Crit Cap

WoW is filled with “caps.”  Soft caps, hard caps.  Caps that are nearly mandatory to reach, caps that are suggested to reach.

For most of our rogue lives we have watched our hit rating for caps.  We know about the hit cap for special attacks and poison hit cap, and the out-of-reach white hit cap.  (if you don’t, see my detailed post from last year).  In recent months rogues became very concerned with the armor penetration cap.

For my five years of playing WoW, though, I never really worried about crit.  More crit = better.  That’s changing.  At T10 gear levels, there is a point where more crit no longer helps your autoattack white damage.  Thus, the existence of a crit cap.

Chase Christian at wow.com did a good job of explaining this briefly.  I’m going to go a little more teacher-like, because that’s what I do.  To skip the discussion, scroll down to the Wrap Up at the end.

To start, we need to be familiar with the hit table.  When you attack, its as if you roll a die from 1-100.  You have a chance to crit, hit, be dodged, get a glancing blow, or miss.  I’m omitting parry as an option here on the assumption that you’ll be attacking from behind, as you are certainly a well-informed rogue. 

If you had zero hit rating and zero expertise and were attacking a level 83 raid boss, with a 30% crit chance, your hit table would look like this:

27% miss
6.5% dodge
24% glancing blow
4.8 % crit suppression*
30% crit
the rest (7.7%) is normal hit

* crit suppression is a mechanic found to exist on raid bosses by theorycrafters after extensive combat log analysis

Of course, no one goes into a raid with zero hit or zero expertise.  However, we’ll go with that table above as a starting point.  Lets say that this rogue gets some new gems with +crit and increases his crit %.  All of the numbers in the attack table have to add up to 100%, so if crit % increases then something else has to decrease.  What decreases is the chance to get a normal hit.

So if our fictional no-hit, no-expertise rogue gets another 5% crit, then his new attack table would be…

27% miss
6.5% dodge
24% glancing blow
4.8 % crit suppression
35% crit
the rest (2.7%) is normal hit

Now he has only a 2.7% chance to get a normal hit! Hopefully, you can see where this is going.  If he keeps adding +crit, then eventually his chance of getting a normal hit will go to zero.  When that happens his attack table will be

27% miss
6.5% dodge
24% glancing blow
4.8 % crit suppression
37.5% crit

What next?  If you keep adding +crit after that it no longer increases your chance to crit at all!  Our fictional rogue in this case has a crit cap of 37.5%.

But that’s not your crit cap.  Yours is different.

Essentially, your crit cap is whatever % you have left after subtracting your hit, dodge, glancing, and crit suppression from 100%.  You can’t change the glancing blow % or crit suppression, so the way to make more room for crits is by reducing the chance for misses and dodges.  That means adding +hit and +expertise.

Lets say that our fictional rogue above gets some new gear.  He still has his 37.5% crit chance, but manages to get himself expertise capped.  That eliminates all of the dodge chance.  Now his attack table will be..

27% miss
0% dodge
24% glancing blow
4.8 % crit suppression
37.5% crit
the rest (6.5%) is normal hit

He now could increase his crit by another 6.5% without hitting the crit cap.

Now for hit rating.  When you add hit rating, you actually are reducing your chance to miss.  If our fictional rogue adds 5% hit chance he actually reduces his chance to miss from 27% to 22%.  THen his attack table would look like:

22% miss
0% dodge
24% glancing blow
4.8 % crit suppression
37.5% crit
the rest (11.5%) is normal hit

This gives him lots of room to add +crit without hitting the crit cap.

The wrap-up

To find your crit cap, do this:

• start with 100%
• subtract the chance to get a glancing blow (24%)
• subtract the crit suppression for raid bosses (4.8%)
• subtract the bosses chance to dodge (base 6.5%, reduced by expertise – hover over expertise on your character page to see this)
• subtract your chance to miss (base 27%, reduced by your +hit chance – hover over Hit Rating on your character page to see this)
• What you have left is the total chance to hit and crit.  This figure is your crit cap.

Most of us won’t be up against the crit cap unless you’ve been stacking a lot of +crit gear.  Personally, I’m not that close, but another rogue in my guild is within a few percent.  If you’re getting near the crit cap you’ll need to make informed decisions about gear and gems.  Make sure to account for trinket procs if you are getting close to the crit cap.

Switching Specs During Runs

In the past I’ve talked about the fact that I am a die-hard dagger rogue.  I’ve stated this many times, and its due to lore-like reasons.  I’ve always pictured rogues attacking with a dagger in the back from the shadows.  I know that others disagree – commenters have made very well-written cases for swashbuckling rogues with swords or ninja-like rogues with fist weapons.  I can see that.  Its just not my personal vision.  For me, Assassination spec has always been my preferred way to go, even when Combat was the top dps spec.

Game mechanics have pushed me to change my tune on Combat spec.  Specifically, the chain-pulling speed runs in heroics with the LFD tool.

Assassination is a great single-target spec, but it lags when the targets are dying in just a few seconds due to massively overgeared instance groups.  As a Mutilate spec, I’m usually forced to use FoK spam because I can’t build up poison stacks or combo points fast enough for envenoms.

Combat, though, has those nice cooldowns.  If I alternate Blade Flurry, Killing Spree, and Adrenaline Rush on trash pulls, and save two out of the three for boss fights I can do excellent dps in heroics.

This has given me a lot of practice with Combat Sword/Axe, to the point that I’m now comfortable using it in raids.  My routine is ICC now is to go with Combat spec for trash and Mutilate spec for bosses.  This has kept me at an acceptable level of damage (by acceptable I mean #1, of course).

It helps that I’ve been the recipient of a nice axe and sword through the “take it or it gets disenchanted” loot system.  If I was really dedicated to this, I’d actually build up two different sets of gear, since Combat seems to improve with ArPen and haste more than Mutilate does.  However, Combat is still a special-situation set and trash doesn’t require min/maxing the way tightly-tuned bosses do.

A Rogue in Icecrown Citadel – Festergut

As with all of my guides, this is not intended to be a strategy for the whole raid.  It is only intended for rogues and other melee dps classes.

Festergut, like Saurfang, is a very easy fight for rogues.  Specifically, this is a dps test for your raid.  Your job is generally going to be standing still going all-out on the boss.  Therefore, this guide will be fairly short.

On the pull, plant yourself right behind him and go nuts.  The fight will last no more than 5 minutes so you’ll get to use your 2-minute cooldown abilities twice.  If everything goes well in the fight, the boss won’t move at all, and neither will you.  Your raid needs to average about 5-6k dps per damage class (depending how many healers you have and what your tanks can do).

This fight has one interesting mechanic.  You’ll notice that the room is filled with a haze when you start.  Everyone takes damage from that.  Festergut will inhale some of the gas, which reduces raid damage but makes him hit harder.

Every so often there will be gas spores that spawn (two on 10-man, three on 25-man).  In about 10 seconds the spores will explode, but you don’t want to avoid them.  Get close to them! When they explode, you take a small amount of damage but, more importantly, you get a stack of Inoculation.  You really want that.  You should get three stacks from the first three spore spawns.

During the fight, after Festergut has inhaled all of the gas in the room, he will exhale it all at once, doing 50,000 damage to each player.  However, the damage is reduced by 25% for each stack of Inoculation you get, so if you got three stacks you only take about 12-13k damage.

The only time that you might be asked to move is to get the gas spores around.  Each spore spawns on a person.  The whole raid needs to be next to a spore when it explodes, which is 12 seconds after it spawns.  If, by chance, all spores  spawn in the melee group, then one of the players with a spore needs to run out to get to the ranged dps so they can get Inoculated.  You’ll need to set that up with your raid in advance.  Just make sure that you are near a spore when it goes off.  If the spore is on you, make sure you are close enough to the tanks so that they get the Inoculation.

Other than that one possibility, you’ll be able to stay put and do big, big dps in this fight.

One other piece of advice – Festergut can do a targeted AoE effect that makes people vomit for 6 seconds.  He only casts it on players at range, so we rogues don’t have to worry about this.  However, if there are fewer than three players at range (eight in 25-man) he may cast it on melee, which would be bad.  Make sure your raid has enough players at range, and that they are spread out so they don’t all end up puking.

The fight sounds simple, but that’s just for melee dps.  The tanks will be switching to manage a stacking debuff (so be careful with your Tricks if you use it on the tank).  Healers need to switch from raid healing to tank healing as Festergut inhales gas.  None of that affects the rogues, though.

A note about a “just in case” situation… if somehow you don’t get all three stacks of Inoculation then I’ve read that you can avoid his 50k damage explosion by using Vanish just at the instant the cast goes off.  I haven’t tried it myself, so take this advice with a grain of salt.

Festergut has a couple of attractive drops for rogues.  On 10-man, he offers Precious’s Putrid Collar for your neck slot and Plague-Soaked Leather Leggings.  There’s a slow mace, too, if you have seen any mace rogues out there.

The 25-man version has a leg slot item, also – the Gangrenous Leggings.  There is a lso a 2.6 speed fist weapon, Black Bruise.  Unfortunately, there’s really nothing else for us here.

A Blogging Guild

I’ve had my blog running for a couple of years now, although it was only recently that I let my guildmates in on the secret.  The blog thing may be contagious.  There are now three of my guildies who now have their own blogs.  I’ll shamelessly plug them here.

Our main tank (bear druid) is phenomenal.  He’s writing a blog about feral druid tanking and raid leading.  Trust me, he knows what he’s talking about.  Check him out at Primal Precision.

The guild’s other raid leader is a mage who has been playing and raiding since early WoW.  He’s got a new blog that focuses on mage raiding, with particular emphasis on macros and other helpful tricks.  Find him at The Mage’s Den.  (ask him for stories about pre-BC raiding – he’s got a ton of great stories)

Its neat to see what other talents your guildmates have.  One of my friends from the guild has a non-WoW blog where she shows her immense artistic talents.  See her stuff at fawn of the white island.  Maybe you’ll see something you want to buy!

Pugging at Low Levels, part 2

As far as pug groups go, I’ve had a mix of good and bad pugs so far.  The tanks have generally been good.  Even at level 25-30 we’ve been able to group up the mobs and AoE them down.  We’ve had a couple of weirdos, but mostly smooth.  I’d say the number of obnoxious jerks is higher in my low level runs so far than in my level 80 heroics, but its too small a sample size to draw a conclusion.

My big obstacle has been Gnomeregan.  It creates a problem that interrupts the smooth operation of the Dungeon Finder system. The problem is that mobs just inside the entrance respawn fairly quickly.  Lets say your group is 3/4 of the way through Gnomer, and someone drops from the group.  You re-queue and get a replacement, who is ported in at the entrance.  Unfortunately, there are elite mobs between him and you.  Your only choice is to run back and re-clear some trash.

In the efficiency-at-all-costs environment that exists in the game right now, most players are not willing to make that effort, and so the group falls apart.  This has happened to me 4 of the 5 times I was put into Gnomeregan as a random dungeon.

What will happen when I am high enough level to do Maraudon?  Or BRD?  Those places are enormous and mazelike.  I can imagine someone getting ported in as a replacement, seeing that they need to make a 20 minute run from the entrance to the group, and just dropping out.

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Another interesting thought.  When you run instances at level 80, you have the expectation that the other players in your group have learned their abilities through the leveling process.  That’s why level 80 players who only do 1k dps are often disparaged or insulted.

What about at level 25?  If there is a player who clearly doesn’t know how to play the class, what do you do?  It *could* be a brand new player.  Or it *could* be a guy with five 80s who is on his 12th alt, and should know better.

In one of my runs a staff dropped with +spellpower.  I indicated in party chat that I was going to roll Need.  The druid healer started yelling at me!  He said that spellpower was no good for a mage because it only gave +crit and mages didn’t need that.  I replied that Intellect gave crit, and that spellpower was good for any caster class.  He rambled on and on… wrong the whole time.

If this is a new player, this kind of misunderstanding is understandable.  If its an alt of a high level toon, its terrible.  How to react?

I simply passed on the staff (knowing that there are many more such weapons in the game that I can get without loot drama).  I told him to mouse over his intellect stat and see what it says about crit.  And I dropped it.  Maybe he learned something there.  Maybe he is long past learning such things.  I don’t know.

I could take a teacher-like approach here and share my game knowledge in hopes that I make some difference in their game experience.  Or I could just sit quietly and allow the ignorance to contiue, especially since they are not even players on my server so I’ll never hear from them again.

Pugging at Low Levels, part 1

With little to do when I’m not raiding, I’ve picked up another long-forgotten alt.  Ages ago, I had leveled a mage to 23, then let him sit.  At that time, I had three level 80 toons and I swore that I would never level another alt because I was tired of doing the same quests over and over again.

The new Dungeon Finder has completely changed that.

I’ve got him wearing two pieces of heirloom gear for a 20% boost in xp from killing mobs.  With that bonus, questing cannot even come close to instancing as far as xp/hour.  At level 25 I got into a pug for Razorfen Kraul.  I started the run having just barely dinged 25.  I ended the run 20% of the way through level 26.  A second run of Razorfen Kraul got me halfway through level 27.  Cleaning up a few quests in my log got me to 28.  Three levels in about 3 hours online.  Wow.

I expect that I will level him almost entirely in instances.  For me, that’s perfect since I have already done most of the available quests multiple times.

For a player new to WoW, this is a COMPLETELY different game than the one I played.  When I leveled in vanilla WoW questing was the way to go.  I ran each instance once, a few twice, to complete the quests that brought you there.  I spent a great deal of my playtime running from place to place between quest hubs (no mount until level 40!).  Even the times that I ran instances required the time spent getting there, assembling the group, and then running back when finished.

For a new player today, once he gets high enough to do Wailing Caverns/Deadmines/Raging Chasm/Shadowfang Keep he can level without ever leaving his home city.  Sit at the auction house, pop into the dungeon, pop back to the AH when done.  And forget doing quests for gear rewards – the Satchel of Helpful Goods reward from the pug gives nice blue items.

I’m not judging whether this is good or bad.  I’m just pointing out that this is not even remotely like the game I played 5 years ago.  I really liked the immersion that old WoW gave.  If I started the game today, I’m not sure how I would react, or if it would suck me in the way it did then.

From the point of view of a mage, this changes the leveling game completely for clothies.  One of my biggest frustrations when solo leveling the mage was my terrible squishiness.  If I let the mob get close to me I was in trouble, and accidentally aggroing two or three was certain doom. Now, in instances, I have a tank to protect me and healer to heal me and my squishiness is a non-factor.  This is a HUGE change in the leveling experience for mages.

It will be interesting to see in few months what the new players are like when they reach the level cap.  For us grizzled veterans, we we forced to learn our classes thoroughly through the long leveling process.  Sometime during BC and into WotLK, things changed so you could powerlevel a toon through only soloing, and not really learn to play it in a group.  Nowadays, new players can do nothing but instances the whole way up.  Will they be better prepared for the endgame?  Time will tell.

Loot Torture

One of my guild’s main tanks is on a bit of a sabbatical as his school semester has started.  For us to run ICC, then, we needed to bring in another tank.  We have two top tanks, and after that our next level of geared tanks are all alts of core raiders.  Last night in ICC it was my turn to set aside my main and take on tanking duties as a prot pally.

We got through the first four bosses pretty handily.  Other than a few hiccups on Lady Deathwhisper, the run went very smoothly.  We even one-shot Saurfang, despite it being the first time seeing the fight for a few of the players in the raid.  We managed to earn the I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement for those who didn’t already have it.

On the plus side, this was a good week for me on my paladin.  Most of my tanking experience before this was in heroics.  In the past week I have tanked 25-man Ignis for the weekly raid, and 10-man ICC (through Saurfang) twice.  I got Titanguard from FL25, received the first rep ring from Ashen Verdict and now have enough Emblems of Frost to buy the tanking trinket.

But there was loot torture aplenty in our ICC run.  Since I wasn’t on my rogue, I had to stare in horror at this debacle…

First, Marrowgar drops the Shawl of Nerubian Silk.  I have coveted that on my rogue.  It went to a hunter.  That was like a stab in the heart.

Next, Deathwhisper drops the Chestguard of the Frigid Noose.  There was no leather wearing dps in the raid, so it also went to the hunter.  Rip my lungs out, why don’t you?

Finally, Saurfang dropped the Scourge Stranglers.  I don’t even remember who got those – either the hunter again, or the druid tank.  At that point everything was all hazy through the tears in my eyes.

So the thrill of successfully tanking ICC was blunted by the disappointment of seeing all MY gear go to other players.  As if its not bad enough seeing hunters pass me on the damage meters, now they are taking my leather gear!  Loot rage !!!! lol

Rogues nerfed, news at 11

We all saw this coming, so there is not really any cause to complain.  I agree that rogues (especially mutilate rogues) were outperforming everyone else by far too great a margin to go without fixing.

So here’s the hotfix, which was applied Thursday night:

• The base damage bonus from Hunger for Blood has been reduced from 10% to 5%.
• The bonus damage rogues gain from attack power for poisons has been decreased. This applies to Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Wound Poison.

Remember that HfB was reduced from 15% to 10% not long ago.

I know they were going for a quick fix.  I just wish they taken more time and found a more subtle adjustment in the mechanics.  HfB is an easy and obvious place to make cuts, but its a heavy-handed way to do it.   I always liked HfB, even when we had to stack it and refresh its stacks.  However, as time goes on and it keeps getting weakened it becomes a less interesting talent.

According to the theorycrafters at Elitist Jerks, this change reduces mutilate dps by around 7% and combat dps by around 2% (pending further testing).  Mutilate still comes out ahead of combat spec on tank-and-spank bosses, but they are quite close and its possible that there will be fights where combat is preferred.

In my 10-man raids, we typically bring two rogues.  We are both mutilate spec.  I considered switching to combat for the Savage Combat buff, but the decrease in my personal dps outweighed the overall gain from the extra raid buff.  Now, though, it might be worth it.  Further testing will tell.

I think there are probably a couple of hunters in my guild who are looking forward to the damage meters for our next raid. 

P.S. – we also got this…

• Stealthed rogues should no longer trigger traps in Ice Crown Citadel from long range

More Icecrown Citadel Traps

Just a heads up for those progressing in ICC.

Once you kill Deathbringer Saurfang, you can go through the door behind him.  You’ll see some kind of mist spray that blocks the hallway.  Don’t go in it!  After watching it for a moment, you’ll see that there are several such sprays, and they go on and off in an alternating pattern.  Yes, its another Frogger boss!  You can go through them, one at a time, pausing between each one to wait.

Rogues to the rescue!

When you get past the first spray right behind Saurfang and look to your left, you’ll see a lever against the wall.

If you are in stealth you can pull the lever and shut down all of the mist sprays.  Frogger down!  Problem solved!  (of course, you get the ability to teleport past them with the ports so its not THAT much of a help, but still…)

Wait, there’s more!

In a previous post I showed the Spirit Traps that can be disarmed by rogues in the trash area before Marrowgar.

In the hallway where Stinky and Precious path, there are geist traps.  They look exactly like the Spirit Traps.  If they are tripped, a mob of geists spawns behind you and jumps your clothies.  They can be detected in stealth and disarmed.

Like the other traps, this is a good source of rep so you may want to set it off intentionally and AoE the geists down.

Enjoy your rogue goodies!

ICC Rep Runs – Get In There!

You’ve probably seen people asking in Trade chat about ICC rep runs.  If you haven’t done them, get in there!  If you’re not even sure why people are doing this, read on.

Killing mobs in ICC gives rep with Ashen Verdict. This is great rep to have.

If you were around in the Karazhan days, you’ll remember that Kara kills got you Violet Eye rep, and each level of rep got you a better ring from the guys standing outside the instance.  The same is true here.  Levels of Ashen Verdict rep get you increasingly better rings.  Here they are:

Friendly:   Ashen Band of Vengeance (iLvL 251)
Honored:   Ashen Band of Greater Vengeance (iLvL 259)
Revered:   Ashen Band of Unmatched Vengeance (iLvL 268)
Exalted:   Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance (iLvL 277)

On a rep run, the raid is just killing the trash in the first area, and then running out and resetting the raid.  Since no bosses are killed, you don’t get saved to the raid and you can run it with your guild at a later time.  There is no limit to how many times you can do this.  On my server, there are groups that just spend the whole day grinding Ashen Verdict rep this way, swapping people in and out as needed to keep the raid full.

Also, there are crafting recipes available at various levels of Ashen Verdict rep.  I’m not going to list all of the recipes here, but they have some for tailoring, leatherworking, and blacksmithing.  They also have the very in-demand recipes for epic bullets and arrows.  The bullet recipe is available to goblin engineers, and the arrow recipe is for gnomish engineers.