Combat Rating System

[Volonazra]

As you know, your character has a multitude of combat ratings. One set of ratings are specific to spell casting abilities.

These spell ratings are: Spell Hit, Spell Penetration, Spell Crit, and Spell Haste I like to keep things simple, so this will not be a deeply mathematical posting(click the links for the math). However, simply remember the higher the numbers, the better and the higher your character level the less potent the same spell rating will be. For example, 14 Spell Crit. ratiing = +1% Spell crit at level 60 but only about +0.6% at level 70. Different ratings are more important to different classes and in different situations. Hopefully, discussion will follow to illustrate that.

Spell Hit increases a caster's chance to hit with spells. Or rather, the more spell hit gear (and talents) you have the less the chance an enemy will "resist" your spells. A spell that fails to hit is displayed as a resist, although this is different than spell resistance mechanic and leads to some confusion. Your base chance to hit is based on the level difference between you and your target. There is always a 99% Spell hit rating max. Effectively, you want +3% chance to hit for PvP and +16% for PvE/raiding. Some important numbers for a level 70 caster are: 12.6 points of spell hit = 1% chance to hit which means the effective cap 202 spell hit points

Spell Penetration reduces your enemies resistance to your spells. In other words, it overpowers an enemie's spell resistance. Important to remember: 1 pt of Spell Penetration negates 1pt of resistance. Although, Spell Penetration has no effect upon resistance due to level difference. Enemies get a base 5 resistance per level higher than you. It is widely believed that Spell penetration is only marginally useful at this time.

Using Spell Penetration

* PvP: 40 penetration is sufficient to counter Mark of the Wild, which is usually all the resistance a player will have to a school of magic. However, other common resistance buffs include a priest's Shadow Protection and paladin's resistance auras.

* PvE: Curse of Shadows/Elements is usually sufficient to negate any base resistance on your target. Without the curses, a small amount of penetration might be useful to minimize partial resists, but few mobs have base resistance that can be overcome with gear.

Spell Crit rating is the chance to do extra damage per spell cast. Your base crit chance is a product of your Int stat, increased generally 1% per 80 Int @level 70. Talents, items, additional buffs, spells, totems, you name it can increase this effective number. Base damage increase is 50% but can be increased also with talents. On items, 22 Spell Crit Rating = 1% Crit. Spell Crit is regarded as less "effective" than Spell hit point for point realistically. However, many great and wonderful effects only happen upon a crit. Therefor, the importance varies greatly.

Spell Haste is the rating which determines casting speed. Soon to get a boost in coming patch to be more effective and therefor more desirable. Soon Spell Haste of 15.76 points = 1% increased cast speed. Currently it you need 21 pts to gain 1%. Not alot of significant info is around about this stat. nor is the stat a huge focal point. The reason we likely haven't seen it much yet is because so far, spell haste gear only drops at the highest levels. Currently, most haste comes in the form of temporary buffs that allow you to get a few fast casts off. (Most common to our troll friends.) It is regarded as devastating in PvP, and is where it shines most.

Now, simply speaking, Spell Hit, Crit and Penetration work in symphony when a spell is cast. It is easy to think of spell results in a three step process. (Three rolls for us old Pen and Paper gamers.) First roll, does the spell hit or miss? Second roll, does it crit?(natural 20 woot) Third roll, how much damage penetrates?

Advise is to seek to increase your +damage, +hit, then +crit in order priority (generally speaking).

Please discuss, and/or link to better info.

Edited September 15, 2007 by Volonazra

[Rhoach]

Eeeenteresting. I had spell penetration confused with spell hit this whole time. Does +hit help you in pvp?

[Volonazra]

Eeeenteresting. I had spell penetration confused with spell hit this whole time. Does +hit help you in pvp?

Yes! Generally, all you need is 40pts Spell Hit (rounding) to make up for the innate base miss chance vs. same level target.

[Waldonnis]

There is always a 1% chance for a spell to miss (aka fully resist). This cannot be overcome by spell hit, so don't bother trying.

As for "seek to increase your +damage, +hit, then +crit", this is HIGHLY dependent on class and spec. For instance, frost mages are frequently better off going hit > damage > crit, whereas deep fire mages often prefer hit and crit over smaller gains in damage simply because of talented crit boosts and combustion (arcane-heavy specs have their own preferences as well). Affliction warlocks frequently underestimate crit and hit unless they're regularly facing elite mobs over level 72...recasting an instant isn't bad, but I've blown five GCDs trying to "hit" Gruul with a single corruption, for instance (and crit is nice simply because we do cast shadowbolts while our DoTs are ticking).

Penetration is WIDELY misunderstood and undervalued. While it's not spectacular or something that is a "must have", it's still useful and shouldn't be overlooked if you're raiding post-Karazhan. Actually, I think the provided description is a bit misleading so I'll try to explain and will even mention a special case where penetration has absolutely no value....

Ever had a DoT tick away or a spell hit and you only did part of the damage, while some portion was resisted? I've had up to half of an amped curse of doom resisted on Gruul and 2/3rds of a pyro at a few points. This happens frequently, but is often missed unless you're a chronic combat log watcher or can actually process the immense amount of info being spit out by SCT (warlocks and shadow priests would likely miss it because you're flooded with info). Well, those "partial resists" are what spell penetration was designed to overcome. It's true that the partial resists are a function of a mob's (or player's) resistance to that school, much like wearing fire resist gear allowed us to partially or sometimes fully resist things in MC. If those mobs had spell penetration gear, our resist gear would've been less effective. For PvP, penetration probably won't play a big role for mages, since hardly anyone would ever wear resist gear into battle there, but warlocks may want to investigate the effects of spell penetration once resilience starts affecting DoTs.

Now there is one particular school of magic that will *never* get partially resisted: frost. The reason for this is that frost spells have a snare component that occupies the "check slot" for that spell (all other schools have no innate ability like a snare, so that check slot is used for partial resists...spell effects/partial resists are processed after the hit/miss determination). Any mage that's had a frostbolt hit a raid boss knows that they'll see "immune" pop up, even if they did damage with the spell. That immune was the boss's immunity to the snare that accompanies a frostbolt hit. Because the snare occupies the check for frost spells, it's impossible for frost spells to be partially resisted. This is why frost spells are known as "binary spells"...they either hit or are resisted fully. There's a side-effect to frost being binary as well in that the base hit for frost is 84% (could be 87%, but my memory's cloudy on the exact number) at equal level, hence frost mages with no +spell hit frequently see more resists than fire mages (who enjoy a much higher base hit due to the non-binary nature of fire spells). Since frost is a binary school, penetration is totally useless for that school of magic and any mage spec'ed frost that uses that school more than 80% of the time should REALLY go for more +spell hit than a comparably-geared fire mage.

[Volonazra]

As for "seek to increase your +damage, +hit, then +crit", this is HIGHLY dependent on class and spec. For instance, frost mages are frequently better off going hit > damage > crit, whereas deep fire mages often prefer hit and crit over smaller gains in damage simply because of talented crit boosts and combustion (arcane-heavy specs have their own preferences as well). Affliction warlocks frequently underestimate crit and hit unless they're regularly facing elite mobs over level 72...recasting an instant isn't bad, but I've blown five GCDs trying to "hit" Gruul with a single corruption, for instance (and crit is nice simply because we do cast shadowbolts while our DoTs are ticking).

Simply put, casters can most immediately increase dps(or hps) with the priority of damage/healing > hit > crit. Google to find the math if that would be more sufficient.

Penetration is WIDELY misunderstood and undervalued. While it's not spectacular or something that is a "must have", it's still useful and shouldn't be overlooked if you're raiding post-Karazhan. Actually, I think the provided description is a bit misleading so I'll try to explain and will even mention a special case where penetration has absolutely no value....

I have to disagree. It is understood and and found to be a waste. Ive yet to find any serious support for it. Spell Penetration is basically useless. Resistance of high level mobs is due to level difference, not spell resistance. Again, google and read beyond these links for the math.

It can be deceiving but... DoT damage is calculated upon hit and applyed over its duration. DoTs dont not act, as DD, each tick having chance to be "resisted".

Edited September 17, 2007 by Volonazra

[Waldonnis]

A missed spell is less damage, plain and simple. For affliction warlocks, it's easy to conceive of "just cast it again", but a fully-resisted soulfire means no return on a rather long investment in time. This is compounded for mages (especially frost) since not only do they get reduced benefit from +dmg for their primary school, but also enjoy a higher chance to miss. Since math was brought up, any idea how much more +dmg is needed to make up for a 16% miss rate when your +dmg has a less than 1:1 modifier due to shorter base cast time? I've done that math (no Google needed, did it pre- and post-BC) and it's why I swapped back to fire...partial damage is better than no damage and, unlike warlocks, mages don't have infinite mana pools.

Don't get me wrong, +damage is important and should be considered heavily, but I find the "rule of thumb" to be flawed when level differentials on raid bosses combined with an unmodified miss rate as high as frost's can mean up to one third of the spells can be fully resisted. In essence, hit is important and damage is important. How you rank those two in relation to each other is largely dependent on what you have already. To relate this to tanking, it's akin to saying defense > stamina > armour...the order changes depending on what you have already and what the spec/function is. Sure, you can have all of the +hit in the world, but if your damage is lousy, it won't mean much...just as if 25% of your spells are resisted because you lack +spell hit, your godly +dmg gear will only be worth 75% of your +dmg total (which is innately lower than 100% for frost anyway, so it's more like 67%).

As for penetration, I've read those threads...one is from 2006 and pre-dates BC (penetration was a development stat introduced into newer instances and stated back then that it wasn't fully implemented). The other is a more recent thread that, honestly, was littered too much with conjecture and epeen assertions to really take as a serious source of information (Google has turned up similarly flame-filled "discussions"). Blizzard has not adequately explained penetration in detail, much like they haven't explained the threat system (which everyone seems to be an authority on in forums, despite it being a closed system). I've yet to do serious experimentation of spell penetration, but would be happy to do so to find out one way or another. If what you claim is true, then there is literally no mechanical difference between hit and penetration, which would mean that many items introduced in BC are worthless or (at best) interchangeable with spell hit items in terms of stat costs...and that Blizzard never did introduce the partial resist mitigator that they planned on. Of course, to test this, I would need someone with enough time to get hit by about 5,000 fireballs in a row and that has some fire resist gear...any volunteers? (seriously)

Oh, on a side note, healing is quite a bit different for paladins. Pure +heal gear does benefit them from a one-dimensional "hps" front, but a healthy dose of crit will increase their mana efficiency since they get a mana return when they crit heal (hpm on a paladin is astounding on a well-geared holy paladin with high +heal and crit...BoW wasn't the reason they never seemed to run out of mana, it was the crit heals combined with a pre-nerf SA return of 100% on heals received)

Nothing in this game is "simply put", honestly, and I've seen enough walking gear disasters (warlocks with ungodly stamina but no damage, mages with high crit but no damage, rogues with greater-than-cap hit and bunches of crit but not much AP, etc) to want to staple disclaimers on all general recommendations. There are definitely some suggested evolutions for gear stats, but for many classes, there comes a point where the general rules of thumb end up being contrary to what would benefit them the most (as Kailand pointed out in another thread for instance, at a certain RAP level, hunters gain more from agility than from further RAP-only gains).

I think it's a shame that Blizzard introduced so many stats to consider for spell casters, most of which aren't really related, but all of which affect damage...along with a significant amount of "chance". Melee damage stats are significantly easier to quantify and understand (and infinitely better explained officially) in comparison. As a result, we're stuck with discussions like this and people like me looking for volunteers to get pelted with fireballs just to "see how this stuff works" hoping for a glimpse into whether or not stuff actually works.

Edited September 17, 2007 by Waldonnis

[Rhoach]

This is why frost spells are known as "binary spells"...they either hit or are resisted fully. There's a side-effect to frost being binary as well in that the base hit for frost is 84% (could be 87%, but my memory's cloudy on the exact number) at equal level, hence frost mages with no +spell hit frequently see more resists than fire mages (who enjoy a much higher base hit due to the non-binary nature of fire spells).

What about when impact procs on a fire spell? Does that turn the fire spell into a binary spell?

[Waldonnis]

What about when impact procs on a fire spell? Does that turn the fire spell into a binary spell?

Nope, because it's a talent effect rather than inherent to the spell. Impact, frostbite, ignite, and so forth are all dealt with differently than the snare on frost spells. I actually think Blizzard "cheated" with frost spells in their implementation and that their binary nature was a side-effect of that...in short, they only had one "check" in the code and didn't want to make extras for frost (ideally, they should've had a much more complicated system for snare effects) so they just "made it fit". I would've loved to see a partial resist system for frost or other binary spells, but it just isn't implemented that way.

Interestingly enough, and something I forgot about before, was that blastwave is also binary for the same reason. There are a few other individual spells that are binary, but frost is the only entire magic school that is binary in nature.

[muru]

Huh? *Confusion clouds his eyes* Wat latz seb? *Muru walks away slowly scratchin' his noggin*...

[Borg]

Hmmm.....

When Morgh in doubt.....

If character runnin'

*cast Root*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Wrath till target moves*

then repeat.

If character immune to root...

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

Is he dead yet or Is Morgh dead?

If No....keep casting moonfire hehehe

If Morgh Dead....wait patiently for Tupid resser 30sec timer which always starts at 30

heheh

Simpul....no math fur da Morgh to figurs.....only have few fingurs n no toes enyhow.

heheh

[muru]

Hhehhehe, Morgh, yer response got a ROFL outta' me:)

Edited January 8, 2008 by muru

[Kailand]

Hmmm.....

When Morgh in doubt.....

If character runnin'

*cast Root*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Wrath till target moves*

then repeat.

If character immune to root...

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

*cast Moonfire*

Is he dead yet or Is Morgh dead?

If No....keep casting moonfire hehehe

If Morgh Dead....wait patiently for Tupid resser 30sec timer which always starts at 30

heheh

Simpul....no math fur da Morgh to figurs.....only have few fingurs n no toes enyhow.

heheh

you forgot one thing

*cast Moonfire*

....

OOM

Dead.