating, agility or any procs, such as switching out some trinkets.
The only way the concept of crit cap can affect your gear choices, is when the crit from stats, procs, buffs and debuffs is higher than what's admissible by the hit table. Actual realizations of glancing hits or any other attacks are completely irrelevant for choosing gear and should not be brought into crit cap analysis.
The RNG does not affect your crit cap whatsoever. Even if you got unlucky and 100% of your attacks during a short fight were glancing blows that does not change the crit cap.
While it is true that the RNG does not affect the crit cap it is not true that it has no effect on the value of the stat outside what is already modeled in the averages of the sheet. Because the sheets only run calculations on average values of misses, glances, dodges, and criticals it means the effect of the crit cap on DPS at critical chances near the crit cap is larger than what the sheets reflect. According to the sheet if the average miss rate, dodge rate, and glance rates all add up to a number smaller than one minus the average critical rate then there is no negative effect on DPS. This is not the case. Because of the way these values are being approximated as averages there is an underlying assumption that there is an equal chance on any given fight of being 1% over or 1% under the average critical rate, that the critical chance on any given fight is a symmetrical bell curve around the average. Take the following as an example of why this could be problematic.
Let's say a player has the following stats:
24% Glancing
10% Miss
4% Dodge
Which puts the critical cap at 62%
Their tooltip crit is 65.8% which puts their average boss critical rate at 61%. Just under the crit cap so every point of crit they have is working to maximum effect, right? No. A bell curve is predicated on the assumption that the distribution of possible outcomes is symmetrical but this is not the case. What's the chances of, at an average of 61% crit, experiencing 59% crit? It's some number greater than 0 that will depend on the number of attacks that took place in the fight. What are the chances of, at an average of 61% crit, experiencing 62% crit? It's not 0, and it is some number greater than 0 that will depend on the number of attacks that took place in the fight, but it is also demonstrably smaller than the chances of scoring 59% crit. Why? Because the chance of glances, misses, and doges summing to exactly their average is greater than any other which means that, close to the crit cap there's a bigger chance of having less critical hits than the straight average then there is of having more. This is true for every average, tooltip crit rate larger than half the crit cap and the effect gets larger and larger as the average critical chance approaches the crit cap.
Now Ald can correct me if I'm wrong but the sheets, as far as I know, do not account for this interaction, so there is some degree of merit in Tofuu's point about the RNG.
Last edited by tetracycloide : 11/03/09 at 11:49 AM.
I just want to defend my point once more before I drop this topic: We will use the simple scenario of 100 hits on a target dummy as the baseline for analysis.
Scenario #1: I perform 100 hits on the lvl 83 Dummy, out of 100 hits, all of them glance. The probability of this outcome given infinite number of repetition of this trial is P1. Of course, P1 is understandably very low you probably will never encounter such event in your entire wow life and therefore this outcome has no bearing on our gear choices.
Scenario #2 Similar situation, 100 hits, 27 glancing attacks, probability of this outcome (again given infinite repetition of this trial) will be P2. However, P2 would be a much larger value.
If we make a graph of Time VS [(number of glancing attacks)/(total of number of white attacks performed)] (which is basically time vs percentage of glancing), We will see very large peaks in the very beginning of the time axis, and this peaks will slowly come to rest to reach the value of 0.24 as time goes on.
P1 is very small, and probably we don't need to calculate its actual value.
P2 can be calculated, but I honest don't have the resource on the laptop in my room to do it at this point. I am sure someone can do a simple probability test.
Now, Introduce the following stats weight
4% Glancing
10% Miss
4% Dodge
Which puts the critical cap at 62% and if the average critical chance of the person of interest is 61 percent, the question becomes what is the probability of someone having over 25 percent glancing attacks (we call this P3) and also what is the probability that this same person will crit more than 61 percent (P4). The variable is time because with long enough time, glancing will settle at 24 percent and crit will also settle at its average value. So we basically have to determine P3 and P4 for this particular stats weight and introduce a time value that will output a probability that while being 1 percent under crit cap, the dps loss will be significant.
I really do apologize for not giving concrete numbers, I will try to calculate P2 P3 P4 when I find some free time while I am at my lab. In either case, I hope I've made my point clear, even if these turn out to be incorrect.
Edit: I just saw Tetra's post after posting what I have written down here. I also used his stats weight and agree that the probability distribution will be essentially normal.
Well, given that if you're using agi procs like mongoose or Death's Verdict, or DM:G, your 'average' is really skewed upwards because you get big procs for a short amount of time, then you would run below your average crit rate most of the time, with jumps up way beyond the crit cap (of which all but the AP value of the agi is wasted, or all of the excess proc if it's crit rating).
Let's say a player has the following stats:
24% Glancing
10% Miss
4% Dodge
Which puts the critical cap at 62%
Their tooltip crit is 65.8% which puts their average boss critical rate at 61%. Just under the crit cap so every point of crit they have is working to maximum effect, right?
Ok, I will use your example for simplicity.
In WoW there is a single roll system for white dps, which is the only time where we are likely to hit the crit cap with current gear.
With this system we would get a roll between 1 and 100 where everything 61 and below is a crit and everything 62 and above is a glancing/miss/dodge. This means that every point of crit they have is contributing to their chance to crit.
Whether the RNG gives them 100% crit or 0% doesn't matter, none of their crit chance can be anything but a crit.
Where the crit cap comes into it is that if their normal chance to crit a boss is 61 but they also have a trinket/proc/something that gives them additional crit. So now they have a 70% crit chance, the system first checks to see if there is a glancing/miss/dodge, and so they will only get benefit up to the 62% meaning that even before the RNG, you are wasting the additional crit.
The confusion normally comes from the way that some spreadsheets are using an average figure for the bonus agility/crit rating for trinkets and therefore not showing that at some times you may be above the point where additional white crits cannot occur.
The main point to remember is that white damage is on a single roll system. Once you understand that it makes a lot more sense.
Why? Because the chance of glances, misses, and doges summing to exactly their average is greater than any other which means that, close to the crit cap there's a bigger chance of having less critical hits than the straight average then there is of having more. This is true for every average, tooltip crit rate larger than half the crit cap and the effect gets larger and larger as the average critical chance approaches the crit cap.
I think I get what you're trying to say here, the problem is that you have in a sense made two categories on the hit table, one with glancing, misses, and dodges, the other with normal hits and crits. It is true that glances, misses, and dodges have the greatest chance to be at their averages but from what you've explained these three are nearly predetermined and leave a portion of the hit table where crit chances only have a tiny space to move higher then normal and more of a chance to be less then normal which kind of assumes that your chance to hit or crit is based on your chance to glancing, miss, and dodge which of course isn't true. Crit has just a much chance to move that "more" higher.
In a real fight using a bell curve isn't really the best way to envision the chance for five outcomes to occur because you in a sense will base what happens with the other variables around the one in question. Even with a pie chart (which is a good way to look at results and what has happened) you'll tend to think "there's only this much room for this" which is where you start making outcomes dependent on each other. The best way to look at this is to a roll a lop-sided dice or the draw M&Ms from the bag thing (assuming you put them back every time). It's unfortunately intellectually simple but, each roll/draw is independent and none of the sides/draws hold any constraint on the others just like every swing in an encounter. You have the highest chance to be around the average for each of these outcomes, even at or near the crit cap you have a the same chance to x% higher or lower; it'll look higher because you did more crits then normal and/or you did less then normal of some or everything else and vis versa.
Last edited by ieatpaperbag : 11/03/09 at 1:23 PM.
Reason: reworded a point
Perhaps this is user error on my part but I turned on the "recommend expertise gem" feature to see what it would say. As I expected it said I need expertise, after adding 1 gem I was over the cap but it still recommend expertise gems until I equipped 2 more.
None of you guys talked about the time constraint, which is the key. The reason that there exists Crit cap is due to the fact that glancing attacks holds a higher priority than critical strikes in the hit table. Crit and glancing attacks are not dependent upon each other. Glancing is only one of the variables that defines what crit cap is.
The point I am making here is when the time is short enough, there's a calculable probability that critical strikes will be pushed off the hit table. This probability becomes significant when one's very close to the crit cap and at the same time the fight duration is short.
Therefore, as I mentioned earlier, the variables are the duration (time) and the proximity to crit cap. The one thing I am not sure if everyone agrees on is that given short enough duration, glancing is not always going to be at 24 percent and crit has the probability to hit its upper bound region in the probability distribution. The actual raid crit of 59 percent is not saying 59 percent is the highest it can achieve. 59 percent raid crit is the crit value it will arrive at given long enough duration. The shorter the fight, the closer one is to the crit cap, the more likely the upper region of the crit probability distribution will be wiped off through glancing attack priority over crits.
Just think about the two graphs Time vs glancing percentage and Time vs critical percentage, it's not going to be a straight line sitting at 0.24 for graph 1 or a straight line of whatever the raid actual crit is for graph 2. It's going to fluctuate and eventually settles down given long enough time to reach the expected "average value". The problem is again, when actual crit is so close to crit cap, there's a chance that glancing will become a limiting factor for crit when the duration is short enough.
The point I am making here is when the time is short enough, there's a calculable probability that critical strikes will be pushed off the hit table. This probability becomes significant when one's very close to the crit cap and at the same time the fight duration is short.
I believe this is the root of your confusion. The hit table is based on your stats, your target's stats, and your target's level at the time of your swing. The only way there can be a chance for crit to be pushed off the hit table if you are below the crit cap, is if you have procs that push you above the crit cap. The hit table itself is not based on chance, it is static.
On every swing, there are 100 possible outcomes, and glancing makes up around 24 of those outcomes. A short time frame will increase the variance in your results, but it will not change the hit table whatsoever. If you attack 100 times, they can all crit, or all glance, or all miss, etc.
Once the hit table is determined, glancing blows have no priority over crit, just as the number 2 has no priority over 5 on a dice.
None of you guys talked about the time constraint, which is the key. The reason that there exists Crit cap is due to the fact that glancing attacks holds a higher priority than critical strikes in the hit table. Crit and glancing attacks are not dependent upon each other. Glancing is only one of the variables that defines what crit cap is.
The point I am making here is when the time is short enough, there's a calculable probability that critical strikes will be pushed off the hit table. This probability becomes significant when one's very close to the crit cap and at the same time the fight duration is short.
Therefore, as I mentioned earlier, the variables are the duration (time) and the proximity to crit cap. The one thing I am not sure if everyone agrees on is that given short enough duration, glancing is not always going to be at 24 percent and crit has the probability to hit its upper bound region in the probability distribution. The actual raid crit of 59 percent is not saying 59 percent is the highest it can achieve. 59 percent raid crit is the crit value it will arrive at given long enough duration. The shorter the fight, the closer one is to the crit cap, the more likely the upper region of the crit probability distribution will be wiped off through glancing attack priority over crits.
Just think about the two graphs Time vs glancing percentage and Time vs critical percentage, it's not going to be a straight line sitting at 0.24 for graph 1 or a straight line of whatever the raid actual crit is for graph 2. It's going to fluctuate and eventually settles down given long enough time to reach the expected "average value". The problem is again, when actual crit is so close to crit cap, there's a chance that glancing will become a limiting factor for crit when the duration is short enough.
I don't think you understand the concept of single roll hit table that others have pointed out already. Everything is ALREADY PREDETERMINED, it doesn't matter if you get 100% glancing or 0% glancing in however amount of time, it does NOT affect crit cap. 24% glancing is a SET percentage, it will ALWAYS be 24% on the hit table.
The point I am making here is when the time is short enough, there's a calculable probability that critical strikes will be pushed off the hit table. This probability becomes significant when one's very close to the crit cap and at the same time the fight duration is short.
Therefore, as I mentioned earlier, the variables are the duration (time) and the proximity to crit cap. The one thing I am not sure if everyone agrees on is that given short enough duration, glancing is not always going to be at 24 percent and crit has the probability to hit its upper bound region in the probability distribution. The actual raid crit of 59 percent is not saying 59 percent is the highest it can achieve. 59 percent raid crit is the crit value it will arrive at given long enough duration. The shorter the fight, the closer one is to the crit cap, the more likely the upper region of the crit probability distribution will be wiped off through glancing attack priority over crits.
When you say that "The shorter the fight, the closer one is to the crit cap, the more likely the upper region of the crit probability distribution will be wiped off through glancing attack priority over crits." you are indicating a dependency of crit on glancing which is incorrect. Glancing blows do have a higher priority then critical strikes in the sense that if you had no chance to miss or be dodge and had a 100% crit chance from your gear, you would still have a 24% chance to have a glancing blow every individual swing. The only way glancing blows could push critical strikes off your hit table is if you were swinging at an extremely high level mob. As you fight a mob of higher and higher level, you first lose your chance to land any normal hits, and you begin to lose your chance to crit until all of your hits are glancing blows, misses, and dodges. (If you have a ton of time, you could make a level one and swing at the 60, 70, 80 dummies, level up some, swing at them again, etc. you can also just read the first part of Glancing Blows.)
Assuming time is directly related to the number of swings you do, in a fight where you do one swing, there is a 24% chance it will be a glancing blow, 59% chance it will be a critical strike, etc and in a fight where you do 100,000 swings each individual swing has 24% chance to be a glancing blow, 59% chance to be a critical strike, etc. Nothing clicks, changes, or magical happens when you cross the "fine line" between a "short" and "long" fight, the probabilities will all be the same no matter the duration. In a short fight, the results/percentages will seem off like with a fight where you swing one time or ten time or a hundred times, in a long fight, you can expect that the probabilities will closely match the results/percentages simply because there are more swings so you have a higher "confidence" level.
Last edited by ieatpaperbag : 11/03/09 at 3:03 PM.
Reason: Shortened up the quote some for space
In a real fight using a bell curve isn't really the best way to envision the chance for five outcomes to occur because you in a sense will base what happens with the other variables around the one in question.
This is exactly my point. Modeling every stat: miss, crit, glance, and dodge as a bell curve where each stat is an independant variable is wrong because it's a one roll system but the spreadsheets treat all of these stats as normally distributed, independant variables. It captures when the average crit rate goes over the crit cap but does not capture the effect that the variance of each stat has on the experienced average crit rate when approaching the crit cap. The crit cap is either everything or it's nothing according to the sheet and in actual play that's simply not 100% true.
Originally Posted by ieatpaperbag
You have the highest chance to be around the average for each of these outcomes, even at or near the crit cap you have a the same chance to x% higher or lower; it'll look higher because you did more crits then normal and/or you did less then normal of some or everything else and vis versa.
This simply is not true. If it were a perfect bell curve it would be true but it is not a perfect bell curve. The chances of going x% higher are always smaller than going x% lower once the tooltip crit exceedes half the crit cap. Crit is not a symetrical bell curve around an average.
Fight duration is also a red herring, there are more constructive avenues of discussion. All fight lenght means is that the stats do not typically have time to converge to their averages before a fight is over, which is obvious. It does not reveal any underlying bias in which direction a stat's bell curve average as derived from tooltip is skewed.
Last edited by tetracycloide : 11/03/09 at 3:37 PM.
This is exactly my point. Modeling every stat: miss, crit, glance, and dodge as a bell curve where each stat is an independant variable is wrong because it's a one roll system but the spreadsheets treat all of these stats as normally distributed, independant variables. It captures when the average crit rate goes over the crit cap but does not capture the effect that the variance of each stat has on the experienced average crit rate when approaching the crit cap. The crit cap is either everything or it's nothing according to the sheet and in actual play that's simply not 100% true.
This simply is not true. If it were a perfect bell curve it would be true but it is not a perfect bell curve. The chances of going x% higher are always smaller than going x% lower once the tooltip crit exceeds half the crit cap. Crit is not a symetrical bell curve around an average.
If you are looking at your tooltip yes, you are right it will be skewed because any crit from your gear past the crit cap is ineffective at raising your chance to get a critical white strike, I believe this is fairly obvious. I was referring to the crit you have up until the point of crit cap because I believe this is what you were talking about originally. If you have crit from gear just below or at crit cap, it should still be a unskewed bell curve
"does not capture the effect that the variance of each stat has on the experienced average crit rate when approaching the crit cap". Each outcome is independent, the variance of the others may effect the results/percentages, but they don't change the actual probability because they are as mentioned, independent. The variance you mentioned works both ways, you'll have just as similar chance for them to vary lower giving a higher percentage of crits.
This is exactly my point. Modeling every stat: miss, crit, glance, and dodge as a bell curve where each stat is an independant variable is wrong because it's a one roll system but the spreadsheets treat all of these stats as normally distributed, independant variables. It captures when the average crit rate goes over the crit cap but does not capture the effect that the variance of each stat has on the experienced average crit rate when approaching the crit cap. The crit cap is either everything or it's nothing according to the sheet and in actual play that's simply not 100% true.
The only thing that would even change is trinket/mongoose procs assuming all other buffs/debuffs are consistent. But it's already modeled in the combat spreadsheet, although not the mutilate one.
10/30/09, 3:13 PM
in 
