Spell Crit vs Spell Damage.

[xemni]

I played a lot of rogue back in the day, and one of the things i'd read about on Elitist Jerks from time to time is that if you're lacking hit rating, it is in some cases better to take crit pieces over some raw damage, when possible. That being said, I look at mages, whom have no hit gear right now, but, from what I see, a lot of mages are rushing straight flat spell damage gear, over crit.

Why is this? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to pick up crit gear where possible, over spell damage right now, until more hit becomes available? Or at the least, get to a specific crit chance before going for flat spell damage?

Reading an Elitist Jerks thread about Hit vs Crit that dates back to 2006, the mages value crit the same as, if not more than hit rating, so with the lack of hit gear in the game right now, wouldn't that make spell crit your go to stat?

The reason I ask, is that we recently did a guild raid. Our mages rushed "preraid BiS" which consisted of a lot of raw spell damage, and a small amount of crit on gear, where as, I went a different route, and put a priority on spell crit, over spell damage.

In the end, I ended up blowing the other mages out of the water, in terms of damage done.



Any thoughts?

[Lazermon]

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[xemni]

1% crit means that out of the 100 frostbolts you hit, one will on average be a crit, and a crit is 200% damage, meaning 1% crit is in this scenario worth the average your frostbolt hits for.

snip

100 frostbolts ideally take you 250 seconds to cast. Most fights last a shorter time than that, so if you look at your damage in a fight that takes ~60 seconds, your damage will fluctuate a lot from "the average", and even a shitty geared mage can outdamage a mage with superior gear by critting 2 more times than the other mage. To add to that, most fights require the mages to do more than just spam the frostbolt button, so justifying your gear choices by looking at the damagemeter in a molten core run with your friends and comparing with the other people in the raid is not a path I would recommend.

I'm going to snip parts that don't apply, because you brought up very valid points I do agree with, when the time comes for them, but as of right now, in the current state of the game 2 points you made do not apply as of right now.

A. There is no preraid spell hit gear available and wont be for a good minuet
B. We wont have AQ / ZG / Naxx for a long time so worrying about arcane fire for current content isn't something to be focussed on at all.

You're never going into a raid with just 1% crit, and with the item build I currently have (which is by no means optimal yet) would have around 31% spell crit with winters chill.

That is 31 frost bolts, outs of 100 being a critical strike. Without the presence of hit gear right now you have about a 11% chance for your shit to get resisted by a mob. A majority of your white hits fall into that 11%, while ~ 3 crits fall into that. Theoretically anyway.

The difference between my ideal crit builds spell power, vs the current straight so is about 80 - 100 spellpower depending on item choices.

Lets use some sloppy math (because i'm not going to look up exact numbers right this second, but i'd like later when i'm not dead tired)

Lets say frostbolt hits for 500 - 600 base without any modifier.

Lets say I have 200 spell power with crit gear, and that preraid BiS is 300 spell power. This is theoretical, but using the realistic differences, on a theoretical base.

With preraid with 100 frostbolts, lets say you have 13% crit. With winters chill, 23%.

23 should be crits, 77 should be whites. However, with a 11% chance to resist with talents alone, 11 of these 100 will miss. A bulk falling into your whites, with a low chance for 1 more to fall into your crits.

So lets say 3 crits are resisted, while 8 normals hit.

19 crits, 69 whites, 11 regs out of 100 frostbolts.

800 - 900 frost bolt base, 1600 - 1700 crit.

55200 - 62100 normal damage
30400 - 32300 crit damage.

A total of 85600 minimum off frostbolts preraid

Now with crit at 31% with winters chill, and a 11% chance to resist, 3 frost bolt crits should resist, with a low chance at a 4th, while 8 regulars should resist.
28 crits, 61 regs

700 - 800 reg damage 1400 - 1600 critical damage
42700 - 48800 reg damage total

39200 - 44800 crit potential damage

a total of 84000 on a minimum flat.
1 crit away from being exactly the same as the other build.

The damage difference is very close on sloppy numbers. However, while crits have a chance, they also are still RNG. You can have a fight with good crits, and you can have a fight with bad crits. Which means the potential damage could be even more. I've had fights where i've slammed 4 crits in a row, and still had consistent crits afterwords, so you could burst even higher, and do even more damage as a potential.

While, as preraid spell damage stacking for right now, is just consistent white damage with a crit from time to time.




This question i'm asking isn't coming from "damage meters from an MC with your friends" its coming from some reasonable thought, research and curiosity.

[Sheepstick]

Alright looks like you want some kind of spell power to crit ratio. I'll throw in a hit ratio for you as well. At the moment, the ratio is heavily sided towards spell power, so when you said you stacked crit and did alot better than other mages: Lazermon was just saying you got luckier than they did with crits. Also on a few bosses/trash mages need to be doing other things than casting frost bolt (sheeping, decursing) so if you are much higher on those fights, your fellow mages are making up your slack for you (allowing you to DPS a lot more than normal).

Few things to remember: We can ignore hit in this calculation, 1% hit > 1 % crit because an additional hit can crit, were going for thoerycrafting here.
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CRIT
Few assumptions: Your frost bolt does 447 avg dmg. A decent spellpower of 300. Raid consumes of +59 spellpower.

447 + (.86 coefficient * 359) = 755 dmg per frostbolt. Lets add in Talents (3%, 6%) and COE (10%).
755 * 1.03 * 1.06 * 1.1 = 907 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit would over a long average be equal to 1% more damage per frost bolt. 907*.01 = 9.07 dmg.
9.07 / (spell coefficent = .86) = 10.54 Spellpower.
At this gear level 10.54 spellpower would be equal to 1% crit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

Now lets say you have worse level of gear at 200 sp+59 from consumes:
804 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit = 9.3 SP
Flasked? 300sp+150+59 = 509 SP
1062 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit = 12.34 SP
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HIT
Few assumptions: Your frost bolt does 447 avg dmg. A decent spellpower of 300. Raid consumes of +59 spellpower. You can't go above 16% hit (you get 6% from talents)

A hit that would of missed, but then this 1% hit changed it to a hit, that hit may crit.
So 1 hit = [1% dmg of your frost bolt * your crit chance (5% base 5% from gear 3% talents 10% WC = 23%)] / spell coefficient (.86)

907 dmg per frostbolt.
(9.07 * 1.23 = 11.15) / (.86) = 12.97 SP
At this gear level 12.97 spellpower would be equal to 1% hit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

The same case as before, more spellpower = the more each hit is worth.
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So you make tradeoffs on your items until you find your max DPS combination. If you want an item that is +15 sp OR 1% crit? You go with the 15 sp.
You want 8 sp OR 1 % hit? You go with the 1% hit.

Good luck!

[stany212]

Fromj what I remember, I thought the hit table worked differently to the above in vanilla...

I thought that the hit table calculated misses and resists first, before taking into account normal damage hits and your critical damage hits

assuming a 10% critical hit rate,

Out of 100 frostbolts, 11% will be misses/resists, thus leaving 89.

from the remaining 89 frostbolts, you have a 10% chance to get a critical hit (8.9 frostbolts)

Therefore, out of 100 frostbolts, 10% critical hit chance does not yield 10 frostbolt critical hits, but 8.9 instead.

Hope that helped (if it's applicable!)

[xemni]

Alright looks like you want some kind of spell power to crit ratio. I'll throw in a hit ratio for you as well. At the moment, the ratio is heavily sided towards spell power, so when you said you stacked crit and did alot better than other mages: Lazermon was just saying you got luckier than they did with crits. Also on a few bosses/trash mages need to be doing other things than casting frost bolt (sheeping, decursing) so if you are much higher on those fights, your fellow mages are making up your slack for you (allowing you to DPS a lot more than normal).

Few things to remember: We can ignore hit in this calculation, 1% hit > 1 % crit because an additional hit can crit, were going for thoerycrafting here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CRIT
Few assumptions: Your frost bolt does 447 avg dmg. A decent spellpower of 300. Raid consumes of +59 spellpower.

447 + (.86 coefficient * 359) = 755 dmg per frostbolt. Lets add in Talents (3%, 6%) and COE (10%).
755 * 1.03 * 1.06 * 1.1 = 907 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit would over a long average be equal to 1% more damage per frost bolt. 907*.01 = 9.07 dmg.
9.07 / (spell coefficent = .86) = 10.54 Spellpower.
At this gear level 10.54 spellpower would be equal to 1% crit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

Now lets say you have worse level of gear at 200 sp+59 from consumes:
804 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit = 9.3 SP
Flasked? 300sp+150+59 = 509 SP
1062 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit = 12.34 SP
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HIT
Few assumptions: Your frost bolt does 447 avg dmg. A decent spellpower of 300. Raid consumes of +59 spellpower. You can't go above 16% hit (you get 6% from talents)

A hit that would of missed, but then this 1% hit changed it to a hit, that hit may crit.
So 1 hit = [1% dmg of your frost bolt * your crit chance (5% base 5% from gear 3% talents 10% WC = 23%)] / spell coefficient (.86)

907 dmg per frostbolt.
(9.07 * 1.23 = 11.15) / (.86) = 12.97 SP
At this gear level 12.97 spellpower would be equal to 1% hit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

The same case as before, more spellpower = the more each hit is worth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So you make tradeoffs on your items until you find your max DPS combination. If you want an item that is +15 sp OR 1% crit? You go with the 15 sp.
You want 8 sp OR 1 % hit? You go with the 1% hit.

Good luck!

Thank you, this is what I was looking for, as apposed to what I received.

There is no slack to pick up, I decurse as much as any other mage in the run. With your words, if I get lucky enough with crits, It allows me to catch back up rather easy.

but again thank you for the response, this will be most useful

Fromj what I remember, I thought the hit table worked differently to the above in vanilla...

I thought that the hit table calculated misses and resists first, before taking into account normal damage hits and your critical damage hits

assuming a 10% critical hit rate,

Out of 100 frostbolts, 11% will be misses/resists, thus leaving 89.

from the remaining 89 frostbolts, you have a 10% chance to get a critical hit (8.9 frostbolts)

Therefore, out of 100 frostbolts, 10% critical hit chance does not yield 10 frostbolt critical hits, but 8.9 instead.

Hope that helped (if it's applicable!)

According to what I was reading on EJ, its done by two "dice rolls"

One roll for resists and misses, one roll for crit chance, both are done at the same time. From what I read anyway, I tend to believe what I read off those forums, as they're generally correct, but thats not always the case.

[Haidoken]

I'm near 100% sure that spelldamage is a dwo-dice roll.

ie first you roll for a hit, if it's a hit you then roll for a crit.

MELLE however does not work like this the melee table is a one dice roll where crit could effectivly push normal hits of the table, you can still miss though so +hit is always better. This is true for normal atacks only, special attacks (yellows) work like spells

you can reference this article for a better explanation.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Attack_table

[Stalk]

This thread is full of errors. A critical strike will occur independent of whether a spell can hit or not. The critical strike percentages from gear are added as its own entry on the hit table with priority over normal hits when it comes time to roll the dice. Therefore, +1% spell critical strike means that +1.205% of your spells that hit will be critical strikes if you hit an enemy 83% of the time with spells.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/topic/94 ... and-mages/

For example, I was discussing with a mage how much damage his frostbolts can do if they critically strike. The mage had about 2300 critical Frost Bolts without Arcane Power but with raid buffs and a debuffed raid boss. This means that 1% critical strike chance gives (1150 damage)/(83 spells) = 13.86 extra damage per hit on average against a raid boss (this calculation does not factor in binary resists from the 6% average resistance that raid bosses except the ones with frost vulnerabilities should have but that would diminish spell damage as well in an equal manner). Since Frostbolt should have an 81.4% spell damage coefficient, that 13.86 extra damage per spell cast would account for 17.03 spell damage from 1% critical strike chance in this mage's case. The idea is to balance both statistics in order to optimize the damage that your spells do. It is a 2-variable optimization problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization