Enhancement WotLK Talents and spells discussion. - Page 55

Skiace · 08/22/08, 8:44 PM

Originally Posted by Paladia

It should be noted that dual wield specialization increases the chance to hit, not just with melee attacks.

I speculated about this earlier in the thread, and it currently is not the case.

Dual Wield Specialization - Spell - World of Warcraft
[Apply Aura]: Mod Hit Chance
Value: 6

vs.

Enlightened Judgements - Spell - World of Warcraft
[Apply Aura]: Mod Hit Chance
Value: 4
[Apply Aura]: Mod Spell Hit Chance
Value: 4

Mengus · 08/22/08, 9:54 PM

Regarding Glyphs:

Anyone know if the WF 40% AP Damage Glyph will stack with our talent, or does it replace it? Which is pretty stupid if it doesn't stack, since we have to get the talent in order to get Stormstrike anyway. On the otherhand, if we can get an additional 40% WF damage, that's pretty nice, and I'd imagine one of the must have Enh Glyphs.

Orlgin · 08/22/08, 10:52 PM

Unfortunately, it's 40% of the bonus damage (the bonus to AP you get from the enchant when it goes off) and not 40% bonus Windfury damage. It's not that good right now but might get better if they change Windfury before the release.

What's unclear is if the glyph's added damage takes the talent into account:

it's either 445 AP (rank 5) * 1.4 * 1.4 which is 872 attack power

or ((445 * 1.4) -445) + (445 * 1.4) which is 811 attack power

Considering how much of our damage is going to be Windfury in the expansion, especially given the fast offhand that is showing better DPS, I can't see anyone using it. It's not as good as the others available.

We discussed this earlier. Someone did the math on the Glyph. It's not very good.

Paladia · 08/22/08, 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by Skiace

I speculated about this earlier in the thread, and it currently is not the case.

Dual Wield Specialization - Spell - World of Warcraft
[Apply Aura]: Mod Hit Chance
Value: 6

vs.

Enlightened Judgements - Spell - World of Warcraft
[Apply Aura]: Mod Hit Chance
Value: 4
[Apply Aura]: Mod Spell Hit Chance
Value: 4

While it may not do it currently in beta, hopefully that is just a bug. As spell and melee hit should be combined and the talent does state that in increases hit, not just for melee. Otherwise the talent will be quite lackluster if it only works on a lesser amount of the total shaman dps.

Hothgor · 08/23/08, 1:18 AM

Originally Posted by Paladia

While it may not do it currently in beta, hopefully that is just a bug. As spell and melee hit should be combined and the talent does state that in increases hit, not just for melee. Otherwise the talent will be quite lackluster if it only works on a lesser amount of the total shaman dps.

I mentioned this at WoW Forums -> [Suggestion] Add Spell Hit to Dual Wield Spec

Malan responded and stated that he feels the talent is actually working with spells as well as melee. Hes taken all of his hit rating gear off, and his spells have never missed on targets 1-2 levels above him. We can only hope that this is the case.

karl_w_w · 08/23/08, 2:11 AM

Originally Posted by Skiace

It is a bit odd however to see everyone jumping all over Orlgin for saying something that Malan casually proposed (without any fuss) about a month ago

That's because Malan made a hypothesis and Orlgin made a statement of fact with zero maths to back it up.

Skiace · 08/23/08, 3:43 AM

Originally Posted by karl_w_w

That's because Malan made a hypothesis and Orlgin made a statement of fact with zero maths to back it up.

His post had as much reasoning as any other post on the topic (which is to say limited, but not complete conjecture), and it was fairly clear he was asserting his position based on his own observations. You're arguing semantics at best.

karl_w_w · 08/23/08, 7:13 AM

Originally Posted by Skiace

His post had as much reasoning as any other post on the topic

I don't disagree, but it's all in the wording is what I'm trying to say. Malan just made a general statement of "it could be like this" but when you start listing reasons people have a tendency to disagree with your reasons if there's no solid evidence/numbers behind them. Personally I think it's way too early to tell, making the majority of this thread hot air, so I'll go back to lurking.

• Raut · 08/23/08, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Skiace

I dare say it's too early to make a call either way.

It is a bit odd however to see everyone jumping all over Orlgin for saying something that Malan casually proposed (without any fuss) about a month ago in this very thread.

It is too early to speculate, but we know certain facts:

There are several hit caps in WotLK:
* Yellow melee attack
* Spell
* Auto attack

The first will be very important to reach. It's not really a matter of having sims to tell us this because we can see this in our model today. Second one is probably the source of all this discussion since people are raving over shock DPS and other spell related sources of damage. Fact: We will see an increase in spell damage done(note I didn't say increased spell damage as a shaman's total DPS) from Maelstrom Weapon, but you do this primarily to fuel Elemental Devastation. Two Shock rotating every five or six seconds where one will not get it's full DoT duration and a FvB crit at best every 8 seconds is not a great source of damage. Static Shock at whatever it translates to in DPS. Melee will still be the greatest source of damage in WotLK.

If melee is the greatest source of damage, chances are that crit and hit EP will be interesting. To turn the discussion around perfect rotations with Mael and LvB around: Crit on any other spell than LvB will also keep Elem Dev up. So crit as a stat is just gravy to get those extra 9% melee crit.

As to Orlgin: I haven't paid attention to who posts what, but I saw this:

Originally Posted by Orlgin

More Hit adds:

1) Elemental Devastation - Less hit reduces Devastation uptime.

2) Fast off-hand. If you're using one, FT weapon scales directly with haste and hit rating.

3) Static Shock DPS. Every miss you have lowers it's DPS value.

4) Maelstrom Weapon DPS. Every miss lowers the total number of hits reducing the charges you can achieve. Lower uptime on Elemental Devastation also reduces this.

5) More shock damage. Every miss reduces your DPS directly.

This is borderline stupid. Here is why:

To gear for hit you need to sacrifice crit, ag, AP and whatever else increases your DPS. So by removing crit and AP(by the stats alone or by ag/str/int), you lose damage done. Since we don't have a sim or model to test this in, the above is just wild speculation at best, it's plain wrong at worst.

1. Crit increases Elemental Devastation uptime. So clearly hit isn't the only stat doing this.

2. It scales with crit and AP as well. AP translates into spellpower. Claim is just terrible.

3. So you sacrifice other damage stats to hit less, translating in less damage by those shocks even if they hit and maybe less damage from melee. We don't have a model so there's no way to tell if we want to gear like TBC. The above claim can be "lose 10% DPS to gain 1%".

4. See 1. Are there any reports in from beta that we will have problems filling those 5 tokens in 8 seconds?

5. This isn't a paperdoll case where you get either 10% hit or nothing. Hey, Orlgin, what kind of DPS will the melee damage translate into if you take those 10% hit into AP and crit?

The above claims aren't all wrong, they're just completely taken out of context. You can't claim less hit, thus resulting in less shocks hitting, brings your total DPS down. We don't have a model to run these numbers to you are throwing unsupported arguments around.

Pitbuller · 08/23/08, 10:59 AM

Interesting find for off-hand weapon choise [Cudgel of Saronite Justice]. Yeah it's caster weapon and got low weapon dps(64.2dps) but it got 281spell power. Same item level blue weapons got 120dps.
55.8 oh-Wdps vs 281spell power. With fast off-hand and flame tongue simulator give oh-Wdps Ep value of 2.08. And spell power get ep value 0.75(no LvB/statick shock counted).

55.8Wdps * 2.08ep = 116.25ep
281Sp * 0.75ep = 210.75ep
Also some varied sim runs yield higher dps with caster weapon. I din't count other stats becouse that was only some sample caster weapon vs same item-level melee weapon comparision.

Time will show if there is many this kind items and how weapon dps scale vs caster weapon spell power.
Blizz have put many one-hander caster weapon in game but allways changed those to main-hand only items. I hope they don't mess this time or caster might be very angry when melee dps want their loot.

LazyJoe · 08/23/08, 12:03 PM

Some simple maths. Let's assume everybody is specials-hitcapped (I can't imagine a single pve enh shaman that would run with less than 3% hit at lvl 80).

If you take the current EP value of hit and crit rating as a baseline, and consider only direct damage output.

With the new windfury totem we will have 20% meele haste, which means 20% more white hits. That alone will increase hit rating EP by 20%. This will also affect crit rating, but since white hits are around 50% of the total physical damage output it will net around 10% gain in its EP value.

Now considering spells. Our magic dps is around 1/3 of our white hit's dps (15% to 45%, a common average value). It may change at lvl 80 because our spells get quite a huge boost, but since we will have 20% more white hits, and theoretically 25% more stormstrikes (probably less due to GCD and various cooldowns interfering betwenn themselves), I don't think oru dps will be spreaded vastly diffently than nowadays (I bet on something like 55% white hits, 20% spells, but that's still very close to 1/3).

So if spells' dps are 1/3 of white hits' dps, that means another 33% gain for the hit rating. But since (with the current ratings, this may change a lot during the beta however) we have ~25% more spell hit% than melee hit% with the same amount of hit rating, we are looking to 33% * 1,25 = 42% increase in hit rating's EP for spells.

As for crit rating. If we consider 15% magical dps, 85% physical dps. The crit rating is affecting 17,6% more damage. Since a big part of it will comme from lavaburst (which will get 0 benefit from crit rating if used properly) we are looking to something like 10% increase. But since a spell crit is only 50% more damage, this give a final 5% increase in crit EP from spells. Since i'm doing all this math on fictionnary numbers, let's be very optimistic and give it a 10%.

So finally we are looking at at a 20% EP increse through white hits and ~40% though spells for hit rating, and 10% from white hits, 10% from spells for crit rating.

Additive or multiplicative ? Ooch my brain hurts, but in both case there is a huge increase for hit rating, and only a moderate increase for crit rating. Considering present values, they will really be on par with each other.

I just considered direct damage, to be more accurate we also need to factor in thing like flurry uptime, maelstrom waepons and elemental devastation, but these are awfully tricky and need to be simulated. But still both hit and crit rating affect maestrom and elemental devastation : crit rating fuel both, but hit rating leads their efficiency (a resisted maelstromed instant cast has 0 use, and you can't proc elemental devastation if your flame shock or your lavaburst got resisted). I suspect crit% to be globally more efficient in this case, but we get a lot more spell hit% than crit % (almost twice !) for the same amount of rating, so again only the sim will tell.

So my conclusion is : nobody can foretell if crit rating will be better than hit rating.

I suspect that those will be quite close with a well-balanced gear, and their places may swap often as your gear changes unlike nowadays where crit rating is always better (often by a wide margin) than hit rating with any reasonable set of gear.

Orlgin · 08/23/08, 1:56 PM

Everything we say here is an opinion. Raut, I specifically said that this is what Hit increases. Didn't say there were not other factors involved. You are going way out of your way to troll and gave poor arguments. Especially #3 where you say Hit causes me to hit less. What the hell man? It's a simple argument. You look at what Hit does for you and compare it to what other stats give to you. The stats work together. Hit is cheap and misses really hurt DPS. So Hit is valuable.

This is clearly a case of hate the message, kill the messenger. I state what most shamans on beta forums agree: that Hit seems to be the most valuable stat right now. For this, I get slammed repeatably. For what?

Simple example: You get 50 shock opportunities in five minutes. You decide you just want to take 3% hit. That means you have a 14% chance to miss. That means you missed 7 shocks. To simplify the math, let's show without crits what that does to shocks. Assuming an average of 1.3k a shock, that's 9.1k worth of damage you missed. How much AP do you need to make up that damage for the other 43 shocks? Well, you need about 211.6 damage per shock. 30% of AP * 30% coefficient for shocks. You just need 2351 AP to make up the difference. That's 1172 Hit Ratings worth of stat points.

That's an example of how hit improves shock DPS. It doesn't mean there aren't other factors. It's a straightforward example that shows that Hit Rating improves Shock damage. It doesn't account for the other factors. It's a stand alone example to be compared to others.

Static Shock is another example. Let's look at a 5 minute fight. Assuming you have no passive haste, forget to use Drums or Bloodlust, and just autoattack for simplicity's sake. You are using a slow main-hand at 2.7 base speed and a Dagger off-hand at 1.4 base speed. You have flurry right away and you have Windfury totem down which both give you haste. Your main hand becomes a weapon speed of 1.73 which means you swing 0.578 times per second. In five minutes, you will swing 173 times with your main hand. Your offhand becomes 0.9 speed which means you swing 1.111 times per second. You will swing that off hand 333 times. 506 opportunities. You decided that you only wanted 3% hit to cap special attacks. That means you have a 19% chance to miss. That means you actually hit 409 times.

A spell capped enhance has 95% hit rate. He hits 480 times. He scores 71 more opportunities to proc Static Shock. That translates into 4 more static shock procs at 600 damage each. Your 409 hits give you 24 static shock procs. How much damage needs to be added to each of those procs to make up the difference? 100 damage. How much AP is that? 1111 AP. That's 555.5 Hit Ratings worth in stat points.

Again, there are other factors. It's why it's called a simple example.

Let's look at Maelstrom Weapon. You plan to fire just Lava Burst on every cooldown (8 seconds). You get 37 opportunities to shoot. You have that 14% chance to miss so you miss 5 of them. Each of those Lava Burst would have hit for 2.5k. You missed 12500 damage total. You need to make that up with the other 32. That is 390 each divided by 1.5 for the crit effect which becomes 260. That's 2889 AP. In this case, crit rating doesn't change the result assuming you have enough critical to achieve that Maelstrom every 8 seconds. BTW that's 1444.5 worth of Hit Rating in stat points.

Another simple example that I gave. Maelstrom weapon DPS.

Do you see where I'm going? The simple examples I gave can be proved. It doesn't mean other factors aren't involved. All it means if that, in this specific example, Hit Rating was better. Got the idea?

If you're going to greet simple things like Hit Rating is likely better in WoLK with this much drama, I hate to see what this thread is going to be like soon when people try to figure out Glyph DPS or whether that offhand really should be fast. I would think establishing a simple guideline for gearing in the WoLK would be a priority. Figuring out what stats we want in our gear could save us a whole lot of debate and hassle.

Again, prove me wrong. If Crit is better in WoLK, prove it. I will happily apologize and use the new model.

At least, it gets the conversation in the right direction.

• Raut · 08/23/08, 3:42 PM

Originally Posted by Orlgin

Everything we say here is an opinion. Raut, I specifically said that this is what Hit increases. Didn't say there were not other factors involved. You are going way out of your way to troll and gave poor arguments. Especially #3 where you say Hit causes me to hit less. What the hell man? It's a simple argument. You look at what Hit does for you and compare it to what other stats give to you. The stats work together. Hit is cheap and misses really hurt DPS. So Hit is valuable.

I'm sorry, 3. is poorly formulated. "So you sacrifice other damage stats to hit less" should read "So you sacrifice other damage stats in favor of hit". The argument still stands.

"You are going way out of your way to troll and gave poor arguments." Really? You quote my comments and respond to them with some serious thought behind it instead of flaming me for bursting your bubble.

This is clearly a case of hate the message, kill the messenger. I state what most shamans on beta forums agree: that Hit seems to be the most valuable stat right now. For this, I get slammed repeatably. For what?

Clearly(in case you wondered, this was sarcasm). Re-read my post. I didn't say hit was bad in any way, but I do say people like you are bad to this discussion. You, or any other in the beta, have no way of boldly stating that hit is Jesus and we should follow it into the promised land. If you disagree, show me some math that take the entire DPS model into effect.

Simple example: You get 50 shock opportunities in five minutes. You decide you just want to take 3% hit. That means you have a 14% chance to miss. That means you missed 7 shocks. To simplify the math, let's show without crits what that does to shocks. Assuming an average of 1.3k a shock, that's 9.1k worth of damage you missed. How much AP do you need to make up that damage for the other 43 shocks? Well, you need about 211.6 damage per shock. 30% of AP * 30% coefficient for shocks. You just need 2351 AP to make up the difference. That's 1172 Hit Ratings worth of stat points.

That's an example of how hit improves shock DPS. It doesn't mean there aren't other factors. It's a straightforward example that shows that Hit Rating improves Shock damage. It doesn't account for the other factors. It's a stand alone example to be compared to others.

So you're calculating damage based on what now is 15% of our total damage done. Do you see that this is misleading? Say you favor 300 hit instead of 600 AP(same item budget). These 600 AP is just added damage from WF where your 300 hit is lost.

Given WF and a 2.6 weapon, the added 600 AP translates into 111 damage per hit. Add a second hit and potential crits and you're looking at added ~300 damage done per WF proc. How many WF procs do you have in a five minute time window and how soon will WF alone use to gobble up your 9k damage?

Static Shock is another example. Let's look at a 5 minute fight. Assuming you have no passive haste, forget to use Drums or Bloodlust, and just autoattack for simplicity's sake. You are using a slow main-hand at 2.7 base speed and a Dagger off-hand at 1.4 base speed. You have flurry right away and you have Windfury totem down which both give you haste. Your main hand becomes a weapon speed of 1.73 which means you swing 0.578 times per second. In five minutes, you will swing 173 times with your main hand. Your offhand becomes 0.9 speed which means you swing 1.111 times per second. You will swing that off hand 333 times. 506 opportunities. You decided that you only wanted 3% hit to cap special attacks. That means you have a 19% chance to miss. That means you actually hit 409 times.

A spell capped enhance has 95% hit rate. He hits 480 times. He scores 71 more opportunities to proc Static Shock. That translates into 4 more static shock procs at 600 damage each. Your 409 hits give you 24 static shock procs. How much damage needs to be added to each of those procs to make up the difference? 100 damage. How much AP is that? 1111 AP. That's 555.5 Hit Ratings worth in stat points.

You're once again taking things out of context. Look over my WF example over and apply here. You're just showing that the enhance model is complex and you're showing paperdoll examples ignoring large portions of it.

Again, there are other factors. It's why it's called a simple example.

Let's look at Maelstrom Weapon. You plan to fire just Lava Burst on every cooldown (8 seconds). You get 37 opportunities to shoot. You have that 14% chance to miss so you miss 5 of them. Each of those Lava Burst would have hit for 2.5k. You missed 12500 damage total. You need to make that up with the other 32. That is 390 each divided by 1.5 for the crit effect which becomes 260. That's 2889 AP. In this case, crit rating doesn't change the result assuming you have enough critical to achieve that Maelstrom every 8 seconds. BTW that's 1444.5 worth of Hit Rating in stat points.

Another simple example that I gave. Maelstrom weapon DPS.

Do you see where I'm going? The simple examples I gave can be proved. It doesn't mean other factors aren't involved. All it means if that, in this specific example, Hit Rating was better. Got the idea?

I get some idea. It is that your examples are pulled right out of the complete picture and you are buffing your own views of what you believe is right. You math isn't wrong or anything, but you are actively ignoring other mechanics that do not favor your theory. Show me some math with auto attack and WF and how they benefit from hit and we're back in business.

If you're going to greet simple things like Hit Rating is likely better in WoLK with this much drama, I hate to see what this thread is going to be like soon when people try to figure out Glyph DPS or whether that offhand really should be fast. I would think establishing a simple guideline for gearing in the WoLK would be a priority. Figuring out what stats we want in our gear could save us a whole lot of debate and hassle.

Again, prove me wrong. If Crit is better in WoLK, prove it. I will happily apologize and use the new model.

At least, it gets the conversation in the right direction.

I can't prove you wrong. Neither can you claim hit is the number one stat in WotLK. No-one can. We don't have a mathematical model to prove this with or a simulator to approximate an ideal situation. I'm not even trying to say hit isn't the best stat, I'm telling you that I can cook up examples that undermine yours and that is all you need to prove your claim false.

There will always be heated discussions about enhance as long as we have mechanics such as WF. I too will bow down to proof(or something close like it, like a good sim) that a fast OH with FT is superior. ag/crit/AP/exp I couldn't care less about; All I care about is exploring my max potential. I do however care about shotgun math and "proofs" that do not care about the whole picture, but I'm sure you have noticed this.

LazyJoe · 08/23/08, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Orlgin

Hit is cheap and misses really hurt DPS. So Hit is valuable.

I thought the opposite has been proven long ago

Last time I ran the sim, 1% hit translated to 10 dps with my gear (half-BT level) which is far from "really hurting my dps" even if I got rid of all my hit rating.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

All it means if that, in this specific example, Hit Rating was better.

As I showed just before, spells gain a lot more from hit than from crit, but this is nothing surprising.

But this is stupid to even try to make conclusions on a small part of our dps.

I can make similar calculations on windfury and stormstrike. They gain abolutely nothing from hit rating, but scale very well with crit rating. Eventhough these attacks represent a lot more dps than our spells, it doesn't allow me to conclude that crit is infinitely better than hit.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

Again, prove me wrong. If Crit is better in WoLK, prove it.

You don't prove hit rating is better either. This sentence is definitely pure trolling.

Anyway our gameplay is crit-based, all our talents are triggered by crits : flurry, unleashed rage, shamanistic focus, elemental focus, elemental devastation, maelstrom waepons.... only the new static shock will be hit-based, and it won't be part of the core mechanics. We are (and will be at lvl 80) nothing without crit.

Hit rating has almost no utility at the moment (just adding a few white hits), blizzard wants it to support crit rating in wotlk. This is very good, it will make gear choices interesting, but it won't change the fact that crit will be our baseline.

Pitbuller · 08/23/08, 4:47 PM

Originally Posted by LazyJoe

I can make similar calculations on windfury and stormstrike. They gain abolutely nothing from hit rating, but scale very well with crit rating. Eventhough these attacks represent a lot more dps than our spells, it doesn't allow me to conclude that crit is infinitely better than hit.

I have heard and read this statement too many times and that is wrong. Time between windfury procs go down when you gain hit thus raise windfury dps. Every +1% hit give about +½% to windfyry dps. (+1% crit give +0.92% wf dps.) It's not as much crit but can't be ignored.

Orlgin · 08/23/08, 5:19 PM

Let's examine hit rating since there seems to be a lot of confusion here.

Hit Rating and how it affects the Enhance Shaman. WoLK.

- Melee Hits : White hits have a 28% base miss rate for a boss three levels higher. We get 6% from talents. While it may seem that you would deal 22% less damage as a result, this is not the case. This is due to crit and how the hit table works. A miss cannot crit. The critical strike percentage is applied only to hits that land, not total hits. Say you have 40% critical. If you have 1000 hit chances, you'd miss 220 of them, 312 would crit, and 488 would hit. As you can see, the less hit you have, the more critical strike rating is valuable. For that 1000 hits, 312 deal double damage, 488 hit normal, and 220 deal nothing. That's 1112 hits worth of white damage. If it counted total hits, you'd expect 1092 hits worth of white damage.

Lesson 1: Less Hit = Greater value for Critical Strike Chance

- Special attacks : Special attacks such as Stormstrike and Windfury have a 9% chance to miss a boss three levels higher. Any hit that is applied past 9% does not increase damage from these sources.

Lesson 2 : Less Hit = Greater value for special attacks such as Stormstrike and Windfury

- Spell Hits : Spell hits have a 17% percent chance to miss. We get nothing from talents. As per melee hits, a miss cannot crit. This means spell critical is more valuable in the same way it is for melee.

Lesson 3 : Less Hit = Greater value for Spell Critical Chance

- Hit Rating : It takes 32.789 Hit Rating to raise it 1% for both spells and melee. In terms of stat weight, 1.4 Hit Rating = 1 Critical Rating. 1 Hit Rating = 2 AP. 1 Hit Rating = 1 Haste Rating. 1 Hit Rating = 1 Expertise Rating.

Lesson 4 : 1.4% Hit = 1% Critical because of stat weights.

- Maelstrom Weapons : This ability is used in WoLK to fire an instant speed Lava Burst that automatically crits if Flame Shock dot is present on the boss. This one is interesting because once you get enough critical to get a Lava Burst, critical strike rating has no value. Hit Rating is important here as it's an automatic crit that deals nothing if it misses and may cost you Elemental Devastation uptime if it fails.

Lesson 5 : Maelstrom Weapon mechanics make Hit Rating more valuable than critical rating for purposes of itself.

- Static Shock : This ability triggers on damage sources that strike the boss. Every successful hit triggers a 6% chance to deal a Lightning Shield charge to the boss. This ability is not affected at all by critical rating. Since this is triggered by both melee and spell hits, Hit Rating becomes more valuable.

Lesson 6 ; Static Shock mechanics make Hit Rating more valuable than critical rating for purposes of itself.

Let's sum up the first three lessons. If you decide you don't like hit, critical rating gains more value. If you decide you do like hit, critical rating gains less value.

So if you are doing a simulation using current values (low hit), your simulator will show a greater damage boost from critical rating. If you are doing a simulation using spell hit cap numbers, your simulator will show a smaller damage boost from critical rating. This is important and a source of big confusion around here.

Now let's look at 4-6: Hit Rating is 140% more efficient than critical strike rating. Critical Strike Rating affects Stormstrike and Windfury damage and Hit doesn't (beyond 3%). Hit Rating affects Maelstrom Weapon and Static Shock and critical rating doesn't.

Now if you're using a current simulator, both of the items favoring hit rating are missing (MW and SS) while both Stormstrike and Windfury are still present. This means Hit Rating will be less valuable on your simulator.

So to sum things up, using current values (low hit, no MW and SS), Critical Rating gets a huge boost in value. As you increase hit and add the new mechanics, it's value drops accordingly. Given that you need critical rating to be 140% more efficient to make it worth more than Hit, it's lowered value means that the more hit you get, the more hit is valuable until you reach the spell hit cap.

- Fast off-hand. If you do this, you are decreasing your Windfury damage and your Stormstrike damage. You are also increasing the value of hit rating since FT can miss and only crits for 150% damage. Since Stormstrike and Windfury has less value, and crit favors those, critical strike rating loses more value.

Lesson #7 - Having a fast offhand makes Hit Rating more valuable. It also makes critical strike rating worth less.

Sum up 1-7 : The new mechanics mostly favor Hit Rating. The more Hit Rating you have, the less value Critical Strike rating has. Critical Strike Rating needs to be 140% more efficient for damage just to equal Hit Rating.

Thus my theory: Hit Rating will be more valuable than Critical Rating in the expansion.

I hope this better explains my position. While I use math to support my theory, it is still a theory. It is not proven fact. However, it is a theory that makes a lot of sense when combined with the known information I have.

I do not intend to write a book on this. If you have any questions, send them to me personally so we're not using the forum as a personal debate log. I welcome constructive critisism and will respond when I have time.

Atren · 08/23/08, 5:59 PM

Well, i am too tired to think through all you wrote, but i will point you out that hit and crit work differently on white attacks. Crit eats into hit. When system rolls 1-100 (or whatever it rolls) it will look like this: ||----Crit----|---Hit--|---Miss---|-Dodge-|-Parry||

And that all is one roll based. You do not roll first for hit and then for crit to see if the hit that landed critted. That all is about white attacks. Spells are two roll system if my memory does not fail me and so might be special attacks.

WarTotem · 08/23/08, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by Pitbuller

I have heard and read this statement too many times and that is wrong. Time between windfury procs go down when you gain hit thus raise windfury dps. Every +1% hit give about +½% to windfyry dps. (+1% crit give +0.92% wf dps.) It's not as much crit but can't be ignored.

You're wrong. Every hit has a chance to be ABLE to proc WF, nowhere does it say that this effectively WILL happen.
On average it will take X 'connects'* to proc WF. The amount of actual weapon swings is then X / (100% - (miss+dodge) + 3s internal cooldown
*Connect = every type of swing that can proc WF

Case 1: WF/FT setup
Average of 6 connects; 1 swing with 0% proc chance (right after WF, assuming actual speed >1.5s) and on 5 with 20% chance, totalling 100%.

Case 2: dual WF
Harder to model, but assuming 2s actual speed with disphasement you get; 2.5 attacks with 0% after a WF and all the rest a 36% chance to proc, totalling 5,2778 connects on average.

Easy numbers for examples:
Naked DW against a boss has a (100% - (28% + 5,6%)) = 66,4% chance to connect.
Talented DW against a boss is 72,4%
Yellow cap DW is 75,4%
Expertise capped is 82%

If you calculate avg. DPS gained per % hit for both cases(1 CD-swing + 5 to proc & 2.5 + 2.78 proc) you get:
DW talent: 1,316% / 0,912%
3% to yellow cap: 1,2% / 0,823%
23 Expertise: 1,139% / 0,763%

Conclusion:
Hit will more benefitial for WF/FT setups than for dual WF combo. This is probably due to the amount of swings inside the CD, that can never proc WF anyway. Note that the values here are still below the DPS gains of white attacks. These are resp. 1,51%; 1,38% and 1,33%. These values are the same for FT (consider it a 100% proc chance with 0s CD). Also note that the 'diminishing return' on hit rating is worse on WF then on white hits (again, due to cooldown).

Side-note: Although +hit has diminishing returns when it comes to the relative DPS increase, but as amount of AP increases, so will the effective DPS gain from hit rating. Balancing both out seems the best option.

dedmonwakeen · 08/23/08, 6:13 PM

Regarding Hit vs Crit in WotLK

Obviously, the answer is always context-sensitive.... which means there are many answers. Here is one:

Baseline Profile

# Enhancement Shaman
#
# (1) The "weapon=main" option to windfury_weapon puts the enchant only on the main-hand weapon
# (2) The "weapon=off" option to flametongue_weapon puts the enchant only on the off-hand weapon
# (3) The "flame_shock=1,max_ticks_consumed=1" option to lava_burst will prevent it from being called until there is only one tick remaining on Flame Shock.
# (4) The "maelstrom=5" option to lightning_bolt/lava_burst means that LB/LvB will only be executed when there is a 5-stack of Maelstrom Weapon,
#     making the LB/LvB cast instant which prevents auto_attack resets.
# (5) The tool accepts separate value for hit/crit even though WotLK has merged them.
#
shaman=Shaman_Enhancement
level=80
talents=http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents2.html?tal=05203010000000000000000030205033105021335311523125100000000000000000000000000
actions=flask,type=relentless_assault/windfury_weapon,weapon=main/flametongue_weapon,weapon=off/auto_attack/stormstrike/lava_burst,maelstrom=5,flame_shock=1,max_ticks_consumed=1/lightning_bolt,maelstrom=5/searing_totem/strength_of_earth_totem/windfury_totem/shamanistic_rage/flame_shock/earth_shock/lightning_shield
gear_strength=600
gear_agility=800
gear_stamina=1000
gear_intellect=200
gear_attack_power=1500
gear_attack_hit_rating=200
gear_spell_hit_rating=200
gear_attack_crit_rating=350
gear_spell_crit_rating=350
gear_attack_expertise_rating=175
gear_attack_penetration=750
gear_haste_rating=250
main_hand=fist,damage=310,speed=2.8,enchant=mongoose
off_hand=fist,damage=310,speed=2.6,enchant=executioner
glyph_earth_shock=0
glyph_strength_of_earth=1
glyph_windfury_weapon=1
glyph_stormstrike=1
glyph_lightning_shield=1
# Throw in a pair of Paladins.......  Eventually these static parms will be replaced with real actors.
blessing_of_kings=1
blessing_of_might=1
sanctified_retribution=1
swift_retribution=1
# And a Warrior while we're at it.......
battle_shout=1

Baseline Results

Player=Shaman_Enhancement DPS=3801.4 DPM=23.6 MPS=161.3/159.7 
  Core Stats:  strength=776  agility=946  stamina=1226  intellect=336  spirit=132  health=14335  mana=8574
  Spell Stats:  power=1307  hit=7.6%  crit=11.9%  penetration=0  haste=7.1%  mp5=0
  Attack Stats:  power=4356  hit=12.1%  crit=25.7%  expertise=5.3  penetration=750  haste=7.1%
  Actions:
    earth_shock           Count= 20.4|14.2sec  DPS=1724.1  DPE=2488| 5%  DPET=1724  Miss=3.3%  Hit=2332  CritHit=3708|4340|16.9%
    flame_shock           Count= 23.4|12.4sec  DPS= 249.6  DPE=2723| 6%  DPET=1897  Miss=3.4%  Hit=1061  CritHit=1686|1688|24.5%  Tick=340
    flametongue           Count=174.2| 1.7sec  DPS=   inf  DPE= 391| 6%  DPET= inf  Miss=3.5%  Hit= 405
    lava_burst            Count=  8.7|33.5sec  DPS=3006.8  DPE=4380| 3%  DPET=3007  Miss=3.4%  CritHit=4534|4539|96.6%
    lightning_bolt        Count= 20.7|14.0sec  DPS=2255.8  DPE=3247| 6%  DPET=2256  Miss=3.3%  Hit=3048  CritHit=4847|5502|16.7%
    lightning_shield      Count= 51.4| 5.6sec  DPS=6985.3  DPE=1776| 8%  DPET=6985  Miss=3.6%  Hit=1843
    melee_main_hand       Count=167.8| 1.7sec  DPS= 979.7  DPE=1684|26%  DPET= 980  Miss=11.9%  Hit=1547  CritHit=3094|3201|34.4%
    melee_off_hand        Count=180.0| 1.6sec  DPS= 486.9  DPE= 781|13%  DPET= 487  Miss=12.0%  Hit= 718  CritHit=1436|1486|34.4%
    searing_totem         Count=  5.0|58.0sec  DPS= 157.9  DPE=9141| 4%  DPET=7617  Miss=2.9%  Tick=288  CritTick=458|459|26.1%
    stormstrike           Count= 67.1| 4.3sec  DPS=1633.5  DPE=1443| 9%  DPET=1633  Miss=0.0%  Hit=1147  CritHit=2290|3201|33.6%
    windfury              Count= 54.2| 5.4sec  DPS=   inf  DPE=2926|14%  DPET= inf  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2314  CritHit=4629|4789|34.1%

Throw on 100 Attack/Spell Hit Rating Enchant over Baseline

Player=Shaman_Enhancement DPS=3932.3 DPM=24.4 MPS=161.4/159.6 
  Core Stats:  strength=776  agility=946  stamina=1226  intellect=336  spirit=132  health=14335  mana=8574
  Spell Stats:  power=1307  hit=11.4%  crit=11.9%  penetration=0  haste=7.1%  mp5=0
  Attack Stats:  power=4356  hit=15.1%  crit=25.7%  expertise=5.3  penetration=750  haste=7.1%
  Actions:
    earth_shock           Count= 21.4|13.9sec  DPS=1781.8  DPE=2571| 5%  DPET=1782  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2330  CritHit=3692|4340|17.8%
    flame_shock           Count= 23.6|12.6sec  DPS= 251.5  DPE=2825| 6%  DPET=1971  Miss=0.1%  Hit=1061  CritHit=1685|1688|25.8%  Tick=340
    flametongue           Count=185.0| 1.6sec  DPS=   inf  DPE= 404| 6%  DPET= inf  Miss=0.1%  Hit= 405
    lava_burst            Count=  9.2|32.3sec  DPS=3110.5  DPE=4531| 4%  DPET=3111  Miss=0.1%  CritHit=4535|4539|99.9%
    lightning_bolt        Count= 21.0|14.2sec  DPS=2326.5  DPE=3347| 6%  DPET=2327  Miss=0.1%  Hit=3042  CritHit=4837|5502|17.2%
    lightning_shield      Count= 54.8| 5.4sec  DPS=7273.9  DPE=1842| 9%  DPET=7274  Miss=0.1%  Hit=1843
    melee_main_hand       Count=172.6| 1.7sec  DPS=1006.9  DPE=1729|25%  DPET=1007  Miss=9.0%  Hit=1547  CritHit=3095|3201|34.4%
    melee_off_hand        Count=185.2| 1.6sec  DPS= 501.0  DPE= 802|13%  DPET= 501  Miss=9.0%  Hit= 718  CritHit=1436|1486|34.3%
    searing_totem         Count=  5.0|59.6sec  DPS= 163.8  DPE=9743| 4%  DPET=8120  Miss=0.2%  Tick=288  CritTick=458|459|27.1%
    stormstrike           Count= 69.0| 4.3sec  DPS=1640.5  DPE=1449| 9%  DPET=1641  Miss=0.0%  Hit=1145  CritHit=2294|3201|34.0%
    windfury              Count= 57.0| 5.2sec  DPS=   inf  DPE=2927|14%  DPET= inf  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2314  CritHit=4630|4789|34.2%

Throw on 100 Attack/Spell Crit Rating Enchant over Baseline

Player=Shaman_Enhancement DPS=3905.2 DPM=24.2 MPS=161.6/159.8 
  Core Stats:  strength=776  agility=946  stamina=1226  intellect=336  spirit=132  health=14335  mana=8574
  Spell Stats:  power=1307  hit=7.6%  crit=14.1%  penetration=0  haste=7.1%  mp5=0
  Attack Stats:  power=4356  hit=12.1%  crit=27.8%  expertise=5.3  penetration=750  haste=7.1%
  Actions:
    earth_shock           Count= 21.1|14.2sec  DPS=1737.6  DPE=2504| 5%  DPET=1738  Miss=3.5%  Hit=2330  CritHit=3699|4340|18.7%
    flame_shock           Count= 24.1|12.4sec  DPS= 251.1  DPE=2722| 6%  DPET=1898  Miss=3.5%  Hit=1061  CritHit=1686|1688|26.0%  Tick=340
    flametongue           Count=181.6| 1.7sec  DPS=   inf  DPE= 391| 6%  DPET= inf  Miss=3.5%  Hit= 405
    lava_burst            Count=  9.7|31.1sec  DPS=3007.2  DPE=4374| 4%  DPET=3007  Miss=3.5%  CritHit=4535|4539|96.5%
    lightning_bolt        Count= 22.9|13.1sec  DPS=2287.5  DPE=3292| 6%  DPET=2288  Miss=3.3%  Hit=3052  CritHit=4852|5502|18.9%
    lightning_shield      Count= 53.2| 5.6sec  DPS=6990.0  DPE=1778| 8%  DPET=6990  Miss=3.6%  Hit=1844
    melee_main_hand       Count=174.8| 1.7sec  DPS=1007.3  DPE=1719|26%  DPET=1007  Miss=11.9%  Hit=1547  CritHit=3094|3201|36.7%
    melee_off_hand        Count=187.6| 1.6sec  DPS= 503.0  DPE= 800|13%  DPET= 503  Miss=12.0%  Hit= 718  CritHit=1436|1486|37.0%
    searing_totem         Count=  5.0|60.0sec  DPS= 159.9  DPE=9567| 4%  DPET=7973  Miss=2.9%  Tick=288  CritTick=458|459|28.3%
    stormstrike           Count= 69.4| 4.3sec  DPS=1668.4  DPE=1474| 9%  DPET=1668  Miss=0.0%  Hit=1145  CritHit=2294|3201|36.2%
    windfury              Count= 56.2| 5.3sec  DPS=   inf  DPE=3006|14%  DPET= inf  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2313  CritHit=4628|4789|37.3%

SimulationCraft is a multi-player sim. These runs were done with:
Enhancement Shaman
Elemental Shaman
MD/MW Elemental Shaman
Boomkin
Shadow Priest
Smite Priest
Arcane Mage
Fireball Mage
Frostfire Mage
Frostbolt Mage

In addition, there were some static buffs from classes that I do not yet support:
Curse of Elements
Ret Pally buffs
Warrior Battle Shout

Final results:
Baseline: 3801 dps
100 Hit: 3932 dps
100 Crit: 3905 dps

I fully understand that SimulationCraft does not have the "street cred" of Yo's sim, so believe it or not as you will........

Pitbuller · 08/23/08, 6:41 PM

Originally Posted by WarTotem

You're wrong. Every hit has a chance to be ABLE to proc WF, nowhere does it say that this effectively WILL happen.
On average it will take X 'connects'* to proc WF. The amount of actual weapon swings is then X / (100% - (miss+dodge) + 3s internal cooldown
*Connect = every type of swing that can proc WF

Case 1: WF/FT setup
Average of 6 connects; 1 swing with 0% proc chance (right after WF, assuming actual speed >1.5s) and on 5 with 20% chance, totalling 100%.

Case 2: dual WF
Harder to model, but assuming 2s actual speed with disphasement you get; 2.5 attacks with 0% after a WF and all the rest a 36% chance to proc, totalling 5,2778 connects on average.

Easy numbers for examples:
Naked DW against a boss has a (100% - (28% + 5,6%)) = 66,4% chance to connect.
Talented DW against a boss is 72,4%
Yellow cap DW is 75,4%
Expertise capped is 82%

If you calculate avg. DPS gained per % hit for both cases(1 CD-swing + 5 to proc & 2.5 + 2.78 proc) you get:
DW talent: 1,316% / 0,912%
3% to yellow cap: 1,2% / 0,823%
23 Expertise: 1,139% / 0,763%

Conclusion:
Hit will more benefitial for WF/FT setups than for dual WF combo. This is probably due to the amount of swings inside the CD, that can never proc WF anyway. Note that the values here are still below the DPS gains of white attacks. These are resp. 1,51%; 1,38% and 1,33%. These values are the same for FT (consider it a 100% proc chance with 0s CD). Also note that the 'diminishing return' on hit rating is worse on WF then on white hits (again, due to cooldown).

Side-note: Although +hit has diminishing returns when it comes to the relative DPS increase, but as amount of AP increases, so will the effective DPS gain from hit rating. Balancing both out seems the best option.

Why do you want challenge simulator with napking math?
Go Yo's. Run the sim. Write up wf dps.
Now add 10% hit. Run the sim again. Now take wf dps and divide it by earlier number. You get number ~1.05....
So next time run the sim.

First run with 15% hit wf dps: 338.
Second run with 25% hit wf dps: 356.
356 /  338 = 1.053...

I also tested this with wf/ft and result was only better.

• Raut · 08/23/08, 6:42 PM

Hey, Orlgin. Why are you just repeating the stuff you've already gone over numerous times? You are still ignoring other key abilities that do not earn anything or earn less from hit. You are also making numerous claim with no actual proof behind it. Suggesting is fine. Grinding your views as the only truth is not.

WarTotem · 08/23/08, 7:38 PM

Comments on Orlgin's post:

Point 1:
Your base idea is wrong. 40% of your crits means 40% of all your swings, not your connnects. 1000 swings should net you 1180 hits worth of white damage. What you said was actually the 2-roll table for spells and certain yellow abilities (atm only proven for Rogues & Shamans, disproven for any class that can tank)
Your 'lesson' is flawed, because (white) DPS gained from hit rating is not affected by crit rating, or the other way around. In fact, the absolute DPS gain from hit/crit rating merely depends on your AP, not even the amount of hit/crit you already have.

Point2:
I don't understand how less hit can be of greater value? What you probably tried to say was "more hit = no effect for Stormstrike and Windfury" although in the latter case this wrong, as WF requires hits to proc.

Point 3:
Completely wrong here. Because of the 2 roll table on spells, more hit means more gain from crit.

Point 4:
1.4% hit = 1% crit, but stat-wise, 1 crit rating is still 1 hit rating, not 1.4. You really need to be careful here with confusion %gain and ratings.

Point 5:
Welcome to the World of RNGcraft, where nothing is 100% certain unless it says exactly that on the can. Crit rating will ALWAYS decrease the time it takes to stack a full MW stack again. It has diminishing returns yes, but that doesn't mean it's useless.

Point 6:
You're correct for a change. Monkeys and Shakespeare I guess.

Let's sum up the first three lessons. If you decide you don't like hit, critical rating gains more value. If you decide you do like hit, critical rating gains less value.

Wrong, If you don't like hit, hit rating gains more value, if you like hit, hit rating gains less value. The same for crit rating and in case of spells and Stormstrike, you can add crit rating value to the previous sentence as well. That's the entire point of diminishing returns, which has been extensively debated by the Prot Warrior community. For more info; Satrina's Guide on Diminishing Returns

Critical Strike Rating affects Stormstrike and Windfury damage and Hit doesn't (beyond 3%). Hit Rating affects Maelstrom Weapon and Static Shock and critical rating doesn't.

Hit rating affects Windfury because it requires white hits to proc. Mealstrom Weapon requires crits to proc. You are treating these as if they are independant of any other ability, which makes any theory-crafting you base on that completely pointless.

Point 7:
A fast off-hand does not make hit/crit scales differently with Stormstrike. Your base damage will be less, but the multiplier stays the same. You are also sneaking in a comparison between 2 different setups (dual slow WF vs slow WF + fast FT). Dual slow requires more crit because of MW, slow/fast requires more hit for FT/StS, but using this as an argument as to why the one or the other is better is not the way to go.

I hope this better explains my position. While I use math to support my theory, it is still a theory. It is not proven fact. However, it is a theory that makes a lot of sense when combined with the known information I have.

It explains you like hit rating, yes. And although I see you have done quite some effort into building your case, unfortunately your assumptions or 'information' you based yourself was wrong from the start, which totally nullifies the point you tried to make. Better luck next time.

And finally, I'm against using private channels for constructive critiscism, this way another person can learn from your mistakes, saving us all the trouble of correcting him as well

@Pitbuller:
Because Yo's Sim is exactly that, a sim. It's not an average, it's what you get from X hours of simulated combat. And that wasn't actually napkin math. I took an average speed, true, but for that speed the math is correct. The math I've shown is that with the current talented 9% hit and 5.6% expertise/hit, you already go down to 0,763%, with 15%->25% I'm sure 0,53% is a viable number, considering diminishing returns. My point was simply that you can't put 1% hit as X% DPS extra on ability A and Y% on ability B. It simply doesn't work like that. I mean, go do the sim with 0% hit, then add 5,6%, see how much you get then?

Orlgin · 08/24/08, 4:39 AM

My information is from the Wow Wiki page on the attack table. The items on the top of the list take precedence over the items below them. This came from Blizzard and is accurate.

1) Miss
2) Dodge
3) Parry
4) Glancing Blow
5) Block
6) Critical
7) Ordinary Hit

You make an attack against a mob. It checks first if you miss. If you didn't miss, it checks for Dodge and then Parry. It then checks for Glancing Blow. Then Block. It checks for critical and if all these fail, it is an ordinary hit.

An attack that misses could not be a critical hit. Miss is higher on the precedence table.

Special attacks such as Windfury are different. They use a two roll system. The first roll is a miss check. The second roll is a critical check. Note it is possible to achieve a blocked hit that is a critical this way. Something that can't be done with an ordinary attack.

I hope this settles the debate on this issue.

As for spells, here's the formula: crit rate over all spells = crit * hit

So I was incorrect here and I apologize. I read that it rolled for hit and then rolled for crit and I thought it did the second roll only if the first roll succeeded. It does both checks at all times which means a miss can crit. Hit Rating is more valuable for spells than I believed.

an example: an enhance shaman with 3% Hit has a 14% chance to miss. He has a 20% chance to crit with spells so his overall chance to critical with a spell is 86% * 20% which is 17.2%. The choice to not hit cap spells in this case cost the enhance shaman a 2.8% chance to crit with a spell.

I'm going to take a break from this thread for a couple days. Send me a personal message if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer questions. I may answer here if more than one person asks the same question so everyone can see the answer and avoid duplicate questions in the future.

LazyJoe · 08/24/08, 5:24 AM

Originally Posted by Orlgin

My information is from the Wow Wiki page on the attack table. The items on the top of the list take precedence over the items below them. This came from Blizzard and is accurate.

1) Miss
2) Dodge
3) Parry
4) Glancing Blow
5) Block
6) Critical
7) Ordinary Hit

You make an attack against a mob. It checks first if you miss. If you didn't miss, it checks for Dodge and then Parry. It then checks for Glancing Blow. Then Block. It checks for critical and if all these fail, it is an ordinary hit.

An attack that misses could not be a critical hit. Miss is higher on the precedence table.

You definitely should reread the article on attack table. Everything is checkad at once in one roll. Precedence occurs only when filling the attack table.

Originally Posted by Orlgin

an example: an enhance shaman with 3% Hit has a 14% chance to miss. He has a 20% chance to crit with spells so his overall chance to critical with a spell is 86% * 20% which is 17.2%. The choice to not hit cap spells in this case cost the enhance shaman a 2.8% chance to crit with a spell.

What it means is that in order to gain 2,8% spell crit he has two choices : getting 14% of spell hit, or ~3,25% spell crit. Make your own conclusions...

@Pitbuller : shame on me, i knew hit had some effect on windfury, but I thought it was much lower and oversimplified things to make a caricatural example.

Atren · 08/24/08, 5:36 AM

You are wrong. Taken from the same source you indicating take a look at example 1. Does it look like several rolls or one roll to you? If you reference something then actually read it through.

Attack table - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Example 1

Suppose a mob of equal level is attacking your warrior character in melee. Your Defense skill is maxed out for your level, but has no other bonuses. In the general tab of your spell book, you see that your listed Dodge chance is 4.5%, your listed Parry chance is 6.2%, and your listed Block chance (you have your shield equipped) is 5.1%. For the mob attacking you, its attack table will look like this.

Result Chance "Die Roll"
Miss 5.00% 0.01 - 5.00
Dodge 4.50% 5.01 - 9.50
Parry 6.20% 9.51 - 15.70
Glancing Blow 0% —
Block 5.10% 15.71 - 20.80
Critical 5.00% 20.81 - 25.80
Crushing Blow 0% —
ordinary hit 74.20% 25.81 - 100.00

EDIT: My post is response to Orlgin claim.