Denbts

There are level 50+ greens that are better than Tier 1. Warlock Tier 1 is maximum garbage.

Wouldn't that mean that Bloodvine is categorically better because you spend the first minute or so without having to cast lifetap, thus making the T2.5 set bonus useless?

Is there any general consensus on whether it's better DPS to wear 3 piece Bloodvine with Doomcaller's head and shoulders, or 5/5 Doomcaller's for the 15% more mana-efficient shadow bolts? I haven't seen much debate on this topic, but it seems a lot of people disagree when I ask around. With Bloodvine, you gain 4% hit, and lose 20 spell power and 15% cheaper shadow bolts. How might one go about crunching numbers on what the set bonus means DPS-wise? I'm not quite sure how it translates. I get that it means more casts before you have to cast your first life tap, and that subsequent lifetaps will provide more shadow bolts per use, but is the loss of hit worth it?

Thank you for trying to help, and your explanation was probably useful for people who didn't know how the system was supposed to work. I'm just looking for proof.

Semi-crosspost from general forums: Do we have any proof that spell crit is calculated on a two-roll system? If not, we're gearing ourselves entirely wrong. In retail, the damage dealt by a spell was determined with a two-roll system. The game first calculated whether you'd hit the mob before deciding whether you'd crit. If you hit, your crit chance was then factored in as normal, but if you didn't hit, your crit chance was effectively 0. In a one-roll system, however, crits and hits, along with dodge, parry, glancing, crushing, etc, are all calculated simultaneously. You can't have a "missed crit" or a "dodged crushing blow" or a "missed glance" because they are all independent of one another. This is how melee attacks work. Some private servers mistakenly use a one-roll system for spells, which changes stat values significantly. Imagine Denbts the warlock has a 90% chance to hit, and 15% crit chance. Depending on the server he's on, this can mean two very different things: On a two-roll server, if Denbts casts 1,000 shadow bolts, 900 will land and 15% of those (or 135 shadow bolts) will crit. On a one-roll server, however, crit chance is out of the total amount of spells cast, not spells that land, meaning that 150 spells will crit, and 90% of the remaining 850 spells will land. In the first scenario, hit is better; in the second, crit is better. My question is, which kind of server are we on? There have been a few private servers in the past that actually calculated spells with a one-roll system, and although we were pretty sure it was a two-roll system on Nostalrius, we could never 100% confirm it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Does anyone know how we can test this, seeing as there aren't any level 63 target dummies around?

Yes. This is precisely what I'm asking. Responses saying "See, how it works is..." do not help clarify things, because how it's supposed to work is already well-established. What I'm requesting is any information demonstrating that it's working how it's supposed to. Would you be willing to point me towards whatever info you have confirming that the two-roll system worked on Nost? I've seen a fair amount of convincing evidence, but every thread seems to inevitably run into some troubling data points that make it hard to be certain.

This is how spells worked in retail, and people are pretty sure it's how they worked on Nost. However, this is not how melee attacks work, nor is it how spells worked on Feenix. What you are describing is a two-roll system. By two rolls, I mean the game makes two calculations before the number pops up: 1) The game determines whether or not the spell hits. 2) If the spell hits, the game determines whether or not the spell crits. In a two-roll system, as you just described, crits only replace hits. However, in a one-roll system, which melee attacks use, crits can replace both hits AND misses. It factors in your miss chance and hit chance simultaneously. In fact, with a big enough level disparity between the attacker and his target, you can have scenarios where the only way for a melee attack to land is by critting. Your answer is merely an in-depth description of a two-roll system. You're not providing any evidence that this is actually how this server calculates spell crits aside from asserting that it is. This is not how all attacks are calculated though, and while the two-roll system was present in retail, it has not always been how spell crits were calculated on other private servers, due to discrepancies in the code. I want to be sure that such discrepancies do not exist here. So I'm asking for confirmation that the two-roll system -- the one you just described above -- IS actually how things work here. It's supposed to be, but "supposed to be" isn't always enough to go off of with private servers. In order to be sure, we need to do some testing. But seeing as there aren't any target dummies around, I have no idea how to test it. And thus, I'd like to see a staff response if possible.

Those are the hit caps, yes, and thanks for trying to help, but this doesn't really address my question. Your post tacitly assumes that hit and crit are on a two-roll system: that (in your example) 51% crit does not mean that 51% of the spells you CAST will crit, but rather that 51% of your spells that LAND will crit. In this scenario, spell crit is dependent on spell hit, and thus spell hit is better because it technically increases your chance to crit. My question is whether we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is the case. It was the case in vanilla, but it has not always been the case on other private servers, and it was not even 100% confirmed on Nost 1.0. I'm looking for confirmation from somebody who has seen/done testing, or from the staff that spell crit is in fact calculated AFTER it is determined whether or not the spell has landed.

Only depending on your concept of what "required" means. Can you get into premades without engineering? Sure. But all other things the same, in a fight between two similarly geared and skilled locks, the one with engineering toys will almost always win. There are simply too many advantages conferred by engineering. You can root melee (net-o-matic), AoE stun groups of enemies (various bombs), silence casters (arcane bomb), run faster for 20 sec per minute (rocket boots), etc. Warlocks exist to make life miserable for casters. But we struggle immensely against melee. The added benefit of a root/stun against rogues and warriors alone makes the profession worth it. If you want to be competitive in PvP, your goal should be to give yourself every advantage available to you. Engineering is one such advantage, and in many fights, it can be the difference between life and death.

In Vanilla WoW, arguments over whether it was better to stack spell hit or spell crit were common, because the relationship between the two stats was unknown for a long period of time. Specifically, nobody was sure whether crits were on a two-roll system or a one-roll system. In a two-roll system, the game first considers your hit chance and determines whether or not you hit the mob, and then, if it's determined that your spell landed, it calculates whether or not you crit. Meanwhile, in a one-roll system, they're calculated simultaneously. The game rolls for crit, hit, and miss all at the same time, meaning that if you have a 1% added crit chance, exactly 1% more of your attacks will crit. It was later confirmed by Blizzard that melee crit is calculated with a one-roll system, while spell crit is calculated with a two-roll system. Unfortunately, private servers are not always 100% Blizzlike. On Feenix, it was eventually determined that spell crits there were calculated on a one-roll system. On Nostalrius, there was some testing done that indicated that spells were in fact being calculated on a two-roll system, but it was never completely settled. Can the Elysium devs confirm that spell crits are in fact rolled AFTER it is determined whether a spell will land?

Yeah that was vanilla. It was fixed in 1.4, and no longer works on this server.

Damn son

Similar issue with boats on Alliance. I appear out in the ocean, far beyond fatigue range, and am constantly "falling" so I can't use stuck and have to get guildies to summon me. Don't know if this will work for zeppelins, but there's a fix for boats: The second it starts moving, log out. The boat/zeppelin moves for about 25 seconds before it disappears and reappears in the other continent, so you have a small but workable window to do it. Then, wait a minute and a half or so, and log back in. You'll be at your destination.

Any advice as to how to fix the bug where you get stuck out in the ocean? Unstuck doesn't work, and I can't open a ticket because I get disconnected after 10 seconds or so whenever I log in.

Yeah I hear the French government spends a lot of time on private wow severs looking for trolls. That's how Animegirl ended up in Guantanamo Bay.