Hmmmmmmmm. . . .Improved Berserker Change

Interesting, 

The tooltip for Improved Berserker Stance is undergoing some changes on the PTR.  At first glance, I thought maybe they decided that the nerf to Titan's Grip was too high, and they were trying to make up for it some, but then I went through some of the math.

In fact, if you look at the sources, you'll see these are the different things being reported:

Current tooltip (at rank 5): Improves AP by 10% and reduces threat by 10%

Proposed tooltip (as of a week ago): Improves Strength by 20% and reduces threat by 10%

Proposed tooltip (more recently): Improves Strength by 15% and reduces threat by 10%

Ok, so let's see. . . .

At level 80, it's not uncommon to see Fury Warriors with around 900-1100 strength, which contributes 1800-2200 AP pre-increase, and 1980-2420 AP post increase.  This is out of the total AP which is usually in the 3000-3500 range.  

Suppose that instead of increasing AP, they instead increase Strength (which admittedly plays a big role in the AP calculation).  So to start with, let's take 90% of the total AP range giving about 2700-3150 total AP, of which, 1800-2200 is from strength.

Now we increase strength by a percentage, say p%  (so essentially, we have (1+p)*S where S falls somewhere between 900-1100 pre buff etc.

What does it take to get to an equivalent AP?

Well, suppose we get a range for it as well, since these are just estimates anyway.  Suppose we have the lower end of everything there.  

(1+p)*900*2 + 900 = 3000  

gives us p = 16 2/3 %  (approximately 16.67%)

Now let's look at the upper end of the range

(1+p)*1100*2 + 950 = 3500

gives us p = 15 10/11%  (approximately 15.91%)

So essentially, it seems as though the 15% is less than the equivalent AP buff which itself is less than 20%.

Let's get some anonymous true data from Fury warriors in my guild that do pretty well, all of them have improved Berserker stance.

#1  Strength 1069  AP 2721

#2  Strength 1173  AP 3467

#3  Strength 1030 AP 3700

So for Warrior #1, the un-increased AP would be 2449, and 2138 of it would be from Strength.

    So, 

           (1+p)*1069*2 + 311 = 2721

    gives

           p=12.7%   

For Warrior #2, the un-increased AP would be 3120, and 2346 of it would be from Strength.

   So,

          (1+p)*1173*2 + 775 = 3467

   gives

          p = 14.75%

And finally for Warrior #3, the un-increased AP would be 3330 and 2060 of it is from Strength.

   So, 

         (1+p)*1030*2 + 1270 = 3700

   gives

          p = 17.96%

Now, before you start saying "Why the fuss? Some warriors will benefit," I should point out to you that Warrior #1, was clearly off-tanking for someone yesterday, because they signed out wearing their shield and protection gear, so it's not a bit surprising that their AP isn't that high, and of the two remaining, the second one has "Berserking" enchanted on his weapon instead of "Massacre" so instead of adding a steady amount of AP, it has a proc chance and doesn't appear in his current AP.

So it would seem that the estimates are about right, somewhere just slightly higher than 15%, maybe as high as 18% would be needed to get this to work for them, just to keep it consistent.  

I have to believe that Blizzard must still be getting data that even after teh 10% physical damage nerf, Fury Warriors are still doing too much damage compared to other equally geared classes.  

I'd just really like to see the data they're basing that on.

In Defense of the Devastate Glyph

I've seen some disparaging remarks made about the devastate glyph, and I'll be the first to admit, if I'm MT on a raid, realistically, the glyph of blocking is a lot better, but if you're OT, or your main focus is clearing trash effortlessly or PvPing, I've decided that the glyph of devastate isn't that bad, really.  

Minuses - it doesn't generate threat on the second sunder armor debuff, so it does as much threat as the first, third and fifth devastate attempts in that order, instead of the first, second, and third, which is still a little more, but not as much more as you'd have from applying a sunder armor on top of the devastate (which might be a little rediculous).  It eats up one of your precious glyph slots.  For long drawn out fights (like those against bosses), after the first 10-20 secs having a glyphed devastate is exactly as good as having a non glyphed devastate, so it doesn't really do you any good in this situation.

Plusses - When you're working with trash or mobs or foes that will typically drop in 30 secs or less (after they're "really" engaged) you need all the time you can get and blowing the 5 gcd's (about 8-10 secs depending on reaction time) to get up a full stack of sunders doesn't leave you much time to build aggro.  So every spare gcd you can free up is one more big aggro move you can throw (Shield Slam, Shockwave, Revenge, whatever).  And there's not much chance your pet mob will live to much beyond the time it takes you to get your 5 sunders up anyway, so by the time you get to the point that it doesn't matter whether you have the glyph or not, your mob is already dead.

Another thing to note about the MT situation, if you're MT for single bosses anyway, glyph of Sunder Armor (usually a staple) isn't any good right from the get go, since there shouldn't be any "nearby" mobs to receive the extra sunder stack.  If you're really in that situation, you may as well consider yourself free to pick two extra glyphs.  At the moment, maybe Blocking, Heroic Strike, and Revenge, although after the patch, HS glyph won't be as useful, so you can maybe pick up the shockwave, shield wall or last stand glyphs.

Spec vs. Spec (in PvP)

So I'm interested to hear other responses to this.  I have looked up that the best PvP spec in some people's opinions are hybrids that incorporate Mortal Strike, Last Stand and Death Wish in the same package.  

Up until now I haven't knowingly faced one of these, so I can't really say what I think of this idea.

However, I have faced off with warriors with specs that at least tell me something about TG specced warriors vs Shockwave specced warriors vs Bladestorm specced warriors, and for these three specs, I think the results are obvious.

Prot wins.

CC is king, and the protection tree has the most CC of any of them.  Admittedly, they don't seem to have as much cc mitigation as Fury, but a good healer pally / priest beside you and most of the things that you might have difficulty getting out of with Berserker rage and/or your Medallion of the Horde (because you're Horde, right?) aren't really an issue.  

If CC is king, then survivability is queen.  Sure, prot warriors have some of the lowest dps of all tank specs, but we can mitigate damage with the best of them.  Shield wall is just as bad, if not worse, in PvP, throw in some improved spell reflection, shield block, the 10% increase to armor values and at least a 25-45% parry/dodge chance (not to mention the typically low amount of expertise on most pvp gear) and you're suddenly a mountain of an obstacle.  Literally, with a healer (or two or three if you're lucky) on you, you suddenly become invulnerable, so the area cc's and 1K dps you're doing becomes a serious issue to those on the other side.  

My fury spec was really good about racking up 3K+ dps (with crits) and even in PvP was doing better than 2.4K+ but against 40%+ total dodge/parry, literally only one out of every two hits are even landing, and the slower attack speeds make that a serious concern.  Then you add the 70% damage mitigation from armor and defensive stance, on top of the shield block mitigation, and it's like my razor PvE blades are striking a brick wall, occasionally chipping out a single brick that lands on my head and takes me out completely.

In duels Prot vs Fury, although I could generally hold my own for a while, the Prot warrior could inevitably cc me more, take less damage, and keep himself alive longer than I could.  So, Fury vs Prot, winner is Prot.

I faced off against many Arms warriors in bg's (which admittedly is not exactly the same thing) as Fury and what I found was that it was basically a wash.  Sure, Fury did more damage, but Arms has the good "extra" problem talents for PvP.  Generally speaking, it would be a huge explosion, ending in a Bladestorm, a flurry of Bloodthirsts and Whirlwinds, and both of us would fall dead in the end.  In fact, the only thing that seemed to determine which of us would remain standing was who got in the right lucky shots during the initial exchange.   Once it went to bladestorm, the Fury spec was in better shape to get ahead, but takes so much damage that they usually died in the process.  So, my call here, Arms vs Fury is a draw.

And I've been Prot specced for almost two weeks now (at least since the last times I was prot while leveling) and last night I ran into an Arms warrior or two.  I have to hope that the Prot warriors I faced while Fury had a harder time than I did against this Arms warrior.  I almost felt sorry for them after a while.  They spent most of the time stunned, when they went to Bladestorm, I simply charged someone else to get distance, and watched them inch closer to me, waiting for them to finish, and then charged them again and slaughtered them.  It wasn't even close.  So, clear winner in Arms vs Prot is Prot.  

In fact, in terms of the whole PvP experience, I died less often during a full night of BG's and WG battles than I used to during a single BG as Fury.  And I saw a lot more action, and on several of the BG's I even led the board in HK's (admittedly only like 57+ usually, but still).  Crazy stuff.

Of course, this is also why they're changing up the specs some in patch 3.1, and the addition of the leap and some other tools to Arms' arsenal may make that a closer contest, but they're still moving Fury back in the list, so it may end up that Prot and Arms are competing for the top PvP builds with Fury crying at the bottom of the stairs.

New Glyphs for smashing with.

Ok, so there are a number of new glyphs coming out, and here's some things for all of us to consider.  

First, let's do tanking, since that's what I'll do first:

Right now there are a pretty standard (almost) set of choices (at least they're the ones I use)

Major:

Glyph of Blocking - Adds 10% to shield block value for 10 sec each time you Shield Slam.

Glyph of Sunder - Applies a Sunder (+ threat) to another nearby target each time you sunder/devastate.

Glyph of Revenge - After using revenge your next Heroic Strike is Free!

Minor:

Glyph of Bloodrage - Reduces damage taken from Bloodrage by 100% ( a MUST in my opinion)

Glyph of Charge - increases charge distance by 5 yards

Glyph of Thunderclap - increases TC's radius by 2 yards

And there are a number of possible new ones:

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration - Increases health recovered by an additional 10% (over the 10 secs)

Glyph of Shield Wall - Reduces cd on Shield wall by 2 min, but reduces damage by 40% (instead of 60%)

Glyph of Shockwave - Reduces cd on Shockwave by 3 secs

Glyph of Spell Reflection - Reduces cd on Spell Reflection by 1 sec

Glyph of Vigilance - Transfers an additional 5% of threat from target to you.

Now, here are my thoughts on these, and I'd love to get some feedback.

(1) Glyph of Enraged Regeneration.  I like this one, but I have to measure it against the ones I already have.  Sunder makes group pulls a lot easier, and I can see "re-glyphing" for boss only fights like in Eye of Eternity to use this one, but for general raids, Sunder is going to help out on trash more often than ER is going to help out on bosses.  As long as you've got competent healers, ER is more of an OH %(*$%& maneuver anyway.

(2) Glyph of Shield Wall - I guess I have mixed feelings about this.  If you've specced Improved Discipline here, this could potentially give you a 40% damage reduction for 12 secs every 2 minutes, and even without it would be every 3 minutes.  So in some ways this would be good mitigation.  On the other hand, you'll notice that since Protection warriors typically tend to be lower down on the dps meters and since damage = threat, I tend to lean towards things that help me to build threat instead of things that help me to mitigate damage.  Here again, maybe for an all boss encounter I might "re-glyph" to help handle bosses that hit hard, but I don't think I'd use this for generic raiding.

(3) Glyph of Shockwave - This is like Glyph of Devastate, what a great ability to improve upon, and then the improvement turns out to not really be a great thing afterall.  If Shockwave had a really low cd, it would be a great crowd control device, but lowering it to 17s cd from 20s cd seems like they're just toying with us.  10-15s cd and I'd really consider this one to replace Sunder for my crowd control glyph, but as it is, eh. . ..

(4) Glyph of Spell Reflection - Well, ok, I'm a little torn on this, but essentially, it's not really something that would be much good, except possibly in PvP.  As it is, the worst thing about spell reflection is it's cost, the 10 sec cd just means that you can only have it activated about half the time, which I usually find to be plenty.  I think I'd pass on this unless I were going to reglyph for a specific purpose.

(5) Glyph of Vigilance - Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  If you use vigilance judiciously, you probably don't ever run into problems with not getting "quite" enough of the threat from them.  You should be generating threat too, not just standing there letting others build it for you.  Plus this could cause issues between two tanks Vig-ing each other, since one would then be "out threating" the other.  I think this is pretty much a pass.  If it increased the damage reduction to the target to 5% instead of 3%, it might be worthwhile.

And there are no new minor glyphs so far.  So basically it looks as though I'll probably be keeping my glyphs the same, but maybe catching a few of the others in case I need to reglyph for a specific raid or situation.

Now let's do DPSing:

There is one new dps glyph, and it's an Arms talent.  No point in talking about it, so here's the glyphs that I like so far:

Major: 

Glyph of Cleave - cleave hits 1 more enemy (together with Improved Cleave this is great for trash mobs)

Glyph of WW - reduces cd on WW by 2 secs (from 10 secs, a 25% improvement in downtime on your #1 burst damage ability, a win in my book)

Glyph of Heroic Strike - HS Crits give you 10 rage (I know you're trying to dump your rage, but if you get some back you can dump for longer)

Minor:

Glyph of Bloodrage - same as before (why not?  Free rage = more dps)

Glyph of Battle - Extends duration of Battle shout by 1 min.  (ok, I know this is kind of weak, but you look through the list of minor glyphs and find one you like better and let me know)

Glyph of Enduring Victory - extends time window for Victory rush by 5 secs (see earlier one)

So unfortunately, it seems as though while we're being given more choices, the more things change the more it stays the same.  We still don't really have enough minor glyph choices, and we still don't have any options for the major glyphs unless we're preparing for a specific set of circumstances.  At least we have more specific circumstances choices when we tank.  And we also have a new Sweeping Strikes glyph when we decide to chuck Fury and take Arms instead.

RL invasion.

Ok, I promise to keep this sort of thing reasonable, but I'd like to post this news article, as I think it's worth reading.  This is Gurggy's RL "brain" speaking.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/howard/bal-md.ho.iron24mar24,0,2448059.story

This is a story about a small restaraunt up on the way from my house to BWI airport, that my wife and I pass by and think that we'd really like to visit.  

I don't know how everyone feels about things, but having read this story to the bottom, I'm thinking of making a reservation pretty soon, and I may even try to get over some of my initial lack of interest in foie gras enough to at least taste it, just for the cause (otherwise I really don't think it sounds that good, but I've been wrong about these sorts of things before).

Looking square into the Eye of Eternity

Fun stuff.  So a little more background on my spec.  I've been Protection now as a raid equipped level 80 for about a week and a half now.  I spent a long time at 70 as Protection and levelled with it for a long time, but I'm still kind of feeling out the new spec.

I've opted for a Protection spec that's fairly useful, and seems to fit in with most of what has been said about the best builds for the class.  Mind you, realistically, in the protection spec, there's really only about 14 "freebie" talent points to spend, so there's not a huge amount of customization, but it does lend itself well to providing room for arguments.

I mention this because last night I was "the" tank in a 10 man Malygos attempt, which, although unsuccessful, I learned a few tricks from, and I was overall very glad to go.  

I think one of the worst things about this raid is that they designed it with DK's in mind.  I don't have any problem having DK's in raids, in fact, I really like having them even though I have to roll against them for loots, because they're some really heavy hitters, and us melee classes have to stick together.   In this case, though, there is the one aspect of the raid that almost "requires" a DK, more specifically their death grip ability (which I personally love).  It can be done without it, as our group last night showed on a couple of the tries.  While we weren't successful overall, our mistakes weren't so much in phase 1 where the sparks were coming, but rather in phases 2 and 3, and in some cases, I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Generally speaking, I think I need a little bit better gear before I attempt that again.  I took a little too much damage, even blowing my shield block and shield wall, last stand et al when times got rough.  Since we don't have the abundance of cd's to use like DK's I have to assume that I just need to work on revising my gear some.  Getting to Expertise cap would help a lot, but this is easier said than done.  I spent some time researching to find a way to attain all of (a) defense cap, (b) expertise cap, and (c) hit cap, and it is possible, but very very difficult and there are limited options for the gear that will get you all three.  If we forego (c) entirely, and let the hit fall where it may, it's still quite difficult to attain (a) and (b) but you have more "leeway" than you do if you try for all 3.  

That and I've decided if I try the attempt again, I'm going to spend more time strafing.  For any tanks reading this who haven't already tried to tank this instance, I'll tell you now that the most difficult thing about tanking Malygos (other than how hard he hits, which isn't as hard as some raid bosses, but still pretty good) is maneuvering him.  His hit box is HUGE and he won't even lunge your way until you're all the way out of it.  I have specifically two suggestions for you that may help:

1)  After the first air phase, get Malygos in position, and start moving to the edge of the hit box, remember, you can still hit him even from the same distance that the other melee can, so you're not "really" backing off.  

2) once it's time to kite him away, strafe like your life depends on it.  Turning your back won't work (you lose your block/parry ratings entirely) and backing up won't work because it's too slow even with the speed increase from Tuskarr's Vitality.  I think strafing is the right answer. 

Everything else you can find on a forum about handling this boss, including where to tank him, how far to move him and in which direction etc.  My guild has found that the best solution (especially if you DON'T have the requisite 1-2 DK's that the instance seems to want) is to kite Malygos right inside the little lip of the outer ring.  If you have to turn him, make sure you pass outside of the ring, since Malygos doesn't do tail swipes, but does do some massive cleaves.

That should be enough to get you to phase 2, which is pretty simple, especially if you've put the two points into improved Spell Reflection, as I had.

Then it's all up to your coordination as a group, and everyone being familiar with the mechanics of riding the drakes in phase 3, and all done.

Just to note, although we failed, we made it to phase 3 most of the attempts last night, but we had some unlucky breaks in having our "healer" drakes going down almost immediately and having people switch off to heal from dps at the last minute sometimes takes some getting used to.  It was one of those times that you know the next time you try you're certain to pull it off, since we were well under the enrage timer every shot, just a string of bad luck.  Our group has done this before, and while I don't feel like I was personally at fault for any of our bad luck, I do think that some gear changes for me would make it easier for the heals to do their jobs since they wouldn't have to burn as much mana keeping me up.

Titan's Gripe

Ok, so as a warrior who has been Fury specced, I have to say one thing about the changes to Titan's Grip and then I want to leave it alone, because it's not worth QQ over spilled milk.

When they first instituted TG, they had a hefty miss chance added that was so obnoxious and hurt warriors' dps so much that most people just stopped being anything but Protection.

They apparently realized they did this, so they scaled back this miss chance to a more palatable 5% so people would actually play Fury warriors (and allow them into groups).  I also think I understand why they eventually lifted this miss chance entirely, as Blizz really didn't think ahead at all in adding hit rating gear for Fury warriors to use, since we had very little, and what we had wasn't very good.

Ok, so now we're in the present, and here are these Fury warriors (myself inlcluded) who are regularly doing 3K-3.5K dps overall in raids.  Fantastic!  In fact this puts us into the top 10-12 dps virtually every raid no matter how well geared everyone is.  Never mind that in order to get there, we had to get just about epics in every slot.  Now, my issue is that if this is considered overpowered (and especially if it's considered overpowered for PvP) why is it that we're still falling behind the shadow priests that have just started raiding two weeks ago, and their 4K+ dps, or frostfire mages and their 4.5K-5K+ dps?  And why are we so overpowered that we're having every single ability that we do nerfed by 10%?  This is a huge decrease to every ability we have.  It's not like we're paladins and have some holy damage and some fire damage, or something.  We're warriors.  

It's hard for me to believe that we're too OP for PvP contests, considering the small number of fury warriors that make it to the top without DK's Pallys or Mages there to lay on the real hurt while the warrior causes some general distraction.  

For damage dealers, we can still top the charts, but we're easily cc-able, and even if we have our pops ready to go, we can be taken out of combat more easily than just about any other class.  

I think with that kind of "squishiness" we should be able to put on the hurt more.  We should be the class that if we get close is going to slaughter you, so the idea is not to let us get close.  I had an experience in an arena with a warlock that I'll never forget.  I sat still and wailed on the warlock for a good minute or so, with no one even caring that I was there.  Most of my damage was being mitigated, little of anything I did got through, the warlock didn't even drop below 75% health once.  And that was everything I could throw.  

Admittedly I was the only one on the warlock at the time, but my point stands.  Here is a classic, warrior should slaughter the warlock scenario, and even though I have some of the best gear available for my class, I'm not accomplishing anything.  The warlock isn't even sweating hard, and no one EVEN CARES what I'm doing, because they know I'm the least worrisome toon on the field.

Of course since we have virtually no way to mitigate spell damage short of a macro to equip a shield and throw up spell reflect, once they were ready for me, they just casually tossed a couple dots on me that killed me instantly.

My point being this:  are we really so OP that we "need" a 10% physical damage nerf?  Is Blizzard really seeing huge scores of Fury warriors doing 10% more damage than say, frostfire specced mages or warlocks or shadow priests?  Can they even keep up with Ret Pallies?  I'm generally feeling pretty good about myself when I can at least keep in the mix with the top grouping of ret pallies, rogues and hunters, but considering we're the ones right there next to the mobs, getting hit, and having to risk the cleaves etc. why SHOULDN'T we do more damage than the group of people who just stand back and pew pew?  I know it's more complicated than that, but they're doing sometimes twice as much damage as us already, and in at least one case, I know they were doing 1K more dps than our best equipped Fury warrior even though it was the shadow priest's 2nd week to raid (and it's not like the warrior's 3.4K dps was anything to be ashamed of).

I'd really like to know where the numbers are that support this particular change to the Fury build, because I was just starting to feel competitive, and now I'm becoming very worried about my chances to keep Fury as my dual spec.

If they don't have those numbers, then my suggestion is this:  "If it ain't broke . . .. ."

Arms warriors after 3.1

So, I'm almost curious enough about this question to get on the Test Realm and try it out.

Is it possible that the new changes to Warriors will make Arms heavy builds the way to go?  With talents like Shattering Throw it seems that the utility of that spec will certainly be desirable to raid parties, especially since that effect stacks with the new Battle Stance and sunder effects.  Notice that with ST procced, and assuming full sunder stacks at the time, this would practically allow a warrior in battle stance to ignore 50% of an opponent's armor, and that's before armor penetration gains from gear.  

The reason I wonder about this as an Arms warrior change, is that staying in battle stance for very long isn't really feasible for a fury warrior in raids.  Sure, we can switch back and forth, but switching out to hit ST, especially because of the new stance mechanics, will be VERY expensive.  10-20 rage to switch to battle stance, 25 rage for ST, then 10-20 rage to switch back to Berserker stance, you're out 45-65 rage, not to mention the 2.5 second delay.  And you still can't get the 10% armor penetration buff unless  you stay in battle stance (making WW useless, and as your highest damage ability for burst damage and in your top 3 for overall damage (along with Bloodthirst and HS which are fine in any stance), that's a lot to give up.

But an Arms specced warrior could still be beneficial in PvE for those "burst" dps moments when Thaddius is close to enraging, or when you hit 2 minutes on a timed attack on Patchwerk or whatever.  

Provided, of course, that their dps doesn't lag so far behind the standard Fury build that it makes it unacceptable to have on the raid in the first place.

I'm hoping that's not the reason for the nerf to Titan's Grip (which at this point I've heard so much about I'd be tempted to call it "Titan's Gripe") that they're planning on now.  

 

Serving up hit rating

So, with our incredibly high hard hit cap when dual wielding, I had wondered if there were any point in it.  I could barely get enough attack power to be worth anything, and hit rating was even more elusive.  

But lo and behold. . . ..

3.1 PTR hit gear

It seems that it is not only possible, but almost desirable to try for hit caps in the new patch.  Even if I choose not to, my hit rating will probably go up whether I mean it to or not.

Notice from the "Math" post, based on the fact that dual-wielding gives a miss chance of 28% for all off-hand strikes (only 8% for yellow and main hand strikes) that this would require 919 hit rating (see that post comes in handy) and even with Precision we still need to counter a 25% miss chance, which is 820 points.  

Up until recently this was unattainable, as most decent gear for us had virtually no hit rating.  There was some, but barely enough to get up to around 300 hit rating, which is a far cry from the hard cap, but well over the soft cap of 8% (263 rating w/o precision, or 164 with it).

Even better, Blizz has promised us that armor penetration will be 25% more effective after 3.1 hits, so the 323 armor penetration rating (should we have a quiz to see how many people know how large of a percentage armor that will ignore at least before diminishing returns?  Let's put it this way, it will be larger than the effect of 5 stacks of sunder.).  As of now, whether that 25% more effective is going to be from a reduction in the base rate of conversion from armor penetration rating to percent, or whether it's going to be from the promised reduction in the armor values of bosses, I can't say.

Math behind Rating <--> skill points / percentages

So I spent a little time to follow all the articles and such that I found online that gave formulas for ratings to skill point conversions and such.  While this is not my own work explicitly, I have verified it and cross checked it and compiled this from a number of partially incomplete sources.  It is correct up to the time of this posting and if I learn differently later, I'll do something about it.

I then proceeded to compare my results against all the tooltips and directly calculated values from the game itself.  

So I feel fairly confident in saying that this is essentially the same thing that everyone else is doing too.  

The basic premise behind converting ratings to skill points and such is this:  There is a "base" value for a conversion factor, and this "base" value is modified by a character's level.  There are also diminishing returns factored in as well, but lest we get in over our heads right up front, we'll keep it simple.  

So, what could possibly be simpler than just  R / C = S  (where R is the rating, C is the conversion factor and S is the skill value)?  Well, pretty much nothing.  This is a linear function, and would continue to be so, if the base value never changed.  However, so as to make it less simple, the actual value of C depends on a number of issues.  

1st - Character level (L)

2nd - whether you're looking at an "offensive" or "defensive" type of ability (this only matters up until level 34 by the way, because from level 34 on, it doesn't matter) 

3rd - what is the "base" value for the ability you are interested in  (call it b)

So if you're following along, we really have 2 functions of the variables L and b that make up our C value, so together with R you could think of S as a function in 3 variables (4 dimensional graph).  Oooh, fun stuff.

However, much of this is negligible, however, because in general, most people only look at the last level (currently 80) and are generally ok with being told values of b that correspond to the ability they are interested in.  So essentially you are taking a 2 dimensional cross section of your 4 dimensional graph and getting something that looks a lot more like what you remember from high school math, which is infinitely less daunting.

But, if you know a little more about how these things are put together, you too can build an Excel spreadsheet to have on hand as a handy dandy calculator for those intense "should I take this piece of gear over this one" moments when you're not actually in game, but rather sitting at a computer and musing over what will happen later when you're online raiding.

Ok, so here's the skinny on how to put this stuff together:

It all sounds complicated so far, but here's where it gets REALLY easy.

Let's leave R and S alone for now, and just worry about how to calculate this mysterious C(b,L) function.  Since once we have that function we can convert between the other two willy-nilly.  After all, R = S*C and S = R/C.  Those are simple arithmetic procedures once we understand C.

Ok, so to let you in on the secret that I learned about this, Blizzard regards level 60 as their "base" to work with.  I suspect this is because that was the first "uppermost" tier of the game, and they've kind of been playing Patchwerk with these numbers ever since to keep their old algorithms from blowing the game out of control.

So essentially the base numbers we need (b) is the same as the conversion factor between ratings and skills at level 60.  These are remarkably easy to find once you know what you're looking for.  Just browse wowhead for items that require level 60 and you'll have more than enough data to fill in a table like this one.

b values based on ability ratings

  ability  rating                                 b value

Armor Penetration 4.695

Block  5

Critical Hit 14

Defense 1.5

Dodge 12

Expertise 2.5

Haste 10

Hit (Melee) 10

Hit (Spell) 8

Parry 15

Resilience 25

Now, I know what you're thinking, not all of these stats can be found on level 60 gear.  Ok, true.  In fact, the Armor Penetration value of b looks suspiciously as though it were scaled from some other value.  Well, I reverse engineered the level 60 value to make this table cleaner, I admit it.

So nothing could be simpler so far if I tell you that as long as you are a level 60 toon, you can just use those numbers and all is well.  25 points of resilience will yield you 1% less crit chance and dot damage, and 2% less crit damage and mana drain effect.  Pretty simple.

Ok, so what about all the other levels?

Well, for all other levels Blizzard has a conversion factor for this base rate that is based on nothing but your level.  It would be too easy for it to be a single algebraic function, instead it's piecewise continuous.  The intervals conveniently enough happen to be almost the same intervals as the new content releases.  There is one formula for levels 1 to 10.  One for levels 10-60, one for levels 60-70, and one for levels 70-80.  

Ok, so what're the formulas for these conversions of the base factors?

Here's where things get interesting.  Remember that I told you that up until level 34 it depends on whether it's a defensive or offensive ability?  Even though it doesn't matter except for early characters, we may as well be exact.

If you're looking at a defensive ability, such as resilience, defense, block, etc.  the formulas for the conversion of the factor b go as follows:

Defensive Ability

Level range conversion factor as a function of L

1-34 1/2      (yep, it's pretty simple there)

34-80  The same as the offensive conversion factors

And if you're looking at an offensive ability, such as Melee Hit, Critical Strike, Expertise, etc. the formulas for the conversion factor b go as follows:

Offensive Ability

Level range conversion factor as a function of L

1-10 1/26

10-60 (L-8)/52

60-70 82 / (262-3L)

70-80 (82/52)*(113/63)^((L-70)/10)

Ok, so let's call this conversion factor (which you've picked appropriate to the type of ability etc) c(L), since it's a function of L.  Then the easiest way to do this is. . . 

C(b,L) = b*c(L)

Ok, so ready for a couple examples?  

EXAMPLE 1:  Let's say you're level 80, and you want to know how many melee hit rating points you need to add 1% more chance to hit.  For the purpose of Blizzard, either there will be skill points or percentage points as values for S.  If you've ever thought about this stuff, you'll probably know which to use when.

Ok, so, for melee hit rating we know b is 10, and we can calculate (trust me, or use the calculator if you're not sure) that c(L) for L=80 is approximately 3.279 by plugging 80 into the formula shown above on the level 70-80 line.

So, 10*3.279 = 32.79, which is the amount of melee hit rating to remove 1% miss chance at level 80.   And C for this case would be 32.79, so you could convert between any rating numbers or skill numbers to find the equivalent value for the other.  Like, if you needed 3.4% miss chance more, simply multiply S*C = 3.4 * 32.79 = 111.486 and round up to 112 to find how many rating points you need to get at least 3.4% hit chance increase.  Want to know what hit chance increase you get from 241 melee hit rating?  R/C = 241 / 32.79 = 7.35%, pretty good, it's almost up to the standard raid miss chance of 8%.  Melee hit cap, by the way is S*C = 8*32.79 = 262.32 rounded up to 263.  You can answer a lot of questions for yourself with just this simple bit of information.

Easy, right?  But you can find that example anywhere.  Let's look at one that's not quite as common.

EXAMPLE 2:  Now let's suppose you're a mage at level 74 and you want to know how much critical strike rating you need to add 1% more critical strike chance to your spells.

Well, spell crit rating and melee crit rating are the same base value, b = 14.  Plugging in L=74 to the formula for the conversion factor we see that c(L) for L=74 is approximately 2.113405 (it doesn't round quite as conveniently as the last one).  

Now do the same thing.  C = b*c = 14*2.113405 = 29.58767.

And we can see that it takes 29.58767 points of critical strike rating to achieve one percent more critical strike chance.  

We can then use this conversion factor to do all kinds of calculations, if necessary.  How good a critical strike chance am I adding if I pick up this gear with 65 critical strike rating on it?  S=R/C so 65/29.58767 gives us something that rounds to 2.20 (%) when rounded to 3 decimals.  That would be a pretty nice piece of gear at level 74.  

Anyway, now that I've thrown the curtain back a bit, I'll see what else I can drum up that might be interesting.