Weapon Skill Effects not Blizzlike [Very Important]

[Hanzemon 3]

**Introduction.**

This will be a long article about the flaws in the current attack table and the mechanics involved, I will briefly touch the current behavior and compare it to the Blizzlike Classic behavior by going deeply into the mechanics involved, Any error or lack of information regarding the current behavior should not be taken too strongly as I will provide the correct behavior that will kick the other into the maelstrom forever.

--------------------------------------------**THE CURRENT BEHAVIOR**-------------------------------------------

Right now the effects of Weapon skill over the Miss chance **against a mob 3 levels higher**  looks like this:

Weapon skill: 300  --->    Chance to miss: 8.60% 
Weapon skill: 301  --->    Chance to miss: 7.96%
Weapon skill: 302  --->    Chance to miss: 7.32% 
Weapon skill: 303  --->    Chance to miss: 6.66% --Hail satan 
Weapon skill: 304  --->    Chance to miss: 6.04% 
Weapon skill: 305  --->    Chance to miss: 5.40%   

Every 1 weapon skill is reducing 0.64% chance to miss the target, this only occurs when the difference between the mob's defense skill and player's weapon skill is > 10

Now beyond 305 it changes and the effects of weapon skill over the miss chance against a mob 3 levels higher looks like this:

Weapon skill: 306  --->    Chance to miss: 5.36%
Weapon skill: 307  --->    Chance to miss: 5.32%
Weapon skill: 308  --->    Chance to miss: 5.28% 
Weapon skill: 309  --->    Chance to miss: 5.24%
Weapon skill: 310  --->    Chance to miss: 5.20%
Weapon skill: 311  --->    Chance to miss: 5.16% 
Weapon skill: 312  --->    Chance to miss: 5.12%
Weapon skill: 313 --->     Chance to miss: 5.08% 
Weapon skill: 314  --->    Chance to miss: 5.04% 
Weapon skill: 315  --->    Chance to miss: 5.00% 

Now every 1 weapon skill reduces the chance to miss the target by 0.04%.

Table

 

---------------------------------------**INTENDED BEHAVIOR (BLIZZLIKE)**---------------------------------------

**In the original version of World of Warcraft it worked like this:**

--Citing Wow Gamepedia on _Weapon skill_ September 30th 2006.

For each point that your weapon skill exceeds your opponent's defense, you gain the following:

Your chance to miss decreases by 0.04%.
Your chance to score a critical hit increases by 0.04%.
Your opponent's chance to block your attack decreases by 0.04%.
Your opponent's chance to parry your attack decreases by 0.04%.
Your opponent's chance to dodge your attack decreases by 0.04%.

Effectively, you can consider weapon skill to be the inverse of the defense skill. 

Source: Wow Gamepedia on Weapon Skill  30 September, 2006

-

 Now, that brings some doubts, it specifies "exceeds". But what about when it's lower?. 
Let's have some more insight:

--Citing Wow Gamepedia on _Dual wield_ September 6th 2006.

...Take a rogue for example vs. a 63 monster, he has 5%+(0.04% * 15)= 5.6% base miss chance (assuming he has 300 weapon skill and the monster has no special internal Defense skill bonuses),** plus 19% dual wield miss chance, leaving us with a total miss chance of 24.6%.

We can see it has actually the same effect

Source: Wow Gamepedia on Dual wield 6 September, 2006

-

Okay, now we know that the miss chance against a lvl 63 mob at 300 weapon skill is 5.6%  and not 8.6%, but, what does the actual **Attack Table** look like?

Let's jump into that:

--Citing WoWWiki on Attack table October 29th 2006.

Example 2
Elliot the Rogue is level 60, and is attacking a boss mob along with the rest of his raid group. He has stocked up on all sorts of +crit gear, so his crit chance against the boss mob is a whopping 30%. Since he is dual-wielding, he incurs an additional +19% miss chance on every autoattack swing; and although his +5 weapon skill gear does counter a little bit of this, he did not bring any +hit gear with him, so his miss chance against a boss mob is 24.4%. (+Hit gear doesn't directly increase your chance of a hit; instead, it reduces your chance of a miss.) When he attacks the boss mob from the front, Elliot's attack table looks like this:
 

Note that despite his nominal "crit chance" of 30%, his miss chance from dual-wielding and his glancing blow chance due to the boss's high level mean that only 19.4% of his attacks are going to be critical hits. This conundrum is sometimes referred to as the Crit Cap -- his chance to crit is capped at 19.4%, so 10.6% of his +crit bonus is wasted.

Hanzemon: Now we can notice that Elliot's chance to miss is 24.40% instead of 24.60% (5% base + 0.6% Wepskill/Defskill difference + 19% dual wield = 24.60%) this is because as said before he has +5 Weapon skill which reduces his chances to miss by: 0.04% * 5= 0.20%; now, substract it to the total miss chance:

24.60% - 0.20% = 24.40%. 

 Let's continue a lilttle further.

Realizing his stupidity, Elliot maneuvers around behind the boss mob to continue his attacks. From behind, a mob cannot parry or block, so Elliot's attack table now looks like this:

And finally but not less important, for yellow attacks.

 

Source: [WoWWiki on Attack table October 29th 2006

------------------------------------------------------**EVIDENCE**-----------------------------------------------------

Now I will show you the post of a player that played World of Warcraft back in 2006.

--Citing the player Zoroaster member of < The Obsidian Order > from Aggramar server in the forums of WoW Europe.

 Regarding Avoidance:

Dodge, Block and Parry all have a base stat of 5% for mobs. They increase as the mobs Defense becomes higher than your weapon skill at 0.04 per point. Each Mob gains 5 points in defence per level. Block and Parry only apply when attacking from the front. 

Base miss chance is 5%. If you duel weild your white attacks (auto attacks) suffer a further 19%. All your +hit gear reduces this number. For every point the mob defense is higher than your weapon skill, miss goes up by 0.04%.

His examples of the Attack table

Your yellow strikes (special attacks) aren't that effected by targetting the boss, but your white strikes (auto attacks) all of a sudden are much less damaging. Worse to come - say you have +5% Hit and 25% crit, fresh from farming level 60 mobs...

Yellow (Special)
5.6% Dodge 
5.6% Parry (0) 
5.6% Block (0) 
0.6% Miss 
24.4% Crit (-0.6 due to weapon/defence differnece) 
58.2% Hit (69.4) 

White (Auto) 
5.6% Dodge 
5.6% Parry (0) 
5.6% Block) (0) 
19.6% Miss 
40% Glancing 
23.6% Crit (24.4) 
0% Hit (10.4) 

Source & complete post (I recommend you to read it): http://web.archive.org/web/20061115223930/http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=14381707&sid=1

---------------------------------------------GLANCING BLOW DAMAGE----------------------------------------

To finish let's go over glancing blows real quick

--Citing Wow Gamepedia on _Weapon skill_ September 30th 2006.

Glancing Blow chance
The percentage chance of a glancing blow on any melee auto-attack, with either the main hand weapon or the off-hand weapon, is normally agreed to be the following:

(NPC’s Defense skill – YOUR Weapon skill – 5) * 3% + 10%

... where "YOUR Weapon skill" is capped at your level * 5.

With this formula we can calculate the glancing blow chance very easily, which is 40% against bosses regardless of all the +Weapon Skill bonuses you might have, including racials.*

Source: Wow Gamepedia on Weapon Skill &nbsp;30 September, 2006.

Thanks to Killerduki, for debating with me the behavior of the current private servers in comparison with all the data and evidence from retail Classic World of Warcraft .

-Hanzemon.

Original post on Github : https://github.com/elysium-project/classic-bug-tracker/issues/960

Edited December 1, 2018 by Hanzemon
Clarifying that 40% chance to glance is specifically against mobs 3 levels higher.

[Zancon 117]

Wow what a post. I have called attention to this for our development team. I very much appreciate the effort.

[killerduki 54]

5 hours ago, Zancon said:

Wow what a post. I have called attention to this for our development team. I very much appreciate the effort.

I had to do this once for all , to bury this "Anti Hybrids" mantra.

With this formula all this "warrior fury/rogue top dps" , "warrior arms/retri/shaman suboptimal dps" will get buried.

Since the Duel Wields will suffer HUGE , while 1hShield/2H will get overpowered. 

Hope you fix this and finally have Blizzlike Values regarding "some mechanic" . 

Say hello to Shenna! 

/Kind regards Killerduki

Edited November 16, 2018 by killerduki

[Hanzemon 3]

18 hours ago, killerduki said:

I had to do this once for all , to bury this "Anti Hybrids" mantra.

With this formula all this "warrior fury/rogue top dps" , "warrior arms/retri/shaman suboptimal dps" will get buried.

Since the Duel Wields will suffer HUGE , while 1hShield/2H will get overpowered. 

Hope you fix this and finally have Blizzlike Values regarding "some mechanic" . 

Say hello to Shenna! 

/Kind regards Killerduki

I think what this will do is more than nerfing anything is bringing up setups that would be considered underdog in the current flaw system, as it is not directly nerfing any class but instead balancing out the gap between RACES that have +Weapon Skill Bonuses vs RACES  that don't have +Weapon skill Bonuses.

Indeed Warriors and Rogues will have a higher chance to hit their boss targets, but in the same page all melee classes will l do aswell, and have more flexibility regarding Race and Itemization.

I am glad for the information you helped me with for making this post, but I cannot agree or give false expectations on what this fix will do. This will not nerf Warriors or Rogues, but it will certainly buff races that can play those classes AND do not have any +Weapon skill bonuses, as the only big advantage those races will have will be +15% glancing blow damage in the early raids and dungeons.

Kind regards.

Hanzemon.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Hanzemon
Bad grammar Andy

[killerduki 54]

On 11/17/2018 at 4:15 AM, Hanzemon said:

I think what this will do is more than nerfing anything is bringing up setups that would be considered underdog in the current flaw system, as it is not directly nerfing any class but instead balancing out the gap between RACES that have +Weapon Skill Bonuses vs RACES  that don't have +Weapon skill Bonuses.

Indeed Warriors and Rogues will have a higher chance to hit their boss targets, but in the same page all melee classes will l do aswell, and have more flexibility regarding Race and Itemization.

I am glad for the information you helped me with for making this post, but I cannot agree or give false expectations on what this fix will do. This will not nerf Warriors or Rogues, but it will certainly buff races that can play those classes AND do not have any +Weapon skill bonuses, as the only big advantage those races will have will be +15% glancing blow damage in the early raids and dungeons.

Kind regards.

Hanzemon.

You forget about 2handers will not have to use crap weap skill items and instead they are going to have 5.6% miss instead of 8.6% miss + bad items duel wields will have to use in order to get that hit rating for their white swings. 

/Kind regards Killerduki

[Hanzemon 3]

On 11/18/2018 at 5:29 PM, killerduki said:

You forget about 2handers will not have to use crap weap skill items and instead they are going to have 5.6% miss instead of 8.6% miss + bad items duel wields will have to use in order to get that hit rating for their white swings. 

/Kind regards Killerduki

Actually dual wielders already have to use lower item level gear to get +%hit, as I said this is not nerfing any class specifically, it is just indirectly nerfing Sword Specialization, Mace Specialization and Axe Specialization by making them not  give ridiculous amounts +%hit and buffing races with not such racials by balancing the chance to miss across the board. This will not decrease the damage output of Humas and Orcs Rogues/Warriors at all since their chance to miss against bosses will be lowered by 0.20%, at the end of the day it will be an unnoticeable DPS increase. What it will do is increase the damage output of Night elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Taurens, Trolls and Undead Rogues/Warriors/Shamans/Paladins against bosses. 

You can consider this fix an indirect nerf to the  Humas and Orcs Rogues/Warriors by bringing up all the other combinations, but the truth is that Humas and Orcs Rogues/Warriors will still be the best Race/Class combination for DPS since they racials alone provide them with +15% glancing blow damage.