Why 1-roll v 2-roll attack table matters.
Bastiaan asked in comments after the first table why knowing about this matters. I started to get longwinded (go figure) and decided another post was deserved.
First, I want to acknowledge that for priests this is ‘not so much’. For that matter, for all spell casters this is less important than it is for ranged and melee types. It does matter for us and I’ll get to that in details, just “not as much”.
In the end, for everyone, the reason this (and all the theorycrafting) matters is the fact this is a game of incrementalism. Nothing is huge by itself. You get a little of this and a little of that and suddenly you’ve gone from a mana pool of 4,000 to one of 10,000, and heals are 6K instead fo 2500, and… well, you get the idea. Strip a 15K health warrior of all his gear and put him in the ‘wrong’ stance and he’s got a LOT less health. And compared to a level 10… you get the idea. So the +1 this and +3 that adds up. Because it does, getting a bunch of “this” may be MORE effective than getting a bunch of “that”. What we’re doing is figuring out how much more effective this is than that. Actually, it’s more complex than that. See, we also know that there’s a point where more of “this” is worthless – no more benefit. Studying all this lets us know at what point it’s time to go ahead and add “that” instead of “this”.
Look, over time a 1% change in +hit vs + crit is ‘only’ going to be a choice between increasing damage by 1% or by 0.95% (approx, depending on base) for melee on a 2-roll table, whereas in 1-roll table they gave an equal increase in damage, the difference being whether it was “spiky” or “smooth” damage. The question becomes whether this is significant TO YOU or not. To me, when I’m looking at damages and heals in the thousands, this is beginning to be noticable. At level 20 and 40 it’d probably not be so much.
OK, I said I’d mention where it matters for priests. For all spellcasters, offensive crits only increase damage by 50% instead of double. So even the crit-heavy classes aren’t as affected — that change in the preceding paragraph is even less. And priests just can’t be crit-heavy — it’s not in our ability to get much beyond 20% crit (if we work hard at emphasizing that ability). Where it matters for priests, however, is defensively.
Do we select defensive gear against normal hits or against crits?. And what about dodges? Are they first-roll or second? Which is better, +12 AGI or +120 Armor? I did a moderately heavy article weighting points in resilience vs dodge vs defense vs armor. But it assumes single-table, and with two-table the values are WRONG — and what you buy changes, potentially by a lot.
Nothing big, not really. But this game is a whole bunch of little things that snowball into something massive. And if you pick the right little things, your snowball can be even larger.
Priestly Endeavors - a gaming blog 
not all, but most – some of us talent otherwise to get 200% damge crits instead of 150%
Wow! Thank you for the massive reply, and that for a question that could have been worded much better.
I did not mean to say that it is useless to know whether yellow damage follows a one or two roll system, I was just wondering if you could give an example of where you could use this theorycrafting to make a choice between two wands.
But I don’t want to take away too much time from you actually playing the game, so only if it’s not too much hassle!
Bastiaan, the classic example for priests is:
You have two objects from which to choose. One gives spirit. One gives mana per 5 seconds. Which do you choose? Answer as always is “it depends” – but what theorycrafting does is helps us figure out the rest of that sentence. “It depends… on how much time you spend in and out of the 5 second rule.” (well, and whether you have talents that let spirit boost other attributes, but that’s going further into the weeds than you need.)
4 spirit drops 1 mana every 2 seconds when you are outside the 5SR. That’s 2.5 mp5, which means each spirit is 2.5/4 = 0.625 mp5. OUTSIDE the 5SR. What you have to do next is figure out how much time you spend in and out of the 5SR during the combats where this matters. (Where it matters. I have ~8K mana. I can cast a dozen GH and have lots of mana left over. Anything which isn’t going to use all my mana makes the regeneration unimportant. Well, excluding how long it takes for me to be ready for the next fight, but there’s always drinks…)
And so on and so forth, all of which is the result of theorycrafting.
As to your example… ok, let’s say you have a choice between two wands – one with XX +spelldamage and one with YY +spellcrit. Once we figure out what the “real” number for spellcrit is – which is partially whether it’s one or two tables – then we can tell you what the ratio of XX to YY is at which they’re even. So if, for example, breakeven is 1:3 (1 damage = 3 crit rating) and you have 4 damage and 11 crit rating, you’ll know you get a slightly better edge with the 4 damage. OTOH, if it’s 13 crit rating, you choose the other way. Caveated, of course, by your talents and playstyle.
blink. OK, Mera, I must have missed it. What talents can a priest take to get 200% on crits? Because that forces some major recalculations (and a significant change to another post.)
[…] Kirk got into a whole series of posts with an analysis of spellcasting, and a discussion of "why it matters"–posited a lot more eloquently than I […]
Best of the Blogs: 8/30 - 9/5 | Kestrel’s Aerie said this on October 26, 2007 at 10:49 am |