Resilience and Defense - specifics, esp. in PvP

[Sharusil]

I've been trying to find info on exactly how resilience and defense alter crit chance. So far I haven't found anything that answers my question; maybe it's here (or elsewhere), but search tools and time are both limited.

Basically, I want to know exactly what happens when a crit is changed to not-a-crit via either defense or resilience. They might work differently or the same; I don't know.


Here's the scenario.

You're attacking a prot warrior in PvP. He has enough defense for 6% crit reduction, and enough defense/etc. for 25% dodge, 22% parry, and 28% block. Suppose you have no hit rating, no expertise, and 34% crit chance (and you're not dual-wielding).

11% of attacks will miss, 25% will be dodged, 22% will be parried, and 28% will be blocked. The leftover (100 - 11 - 25 - 22 - 28) is 14%; how is this allocated?

Attack table so far:
11% miss
25% dodge
22% parry
28% block
14% ???

The next thing on the attack table is crit; will you crit 14% of the time? (You're waaaay crit capped against this target with 34% crit.) Will you end up with 8% crits and 6% regular hits because of crit reduction from defense?

It depends at exactly what point the server calculates the crit reduction from defense.

Now let's say that same warrior has 79 resilience (about 2% worth).
Will that reduce actual crit rate by 2%, or only potential crit rate?



Possibilities:
a) All crit reduction is taken from your character's crit chance; you have an effective (34 - 6 - 2) 26% crit chance against this target. Only 14% of attacks are not misses/dodges/parries/blocks.
RESULT: 14% crit

b) Defense crit reduction is taken from your character's crit chance, and resilience crit reduction is taken from the attack table. You have (34 - 6) 28% crit chance. The attack table sees 2% of crits converted to regular hits.
RESULT: 12% crit, 2% hit

c) Resilience crit reduction is taken from your character's crit chance, and defense crit reduction is taken from the attack table. You have (34 - 2) 32% crit chance. The attack table sees 6% of crits converted to regular hits.
RESULT: 8% crit, 6% hit

d) Both types of crit reduction are taken from the attack table. The attack table sees (6 + 2) 8% of crits converted to regular hits.
RESULT: 6% crit, 8% hit.



Note: I have read that there is probably no entry in the attack table for "resilience-eliminated crits". (This would explain why Blood Craze and Enrage will sometimes trigger separately on regular hits for someone with resilience.)

Also note: Against bosses this is a moot point, since 5.6% crit reduction is 5.6% crit reduction is 5.6% crit reduction. This can only ever affect situations with players attacking.



I don't really have a good way to test this at the moment... my playtime is severely limited lately--hence the wasting time thinking/writing about this stuff. I was hoping someone might know the answer already. I hope the scenario is clear enough.

[Ciderhelm]

I need to get to bed, but I'm going to make a quick comment:

-Special Attacks crit through shield block. You will never see it happen in PVE, because NPCs never crit their specials, but that's the case.

-For crit reduction purposes, Defense and Resilience add together. If you had 6% crit reduction from Defense and 2% crit reduction from Resilience, you would have 8% crit reduction on melee.

-For proc purposes, yes, Resilience-eliminated crits aren't intelligibly implemented. You're correct in repeating that Blood Craze and Enrage can proc separately as a result of this.


-I won't pretend to be awake enough to know if I helped in any way, but hopefully someone else can.

[Sharusil]

I need to get to bed, but I'm going to make a quick comment:

-Special Attacks crit through shield block. You will never see it happen in PVE, because NPCs never crit their specials, but that's the case.

-For crit reduction purposes, Defense and Resilience add together. If you had 6% crit reduction from Defense and 2% crit reduction from Resilience, you would have 8% crit reduction on melee.

-For proc purposes, yes, Resilience-eliminated crits aren't intelligibly implemented. You're correct in repeating that Blood Craze and Enrage can proc separately as a result of this.


-I won't pretend to be awake enough to know if I helped in any way, but hopefully someone else can.

Tiredness, yes, a common malady. I'm headed to bed after this myself.

I wasn't even thinking about shield block... I haven't researched how that works in PvP. I figure there might be some other things about the PvP attack table I don't know. I do wish blizzard would go ahead and release complete info on the mechanics.

"For crit reduction purposes, Defense and Resilience add together."
Indeed they do. But does the server treat defense-eliminated crits the same way it treats resilience-eliminated crits? Maybe. For all I know, the server might lump them together into a single number called "crit reduction" and work from there. That'd explain why they used that screwy implementation for Blood Craze and Enrage w/ resilience.

[Sharusil]

Another way to look at the problem:
How does the server generate the attack table?

Simplified example:

5% miss, 10% dodge, 10% parry, 0% block, 30% crit (45% hit)
(No resilience or extra defense)

001-050    miss
051-150    dodge
151-250    parry
--------   block
251-550    crit
551-1000   hit

With 5% crit reduction (from any source), there are two basic ways the attack table could look:

001-050    miss       001-050    miss
051-150    dodge      051-150    dodge
151-250    parry      151-250    parry
--------   block      --------   block
251-500    crit       251-300    hit (mitigated)
501-1000   hit        301-550    crit
                      551-1000   hit

Now, how do I justify the possibility of table #2? From what I hear, there is no entry in the attack table for "resilience-mitigated crit". But is there an entry for "defense-mitigated crit"? If so, resilience-mitigated crits were probably rolled into it [insert reference to Blood Craze/Enrage here].

If table #1 is correct, then in my previous data, a) would be the right answer (RESULT: 14% crit). If table #2 is correct, then d) would be right (RESULT: 6% crit, 8% hit).

It is possible to test this* to some degree against a tank with high passive avoidance--but not enough to be 'uncrushable' vs. the person attacking. (Assuming there's nothing serious I don't know about the PvP attack table: ) Find someone who would be crit capped** against your high-avoidance tank. Have that someone autoattack the tank (no specials), and watch the combat log.

If I am correct, all attacks should be misses, blocks, dodges, parries, and crits. There should be no regular hits at all. If there are any regular hits, then table #1 can't be right.***



*Again, I lack resources to test this myself at the moment. I'm not in a raid guild, and really don't know any tanks who are raiding at a high level right now. I'll still try to test it if I get a chance, though. Maybe I'll spam trade for a test subject next time I'm on...

**It is imperative that your tank have enough avoidance to push regular hits from your attacker off the attack table--don't forget to take crit reduction, hit rating, etc. into account here.

***This test can be repeated with zero resilience on the tank and with some resilience on the tank in order to determine whether resilience and defense mitigate crits differently.