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Rogue Understanding the rogue class: Soyoen's way

Soyoen

Authorized
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
This version is revamped elsewhere and can be found on the original publication site. It will be updated here soon enough.
Preface

Thoughts, possible choices, decisions.

The natural progression when deciding in which manner you want to play this game, that although old still have a special charm in it. Allow me to take you onto a journey that you will soon forget or dismiss: Why you should consider, or be pleased about, the decision of joining our ranks within the rogue class. My nickname is Soyoen, I have close to exclusively been playing as a rogue since the closed beta back in 2004 with a few breaks in between - this is my way to understand the rogue class in the original version of World of Warcraft.


Table of content
1. The Rogue
1.1 Choosing the race
1.2 Road to the level cap
1.3 The class at the level cap
1.4 Preparing for your first raid
1.4.1 Consumables for your first raid
1.4.2 Enchants
1.4.3 Addons
1.4.4 Keybindings
1.5 What can a rogue roughly expect to do in a set of boss battles
1.5.1 Molten Core: Gehennas
1.5.2 Molten Core: Ragnaros
1.5.3 Blackwing Lair: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt
1.5.4 Blackwing Lair: Chromaggus
1.5.5 Zul'Gurub: High priestess Mar'li
1.5.6 Zul'Gurub: Jin'do the Hexxer
1.5.7 The Temple of Ahn'qiraj: Princess Huhuran
1.5.8 The Temple of Ahn'qiraj: C'thun
1.6 Special consumables

2. The important basic mechanics
2.1 Getting rid of misses on yellow attacks
2.2 Rotations & cycles
2.2.1 Rotations
2.2.2 Cycles
2.3 Cooldown management

3. The important advanced mechanics
3.1 Weapon skill
3.1.1 What is it?
3.1.2 Why do I need to have knowledge about it?
3.2 Proc chance & Proc per minute
3.2.1 What is it?
3.2.2 Why is it important to have knowledge about?
3.2.3 Actual PPM

4.0 RogueDPS Reborn spreadsheet




The Rogue
1.1 Choosing the race
Something as trivial as making the choice of what race you wish to play will have substantial effect on your ability to compete in the late game as a rogue. This is especially appearent if you are looking to play on Alliance as Human rogues stand out from the rest due to weapon skill, but more on that later. The rogue class calculates critical strike chance in terms of [5% base crit + (agility gained from items/29) + other critical effect gains], this makes the base attributes of strength and agility to only contribute to the amount of attack power gained from them.

In short; When choosing a race you are looking at racial abilities and skills such as "Will of the forsaken" and "Blood fury" first, and the AP values second. I have made a list of each of the factions races below in falling order from best to worst, with that said I need to stress again that the biggest difference between races is present to Alliance players.

Alliance: Human > Night elf > Dwarf/Gnome
Horde: Orc > Troll > Undead



1.2 Road to the level cap
The leveling experience as a rogue differ from the majority of the other classes, due to the stealth ability that enables you to skip through packs of non player characters (NPCs). You will quickly learn to mash that sinister strike or backstab button, and realize just how easy crowd control can ruin your day. As you reach level 24, I would recommend a talent distribution like the one that can be found in the link below. The road afterwards would either be invested towards relentless strikes in the assassination tree, and/or weapon expertise in the combat tree.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#fMZMIV

Backstab will be one of your most valuable abilities early on in the game as you can sidestep "through" NPCs, and as the NPC is always facing you, eventual delay will make you able to backstab the NPC if you quickly repeat the sidestep. On some server projects this is a lot harder to pull off but when you get a hang of it, in terms of spamming your backstab button, your leveling pace will pick up momentum. Key talents for leveling speed are Remorseless Attacks, Precision, Riposte, Blade flurry, and Master of Deception if there are many high level gankers roaming.

Notable leveling dungeons that features good gear for rogues to ease up the leveling phase are Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines, Blackfanthom depths, Razorfen Kraul & Downs, Scarlet monastery (quest), Maraudon, and Blackrock Depths.



1.3 The class at the level cap
When you have finally reached the level cap a new chapter begins in this version of World of Warcraft; the gathering of your preraid best in slot items. As time progresses and more items and quest chains are unlocked it will be easier to obtain great items to put your right into the social mess of raiding. Great rogues are always in demand, and in this version of World of Warcraft rogues have one of the more action packed roles.

In Dungeons up to 10 man you can expect to aid your group with crowd control and out of combat pack control with abilities such as sap, gouge, blind, and distract. When progressing up to 20 man raids you will still make use of the same abilities on certain packs, but it becomes more of a wipe recovery and/or avoidance maneuver - with that said if you manage to pull out key distracts and/or likewise that enables your raid group to survive a potential wipe then you have created some good value for the team.

In 40 man raids your job is more one dimensional; Maximum damage per second (DPS) at all times WITHOUT screwing up kicks, rotations, positioning, and likewise. As Ghostcrawler once said: "the class is ultimately very mathy", and makes for a perfect fit for eventual players who want to tryhard and pull out some extra chunks of DPS. The rogue class is easy to learn, hard to master, and one of the most rewarding classes in a PVE environment - especially if you are playing Horde with windfury totems.



1.4 Preparing for your first raid
1.4.1 Consumables for your first raid
Looking away from obtaining your best in slot preraid gear you will need to prepare a few other things in order to ease up your ability to perform. Mongoose potions, Juju power, and winterfall firewater are all great ways of boosting your DPS. However for your very first raid it shouldn't be the focal point as protection potions and likewise may provide greater aid to your raidgroup by easing up the job of the healers. If money is low and you can only sustain defensive potions I recommend looking at DPS boosting potions one tier below mongoose potions.

1.4.2 Enchants
Something you most definitely should have on your gear when entering your first raid are enchants, and more specifically the weapon enchant in terms of crusader on both your weapons. This is due to crusader providing so much more as a single enchant then most other ingame and is thus very worthwhile to acquire, especially if you team up with another rogue/druid in order to farm Archivist Galford for righteous orbs. Aside from this, all enchants that provide agility would do good before your first raid BUT crusader should have priority.

1.4.3 Addons
There will be a set of required addons to use for your first raid, usually your guild has their own KTM threat meter and a few other addons they require you to use. I however will give you what you really need to hit the ground running, the list below will provide you with good possibilities of creating a very functional and clean raiding UI. Some of the addons may requires ACE2, prat is also a very useful addon but not completely in my taste.

BearCastBar: Swing timers combined with a new Cast bar. Superb for Windfury users.

BigWigs: Boss addon that is commonly used to track certain abilities, combine with NECB.

NECB: Addon that tracks enemies and has a built in boss addon, combine with BigWigs.

Bongos: Easy to use for setting up your bars.

Buffalo: Tracking buffs and debuffs, easy to use and nice looking.

Chronometer: Every rogues favorite CD/SND tracker.

Classic Snowfall: Instant button pushes.

CustomNamePlates: Improve the ingame nameplates to actually look good.

EnergyWatch_V2: Combine with LUNA.

KTM Threat meter: To keep track of the threat on intensive fights.

LunaUnitFrames: The best unit frames addon in vanilla.

Recap: To keep track of your shit for casual theorycrafting.

SimpleMinimap: Improving the visuals on the minimap.

Stunwatch: Keeping track of stuns and likewise in dungeons & 20mans.

SWStats: Your favorite raiding addon.

Tinytip: UI Improvement.

XLoot: Improves loot window.


1.4.4 Keybindings
The following abilities and consumables are recommended to be easy accessible when you start raiding: Sinister strike, Slice'n'dice, Eviscerate, Backstab, Kick, Evasion, Sprint, Vanish, Adrenaline rush, Blade flurry, Distract, Feint, Thistle tea, Greater X protection potion, Free action potion, Instant poison, and Bandages.

My recommendation is that you make a priority list for yourself of what you value the most as everyone has a different way of playing, and then doing the binds in whichever order suits your needs. I've highlighted some abilities in the list above that are actually crucial in vanilla content.

1.5 What can a rogue roughly expect to do in a set of boss battles
1.5.1 Molten Core: Gehennas
The boss fight against Gehennas is a easy fight to learn and hard to get right due to its duration. At the maximum level you will use a free action potion before the first aoe stuns come out from the two adds, while pulling out a perfect rotation to cleave the adds down in combination with the boss. In speedruns it can be common to pull the next pack before the boss is dead, so minimizing the damage taken from rain of fire is crucial to your raid groups speed.

1.5.2 Molten Core: Ragnaros
In the last fight within the Molten Core you face of against Ragnaros, the key to perform well on this fight is to time eventual knockbacks. On some servers this is a harder thing to achieve, without the movement speed buff from the boots enchant it should take approx 3.3-3.6sec to run clear from the aoe blast. If the DPS in your raid group doesn't cut it and the sons of flame make an appearence it is your job together with a tank to deal with the non controlled sons.

1.5.3 Blackwing Lair: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt
This is the best fight in the game for any and every rogue, unless your tanks doesn't do enough threat per second - in which case it kinda blows. "Infinite" amount of energy will make backstab the go to build on this encounter, and if you are usually using swords I recommend using the build posted in the link below. On this fight you are guaranteed threat issues and will especially if Horde, utilize feint to reduce your threat in the beginning 20-25s of the fight. Remember: Even if vanish doesn't clear your threat on KTM or likewise, it is still cleared.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#f0efoxZMIV0bVzxfo

1.5.4 Blackwing Lair: Chromaggus
One of the longer fights pre AQ and Naxxramas, on this fight you need to perfect the rotations you are using whilst utilizing both grenades and likewise to maximize your damage during the nature and fire weaknesses. To this you also need to make sure you gain the best possible uptime between the breaths without risking eating one, in short it's a game of uptimes.

1.5.5 Zul'Gurub: High priestess Mar'li
Aside from the obvious of providing a good chunk of DPS, you will need to provide kick assistance on the drain life ability whilst making sure that no adds grow to large. In contrast to the bat boss within the same raid, kicking isn't as important here but it will speed up your raid speed by a bit if your raid DPS is low.

1.5.6 Zul'Gurub: Jin'do the Hexxer
Against Jin'do the Hexxer your main job is to kill the totems, totems, and totems. Whenever the totems stop dying you will shortly experience a wipe so your job is crucial on this encounter. Looking further into the encounter you can ease up the skeletons spawning with Stratholme Holy Water to ease up the job for other players within your raid group.

1.5.7 The Temple of Ahn'qiraj: Princess Huhuran
Welcome to AQ40, you will now stack tons of nature resistance in order to "soak" the aoe damage Huhuran spits out every now and then. Make sure to bring extra protection potions as you'll need them for lateron in the raid.

1.5.8 The Temple of Ahn'qiraj: C'thun
At C'thun your role is to kill your assigned eye tentacle whenever it spawns whilst keeping your distance to the players around you. To ease up the work of healers and likewise you will drink a green liquid goo every 2 minutes (Greater Nature protection potion).


1.6 Special consumables
There are several consumables that will help boost your ability to perform well in raids, top tier rogues love to keep thistle tea on a constant cooldown whilst having a stocks of both free action potions and restorative potions. Engineering items such as grenades (Dark Iron BomB / Thorium Grenade / Dense dynamite) and Goblin Sapper Charge make for good use throughout raids. We can of course not forget the special JuJu items such as Flurry that can give a decent boost on longer encounters.


The important basic mechanics
2.1 Getting rid of misses on yellow attacks
Something that you can't avoid is the unavoidable dodge chance every boss have which sits on 5,6% and can scale a bit more due to the difference between your weapon skill and the defence skill of the boss. What can be taken care of though is the chance to miss on yellow attacks. Acquiring between [8-9] in hit including talents will make sure that you never miss a yellow attack, of course weapon skill does have an impact on the amount of hit required.

2.2 Rotations & cycles
2.2.1 Rotations
Slice'n'dice - SND, Eviscerate - E
Sword/Mace/Fist common rotation: 3 SND - 5 SND - 5 EVIS
Dagger common rotation: 5 SND

Rogues have for a very long time held themselves to a few rotations of which can be found in the small list above this sentence. Rotations is a very real tool in order to increase your DPS without obtaining better gear, and sadly the two rotations above haven't evolved in a very long time and there's not enough space to evolve the dagger rotation (boy have I done the math). The sword rotation has however gotten a slap in the face and been extended with todays release of the RogueDPS Reborn spreadsheet, be sure to check it out at the bottom for more details on the cycles DPS.


Sinister strike #1: 3snd-5snd-5evis-4snd-5evis-3snd-5snd-5evis - REPEAT
Sinister strike #2: 3snd-5snd-5evis-5snd-4evis - REPEAT

2.2.2 Cycles

DPS cycles used by different specs and rotations has been widely debated over the years in the rogue vanilla community. From what I've seen there have been several individuals over the years stating that the dagger spec theoretically have the best possible DPS output. It is true that the dagger cycle rotations have higher DPS output, however this is often put at rest by the sword specialization contribution. The only tier so far that daggers actually beat swords is AQ40, with the reasoning being of the superb weapon skill gain from Death's sting. That said, daggers is not a bad talent spec - it just lacks non lackluster itemization options until AQ40. Had there been better itemization and talent build options for dagger rogues in this version of World of Warcraft, I doubt there would be any sword/mace rogues on Alliance - Horde however would still take windfury to bed all nights of the week.

2.3 Cooldown management
Managing your cooldowns throughout raids and dungeons will be crucial for your performance, my only advice to how to improve this is to plan your raids ahead. Think about at what packs you want/can use cooldowns and when you need to save them for later usages. Zul'Gurub is a very good example when it comes to how valuable cooldowns can be to have at the ready due to the constant fear of asspulls.


The important advanced mechanics
3.1 Weapon skill
3.1.1 What is it?
I've mentioned weapon skill several times in the topic and I have yet went into detail to what it really is and why you need to have some basic knowledge of it. To make this as easy explainable as possible: You are a forth grader (max level) in the South Park elementary school and PC Principal is the boss you need to take down. Now obviously there are some physical differences between you and mr PC Principal, and those differences affect your chance to have a successful punch at the boss. Aside from that; since mr PC Principal has awesome physique 40% of your blows doesn't quite hurt him as much as they should if you were hitting, say, Kyle.

3.1.2 Why do I need to have knowledge about it?
Those 40% blows are called glancing blows in World of Warcraft and have a reduced damage output when attacking NPCs with a higher defence skill than you have weapon skill. You can reduce the damage reduction by collecting items or talents that increase your weapon skill, or if we connect it to mr PC Principal by sending in a Horde of pregnant mexicans. The weapon skill system is substantial to your DPS, but luckily rogues get +5 on pretty much every weapon skill by talents which eases up everything by a ton. This makes it so that instead of your glancing blows hitting mr PC Principal for 65% of your original weapon damage, they now hit him for 85% with 15% left to "collect" by amassing weapon skill into your favour. The formula that should be used by private servers is Athan's formula, on that topic there should be no debate.


3.2 Proc chance & Proc per minute
3.2.1 What is it?
Many items in this version of World of Warcraft have certain chance to do a special event in terms of a damage spell, extra attack, attack speed bonus, or likewise. Sword specialization is a good example of a static proc chance, the same applies for hand of justice. There are other items however that doesn't list a certain proc chance like Vis'kag the Bloodletter, or Ironfoe. These items are calculated using a proc per minute (PPM) type of system which uses the following calculation: (PPM) / (60/Weapon speed) = Proc chance.

3.2.2 Why is it important to have knowledge about?
Because things aren't as obvious as they sometimes seem to be, PPM type of systems doesn't work well enough in this version of World of Warcraft to control how many times an item can proc for someone playing the rogue class. The reason for this is that a majority of our attacks are instant attacks that work to artificially boost our PPM rate by providing more attacks than thought of. This brings me into the next topic.

3.2.3 Actual PPM
Actual PPM is how many procs you gain under a minute after you've been using attack speed altering effects, alot of instant attacks whilst getting a few windfury/sword specialization/hand of justice procs. Ebon Hand, as example, has a PPM set at 2,0869 (assuming Blizzard values), with the actual PPM rising to almost the double in the main hand. I need to state clearly that PPM and actual PPM are two different entities of gaining understanding around the rogue class, hence why I included it here to give you something to think about.



RogueDPS Reborn spreadsheet
I have for the majority of my time within the vanilla rogue community maintained my own sheets that I based around attribute input to make things a bit easier to get a grip on. Some time ago I thought about releasing my sheets but decided that the user experience with some of them would simply be horrible.

I went on and made a new sheet from the ground up taking the best bits from my previous sheets and one entry from the classical RogueDPS sheet that I cleaned up and modified to make it easier to overlook (Energy analysis tool by Kalman). It is my pleasure to introduce to you RogueDPS Reborn, which can be found in any of the links below, may it serve you well when arguing over wellfare epics :)

Mediafire:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/yfrdb4a34sxius3/RogueDPS_Reborn_by_Soyoen.xlsx

Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/efwxz2qg1lo8jp3/AACHDH4YO4o91Plwdzb6eIDYa?dl=0

Currently for Kronos content the spreadsheet is missing the T0,5 set, this will be updated in a coming update of which I'll let you guys know.


Ending words
If there is something that I want you to take with you from what I've posted above, or on your coming journey as a rogue then it is this the following; Be happy that you decided to roll a rogue, respect the rotations, any class works for a rogue who got the will, and don't make a meme out of my weapon skill explanation!


All the best champs
Soyoen






Changelog RogueDPS Reborn
2015-10-24
Corrections
Haste effects adjusted
Blade flurry dps adjustment
Bloodfang proc adjusted to available data
Vis'kag the Bloodletter IF formula added, ppm corrected
Felstriker uptime calculation adjusted
Crusader uptime calculation adjusted
Emphyrean uptime calculation adjusted
Glancing blows can now not deal more damage than normal hits in case of very high amounts of weapon skill.


New content
Possibility to select the level of the opponent, with the changes that comes with it in terms of reduction on glancing blows and the occurance of glancing blows according to Athan.
Threat per second window added next to the Damage spreadsheet
Darkmantle set (T0,5) Added to the list of choices.
Set bonus added for T2.5 (Darkmantle)
Set bonus added for T2.5 (Deathdealer)
Set bonuses added for T3 (Bonescythe)


Additional
Contributors tab added to the main menu; If you manage to point out changes or mistakes on my part I'll correct them and add you to the list. (Char name - Realm)

 
Last edited:
and don't make a meme out of my weapon skill explanation!

Thing is that if you don't use same formula as is used on Kronos, spreadsheet will be wrong for Kronos players, giving them wrong numbers and wrongly lowering the value of gear (and talents) that add weapon skills.

The formula that should be used by private servers is Athan's formula, on that topic there should be no debate.

Quick googling led me to a Nos forum post where it was described and as far as I understood that one assumes 315 to be cap for weapon skill (100% glancing blow value?). Well then it's not the one used on Kronos and it will give wrong numbers. If you want it to be usable on this realm you should adjust it to the Kronos one. Until you do that, can't recommend anyone to use it here.
 
Thing is that if you don't use same formula as is used on Kronos, spreadsheet will be wrong for Kronos players, giving them wrong numbers and wrongly lowering the value of gear (and talents) that add weapon skills.

Quick googling led me to a Nos forum post where it was described and as far as I understood that one assumes 315 to be cap for weapon skill (100% glancing blow value?). Well then it's not the one used on Kronos and it will give wrong numbers. If you want it to be usable on this realm you should adjust it to the Kronos one. Until you do that, can't recommend anyone to use it here.

When fighting against a boss you're effectively fighting against a level 63 mob and hence its defence skill should by default be 315 (5 for each level). The cap will effectively be 315 here on Kronos, just as it was back on Emerald Dream - unless someone messed something up in terms of the level of bosses or the gain from weapon skill. The "cap" that was often described was aimed at the point where weapon skill doesn't yield the same amount of value per point - but it would still provide some value.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Talk:Weapon_skill


GlancingReduction.jpg
 

The cap will effectively be 315 here on Kronos, just as it was back on Emerald Dream - unless someone messed something up in terms of the level of bosses or the gain from weapon skill.

Based on my experiments (http://forum.twinstar.cz/showthread.php/99908-BWL-BIS?p=769972&viewfull=1#post769972) it seems that with 309 weapon skill glancing blows will do 100% of weapon damage. That was my whole point. I am not going into what formula is correct or should be used.
 
Update
I have updated the rogue sheets with some new information that can be seen in the changelog on page 1. Aside from this information I can also share that the sheet has been so far downloaded 437 times from mediafire (dropbox sadly doesn't give any information on how many times it has been shared).

A big thank you to everyone who has downloaded and taken a look at the sheet, and of course to all who contributes with eventual thoughts and likewise.





Based on my experiments (http://forum.twinstar.cz/showthread.php/99908-BWL-BIS?p=769972&viewfull=1#post769972) it seems that with 309 weapon skill glancing blows will do 100% of weapon damage. That was my whole point. I am not going into what formula is correct or should be used.
I have been busy trying out the new PVE realm and hence I havn't had the time to respond to this. I've looked into how it works here on Kronos and although I wish to facepalm, I realize that design choices have to be made. I've had thoughts of adding in a realm option into the sheet but it would honestly be to much effort to get working properly, whilst it would not move the rogue vanilla community towards a unified perspective - which is one of the core reasons I made this guide and spreadsheet from my part.


Sources for formula used here (27th of July, 2006)
http://leftoversraiding.org/index.php/topic/839/1/glancing-blows-and-you.html
(26th of September, 2006)
http://wow.ingame.de/forum/threads/114791-Edgemaster-s-Handguards-vs-Flameguard-Gauntlets

Sources for other formula (20th of July to August 3rd)
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Talk:Weapon_skill

For those interested; read between the dates I've listed and compare the reliability between the sources and form your own opinion based on that.


Best of regards
Soyoen
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download/yfrdb4a34sxius3/RogueDPS_Reborn_by_Soyoen.xlsx

Hi, I have problems accessing the main post to edit in more stuff into the changelog so I'll just post in here instead.


Update
MSA proc corrected in accordance to Trindade (3 to 3,5dps difference).
Maelstrom interaction with MSA corrected.
Maelstrom PPM corrected (~0,2dps difference).
Bonescythe set bonus 8 is now actually working (boy am I glad most servers dont have access to T3 gear!).
Corrected combat table calculations at the highest possible gear and buff levels.
Found and corrected a major flaw in the combat table calculations.
Bloodfang damage call error corrected.

New Additions
Talent system implemented together with minor core rewrite to make sure the talents show impact on the DPS in the main sheet (I'd call this to be in a final BETA state so if you find any bugs then please report them here or by private message).

Independent weapon skill for MH & OH implemented (was simulated by default in earlier versions but this solution will make the logic easier to follow).

Selecting time slot will now accurately determine your dps during that period of time (from 1min up to "full raid". Future releases will be more customized toward boss fights.

Added armor selection option for NPCs with three different type of opponents in terms of Caster, Melee and Tank/"High mitigation" opponents. Example: a Zul'Gurub high priestess, Magmadar and Garr. (Any additional suggestions on this topic on the armor values would be encouraging)

Jom Gabbar added
Nightslayer Pants added
Thunderfury added


A big thanks to everyone who has downloaded and taken a look at the sheet (1400+ across four servers), and of course to all who contributes with eventual thoughts and likewise. If you find any weird behaviour then either post it here or send me a private message:)




Best of regards
Soyoen
 
Are the procs of darkmantle, viskag etc. tested on each server individually or on which server did you test them to model them?
 
Athan's formulas were partly correct. He did a great job with the limited information that was available.

However the true glancing formulas for every level, class were given by: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Weapon_skill?oldid=349298

This was edited by guy named Beaza, a world of warcraft coder who did not reveal his identity however they are fully compatitible with athan's formulas and on top of that it completely matches the glancing blow behaviour in later patches which are well documented (damage range on glancing blows, caster and melee glancing blow formula distinction).

If you don't believe it, google patch 3.30 patch notes were it's stated that casters, i.e. mages,warlocks,priests will from then on follow melee glancing blow formulas.

Beaza came out the blue on wowpedia, with the formulas for every class and level, made a distinction between caster and melee glancing formulas as the first and one of the only to do so, explained that conventional melee swings are based on a single roll attack table back when no one had a clue, among other things.

Nostalrius had incomplete formulas, whereas Kronos has implemented their formulas based on a source that basically comes straight from blizzard
 
Random response I wrote a while back but my attention got caught up elsewhere before posting, it concerns "mechanics" but in reality the truthworthyness of data and the distinction between information and data. @Fabix response: data from 2005-2006.

Beaza came out the blue on wowpedia, with the formulas for every class and level, made a distinction between caster and melee glancing formulas as the first and one of the only to do so, explained that conventional melee swings are based on a single roll attack table back when no one had a clue, among other things.
Indeed, Beaza came out of the blue and caused a hell lot of a ruckus a mere 5 days prior to the pre expansion patch which forever disregarded weapon skill as a stat for handling the reduction of glancing blow damage, without providing any real DATA which in itself disqualifies this source of secondary data. Post 2.0.1 weapon skill did not reduce the percentage damage as can be seen in the quote below and hence no further DATA (information processed and analyzed) could be gathered on that specific topic – weapon skill instead became more focused upon the hit gained from the first few points as seen in the link below:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090715100718/http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11885-rogue_warrior_weapon_skill_adjustment_discussion/p20/#post469576

Patch 2.0.1 (05-Dec-2006): Weapon skill will no longer reduce the percentage damage lost due to glancing. The player will gain 0.1% to their critical strike rating per weapon skill against monsters above their level.

Beaza changed values I personally verified with awkward values, and directly contradicted various blue statements from forums over the past two years (among others), including things that can be observed like: each point of Defense increases Block, Parry, Dodge, and Miss chance against you by 0.04% (Beaza says 0.01%), or that WoW combat is table-based (Beaza says it's an if-then-else system).
Beaza, who has no contribution before today (no Wowwiki history) has modified today (or is MODIFYING right now) every combat-related article to show his/her view. I consider this vandalism, as he/she does not back ANY CHANGE in the Discussions but merely inputs data which may be, as far as I know, arbitrary and/or incorrect.
-Dorenthas 30 November 2006

Well, I checked Beaza's other modifications and they didn't seemed as random as I first thought (except one entry, which states that the Combat system is a series of "if then else", which it probably isn't - but that may have been said just so it's clear which event takes precedence over what). However, the values changed in the formulas of THIS article STILL seem completely random, and the statement about Defense (regarding its effect in increments of 0.01%) is applicable to mobs' Defense skill, not players' Defense skill. This was unclear in the modifications to this article, but it was stated more obviously in another modification from Beaza.
-Dorenthas 30 November 2006

Nostalrius had incomplete formulas, whereas Kronos has implemented their formulas based on a source that basically comes straight from blizzard
Stating that the source came straight from Blizzard is a lot of sugarcoating to say the least, especially considering the denial that Beaza was an official voice combined the advice to treat said information as “unofficial and subject to change at any time”. Again let’s stress this again: Information, not actual DATA. Why not just apply a tinfoil hat to this and see things from this alleged coder’s perspective: Should he/she leak classified information kept secret by the company to the public, jeopardize eventual career and risk legal actions if his/her identity were to be discovered?

a world of warcraft coder who did not reveal his identity however they are fully compatitible with Athan's formulas and on top of that it completely matches the glancing blow behaviour in later patches which are well documented (damage range on glancing blows, caster and melee glancing blow formula distinction).
Actually there are abnormalities when compared with the data collected by Athan et al. Seeing as the lower value was said to be put at 0,91 whilst the higher value at 0,99 you would effectively be able to accomplish 94,5% average glancing blow damage at 308 weapon skill: well below the 310 value that had been statistically proven. In fact that is a 2.7% glancing blow damage reduction difference at 308 weapon skill, which does not exactly back the claims made at the time. This part would also mean that Kronos have not completely implemented these formulas if we relate to the Big Theorycrafting Thread available at:

https://forum.twinstar.cz/showthread.php/57011-Big-TheoryCrafting-Thread?p=498323&viewfull=1#post498323

Instead the damage range for the low end would be [0.01, 0.91] and the damage range for the high end would be [0.2, 0.99] as can be seen in the poor wording of the article you linked (glancing blow damage reduction):

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Weapon_skill?oldid=349298

The picture below will give a short overview of how things differ from the statements Beaza made during the 30th of November 2006 in relation to information that had been collected, analyzed and processed into DATA. Error and abnormalities are deemed so in relation to what the DATA previously had shown:

BZuUPHD.png


So then what are we left with for the average damage reduction of glancing blows in patch 1.12.x?
  1. Tests conducted by Athan et al consisting of thousands of hits on different level targets which in the end concluded in a formula for the average glancing blow damage reduction, which can be considered trustworthy secondary DATA.
  2. A random individual with no prior contributions who claim to be a World of Warcraft coder whilst provide no DATA or proof on the claims and edits that he made to support these. This could very well act as the definition of untrustworthy secondary DATA – in fact in many cases it would not qualify to be considered secondary data or data at all for that matter.
Now obviously this is where things actually get interesting as when WOTLK hit you can find the following quote below which would imply that the actual glancing blow damage range formula was not what Beaza stated:

“I am a Warrior lvl80. Target is a boss dummy. Whitedamage is 274 to 276, 275 average. No procs, no blood frenzy, no gains, nothing like that. Made 1167 hits.
273 came up as glancing, which quite supports the 25% theory, but not fully. Damage range of glancing blows was 179 to 234, average 208. This comes out to be quite exactly 65% to 85%, averagely 75%.
This of course supports 1.3 - 0.03 * 15 (with 15 as skill difference), which gives us 85%, but not 1.2 - 0.03 * 15, which gives us 75%. So my guess is, that the proper formula for the lower end is 1.1 - 0.03 * 15, which gives the accurate 65% instead.”

Obviously this can have been subjected to change, my point bringing it up being: Things are bound to change throughout the expansions, we can with no certainty state that what Beaza “contributed” with on the 30th of November 2006 to be correct for the 1.12.x version of the game. If there is DATA that confirms what he stated during TBC, or any other version for that matter, then we can certainly state that it should apply for that specific version of the game, but due to both actual and possible undocumented changes that arrived with 2.0 we can’t with any certainty state that the low/high range on glancing blows provided were in any way correct for 1.12.x. We can however claim that the damage range played a part, and we can likewise with evidence claim that the average glancing blow damage reduction most likely followed a pattern close or similar to Athan’s formula – which in itself means that the variables for the low/high range provided by Beaza were incorrect and thus could be tweaked to match the available DATA to better replicate the glancing blow damage reduction in 1.12.x.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:Glancing_blow
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Talk:Dodge


Regards
Soyoen
 

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