What does Weapon Skill do in vanilla?

[Keftenk]

I'm doing some further research and coming across a lot of items that have +X to a weapon skill or even some racials like Orc's Axe Specialization giving +5. I remember this was expertise in TBC, but did it all work the same? Just a different name?

Glancing blows? Does it affect hit% too?

[Netherfrost]

For simplicity, it's better to just think of it like this...
Increase of weapon skill means you're able to hit higher level mobs without the penalty from the reduced glancing dmg... it basically brings your weapon skill level up to that of a higher level mob(bosses are 63).

But, you still have all the base miss/dodge/parry/block that you would have if fighting a level 60 while you are level 60.. Like in the ordinary attack table. Hopefully this makes since.

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%.

Glancing hits have a 40% chance to occur against level 63 mobs, increasing weapon skill will reduce the damage penalty from the hits. (At 300, its 40% chance with 40% reduction). Once your weaponskill is at 310, your penalty is 0%, so 40% of your hits will never miss or crit, but will always do the usual white dmg.

Important to know is that a boss has a base dodge chance of 5.6% and can only parry/block attacks that are made from their front, but since a rogue should never be attacking a dungeon/raid monster/boss from the front, we will see their parry/block chance as 0%.
Your base chance to miss is 24% when dual wielding against a boss.
Another good thing to know is that when you as a player gain +hit you do not exactly increase your hit chance, instead you reduce the chance to miss(Important part).

The total amount in the hit table can not be higher than 100%, and therefore theres a priotization system, crit will always go above others, but it can only be there if you have enough "minus" miss
Your chance to hit is what is left over to reach 100% after adding all the other things. Lets say your chance to get a miss+dodge+glancing blow+crit = 80%, then you have 20% to get a normal hit.

Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill (300) against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield.

I just brainstormed on the topic, so feel free to ask questions :p
And, please hesitate looking at the wowwiki formular. Its incorrect at some points.

[Keftenk]

Wow o_o
A lot of info! This is great, thanks :O

Too bad for my Enh. Shaman luls...

[Hatson]

I'd also like to add to Netherfrost's statement, just a bit of extra info:

Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill (300) against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield.

And the chance to miss increases by 1% for every level the target is over your character.
Example: Raid Bosses (skull) are 3 levels higher than the max level (60 + 3 = 63)
So the chance to miss increases by 1% x 3 levels = 3% increased chance to miss.
(Keep in mind that skull level portrait on players does NOT mean they are 3 levels higher than 60. This only applies to raid bosses).

So say you're an Arms Warrior using a 2hander: You ideally want 5 + 3 = 8% hit if you're going to be swinging at raid bosses.

I believe the same formula goes for the dual-wielders, making it 27% chance to miss vs raid bosses.
As for casters: The spell hit % required to hit cap against equal level players / monsters is 14% - So the spell hit cap for raid bosses would be 17%.
Correct me if I'm wrong on those two, though.

[Netherfrost]

I'd also like to add to Netherfrost's statement, just a bit of extra info:

Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill (300) against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield.

And the chance to miss increases by 1% for every level the target is over your character.
Example: Raid Bosses (skull) are 3 levels higher than the max level (60 + 3 = 63)
So the chance to miss increases by 1% x 3 levels = 3% increased chance to miss.
(Keep in mind that skull level portrait on players does NOT mean they are 3 levels higher than 60. This only applies to raid bosses).

So say you're an Arms Warrior using a 2hander: You ideally want 5 + 3 = 8% hit if you're going to be swinging at raid bosses.

I believe the same formula goes for the dual-wielders, making it 27% chance to miss vs raid bosses.
As for casters: The spell hit % required to hit cap against equal level players / monsters is 14% - So the spell hit cap for raid bosses would be 17%.
Correct me if I'm wrong on those two, though.

Well, now "correct" becomes a bit ambiguous. This is the case on 99% of the vanilla servers, however it is not blizzlike. In most cases the extra 3% is also cleared away once you reach 310 weaponskill.

[Armilus]

This isn't really about weapon skill but Netherfrost went pretty far in explaining it so I'm going to finish it off.

From what Netherfrost said you will notice that you have a base 27% chance to miss, 40% chance for glancing blow, 5.6% chance to be dodged.

These total to 72.6%, so before taking any of your gear stats into account you only have 27.4% left over for normal hits and crits (Note: This only applies to white hits, your yellow attacks do not have a glancing blow chance).

That means that with 0% hit you can only get up to 27.4% crit, at which point all of your yellow attacks that are not dodged, missed or glancing, will be crits.

This is called the soft crit cap because crit becomes less useful when your white damage is already maxed out. It does still affect yellow attacks though.

In order to increase your soft crit cap, you need to reduce your miss chance with +hit gear. For the most part, you won't have to worry about the soft crit cap unless you are in best-in-slot gear and have the 5% crit buff from the onyxia/nefarian head turn in.

[Moxey]

I remember doing AQ40 as horde and our orc warrior was using a level 3x blue drop from uldaman rare spawn cause it gave +axes and was a better dps increase then any other hat.

[Hatson]

This is the one you're referring to, Moxey.

And yes, it is very good. Also BoE from a rare spawn so if the server gets enough players and economy raiding end-game. This could become quite high value.

[Hatson]

Well, now "correct" becomes a bit ambiguous. This is the case on 99% of the vanilla servers, however it is not blizzlike. In most cases the extra 3% is also cleared away once you reach 310 weaponskill.

I was speaking of in a sense if you had the usual max weaponskill (300). As a continuation of what you said when someone had 300 weaponskill:

Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill (300) against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield.

I wasn't taking in any extra weaponskill.

[Netherfrost]

It's still never above 5/24 if its scripted correctly. As I said, it is not blizzlike.