this is the second post of my series and is building up on the first post. ( Theoryclub #1 ) In this part I'll be writing about "Glancing Blows" and "Crushing Blows". Also I'll clear the myth "an attack that doesn't hit can't crit" and explain why the combattable has 10.000 slots.
Theoryclub #2:
In the following I'll only talk about fighting an NPC from a players perspective. The statements are only partially or not at all correct for PvP or NPCvsNPC Combat.
What are glancing blows ?
Glancing Blows are basic meele attacks ("White Hits") which deal reduced damage. They can only accure when fighting Monsters which are at least 1 lvl above the attacking player (If he reached his current maximum base Weaponskill). The bigger the difference between attacking player and defending NPC the bigger is also the chance to land a glancing blow. While fighting an NPC 3 lvl above yourself (Boss LvL) there is a 40% chance to glance the NPC. The amount of damage dealed with a glancing blow depends on the weaponskill of your current weapon. If you reached 300 Weaponskill a glancing blow will deal 70% damage of a normal auto attack.
Can I do something against glancing blows ?
Yes and no. Sadly it's not possible to decrease the chance of scoring a glancing blow. But it is possible to increase the damage a glancing blow deals. Each point of weaponskill which exceeds 300 will give an additional 3% damage up to a maximum of 100%. So if a player is able to get 10 weaponskill from talents or items his glancing blows will deal 100% damage of a normal attack.
Is it useful to do something against glacing blows ?
Yes, it is very useful to do something against glancing blows.
So again let's take our lvl 60 gnome rogue from the Theoryclub #1. All his values stayed the same but this time he grouped up with lots of friends and went into Molten Core to face BossLvL-Monsters. Like written above a player has a 40% chance to land a glancing blow when he is facing BossLvL-Monsters.
So if we look at the rogues combattable for a normal attack ("White Hit") then it'll look like this:
001 - 005 Dodge
006 - 010 Parry
011 - 034 Miss
035 - 039 Block
040 - 079 Glancing Blow
080 - 094 Critical Hit
095 - 100 Normal Hit
Roughly 50% of a rogues damage is done with White Hits. If 40% of all White Hits only deal 70% of their usual damage then it will result in a significant decrease in DPS. In General we can say that weaponskill between 300 - 310 is worth a lot for every meele dps class. One point of weaponskill between 300-310 is equaly strong as 1% crit when facing Bosses. The bigger the part of a players white hits damage is compared to his overall phisical damage the more efficient weaponrating will be for that player. I can provide a calculation to back up these numbers but the calculation is a little messy and obscure (and varies from class to class) which would be too big for this theoryclub.
What are crushing blows ?
Crushing blows are attacks that can only occure when a player is attacked by an NPC which attackrating
( NPCLvL * 5 ) is at least 15 points higher then the players base defenserating. So if a player reached 300 defenserating only a NPC with lvl 63 or higher (f.e. bosses) can land a crushing blow. Crushing blows deal 50% additional damage of a normal attack. The Chance for a crushing blow is 15% if the player reached 300 defenserating. The formular is:
(Attackrating - Defenserating of the victim(max. 300)) * 2 - 15
Example: LvL 63 (Boss) NPC attacking a lvl 60 player that reached 300 basedefenserating
( 315 - 300 ) * 2 - 15 = 15
Is there something I can do to avoid crushing blows?
This question is especially interesting for tanks as they are the ones supposed to tank the boss
Crushing blows can be avoided by pushing them of the combattable. Or to say it differently a player needs to have enough dodge, parry, miss and block that there is no more open slots on the combattable for crushing blows. Lets take a LvL 60 warrior which has 10% dodge, parry, miss and block. The combattable for a boss attacking the warrior would look like this:
001 - 010 Dodge
011 - 020 Parry
021 - 030 Miss
031 - 040 Block
041 - 045 Critical Hit
046 - 060 Crushing Blow
061 - 100 Normal Hit
If our warrior would now use his ability Shiel Block the combattable would look like this:
001 - 010 Dodge
011 - 020 Parry
021 - 030 Miss
031 - 100 Block
After filling Dodge, Parry and Miss there are only 71 open slots in our combattable left but our warrior has 85% block while Shield Block is active. So every of the remaining 71 slots will be filled with block and there is no more slots for crushing blows on the table. This is also one of the main reasons why warriors are the best raiding tanks in Vanilla WoW.
Why are there 10.000 slots in the combattable ?
For sure many of you have hovered with there mouse over the auto-attack spell (or dodge-icon) in their spellbook and noticed that it shows the players chance to land a critical hit. All the values are calculated up to two digits behind the comma. So the smalest chance for an event in WoW can be 0.01%. The probability for that event would be 1 out of 10.000. So the combattable has 10.000 slots to be able to recieve all the probabilities.
Since this post got rather long I'll put the Myth into the next theoryclub which will be released soon. I'll also talk about all the stats and how they effect each class in the next post.
As always I really appreciate any feedback
so far justclassic
