Hi ,
starting with this one I'm going to release a number of posts to give some insight into the theory (Theorycrafting) of Classic-WoW. I believe that many people allready have a lot of knowledge about what is going on behind these coloured pictures on their screen but I hope to give some newer players a little insight. Maybe I can even show some veteran players something they didn't know yet and I also hope to learn something from your feedback. Additionally I'd like to clear up some of the myth about theorycrafting that are out there. Which of them are true, which are partially true and which are simply wrong.
So let's get started
Theoryclub #1 : The Combattable
The Combattable is a great start into this as it is a basic thing to know for many aspects of theorycrafting.
What is the Combattable ?
The Combattable is a table which is used to calculate every meele or ranged attack done by a player or NPC. The table is calculating if an attack will crit , miss or result in any other of possible events. It also explains how stats like Crit or Hit influence your character or how they interact with each other.
So how does this work ?
To be able to explain this properly lets list up all the possible events that can happen on a meele or ranged attack.
1. Normal Hit - The attack deals normal damage.
2. Critical Hit - The attack deals increased damage.
3. Dodge* - The attack is dodged, no damage is dealt
4. Parry* - The attack is parried, no damage is dealt
5. Miss - The attack is missed, no damage is dealt
6. Block - The attack is blocked, normal damage minus blockvalue is dealt
7. Glancing* - The attack glances, a percentage of normal damage is dealt
8. Crushing** - The attack crushes, 50% additional damage is dealt
* Ranged attacks can't be dodged, parried or glanced.
** Only NPC can crush, players can't
So what happens next is that whenever a meele or ranged attack is launched the game fills the combattable with all possible events for that attack. The slots are filled depending on the probability of an event to accure. The combattable will be determined for each new attack. The Combattable has 10.000 slots that will be filled (I'll explain in the next Theoryclub why that is so)
To make things a little more vivid let's make a simplified example. Lets assume the combattable only has 100 slots and that all the probabilities of the different events (crit, hit, miss etc.) are flat percentage values. For this example a lvl 60 gnome rogue is attacking a lvl 60 stone golem with a standart auto-attack. The rogue hasn't spend any talent points, has 15% crit, uses 2 sword, has achieved 300 weaponskill with sword and is standing in front of the golem.
Okay, so let's see which events are possible and how probable they are.
A NPC of the same lvl has a flat 5% chance to parry, dodge or block an incoming attack. Additionaly the rouge has a 24% chance to miss the golem (5% base + 19% (dual-wield penalty)). The rogue has 15% crit. So now we have all the special events (which are not normal hits) and their probabilities listed.
Now we start filling our Combattable, allways starting with the event with the best possible result for the Player/NPC that is being attacked. (There is one eception to this rule but more about that in Theoryclub #2) So first we begin with filling in all probabilities which will result in no damage taken for the victim of the attack. Each 1% stands for 1 slot in our simplified table with 100 slots.
1. The golem has 5% dodge and 5% parry, so the slots 1-5 will be given to dodge and the slots 6-10 will be given to parry.
2. The nextbest event for the attacked person is miss as there will also be zero damage done. The gnome rogue has 24% miss so the next 24 slots ( 11 - 34 ) will be filled with miss.
3. Following to miss there is block as there is not all but parts of the damage reduced. The golem has 5% block so the next 5 slots ( 35 - 39 ) will be filled with block.
4. The next special event is crit. The gnome rogue has 15% crit so the next 15 slots ( 40 - 54 ) in our combattable are filled with crit.
5. Now every special event for the attack have been filled into our combattable. The remaining open slots will be filled with normal attacks. So 55 - 100 will be a normal strike.
Our Combattable now looks like this:
001 - 005 Dodge
006 - 010 Parry
011 - 034 Miss
035 - 039 Block
040 - 054 Critical Hit
055 - 100 Normal Hit
So when this attack would be launched WoW would calculate a random number between 1 - 100 and execute the event that was rolled.
Okay this is it for the first post. In the next part of the series I'll write about "glancing blows" and "crushing blows", explain why the combattable has 10.000 slots and talk about the myth "an attack that doesn't hit can't crit".
I'd really appreciate your feedback.
so far justclassic
