Patch is up, downloadable, 54.6 MB

[Ruvanal]

75% for the win.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...&T=4899366&P=18

Motive confirms that resistances are not only not increased, but are decreased in the new patch, which actually fits with certain of my observations rather well.
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Since posts on those forums have such a tendency to disappear after a time...

motive:

Hopefully this will clear up any confusion that is currently widespread regarding spell resistances as well as reinforce the fact that since these reports back come in, QA really has tested spell resistances thoroughly and found that they are working in 1.7.0 exactly the same way that they were working in 1.6.1.

Firstly, as you all know, the following note is included in the patch 1.7.0 patch notes:

Debuffs and area effect spells now use their actual cast level rather than effective cast level for calculating periodic resistance.

In better terms, this means that Debuffs and area effect spells now use their adjusted cast level rather then the level the spell became available when calculating periodic resistance. For example, Blizzard rank 5 (a spell learned at level 52) cast by a level 60 mage should be considered cast by a level 60 caster not a level 52 caster.

Secondly, below is the current spell resist percentage table before and after patch 1.6.0:

The general resistance data is as follows for PVE:
Vs. +0 level mob (same level), old resist: 4% new resist: 4%
Vs. +1 level mob, old resist: 5% new resist: 5%
Vs. +2 level mob, old resist: 6% new resist: 6%
Vs. +3 level mob, old resist: 37% new resist: 17%
Vs. +4 level mob, old resist: 48% new resist: 28%
Vs. +5 level mob, old resist: 59% new resist: 39%
Vs. +6 level mob, old resist: 70% new resist: 50%
…
And so on (+11% for each additional level)

The general resistance data is as follows for PVP:
Vs. +0 level player (same level), old resist: 4% new resist: 4%
Vs. +1 level player, old resist: 5% new resist: 5%
Vs. +2 level player, old resist: 6% new resist: 6%
Vs. +3 level player, old resist: 25% new resist: 13%
Vs. +4 level player, old resist: 32% new resist: 20%
Vs. +5 level player, old resist: 39% new resist: 27%
Vs. +6 level player, old resist: 46% new resist: 34%
…
And so on (+7% for each additional level)

We have tested this chart again in patch 1.7.0 on live retail servers and verified that these percentages are correct.

Lastly, I took several of the reports from this thread and had them tested as closely as possible to how they were described in the original post. All of these reports were testing on a currently live retail 1.7.0 realm. The outcomes of these tests are listed below:

    Q u o t e:
    so many resists

    i had drain life and drain soul resisted like hell against lvl 53/54 stuff in BL yesterday.

    just silly.

    4 consecutive resists against drain sould from a 60 lock on a 54 mob???

    c'mon



As a level 60 Warlock fighting a level 53 Helboar from Blasted Lands our test resist rates with Drain Soul and Drain Life were as follows:

Rank 1 Drain Soul
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 4 Drain Soul
50 spell hits
1 spell resists

Rank 1 Drain Life
50 spell hits
0 spell resists

Rank 6 Drain Life
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

    Q u o t e:
    yup getting full or partial resists on a very high rate with my lightning spells and shocks...definately noticeable and i am using the highest rank of all abilities...terrible thing is the only testing i have done is on level 51-54 elites, which by all reasoning shouldn't resist hardly at all being so much lower level than i am...very strange indeed



As a level 60 Shaman fighting a level 54 elite Anvilrage Marshall our test resist rates with Earth Shock and Lightning Bolt were as follows.

Rank 1 Earth Shock
50 spell hits
0 spell resists

Rank 7 Earth Shock
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 1 Lightning Bolt
50 spell hits
0 spell resists

Rank 10 Lightning bolt
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

    Q u o t e:
    I'm getting about 33% resist rates on my Frost Nova. Go Go lvl 54 max rank spells!



As a level 60 Mage fighting a level 57 Blackrock Battlemaster our test resist rates with several mage spells including Frost Nova were as follows:

Rank 1 Fireball
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 11 Fireball
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 1 Frost Nova
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 4 Frost Nova
50 spell hits
0 spell resists

Rank 1 Frostbolt
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 10 Frostbolt
50 spell hits
0 spell resist
-

    Q u o t e:
    I see so many RESISTs for Crippling Poison that I'm tempted to switch to Instant/Instant -- because Instant Poison still works.



As a level 60 Rogue fighting a level 60 npc target our test resists with Crippling Poison were as follows.

Rank 1 Crippling Poison
50 spell hits
2 spell resists

Rank 2 Crippling Poison
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

    Q u o t e:
    I hope you're kidding.

    Since 1.7 in level 60 vs level 60 PvP in Arathi Basin the amount of times my Cheapshot stun (the only reason to use Cheapshot as your opener I might add) has been resisted so often I thought I had broken my talent spec somehow. See also gouge and blind being parried, dodged etc at a far higher rate. You don't even need logs to notice it. It was so noticeable I couldn't NOT notice it.



As a level 60 Rogue fighting another level 60 player and attacking from behind our test resists with Cheap Shot were as follows.

Cheap Shot

50 spell hits
0 spell misses

Just as a final test, we also looked at a level 60 Mage using Fireblast against another level 60 player. Our resists were as follows:

Rank 1 Fireblast
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 7 Fireblast
50 spell hits
1 spell resist

Rank 1 Frost Nova
50 spell hits
0 spell resists

Rank 4 Frost Nova
50 spell hits
2 spell resists


Tallying up all of the results from these 6 tests we see that out of a total of 1066 spell attempts 1050 of our spells hit and only 16 of them were resisted. This is about a 1.5% resist rate.

A combat system based on randomly generated numbers will always have a chance of giving you a “resist”, “miss”, “parry”, etc several times in a row. As low as this chance might be, it is still a possibility. As low as the chance of a coin landing on heads 100 times in a row is, it’s still a possibility.

Another thing to remember is that both PC and NPC targets can have both resistances and abilities that will cause you to resist more often. For example, an NPC could be resistant to shadow damage or a Hunter PC could have the “Surefooted” talent that gives them a chance to resist stuns.

Even though we were able to show that resist rates are not completely abnormal in this patch I am not completely ruling out the possibility that under some circumstances that we have not tested yet, resistances could become broken. If anyone has any solid evidence showing that they are actually getting extremely high resist rates from either NPC or PC targets I urge you to please provide us with that evidence. We have seen reports of people saying that they have seen as low as 1/10 chance to hit. Without any information regarding the circumstances under how to reproduce these kinds of problems, these kinds of reports do not help us at all. Again, if you do have this problem I urge you to post proof so that you can aid us in ensuring that the World of Warcraft is as bug free as possible.

Thanks! - motive -
Blizzard QA Lead Tester

[lemekim]

It is good to see that Blizzard actually took the time to test this and verify that no problem actually exist...

But a few people mentioned that the problem might actually not be in the resist system or miss rates, but rather the incredibly streaky random number generator. So what people might see is either continuous hits, or streaks of resists, rather then hits peppered with some resists.

A good test for this would be to calculate average resist of a spell on a mob, then calculate the resist rate of spell cast right after a resist, right after it lands, second spell after a hit, second spell after a resist, and see if there is any significant deviation from the average.

But of course, this might be all in our heads!

[oldmandennis]

/agree its in your heads.

Gave AB a whirl a couple of days ago, and used mostly Earthshock 1 to save mana. If it was really a lvl 16 or whatever spell, it would not hit. It hit most of the time.

/sings Paranoia may distroy ya!