Talk:Critical strike/Archive1

Bad link
The link from the Formulas and Game Mechanics category for physical crits points to this page, which is only about spell crit. There is no spell crit link the the above category, and no page (linked anyway) that points to physical crit%. I'm too new to fix this, so will someone who knows what they're doing please correct this? Decibal 02:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. See the last comment on this page (for the future, just click on the + to add a new comment.) --Sky (t | c | w) 08:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

2.0 changes
Patch 2.0.1 has this new Crit Rating stuff in it. I couldn't find any Blizzard posts that solidly explain how it works, but I'm guessing this page needs entirely reworking for it. Anyone got a cite or three that we can use to start on that ? Athan 06:44, 11 December 2006 (EST
 * There's a new page, Combat rating system which starts explaining it. This page still needs to be updated to reflect it, or merged. Ideas? Luci 09:34, 6 January 2007 (EST)
 * tbh, a merge into this article would probably be appropriate.--Sky (t · c · w) 23:31, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

This page needs to remain independent, but linked to the new page on Combat Ratings. That's because this page should discuss things like amount of crit chance you get per agility etc. -- Lego 22:24, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Recent deletions
A recent edit deleted most of the contents of this article. While recent changes may have rendered this information inaccurate, simply deleting it (along with most of the context of the article) seems a poor solution. -Deepone 19:51, 24 April 2007 (EDT)


 * Well, I deleted a lot, that's true. Maybe I went a little too far. The problem is that most of the content was duplicate information. IMO this page should not contain things which can be found elsewhere (like the ratings formula, or the base crit chance derived from some stat). Also the second half has become obsolete by the attack table article. --Batox 14:25, 5 May 2007 (EDT)


 * At the very least, the page should contain crit chance per AGI and spell crit per INT. I just scoured wowpedia for the stuff, trying to find the stuff, and I couldn't find it until I looked here. I'm going to put it back in a sec. This is the Crit chance formula page, and if we can't find the formula for calculating the crit% given a certain amount of stats, then it's useless. Pzychotix 17:01, 5 May 2007 (EDT)

Critical hit chance formula revealed
Eyeonix released the proper formula for calculating critical hit rating on the official wow boards (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=98740260&pageNo=2&sid=1#27). His post is directed toward hunters, but the information is still valid for all classes and should be included on this page. If you look at my profile, I'm new to wiki'ing (should be a verb), so I'm just making people who know what they are doing aware of this information. I'll reproduce the content of what he posted here in the talk section in case it should become unavailable:

"Players have done a great job of discovering the underlying formula for how critical strike chance and dodge chance are calculated. Unfortunately an incorrect assumption has been made. however. It's been assumed that these chances were determined by a simple ratio. What they actually are is a linear equation (y=mx+b from introductory Algebra). In this case, the slope, or m, is 1/40 for level 70 Hunters as has been discovered. However, the part being missed is the intercept, b. The intercept is -5.45%. Every class has a different value for the intercept, and a different value at every level for the slope.

Prior to the Burning Crusade, Hunters had an intercept of 0. In order to keep that balanced so that typical level 60 Hunter didn’t have excessive amounts of critical strike chance, the slope was very very steep, at 53 points of agility per critical strike percent. That made Hunter critical strike chance improve very slowly in a way many Hunters complained about, justifiably. So we made the slope dramatically less steep. However, with a less steep slope, the typical Hunter had more critical strike chance than we intended. In order to fix that, the intercept was lowered to a number below 0.

This is not a bug, but a deliberate design decision.

The net result is that as a Hunter gains more agility, they benefit from it far more than they used to, but the base starts lower. It means you get better with your gear and buffs more easily, an overall gain to the class. Also note that every class in the Burning Crusade has a non-zero intercept. If you examine the other classes, you can calculate theirs as well. "LazeGamer 13:03, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Healing Crit.
I took the part out about Shamans healing crits for 200%, because there has been no confirmation. I am thinking it was from an old talent that does not exist anymore.

melee vs. physical
I'm thinking the section labelled 'melee' should be renamed 'physical' as unless I'm mistaken it applies to all physical damage, whether it be from a rogue backstab, warrior white damage, or a hunter autoshot.--Scrotch 03:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Spell Damage vs. Spell Crit
It seems to me that Spell Damage increases easily trumps Spell Crit increases. Can someone please check this and comment? Because my friend the wow maniac doesn't buy this -- he is sure they are about equal for a destruction lock like me.

Let's say that a lock had a base damage of 1000 (very low, but the specific number doesn't matter). Spell damage increases your base damage, so that +30 spell damage gives an average of about 30 points additional damage per hit. +30 to Spell Crit would increase the Spell Crit about 1.5% or so, which would be an average of 15 points per hit. Thus, 2 points of Spell Crit is worth 1 point of Spell Damage, as a rule of thumb. (This assumes a crit gives 100% of the base damage; for a destruction warlock this is the case.)

The base spell damage does matter to which is better (avg non-crit your spell is hitting for), because +crit is multiplying your damage by 1.5 or 2 depending on talents. Assuming ruin, ignoring cast time, and using mage formula for +crit give (base_dmg*(+crit/22.1)/100): Note that talents for instance that give +5% damage should just magnify this difference, and this doesn't take into account side-effects like crit sometimes giving +20% shadow dmg debuff, etc. --Awarlock
 * At 1000: +30 dmg vs +13.6 from crit
 * At 2210: +30 dmg vs +30 from crit
 * At 3000: +30 dmg vs +40 from crit

I believe that while it is impressive and fun to see those big critical hits, we'll do more damage overall by focussing on base spell damage -- and we'll generate less threat. --Jerel 04:35, 28 May 2007


 * It's a mix of things. The more spell damage you have, the less useful spell damage becomes. For example, if you have a spell damage of 100 and 0% crit, and you gain 1 spell dmg, you've increased your overall output by 1%. However, at 1000 dmg, 1 more +dmg is only a .1% increase. Same goes for +crit (i.e. the more you have the less overall benefit you get). It becomes a balance, and I'm sure calculators could tell you which is better. Pzychotix 08:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This is something I and others have noticed too. Level 70 scaling of crit rating has totally broken the usefulness of crit stacking. The problem is that 1 spell damage costs 0.885 item budget but 1 crit rating costs 1.0 item budget. You typically need twice as much crit rating than spell damage to get an equal increase in DPS. The result is that for every 1 crit rating you could have had 2.25 times more effect on DPS by choosing 1 spell damage instead. This holds true for warlocks (even destruction) and mages (even with spell power). See this discussion with similar calculations to what I did for warlocks, on the EU-Mage forum: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=289879530&sid=1 --Mekkapiano 12:47, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Pzychotix has the truth of it: because damage and crit are multiplicative in terms of increasing total DPS, at some point on either end of the scale one becomes more valuable than the other. The crossover point is different for each class (and for each spell!) due to the complexity of the relationship. Think of it terms of the equation: Total = (base + plus_dmg)*(damage_bonus)*(1.0 - miss% + crit%*(0.5+bonus_crit)). The base damage of the spell, +damage gear, +spell hit gear, damage bonus from talents and buffs/debuffs, bonus crit effect from talents, and crit % all affect the outcome. However, Mekkapiano makes a good point: the itemization budget skews the crossover point for all class/spell combinations toward the lower end of crit%, for some class/spell combinations way down into the low single-digits. You do also have to factor in procs from critical effects, though, so it's not even as simple as that. :) Flick 23:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Spell Hit over 99% ?
Could someone clarify this statement: But although increasing +spell hit over 99% is not a complete waste if using binary against a resist chance (since in that case the resist chance works as a reduction of the hit chance), in general a 99% spell hit chance will be sufficient for most casters.? I cannot find anything about it in articles Formulas:Spell hit chance or Resistance.

Fibby 07:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Pretty sure that information is wrong - from my understand - here are 2 distinct calculations used, the first based on chance to hit and is decided on mob level and typically hit talents - and then there is the resist calculation used to lower normal spell damage, or "resist" binary spells. The only thing to my knowledge that counters "resistance" based resists, is spell penetration. Going over 99% hit is complete useless (unless our preconception about 1% minimum is incorrect, and actually it's a 0.5% minimum cap or something)

Cubensis 00:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

This is referring to the order in which binary spell resistance is calculated. This does require testing, but if true then there is usefulness in stacking over 99% when a target has non-zero resistance to the school that binary spell uses.

The formula is either:

hit_chance = min(base_hit + plus_hit_gear, 99%) * (resistance * (target_level * 5) * 75%)

or:

hit_chance = min((base_hit + plus_hit_gear) * (resistance * (target_level * 5) * 75%), 99%)

The order of the cap makes a huge difference. In the former case, going above 99% does nothing. In the latter case, the 99% cap is applied after the target's school resistance is taken into account. For example, if the target had 233 resistance (that's 50%), 96% base hit (same level) and you had +20% hit gear:

Either:

hit_chance = min(96% + 20%, 99%) * 50% = 99% * 50% = 49.5%

or:

hit_chance = min((96% + 20%) * 50%, 99%) = min(58%, 99%) = 58%

So, you actually get some improvement out of over-stacking +hit if the latter case holds true. Again, only for binary spells.

--Mekkapiano 12:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Mage's Spell Critical Hit Chance
I'm a 70 mage and was trying to figure how the game calculates critical hit chance basing on Int and CR (spell Critical hit Rating). So i just played around with my equipment, wrote down crit figures from character view window, and then just ran a regression to come out with the following formula:


 * Crit Chance = 0.90 + Int/80 + CR/22.1

Confidence intervals at 95% level for those coefficients were: [0.89 0.91], [79.6 80.1], [22.06 22.14]

Fibby 21:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

two-hander base miss?
What's this about 9% base miss chance for two-handers ("what's better: +hit or +crit?")? That's the first I've ever seen to that effect: if it can't be corroborated (which should have a link) then it should be removed as misinformation.

Flick 23:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Effect of increased crit or hit chance
The claim made in this section that "Both increased hit and crit chance have a kind of 'diminishing returns' mechanic built in" is misleading. The first 1% of crit/hit increases your DPS by the same amount as the 40th 1% of crit/hit. Such a linear relationship is not normally characterized as a "diminishing return."

-- Cartec 13:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Base crit chances!?
I tried to calculate my rogues crit chance and never got a valid result. My results of all calculated variants had 0.29% more then it should really have (as shown as ingame chance to crit. So it looks like a level 70 rogue has a base chance to crit of -0.29%. Could someone confirm this? And if this is right I would like to see a table with base crit chances for all classes. ;)

FMK 8 October 2007

Mage Spell Power talent
The article here states that Spell Power brings crit damage to 200% at full talent, but the Spell Power article says that it only brings the damage to 175%. I tend to agree with the reasoning given for 175%, but can anyone confirm which is correct? --Thorn 11:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Changes to Spell crit vs. spell hit section
A recent change to this section added a bunch of personal opinion without any solid evidence to the matter of whether WoW uses a 1-roll or 2-roll system. I'd like to revert the changes, but I'm new, so I wanted to ask the opinion of more experienced editors here. Thanks. DirewolfX 21:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Reverted. From all the posts of testing I've seen, spells use a 2-roll system. --Sky (talk | con | wh ) 06:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Changes regarding Weapon Skill / Expertise
Doesn't the 2.3 change with respect to Expertise drastically change all these weapon skill based formulas? Or does it apply to existing weapon skill with the cap at 350? Been reading up again now that i'm playing a melee class for the first time in a year, and it seems like all this information is now pretty out of date, including miss/crit chance data. Seems like these pages need to be flagged and considerably reworked to remove all obsolete info. --Valmorgul 11:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

different crit rates for special attacks?
sw_stats quite a difference in crit-rate for a) normal attacks and b) sinister strikes. for normal attacks the critrate was 18,7%, for SS it was only 10,9%. at 1450 normal attacks and 500 Sinister Strikes. Anyone who can explain this?

No Physical?
This page is listed under physical attacks but all I see is spell. Did the rest of the page move?
 * Yes. I merged it into Critical strike. Will be removing the Spell crit section soon as well, in preference for Spell critical strike. --Sky (t | c | w) 22:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)