another quick hunter post

I feel like I’m playing hookie – skipping mandatory school classes – by not going into the scripting.  Well, till the truant officers find me and drag me back, WHEEEEE!!

I’ve been examining my options, and suddenly realized I was making an invalid assumption – one that would have tripped me up quite severely, and worth raising with everyone else.  Quite simply, I was looking at my level and giving up crit under the assumption it would do ‘no good’.

Idiot.

The only thing that’s going to matter is resilience.  Level will have NO EFFECT.  Now, the odds are that just about every level 70 will have resilience.  But still, ok, theorycrafting to demonstrate the why.

I am level 64.  I am targeting a level 70, who has 5% resilience from his gear.  I’ve maxed my weapon expertise, he’s maxed his defense.  350-320=30.  Before I get into anything like class and talents and all of that – I have a 35% chance to miss.  And he’s +1% to dodge, parry, and (if applicable) block.  Added together and I’ve got… 5% chance to crit, and 57% chance to hit.  Now, here’s the fun to remember.

Picture these as a stack of numbers with hit on the bottom.  I can increase any of the numbers by any amount.  And then I start adding from the top, and as soon as I reach 100 I’m through – anything not added is gone and that category cannot happen.  Two examples here.

Say he adds 50% to his dodge.  The situation is now: 35% miss, 51% dodge (86%), 1% parry (87%) 1% block (88%), 5% critical (93%), and since I’ve only got 7 left to 100, 7% of a normal hit.

Second example.  This time, I increase my crit number to 10%.  35%, 1%, 1%, 1%, 10%, 52%.

So what does this mean?  It means for melee that crits are almost always better than hits because the ‘higher damage’ option stays on the ‘chance to do anything’ table longer.

This can’t be taken as a blanket statement, though.  Here’s the deal to remember – Resilience reduces crit.  So if I’m facing a lot of 70s with resilience gear, I’m probably better served to have increased my +hit (or more accurately, my -miss) number.

Yeah, that’s the next important thing in theory crafting for melee.  +hit doesn’t add to the bottom of the table – in fact, you can almost think of “hit” as getting anything that isn’t in any other category.  So +hit beats +crit in that regard.

+hit to the hit cap, +crit beyond – and don’t forget that additional weapon expertise increases damage.

As a level 64 hunter in PVP, I’m not going to hit as frequently as I do ‘outside’.  But the really funky thing?  Excluding resilience, my CRITS will happen just about as often.  Yes, there’ll be the untouchable gods in S3 armor.  Or even S2, and to some extent S1.  But they’re NOT the rule, they’re the exception.

Which means I can actually plan for crits.  That changes some of the things I was considering – a lot.

~ by Kirk on January 30, 2008.