Mechanics Quandries II

[T_Dawg]

Dear Loungers,

I am sorry that I am ignorant. If this information is easily attainable somewhere, and I have been slack in my searching (which I tried without availe), please point me where I should go.

First off, Can someone explain to me what Attack Power does, in general. Like weapons that add +17 melee attack power, what does that do for my damage / to hit?

Second, what does skills in say axes do? Like if I have 256/270 in axes, how does that affect anything?

Basically, I need help learning how the entire to hit / damage system works!

Any formulas for calculating to hit / to crit / damage would be a great help. Sorry for my ignorance.

[Malakar]

Dear Loungers,

I am sorry that I am ignorant. If this information is easily attainable somewhere, and I have been slack in my searching (which I tried without availe), please point me where I should go.

First off, Can someone explain to me what Attack Power does, in general. Like weapons that add +17 melee attack power, what does that do for my damage / to hit?

Second, what does skills in say axes do? Like if I have 256/270 in axes, how does that affect anything?

Basically, I need help learning how the entire to hit / damage system works!

Any formulas for calculating to hit / to crit / damage would be a great help. Sorry for my ignorance.
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This thread has some info you should be interested in.

WeaponSkill / 5 is the approximate "level" of your skill, meaning you should be able to attack monsters of that level without much trouble. Low weapon skill generally produces more misses and lower damage I believe.

[Artega]

EDIT: Found this after a minute or two of looking. Pertains only to Warriors, but you get the idea :)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post438709

[Malakar]

GUIDE TO STATS AND ENCHANTMENTS

I wanted to write this up so that people, including myself, have a reference point for comparing a warrior's stats.

Im encouraging you to post if youve got things to add, wish to disagree, etc.. Hopefully this can save alot of uneccessary posts!

Note: All stats where necessary assume lvl60 vs. lvl60


MECHANICS OF AN ATTACK

You attack and get assigned 3 random numbers from 1-10.

Assuming a 20% Crit Rate, 10% Miss Rate, and a 10% chance to be Parried, Dodged, or Blocked. (These numbers would be different for each person).

In the same combat calculation, Dodge/Parry/Block are calculated seperately. It will check for dodge, then parry, then block:

Calc 1:
1-2 = Critical Hit
3-8 = Regular Hit
9 = Miss
10 = Dodge

Calc 2:
1-9 = Stick with original Roll
10 = Parry

Calc 3:
1-9 = Stick with original Roll
10 = Block

So, getting a 1-8 in the first roll would be a Hit, with Critical Hits already factored into this range. Thus, Critical Hits can't Miss or be Dodged, Parried or Blocked because they're already a Hit.


HIT AND MISS

Standard Miss Rate - Dual Wielding = 24%, Two Handers = 7%, One Hand and Shield = 5%.

Theres a maximum effective bonus of +5% to Hit on all weapon configs, which is inversly reflected in your miss rate.
i.e. minimum Miss Rate for DW - 19%, 2H - 2%, 1H - 0%.

It should also be noted that all special attacks have a standard 5% Miss Rate and are (unless otherwise stated), always taken by your main hand weapon. This makes spammable abilities such as Heroic Strike much more effective for Dual-Wielding Warriors due to the much lower Miss Rate than their regular attacks.

+1 Defensive Skill = +.04% chance of being Missed by your opponent.


CRITICAL HITS

+1 Agility = +.05% chance to land a Critical Hit on your opponent.

+1 Weapon Skill = +.04% chance to land a Critical Hit on your opponent.

Critcal Hits do twice the damage of a normal swing, thus +1% to Crit is generally equal to +1% to your DPS. However, this differs enourmously when you factor in various talents that trigger on crits such as Flurry etc. More on this can be found later under Damage Per Second.

+1 Defensive Skill = -.04% chance to receive a Critical Hit.

With above stats in mind, you should note that to counter being critted you will need extra defense skill that is equal to the opponents crit rate times 25.

Thus the sweet spot against lvl 60 mobs (who all have a 5% crit rate) is 425. (5 * 25 + (players base defensive rating which is 300 for a lvl 60)).


DODGE / PARRY / BLOCK

+1 Weapon Skill = -.04% chance to be Dodged, Blocked, or Parried by your opponent.

+1 Defensive Skill = +.04% chance to Dodge, Parry, and Block your opponent.

+1 Agility = +.05% chance to Dodge.

+1 Strength = +.04 to Block% with a shield.

Your Block% = 5 + (Defence_Skill - Your_Level * 5) x 0.04
Plus any items with +Block% Stats.

To calculate damage mitigated from Dodge, Parry and Block you multiply the chances.

i.e 10% Dodge, 15% Parry, 10% Block would mean:
Dodge = 100*(1-.1)=90% chance to get hit, then
Parry = 90*(1-.15)=76.5% chance to get hit, then
Block = 76.5*(1-.1)=68.85% chance to get hit. (Even though Block doesn't block full damage)
Resulting in 31.15% of damage mitigated.

If you Dodge you suffer no damage, If you Parry you suffer no damage, If you Block with a Shield, an amount of the damage is absorbed by the shield, the final damage taken is reduced again by your armour.

The amount blocked(absorbed) by your shield is a numerical value, NOT a percentage.
Damage Reduced = Shield Block Value + Strength / 22.

It should also be noted that Block, Dodge and Parry are only effective against melee attacks, and not ranged or magical attacks. Against ranged attacks your only protection is your Armour Class, whilst against magical attacks, your only protection is your Magical Resistances.


MITIGATING DAMAGE

Once youve recieved a hit your only option is to mitigate the damage with your Armour or Resistances, then take the hit to your Hit Points.

+1 Agility = +2 Armour Class.

+1 Stamina = +10 Hit Points.


Higher Armour Class Gives Decreasing Returns

The physical damage you recieve during combat, is directly effected by your Armour Class and is calculated in a standard way without randomness, such that a certain AC will always reduce the damage taken by a certain PERCENTAGE. Damage reduced is equivalent to Decreased DPS. The formula for calulating this is:

Their DPS decrease = Your_AC / (Your_AC + Their_Level * 85 + 400)

This means that Armour Class effects a DPS decrease in a non-linear way, so that while more armour means lower DPS, double the AC does not equal double the DPS.

It works both ways, as their AC goes down, you get increasing returns. This means that the first Sunder Armour you cast on a Plate and Shield Warrior adds a measly 1.7% DPS while the fifth adds 2.4%, giving a total DPS increase (after 5 Sunders) of 10.3%. That same first Sunder on a cloth wearing priest adds a very nice 7.0% DPS return (much more worthwhile in PVP and non-boss encounters).

I copied the above from Mobzoth's analysis of Sunder Armour, found here http://mobz.org/tauren/sunder.boa


Balancing Armour Class And Hit Points

For an excellent discussion by Satrina on damage mitigation and Stamina/AC equivalence go to http://evilempireguild.org/guides/

It gets complicated, but to summarize, Satrina found that when it comes to mitigating an opponents DPS, increasing your Hit Point totals would increase the worth of your Armour very quickly, whilst increasing your Armour totals would increase the worth of your Hit Points at a slower rate. Magical damage is a factor that helps to balance this difference between higher Hit Points and higher Armour. Having very high Armour at the expense of Hit Points will be an advantage against pure melee opponents, but a disadvantage against opponents who use magic. Because of this, a balanced approach to Hit Points and Armour is probably the most beneficial, somewhere in the range of 1 Stamina for every 20 to 25 points of Armour.


Magic Resistance

When hit by a spell, you have two chances to resist the spell. The first chance is based on your level. If you are much higher level than the attacking caster, you will have a significant chance to resist the caster's spell, but if you are much lower level, you will have a minimal chance to resist the spell (minimum of 1%). If you make this resistance chance, you are completely unaffected by the spell.

The second chance to resist is based on your resistance score and the level of the caster. The higher your resistance score in relation to the level of the attacking caster, the higher your average resistance percentage, up to a maximum of 75%. Against most spells, this resistance percentage is the straight % chance to completely resist the spell. Against direct-damage spells (spells that deliver their full damage upon impact, such as Fireball, Mind Blast, and Earth Shock), this resistance is the percentage of damage you will resist on average.

When you are hit by a direct-damage spell, you have a chance to resist 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, or 0% of the spell's damage, depending on your resistance score in relation to the level of the attacking caster. Your average percentage of damage resisted is the weighted average of your resistance percentages for each level of damage resistance (100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0%).

Resistance against most level 60 spells
(Resistance Score followed by the percentage chance to resist the spell):
50 - 7.5%
100 - 15%
150 - 30%
200 - 45%
250 - 60%
300 - 75%

For more info on the average Direct Damage resistance check where i got this info, at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basi...ances.html

[Malakar]

DAMAGE PER SECOND

+1 Strength = +2 Attack Power.

+14 Attack Power = +1 DPS.


Strength Vs Agility

As previously stated +1% to Crit (or +20 Agility) is generally equal to +1% to your DPS. But where this differs enourmously is when you factor in various talents that trigger on crits such as Flurry, Impale, Deep Wounds, etc.

As an example, say i have the Flurry talent and a 33% Chance to Critical Hit in Berserker Stance. I will pretty much have flurry active 100% of the time for a 30% boost to my base DPS. Couple this with 1 in 3 hits doing double damage and you can see why people favour Agility so highly.

However, this has to be weighed against how much Attack Power you have to sacrifice to get such a high crit rate. Weigh the *laughs* 600 Agility necessary to get such a Crit Rate against the 600 Strength you could have instead.
600STR = 1200AP = 85.71DPS...

+1% crit will become more and more valuable as your BaseDPS (determined by WeaponDPS + AttackPowerDPS) rises; +1% crit at 10dps is worth much less than +1% crit at 500dps. We want to find the threshold for when Agility becomes more valuable than Strength.

So, comparing Flurry and your Crit Rate (a 63% BaseDPS boost), with the above information;

STRENGTH > AGILITY when 63% of your BaseDPS is less than or equal to 85.71. i.e. when your BaseDPS is less than or equal to 136.05.

Other formulas can be applied to other talents that proc on Critical Hits to determine what stat is more valuable to you! Remember, the above only applies to flurry, and only to regular melee attacks, the more special attacks you use, the more you'll favour one way or the other. With Bloodthirst you'll value Strength more, with Execute you'll value Agility.


HATE GENERATION

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post361110

This is the summary from Cop's thread.

Skills by total hate generated on a single target (50% mob dmg reduction):
1. Revenge - 1370 total hate.
2. Shield Slam - 1220 total hate.
3. Sunder Armor - 1050 total hate.
4. Shield Bash - 910 total hate.
5. Heroic Strike - 890 total hate.
6. Cleave - 500 total hate.
7. Thunder Clap - 290 total hate.
8. Demoralizing Shout - 175 total hate.

Skills by hate/rage efficiency on a single target (50% mob dmg reduction):
1. Revenge - 274 hate per rage point.
2. Shield Bash - 91 hate per rage point.
3. Sunder Armor - 88 hate per rage point.
4. Heroic Strike (fast weapon) - 59 hate per rage point.
5. Shield slam- 41 hate per rage point.
6. Cleave (fast weapon) - 22 hate per rage point.
7. Demoralizing shout - 18 hate per rage point.
8. Thunder Clap - 15 hate per rage point.

Regular physical damage in Defensive Stance(presumably with defiance): 4.1 hate per point of damage.

1 Hate = 1 point of Healing by a Priest with 20% Threat Reduction talent.


CRUSADER AND LIFESTEAL

From posts ive read here and elsewhere, both the Crusader and Lifesteal enchants are set to a %chance on Hit, based on a target number of Procs per minute. This %chance per Hit is adjusted by the speed of the weapon.

Crusader target Procs per minute - 2
%chance on Hit for a 3.0 speed weapon = 10% (or 1 in 10 hits).
%chance on Hit for a 2.0 speed weapon = 6.6% (or 1 in 15 hits).
%chance on Hit for a 1.0 speed weapon = 2% (or 1 in 30 hits).

Lifesteal target Procs per minute - 10
%chance on Hit for a 3.0 speed weapon = 50% (or 1 in 2 hits).
%chance on Hit for a 2.0 speed weapon = 33.3% (or 1 in 3 hits).
%chance on Hit for a 1.0 speed weapon = 16.6% (or 1 in 6 hits).

Now where this Proc rate appears different is:
1)When you start using instant attacks, as these attacks are not factored into the target Proc rate and as such add an extra chance to Proc each time you use them. and..
2)As per your Crit Rate, the proc rate is not based on successful Hits only, it also includes Misses, Blocks, Dodges and Parries. Thus you'd notice a big difference between Procs using a single weapon and procs when Dual-Wielding two weapons (with only one of them enchanted), because the Miss Rate will reduce the %chance to Proc when Dual-Wielding.


Off-Hand Proc Rate

Ive yet to test my theory on how the proc rate on the off-hand is calculated when Dual-Wielding, however i beleive that (similar to the damage reduction for the off-hand) the enchant on the off-hand will proc at half the rate of the main hand.. Leaving DW with one enchant inferior to using an enchanted 2 Hander.. But making DW with two enchants superior!

Testing this theoretically, not including Blocks, Dodges, or Parries..
-2 Hander with Lifesteal(3.0 spd) = 50 * .93 = 46.5% chance to proc every 3 seconds.
-DW with 1 Lifesteal(3.0 spd) = 50 * .76 = 38% chance to proc every 3 seconds.
-DW with 2 Lifesteal(3.0 spd) = (50 * .76) * 1.5 = 57% chance to proc every 3 seconds.

Similarly, trinkets etc. with an unspecified chance to proc on hit would use the standard proc rate on the main hand (reduced due to the high miss rate), and half the standard proc rate on the off-hand (also reduced due to the high miss rate). Resulting in slightly more procs when Dual-Wielding if similar speed weapons are being used.
Note: If the proc rate on hit is specified in the description then the off-hand will proc at the full rate, making Dual-Wielding far superior when using such items.

Let me know if you think it works differently to this.


Comparing Crusader And Lifesteal

Assuming 10 procs in a minute for lifesteal and 2 procs in a minute for crusader. Also assuming an average of 25hp stolen (assuming 16.6% resisted) on lifesteal and 100hp healed for crusader with 16.6% mitigated from the opponents Armour (would be more for melee classes and less for casters).
100 Strength = 200 Attack Power = 14.29DPS for 30secs = 428.7 damage * 16.6% mitigated = 357.5.
-Lifesteal heals 250 life and does 250 damage.
-Crusader heals 200 life and does 357.5 damage.

This does not take into account instant attacks, crits or miss rate, which will in any case just exagerate the results.

We can therefore conclude, as the majority of people already have, that in general Crusader > Lifesteal. This applies for any weapon of any speed!

However, the effectiveness of these enchants would vary depending on your opponent:
LONG FIGHT / LOW AC OPPONENT - Crusader is better.
SHORT FIGHT / HIGH AC OPPONENT - Lifesteal is better.


WEAPON COMPARISONS

To compare your DPS with different weapons:

- 28AP = 14STR = 8DMG
- Melee Attack Power DPS = {[({[Racial Melee Attack Power + 2*(STR gained from Armor) + Attack Power Gained From Gear]/2}/14)*8]/4.0} * Weapon Speed
- Overall DPS = Weapon DPS + Melee Attack Power DPS
- Average Damage = (Overall DPS)*Weapon Speed
- Gap = High Weapon Damage - Low Weapon Damage
- Epsilon = Gap/2
- Maximum Weapon Damage = Average Damage+Epsilon + 1
- Minimum Weapon Damage = Average Damage-Epsilon

Or use this Calculator - http://www.kodiesuperstore.com/wow/warrior.php