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Even before its release, Burning Crusade has already burned its mark on to the collective consciousness of World of Warcraft players all over the globe. With its host of new gameplay features, races, skills and equipment, a lot of questions have been raised by WoW players regarding the impact these additions will bring to the table.
One of the most talked about feature is the newly introduced stat called Combat Ratings. To clear up a few things in the waiting period until Burning Crusade hits, Blizzard poster Vaneras has graciously explained a few things regarding combat ratings in the WoW Europe forums.
According to Vaneras, combat ratings will be used for any percentage-based combat stat such as critical strike chance, hit chance, dodge chance, and defense skill. These ratings however, will only be used with effects generated by items. They will not apply to effects that are generated by spells and talents which will continue to work the same.
Currently, the following combat ratings are in use in the Burning Crusade beta tests: weapon skill, defense, dodge, parry, block, hit chance, spell hit chance, critical strike chance, spell critical strike chance, resilience, haste, and spell haste. Depending on how the testing goes, others may be added at a later time.
Here's what Vaneras posted regarding the new combat ratings system:
Combat Skills
Unlike fixed percentages such as 2% critical strike
chance, combat ratings diminish in potency as your character increases
in level. 2% crit is the same at every level, while 28 critical strike
rating grants 4% crit at level 34, 2% crit at level 60, and 1.27% crit
at level 70. This allows us the ability to create and add new and
better items to the world without eventually reaching a point where
every character has a 100% chance to critically strike.
Below is the level 60 conversion for combat skills:
Weapon Skill Rating
2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill
Hit Rating
10 rating grants 1% hit chance
Spell Hit Rating
8 rating grants 1% spell hit chance
Critical Strike Rating
14 rating grants 1% critical strike chance
Spell Critical Strike Rating
14 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance
Haste
10 rating 1% haste
Spell Haste
10 rating grants 1% spell haste
Defense Skills
The impact that the new combat ratings system has on the defense skill and weapon skill systems is a bit more complicated. A lot of players do not realize these skills actually grant percentage-based benefits already. For example, every 25 points of defense skill grants a 1% dodge chance, 1% parry chance, 1% block chance, 1% increased chance to be missed and 1% decreased chance to be critically hit by physical attacks. Weapon skills have a similar effect for the attacker. Items will now grant skill rating rather than skill directly, and that will convert to an actual skill increase.
Below is the level 60 conversion for defense skills:
Defense Skill Rating
1.5 rating grants 1 defense skill
Dodge Rating
12 rating grants 1% dodge
Parry Rating
20 rating grants 1% parry
Block Rating
5 rating grants 1% block chance
Resilience
Resilience is a special new rating which we have created to reduce the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by X percent, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2X percent. X is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.
Below is the level 60 conversion for resilience:
Resilience
25 rating grants 1% resilience
Each time you go up a level, the amount of rating needed to get the same benefit will increase. An example of the scaling involved would be the current implementation of Agility which has always worked this way in the live game, requiring more agility for the same critical strike chance as you go up in level.
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