Wow...

...not gonna lie, those new talent trees for us warriors look pretty damn tight.

Oh....hi.

;)

*ninja vanish*

Bon Voyage

So as the 2 people who read my blog may or may not know (okay, they do), I leave for the Navy may 12th. Counting Boot Camp and A School, I shall not be back for 4 months, give or take a week here or there.

I will miss all of you. Every single one of the people I have played with have changed me, and most have made my playing experience a pleasant one. I've had a great time, and theres so much to thank people for I just can't include it all in one blog post.

Some of you know my plans when I come back. I intend to make a new guild, a raiding guild, progression if you prefer the term, of friends and allies new and old. I can't seem to be happy in a guild I don't run...so we'll see.

I love all of you.

Cheers, and ciao. May your lewts be phat and your repair bills small.

Crit Cap: Demystified, Button Style

So Bell asked me to explain another of those obscure game mechanics only the truly mad seem to understand: this time, hit cap/crit cap. Bear with me folks, this is gonna get rough.

To first understand what the crit/hit cap is, you have to first understand what happens when you take a swing on an NPC, and that in itself is something of a headache. Okay, so imagine you have a 100-sided die. When you attack that boss from behind with white attacks, imagine that you roll that die. If you roll a 1, you miss (presuming you are hit capped). If you roll 2-7, the boss dodges. If you roll 8-32, you glance (remember, this is white damage). If you have 35% crit, subtracting the bosses improved defense against crits, if you roll 33-66, you crit. The rest of the die, 67-100, is filled with white damage hits.*

So, that looks like this:
1 - Miss
2-7 - Dodge
8-32 - Glancing Blow
33-66 - Crit
67-100 - Hit

Crits routinely push hits off the table, as the max % for any outcome of a hit made cannot exceed 100% (you can't roll anything higher than a 100 sided die every time you attack). So now we're getting somewhere: the crit cap.

The simple truth of the crit cap is that it is nearly impossible to reach. Prior to patch 2.1, the crit cap was a simpler matter, as the glancing blow part of the boss hit table was almost 40%...meaning less white hits and crits put together, meaning that the higher crit rate, the less hits, running down to 0 white hits and all crits. In 2.1 the glancing blow chance was lowered to 25%. Since hits fill blanks on the table, it fills in that extra 15%, needing an extra 15% crit.

So for a melee character, non-dual wield, to reach his crit cap, he would need (while hit capped), roughly 67% chance to crit in order to never again have a white "hit". Counting a bosses improved defenses again, he'd need closer to 68%.

Possible? Yes. Probable? Noooot really.

*All of this math does not apply to dual wield or to ranged attacks. For ranged attacks, there is no dodge, therefore their crit would need to be even higher.

For dual wield, your miss % is much higher, giving you a theoretical easier time at the crit cap.

Sleeper Cells

I just wanted to share my accomplishment with the world, Button, a 33/28 Arms warrior, successfully topped Damage charts against Lurker, with t4/t5 geared competitors. It made me feel awesome to have cast off the stereotype shackles of my class and prove myself in such a way.

But that's not the topic of this post.

I know I've disappeared for a bit, but writer's block has had me in a rut. It's alright because I have a topic now, and it's one that's close to home for me.

Every guild has that guy, the connected guy. (Go Matticus for pointing it out) He's the guy you want in your corner whether you're getting ganked, your phat lewtz get ninjaed, or you just need to get a raid together. But on the flip side of that coin is that he is also the one person you don't want against you. Harder still is when that "connected guy" is your former guildleader, who took your guild of 5 irl friends and formed a KZ guild of 50+ members. Maybe he stepped down and took a few months off, turning the guild over to someone with more time and patience while he sorted life out.

What you do not do is tell him that he was a shoddy guildleader to start with, and that your new guildleader is better. That's asking for trouble, whether it's true or not. Simple logic and common courtesy should stop you from saying something like that to anyone.

Also, it can cause them to become determined to prove that they're better than you....if they're the competitive sort, that is.

Which I am.

I'm leaving for Naval Boot Camp on May 12th...but when I get back, if I come back to WoW, a reckoning will be had.

Talk about ungrateful. You picked the wrong person to call out.

P.S. I would have quoted Isoroku Yamamoto just to make it more dramatic, but twice in one blog is too many.

Sometimes, It's Just Worth It

After the days I've been having in WoW lately, I was about ready to quit. But every so often, people just make it worth it.

Armor Penetration: Demystified, Button Style

Today I ran Magister's Terrace, the new 5-man in Sunwell, for the first time, and let me tell you, it was a doozy. The 5 caster pulls are intense, especially for an arms warrior in blues and a few pieces of Kara gear. I think I got through it with a lot of luck, a little skill, and a shit ton of spell reflection.

Actually, on an interesting side note, somewhere midway between the 2nd boss and the 3rd, I accidentally switched to my DPS gear...and did BETTER. We wiped a first attempt on the 2nd to last boss with me in tank gear...being expected to hold aggro right off the bat on 5 elites was ridiculous. What do I look like, a pally?

The 2nd attempt, again, I accidentally hit f3 (my macro for my PvE DPS gear) and wound up switching to my 2hander...and we downed it no problem. I did the same thing for Kael'thas...and killed him in full DPS gear. That instance just wasn't designed to be tanked.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Where was I? Oh yes, upon looting the still fresh corpse of Kael'thas, I got a pleasant surprise in the Sunstrider Warboots. Sweet. Anyway, this lead to a question by a fellow guildie on the benefits of ArP, or armor penetration. So for his benefit, here's a simplified explanation.

PvE
Most bosses have somewhere between 6000-8000 armor, normally ranging from the 6100-7700 area. This is important because ArP increases in effectiveness and power the more of it you have exponentially. In other words, the more ArP you have, the more effective a single point of ArP is.

ArP is largely based, percentage wise, off the total amount of armor a boss has. In effect, it lends itself more to low-armor bosses, in terms of raw % added to your damage, than to high-armor bosses. An easy way to demonstrate is this (helped in part by Elitist Jerks):

For a boss with 6200/7700 armor, SA x5 gives a damage increase of 18.36%/16.61%.

If we assume now that the boss has SA stacked x5 on it, adding just FF gives a further 4.5%/4.05% increase, CoR gives 5.99%/5.38%, and with both on they give 11.06%/9.9% increase over just SA.

Armor Penetration is a bit more complex because it comes it varied amounts. If the boss has just SA x5 on it, then the effect of ArP is as follows:
100 ArP: 0.71%/0.64%
200 ArP: 1.43%/1.29%
300 ArP: 2.16%/1.95%
400 ArP: 2.91%/2.62%
500 ArP: 3.66%/3.3%

For a fully debuffed boss (SA x5, FF, CoR) the increase from ArP is:
100 ArP: 0.79%/0.71%
200 ArP: 1.59%/1.42%
300 ArP: 2.41%/2.15%
400 ArP: 3.24%/2.89%
500 ArP: 4.08%/3.64%

SA: Sunder Armor
FF: Faerie Fire
CoR: Curse of Recklessness

Also, a good thing to remember in PvE is that it's not a good thing to stack so much ArP than the boss would go below 0 armor...there are other stats you could improve instead, so if your ArP gets to that level, it might be wise to carry another set for low-armor bosses.

PvP
PvP is another animal altogether, as they say.

Nowadays, especially with the rise in full-s3 Gladiators, you'll see a lot of pvpers walking around with Executioner. The reason for this is simple: much like in PvE, ArP increases in effectiveness the more of it you have. Reducing a 10000 armor warrior (50% reduction in physical damage) to 7000 or 8000 is a 5-10% increase in your own damage.

A 5-10% increase on a resto druid shifted into bear may be enough to get off that Execute or Hammer of Wrath for the kill before he heals to full (yet again). And on a clothie, especially those of the Shadow Priest variety, it can be the difference between living and dying.

In short, ArP is as valuable, if not more so, than crit or attack power, but not at the expense of them. Certain levels of each must be met and maintained for optimum efficiency.

And that's Armor Penetration the Button way.

My name is wha? My name is who? My name is...

Okay, so I rant a lot. And as I was telling Bellwether, I don't think I have a lot of readers SO ranting here is a little like ranting to myself, which (as I also said), I prefer to do in the privacy of my own head.

I think it's because I tend to write more fluidly when I have something I feel strongly about, and the best when it's something I feel strongly about in a negative fashion. I don't particularly know why it is, but trying to figure it out would be counterproductive. I think.

....where the hell was I?

Oh right, I never introduced myself. I'm Button, an arms warrior (yes, for PvP AND PvE), member of [Roll For Blame], former guildleader of [No I In Alliance] and [The Immortals], and consort of DEATH!

Okay, that last one was a bit of a lie.

Nonetheless, the rest seems about right. I know a few members of the blogging community, and Bellwether at 4haelz is one of my good friends :). As for the rest of it...well, I suppose you'll just have to learn the dark secrets of my past on your own.