Dodge questionFollow

415 Defense rating: True, assuming you have max Survival of The Fittest and less than 8 resilience.

now...

Using your math, 20 hits are crushing blows regardless of your dodge chance, and will hit no matter what: however, the other 80 blows are normal hits, glances, etc. since you know for sure that those 20 crushes are going to connect, you want to dodge as many of the other attacks as possible.

Basically, you're not increasing the amount of times a mob is able to crush you, you're increasing the percentage of hits that connect being crushes.

The combat table in WoW is additive, not multiplicative. Values for mitigation are absolute, and can result in other possible results being pushed off the table partially or completely. Results are mutually exclusive, you will only be "missed" OR "dodge" OR "be crushed", you can't dodge a critical blow or be missed by a critical hit. An important point to note is that crushing blow chance can not be mitigated by defense beyond your level cap like chance to dodge, parry, block can be. It is a straight 15% chance against a level 73 boss.

For druids being attacked, the order of precedence is:

Miss
Dodge
Critical
Crushing Blow
Ordinary hit

An increased dodge value first reduces your chance to recieve an ordinary hit. Only once ordinary hit is no longer a possibility would crushing blows begin to be pushed off the attack table.

The total percentage chance of the above entries on the table must equal 100% (every possible outcome). So if we say the mob has a 5% chance to miss, and you have 35% chance to dodge, and 415 defense, the attack table would be:

Miss 5%
Dodge 35%
Critical 0%
Crushing Blow 15%
Ordinary hit 45%

In the case of 100 attacks, you would expect 5 misses, 35 dodges, 15 crushing blows, 45 normal hits.

Since we can't increase the mob's chance to miss by our defensive stats (can be done through things like insect swarm, but that it out of our control), we can only increase mitigation ability through increasing dodge. Increasing dodge chance pushes the chance to be hit ordinarily down off the bottom of the chart, resulting in a direct 1:1 trade for dodge:ordinary hit. Let's say you temporarily gain 8% dodge:

Miss 5%
Dodge 43%
Critical 0%
Crushing Blow 15%
Ordinary hit 37%

In the case of 100 attacks, you would expect 5 misses, 43 dodges, 15 crushing blows, 37 normal hits.

Only when ordinary hits are completely pushed off the table will crushing blows begin to be lessened, as the next bottom outcome in order of priority. In this case, assuming a 5% chance to be missed, you would need more than 80% dodge before crushing blows begin to be mitigated.

Miss 5%
Dodge 80%
Critical 0%
Crushing Blow 15%
Ordinary hit 0%

In the case of 100 attacks, you would expect 5 misses, 80 dodges, 15 crushing blows, 0 normal hits.

Miss 5%
Dodge 82%
Critical 0%
Crushing Blow 13%
Ordinary hit 0%

In the case of 100 attacks, you would expect 5 misses, 82 dodges, 13 crushing blows, 0 normal hits.

Assuming 5% miss, to completely negate crushing blows in the above scenario you would need 95% dodge.

In reality these numbers are slightly low - 73 bosses have less chance to be dodged/miss etc so you need slightly more dodge still to completely negate crushing blows, but I used simple numbers for the purpose of more easily explaining.


In summary:
Adding dodge for Druid will always result in (approximately) that percentage of TOTAL attacks recieved being dodged, at the expense of not recieving normal attacks instead. Crushing Blows will (until very high levels of Dodge) not be affected at all by increased dodge.

Edited, Mar 18th 2008 2:51pm by Delekii

wow thanks a ton for the answers that clears it up very well.

I assume you meant to say they cannot be dodged. If you have 0% dodge, 15% of incoming attacks will be crushings. If you have 60% dodge, still 15% of incoming attacks will be crushings.



Edited, Mar 19th 2008 10:12pm by RareBeast

And if you stack enough Defense/Agi to reach 102.4% total avoidance (even if it's temporary from things like Badge of Tenacity and Moroes Watch) you will be dodging 100% of the incoming Crushing Blows.



L2read, I already said Crushing Blows are the last type of attack to be pushed off the attack table. Saying that Crushing Blows can't be dodged at all is an overly simplistic and irresponsible answer. If you're too lazy to explain the reason Crushing blows are unlikely to be dodged, don't contradict correct information.

Delekii already did a good job of explaining the attack table, but I guess I have to go over it again for your benefit. Do I need to go get the crayons and construction paper from my kids' art supplies? Or will text work for you?

Melee attacks in WoW use a single to-hit table, populated with the following possible outcomes:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Block
Glancing Blow (only when the attack's weapon skill is 15 or more below defender's defense)
Critical Hit
Crushing Blow (only when the defender's defense is 15 or more less than the attacker's weapon skill)
Hit

Starting at 1, possible outcomes are filled in up to 100 in the above sequence. Anything beyond 100 is ignored. Here's a fairly normal example for a druid tank.

1-7 Miss (5% base +~2% from Defense skill)
8-32 Dodge (25%)
33-47 Crushing Blow (15%)
48-100 Hit (53%)

Now, let's say your Agi and dodge rating goes up a lot from Grace of Air (Agi), Blessing of Kings (Agi), Idol of Terror proc (Agi), activating your Badge of Tenacity (Agi), activating your Moroes Lucky Pocketwatch (dodge rating), etc...

1-7 Miss (7%)
8-90 Dodge (83%)
91-100 Crusing Blow (10%)

There's no chance to recieve a normal hit, because the table is already full of events that have a higher priority. You are, in effect, dodging 5% (or 1/3) of the crushing blows you could recieve.