Theorycrafting: spell hit rating and me
Mood: geeky
Posted on 2007-09-12 15:48:00
Tags: math theorycraft worldofwarcraft
Words: 352
Last night some gear dropped in Kara and I was next on the unofficial Suicide Kings list for loot and I couldn't decide whether to take it or not because of stupid spell hit rating. So I'm going to work out how much spell hit rating is useful for me in the hope of avoiding this in the future. This is all based on the Spell hit article in WoWWiki.
For raiding, bosses are considered to be level 73, which means by default I have a 83% chance to hit them with spells. I have 3/3 points in Elemental Precision which gives me +3% hit for Frost and Fire spells (which is all I ever cast on bosses), bringing me to 86%. The maximum hit chance possible is 99%, so that leaves a 13% gap.
1% of spell hit chance is the same as 12.6 points of spell hit at level 70, so that means I need 13*12.6=163.8 spell hit rating to max out. Since I have 5/5 points in Ice Shards, my frost spells crit bonus is 100%. Unlike melee attacks, for spells hit and crit are separate rolls. So 1% of spell crit chance is really worth (chance to hit)%. So spell hit does more good than spell crit. (for fire spells spell hit is even better, since by default the crit bonus is only 50%) It takes 22.1 spell crit rating to get 1% of spell crit chance at level 70.
Summary: I only have 83 spell hit rating with my current gear, so I need another 80 spell hit rating to max that out. When comparing gear, since my current spell hit chance is 92.6%, 1 point of spell hit is worth around (22.1/12.6)/(.926)=1.9 points of spell crit, and this is underestimating spell hit since I do cast fire spells in my normal rotation (frostbolt, frostbolt, fire blast, ...) Also, spell hit is worthless on my PvP gear since my chance to hit is 96%+3%=99% on lvl 70 opponents, which is maxed out.
Next time, how much spell hit/crit is worth versus +spell damage!
Thanks to destroyerj for corrections.
12 comments
Comment from fartingmonkey:
2007-09-12T15:36:17+00:00
Wow, I figured mages would have some talent to boost that more. Shadow priests have something that closes the gap a ton. Basically talents get me to 93% and i need around 72 spell-hit to close the gap. Of course more spell hit gear means i can dump that talent and put it in higher dps talents.
Without it maxed you are probably missing a good portion of your crits, you can calculate out your actual crit % based on your to-hit. 20.6%*86%= 17.7% actual crit rate. So you are being mitigated of 13% of your normal damage, 3% of it is crits. I am of course ignoring your crazy ass frost crit insanity.
As much as Bri mocks my choice of valuing spell hit as infinity-with-limits(don't go past your max, better for s.priests & mages) I think I'm right..but I tend to get bored after 5 minutes of theorycrafting.
Comment from gregstoll:
2007-09-12T15:44:26+00:00
Wow, that's pretty sweet. I was a little surprised as well, but most of the Frost talents are plus damage and not plus hit. I'll just stick to 1 point of spell hit = 2 points of spell crit, more or less.
I'm really interested in how +spell damage compares to all this but the math is getting fairly complicated :-)
Comment from fartingmonkey:
2007-09-12T16:16:36+00:00
I think the spellstrike gear is really good, pants/helm...I know a guy that can make the helm on our server. Its pretty expensive though.
If it makes you feel better on gear, I basically don't need shoulders/robe/boots/belt/trinkets. The amulet i want is a trash loot drop for only shadow damage out of kara.
This leaves:
Gloves from Attumen
Dagger from Prince my offhand is from heroic badges
Legs from Opera
Hat from someone probably...dont remember. ;)
So thats only like 4 things we'll compete on...not overly bad.
Comment from gregstoll:
2007-09-12T16:20:46+00:00
Not the Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Curator? That thing looks pretty awesome!
Comment from fartingmonkey:
2007-09-12T17:09:26+00:00
Oh, it is awesome, but with the dagger from prince + offhand from badges i would get to 250 spell damage before the enchant which is insane.
If I ever actually got the shadow labs mace I would be at 200ish.
But the staff is a big freaking upgrade to my current staff. :)
Comment from fartingmonkey:
2007-09-12T17:13:52+00:00
Ok after reading the comments on WoWhead im convinced that its either this staff...or the dagger+offhand combo
Basically the lower city rep mace versus the staff
"This combo has 25 more damage than the staff, but I lose 23 spell hit for 15 spell crit I don't need, and I'm losing a whopping 35 intellect."
Comment from cifarelli:
2007-09-12T16:12:21+00:00
More versed in melee (rogue) theory craft but in general for raiding DPS both spells and melee +hit is a superior stat to load up on up to the max accuracy point. The other thing about +hit vs +crit is loading up on hit gives a steady consistant increase in damage. Loading on crit will give you huge damage spikes as you randomly get chain crits which is much harder to watch and manage threat with.
Crit vs hit value also varies a lot with class (and spec). Shadow priests and affliction warlocks have lots of damage sources that never crit so they will load up on +hit. Mages have a lot more talent options that care about getting crits so balance is more useful.
And yeah, actually starting to put value on these vs raw +damage will get messy fast.
Comment from gregstoll:
2007-09-12T16:15:09+00:00
Yeah, that's a good point - consistency is probably better, although crits are more exciting. (and better in PVP)
Aw crap, I'm crunching numbers and I forgot about my Shiffar's Nexus-Horn. Messy indeed...
Comment from cifarelli:
2007-09-12T16:48:02+00:00
Well... it was the best in PvP till they introduced Resiliance. Resiliance means crit is no longer the automatic king of PvP.
Comment from tehfanboi:
2007-09-13T08:16:03+00:00
In the unsolicited spec department....
Why the point in improved wand? Also I found Shatter kinda pointless unless you have frostbite, which is bad if you have Imp Blizzard. I'd think you could get some rearrangement of talents and get some really nice stuff.
Comment from gregstoll:
2007-09-13T09:00:43+00:00
So I just needed more points in the Arcane tree to get up to Improved Counterspell. The problem is that I rarely use Arcane spells (never Arcane Missiles) so few talents are useful to me. If I had to do it again I might ditch those and put two more points in Magic Absorption which is kinda neat.
Frostbite certainly helps Shatter, but I think Shatter stands on its own with Frost Nova. It's not exactly a raiding talent so I'll cop out by saying it's for PVP. And I'm not too excited about anything else in the Frost tree except for my missing two points in Arctic Winds.
Comment from anonymous:
2008-03-17T18:00:40+00:00
As a fire or frost mage, if you have Elemental Precision, your magic number" you need to reach is definitely 164.
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