Mechanics

From Death Knight Wiki

Contents 1 General Melee Mechanics 1.1 Attack power(AP) 1.2 Expertise Rating 1.3 Hit Rating 1.4 Critical Rating 1.5 Haste Rating 1.6 Runic Power(RP) 2 Tanking Mechanics 2.1 Defense Rating 2.2 Dodge Rating 2.3 Parry Rating 2.4 Resistance 2.5 Threat 3 PVP Mechanics 3.1 Resilience 4 Reference

General Melee Mechanics

• 1 point of stamina = 10 health (10.5 for Tauren)
• 1 point of strength = 2 attack power, Increases parry rating by a % of strength. (As of 8714, see below)
• 1 point of agility = 2 armor, and increased Dodge and crit (see below)
• Horn of Winter boots Agility and Strength per rank for two minutes, and as of patch 3.0.8 no longer costs 20 runic power.

Attack power(AP)

• 14 attack power grants 1 damage per second.

Attack power is easily earned through gear and Strength where 1 strength grants 2 Attack power (henceforth referenced as AP)

Increases damage dealt by certain attacks.

All Death Knight "spells" scale with attack power. Each spell has its own Attack Power Coefficient (henceforth referenced as APC). The APC determines how much benefit the spell gains from the Death Knight's AP.

Death Knight "strikes" scale with some percentage of your "weapon damage" All strikes except Rune Strike use normalized weapon damage, this is calculated by using the formula below:

• Normalised Weapon Damage = Tool-tip Weapon Damage + (AP/14)*(Normalisation Constant)

For weapons a Death Knight can equip;

The Normalisation Constant for 2h weapons is 3.3

The Normalisation Constant for 1h weapons is 2.4

For non-instant attacks the weapon damage calculation is much simpler;

• (Weapon DPS + (AP/14))*Weapon Speed (before haste)

Expertise Rating

• At level 60, 2.5 Expertise rating = 1 Expertise
• At level 70, 3.92 Expertise rating = 1 Expertise
• At level 80, 8.195 Expertise rating = 1 Expertise

• 1 Expertise = -.25% chance your attacks will be dodged or parried

Expertise is useful in increasing DPS, and TPS (Threat Per Second)

against mobs 3 levels higher and Boss(Skull) level mobs, DPS players ~26 Expertise to not see dodges, Tank players need ~60 Expertise, not Expertise rating, to knock Parries off the table.

Mobs can only parry from the front arc, thus (melee) DPS should not have a problem with parries so long as they are behind (in a 180 semicircle) their target.

Hit Rating

Vs. mobs your level +3 and Boss(Skull) level mobs

• Special attacks (Displayed on the GUI and Combat log in yellow) cap at +8% to hit.
• One handed weapons (non dual wield) and two handed weapons have a 8% chance to miss.
• Dual-wielding, you have an overall 28% chance to miss.
• Spells cap at +17% to hit, the old 1% miss rate has gone in WotLK. Any damaging skill that does not scale directly with weapon damage is considered a spell for determining miss/resistability.
• Hit rating scales faster for spells than it does for physical abilities.

• At level 60, 10 Hit rating = 1% to hit.
• At level 70, 15.77 Hit rating = 1% to hit.
• At level 80, 32.7 Hit rating = 1% to hit.

'Presuming that our effects are considered physical skills.'

• At 60, 90 hit rating caps 2h/yellow attacks.
• At 70, 142 Hit rating caps 2h/yellow attacks.
• At 80, 294 Hit rating caps 2h/yellow attacks.

'Dual-wielding takes significantly more hit rating to cap white attacks, nearing 27% hit to cap.'

Critical Rating

This section assumes we fall under the non warrior or hunter/rogue category.

• At level 60, 20 agility = 1% to Critically strike.
• At level 70, 30.03 agility = 1% to Critically strike.
• At level 80, 62.5 agility = 1% to Critically strike.

• At level 60, 14 Critical Strike rating = 1% to Critically Strike.
• At level 70, 22.07 Critical Strike rating = 1% to Critically Strike.
• At level 80, 45.90 Critical Strike rating = 1% to Critically Strike.

As of the expansion, Critical strike rating will apply to spell based critical strikes as well as melee critical strikes, at the same ratio of rating/crit%.

Haste Rating

• At level 60, 10 Haste rating = 1% haste
• At level 70, 15.7 Haste rating = 1% haste
• At level 80, 32.7 Haste rating = 1% haste.

Haste and Spell haste are being wrapped into one stat (just like hit and crit), thus, the rating conversion may change.

For every 1% haste you have, your attack speed increases by 1%. Haste stacks in a multiplicative manner.

Runic Power(RP)

• Every rune based attack generates a base of 10 runic power
• Some talents boost the RP you gain from specific attacks by 2.5/5 (25%/50%)
• Some talents (namely blood talents) grant runic power from meeting conditions, "when hit" or "when you kill an enemy that yields exp or honor"

Like its red cousin, rage, it decays while out of combat at a fairly slow pace, one that can be made slower via specific talents.

Certain attacks require runic power to use, these attacks either do direct damage (Frost Strike, Death Coil) are reactionary attacks (rune strike) or provide a utility effect (Mind freeze, Horn of winter, Anti-magic shell/zone, etc.)

Tanking Mechanics

Defense Rating

• At level 60, 1.5 Defense rating = 1 Defense Skill.
• At level 70, 2.36 Defense rating = 1 Defense Skill.
• At level 80, 4.91 Defense Rating = 1 Defense Skill.

Defense increases Dodge and Parry (as well as block for shield-wearers, but this is deathknight.info, not boardandswoard.info) and reduces the chance to be Hit and Critically hit until the soft-cap.

• At 60, Defense caps at 440 (210 rating.)
• At 70, Defense caps at 490 (330-331 rating.)
• At 80, Defense will cap at 540(687-688 rating)
• Ratings wind up in a decimal point, so depending on how things are rounded you may need one additonal rating to achieve the defense cap on your character screen's defenses tab.

After this point - You will be un-crittable by mobs your level+3 and Boss(Skull) level mobs, and the chance to be hit by mobs will not decrease further. All Defense skill after this grants Dodge and parry as usual.

Dodge Rating

• At 60, 12 Dodge Rating = 1% to dodge.
• At 70, 18.9 Dodge rating = 1% to dodge.
• At 80, 39.3 Dodge rating = 1% to dodge.

Agility also boosts dodge chance, however, the Agility/dodge ratio is not yet confirmed for death knights, and can be anywhere from just over 14 agi/dodge (druids) to 25 agi/dodge (most casters and hybrids) to 30 agi/dodge (warriors).

Dodge grants a flat % chance to avoid damage un-consequentially.

NPC's can dodge attacks from behind, players can not dodge attacks made from behind. Ranged attacks can not be dodged, but have an inherently higher chance to miss.

Parry Rating

• At 60, 15 Parry Rating = 1% to parry.
• At 70, 23.65 Parry rating = 1% to parry.
• At 80, 49.18 Parry rating = 1% to parry.

• Death Knights increase their parry rating by 25% of their strength. (as of beta build 8714)

When a player parries an attack he gains a 40% haste to his current swing, this haste does not reduce the current swing to less than 20% of the swings total time... When an NPC parries an attack, they also gain a haste to their current swing, causing chains of parried attacks to be fatal in some situations for players.

In example, Joe the Death Knight's swing timer is 3.3 after factoring what little haste he has, Joe's swing timer has just reset, and he parries his opponents attack, giving him a 40% haste, Dropping the time till his next swing from 3.3 to 1.95. IF Joe's swing timer was at say, 1.0 and he parries an attack, his next swing would come come in .66th of a second, not .6, depending on how WoW decides to round that, you will probably see it as .7 of a second instead of .6 because parry haste will never drop your next swing below 20% of your total swing time.

NPC's and players can not parry attacks made from behind them.

Resistance

Resistance increases your chance to completely or partially avoid spell or spell-based attacks. A good example of a spell-based attack is an elemental's standard attack, which only deals elemental damage based off the flavor of elemental.

Resistance, like armor, hard-caps at 75%. Any resistance after acheiving a 75% resistance in a school is utterly wasted in a pve setting, unless you're dealing with mobs who lower resistances.

• Against a level 63 mob, 315 resistance will grant 75% average resistance.
• Against a level 73 mob, 365 resistance will grant 75% average resistance.
• Against a level 83 mob, 415 resistance will grant 75% average resistance.

The fast way to determine the "resistance cap" is to multiply your enemies level (or for skull mobs, add 3 to either the level its intended to be fought at, or your own level, whichever is higher.) by 5.

Having a 75% average resistance grants you a 75% chance to outright negate effects that come coupled with a non-damage component. spells coupled with snares, like frost shock, or outright utility spells like polymorph are incapable of a partial effect, they hit or they miss.

Spells that are not coupled with a secondary non damage effect work differently. At the resistance cap, you will often see spells get outright resisted (no damage) frequently resist 75% of their intended effect ("you take 250 fire damage (750 resisted)") slightly less frequently, you'll see spells deal half damage, occasionally resist 25%, and see very few full damage effects from spells of the school.

At a 75% resistance, Wowwiki reports that you see 1 point of damage per 3 points resisted, on average.

Threat

Threat is a value which determines what an NPC targets.

To gain threat, Melee needs to pass the current target's threat by 10%, ranged needs to pass the current targets threat by 30%

To activate the in game threat meter in beta; enter the following commands

• /console showThreatMeter 1
• /script function IsThreatWarningEnabled() return 1; end

PVP Mechanics

Resilience

• At Level 60, 25 Resilience Rating = 1% Resilience
• At Level 70, 39.4 Resilience Rating = 1% Resilience
• At Level 80, 81.9 Resilience Rating = 1% Resilience

1% Resilience grants

• Reduces the chance to be critically struck by 1%.
• Reduces the damage taken by critical strikes by 2%.
• Reduces damage take by damage over time effects (DoTs) by 1%.
• Reduces Mana Drain and Burn effects by 2%. (irrelevant to death knights)

Skills that are activated by being crit takes your base chance to avoid critical strikes from avoidance into account, and have a chance to activate even though an attack from an enemy player did not crit.

Reference

This is a brief summary of melee mechanics - Most of the above information is from WoW Wiki, and directly from World of Warcraft itself. For more information, feel free to check out WoW Wiki

Level 80 Values were derived by THIS ELITISTJERKS THREAD BY WHITETOOTH, Giving up full credit to him for his hard work and for sharing this with the community.