WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 2
For those of you who have been playing World of Warcraft since launch, this information is going to be ancient history. However, for players newer to the game, I imagine that many of the stats you'll find on armor and weapons remain something of a mystery -- and it's for the new players in the audience that this post was written. That said, if you haven't read our recent post attempting to explain the five basic attributes, you ought to start there, because the basic stats all impact the more advanced stats we'll be discussing here.
In part 2, we're going to be talking about stats that improve physical DPS -- if that sounds interesting to you, read on!
Attack power (AP): Increases your melee damage per second (DPS) by 1 for every 14 AP. Other than equipping gear that specifically increases attack power, you can increase your AP by equipping gear with agility (for Hunters, Rogues, and cat form Druids), by equipping gear with strength (for all classes).
AP is the bread and butter of melee damage classes -- Rogues, feral Druids, DPS Warriors, and Retribution Paladins can always use attack power, which directly improves their DPS.
Each class can calculate their attack power as follows:
Is there such a thing as too much attack power? Maybe. You can't focus on any one stat to the exclusion of all others, and getting all attack power while skipping out on stamina, for example, could land you in trouble when you don't have enough hit points to survive a single fight. However, some classes and builds focus on killing things faster than they can kill you -- you'll have to find the right balance between damage and defense for your playstyle.
Beyond gear, some classes have talents that improve AP:
Ranged attack power (RAP): Increases your ranged damage per second (DPS) by 1 for every 14 RAP. You can increase your RAP by equipping gear with agility (for Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors).
Obviously, RAP is what every hunter wants -- it directly improves their primary source of damage. But while it does improve the ranged damage done by rogues and warriors, their ranged damage is such a small portion of their overall damage that RAP shouldn't be a concern for them (at all!).
As with AP itself, it's possible to overdo it with RAP. While RAP is excellent for hunters, remember that to keep doing damage you still need hit points to stay alive and mana points to keep throwing out high-damage skills.
As mentioned above, Hunters are the only class that should worry about RAP. Their RAP numbers can be calculated thusly:
Since RAP is really only important for Hunters, there are fewer talents that improve RAP, but there are a couple in the Hunter trees:
Note: We're about to talk about critical strike rating and hit rating. Why, you ask, are we discussing "ratings" instead of "percentages?" In their pre-BC patch, Blizzard changed the way they did itemization for crit chance, hit chance, and a few other things. Instead of gear having a flat 1% crit on it, gear would have +14 critical strike rating -- and different amounts of critical strike rating give you different critical strike percentages at different levels. This change allows the gear to scale better: now Blizzard can put crit rating on low level gear, which will be great for a while, but you'll outgrow eventually as you need more crit rating to equal the same amount of crit percentage. However, it also meant that level 60s who may have been raiding since the game's release would outgrow their gear and have to replace with better stuff to keep the same benefit. (This change put the new ratings more in line with the existing five basic attributes, which already scaled with level.) However, while gear now grants "ratings," you'll find that talents still give you a flat percentage improvement.
Critical strike rating: Physical critical strikes are special attacks that do 200% normal damage. You have a small chance to score a critical strike with each hit and you can improve that chance by equipping gear with agility on it or by equipping gear with critical strike rating on it.
When's critical strike rating useful?
When's critical strike rating less useful?
Before we continue, I have to interlude with some basic information on how threat works. (After all, how are you to know whether you're in danger of pulling aggro if you don't understand it?) Basically, when you attack a monster, the monster has "threat list" containing everyone it's noticed (everyone who's done damage to it, buffed or healed someone who's done damage to it, body pulled, pulled a linked mob, etc). The tank's job in any situation is to stay on top of this threat list. So what causes threat? Some basic definitions:
One point of damage equals one point of threat. Some attacks cause more threat than their damage would indicate -- these are usually noted in the skill's tooltip.
Each point of healing causes a half a point of threat. This is only for actual health restored -- overhealing does not cause threat.
Buffs cause a small amount of threat when cast.
Gaining mana, energy, or rage causes a small amount of threat. So health potions, mana potions, and skills like Life Tap all generate threat -- and can pull aggro! (So if you've just pulled aggro for some reason or another and the tank pulled it off you again -- a healing potion to bring yourself back to decent shape can pull that boss right back to you. Trust me, I've done it!)
Some monsters (bosses, usually), have abilities that reduce players' threat on them. (Either just the tank or all players.)
To prevent monsters from jumping constantly from target to target, you have to go well above the top target on the threat list before the monster will turn to you.
If you're in melee range, you need 110% threat of the monster's target to pull aggro.
If you're ranged, you need 130% threat of the monster's target to pull aggro.
All taunt abilities will give you equal threat to the highest person on the threat list of your target.
For more detailed information on threat mechanics, I point you towards Kenco of Perenolde's Guide to Threat.
Now, back to the subject of what you can do about critical strikes -- and how to avoid pulling aggro.
At level 70, you need 22.1 critical strike rating to get 1% critical strike chance.
Several classes have talents that will improve their critical strike chance:
Several classes have talents that will improve their critical strike damage:
Several classes have other interesting abilities that are triggered by crits:
Attack Tables: The so-called attack table is a chart that explains how the game determines which type of attack will land on any given attack (a crit? a hit? a miss? a glancing blow?) -- and it's important to know a little bit about before we discuss hit rating below. While Blizzard doesn't release specific details on how these calculations are done, they drop the occasional major clue on how they work:
The way WoW calculates crit rate is over ALL attacks. Crit rate is not based on hits only. In other words, if you have a 5% crit rate, that 5% chance includes misses. (Source: CM Aeus on the European forums.)
What's this mean? The result of any of your attacks is determined by a single random number generated by the game. So a random number is generated and then compared to a table of possible results to determine how your attack lands. Let's look at some examples by Satrina of Stormrage.
Here's a sample attack table, presuming a random number between 0 and 999:
000-049 = Miss (5%)
050-149 = Dodge (10%)
150-249 = Parry (10%)
250-349 = Block (10%)
350-499 = Critical Hit (15%)
500-999 = Hit (50%)
So your attacks have a 5% chance to be missed, a 10% chance to be dodged, a 10% chance to be parried, a 10% chance to be blocked, a 15% chance to crit, and a 50% chance to simply hit. Let's say you add 1% to hit to your character, through gear or talents. The table would look like this:
000-039 = Miss (4%)
040-139 = Dodge (10%)
140-239 = Parry (10%)
240-339 = Block (10%)
340-489 = Critical Hit (15%)
490-999 = Hit (51%)
Since the table can't add up to more than 100%, adding to your hit chance subtracts from your miss chance. Now let's see what happens if we add 1% to crit:
000-049 = Miss (5%)
050-149 = Dodge (10%)
150-249 = Parry (10%)
250-349 = Block (10%)
350-509 = Critical Hit (16%)
510-999 = Hit (49%)
Again, since the numbers can't add up to more than 100%, adding 1% to crit, reduces your chance to score a normal hit by 1%. And what if you add 1% to hit and 1% to crit?
000-039 = Miss (4%)
040-139 = Dodge (10%)
140-239 = Parry (10%)
240-339 = Block (10%)
340-499 = Critical Hit (16%)
500-999 = Hit (50%)
While these examples are going to vary depending on gear and talents, this should give you an idea of how attacks are calculated.
Hit Rating: Additional hit rating improves your chance to hit (instead of miss) a monster with a physical attack.
Your base chance to miss (on mobs of equal level -- your chance to miss gets higher the greater the level difference) is 5% if you're using a one-handed weapon with no off-hand, 9% if you're using a two-handed weapon, and 24% if you're dual-wielding. (Hunters note: ranged weapons fall under that default 5% chance to miss.)
For each level above you a target is, you gain an additional 1% chance to miss.
So when's +hit useful?
When's +hit not so useful?
At level 70, 15.8 hit rating grants 1% hit chance.
Several classes have talents that will increase their ability to hit with weapons:
Weapon Skill Rating: Improves your skill with weapons. While not heavily itemized, weapon skill rating is swell, because it gives you a bit of everything good in the melee world -- however, it gives you a very small bit of everything good.
For each point that your weapon skill gains in relation to your opponent's defense you will gain:
At level 70, 3.9 weapon skill rating grants 1 skill point.
Several classes have talents that increase their skill with weapons:
