Tobold's Blog
Monday, May 16, 2005
 
WoW Higher Math

Just a short thought on how tricky math can be in World of Warcraft. Some numbers in WoW are given in percent. For example there are talents that improve a stat by some percent. If you have 100 stamina and take the talent that improves stamina by 3%, you have 103 stamina afterwards. Easy.

But looking at this you would think that talents that improve something by 1% or 2% aren't really worth it. And there you might be wrong. Because sometimes the WoW percentages are calculated differently, additive. For examply warriors have a talent that improves their chance for a critical hit by 1% per point spent. But the original chance to land a critical hit is also a percentage, around 5%. And if you take the talent, that chance goes up to 6%. So in effect the improvement is 20%, not 1%.

Now my problem is that my new Warlock, level 18, just put talent points into "Suppression". Each point "reduces the chance for enemies to resist your Affliction spells by 2%". And I have no idea how that is calculated. When I max the skill out, I get 10% reduction in resistance. If the enemy has 20% chance to resist normally, how much does he have afterwards? 18% or 10%? I don't know, and I don't even see how I could find out.
Comments:
A comment on the Warlock talent.

Take Suppression and max it. Please! The best example I can give of its efficacity is a UBRS (Upper Blackrock Spire) end-boss trick. One way to deal with the 2 friends General Drakkisath has is to have your Warlock fear one of them for the duration of the fight. Without Suppression, the Warlock *cannot* reliably fear the level 58-59 elite. They simply can't. I've seen this hold true for repeated 'tests.' I now ask every Warlock, when we get there, whether they have the Suppression talent. If they don't, no fearing.
 
No problem, it's already in the works. I put the first 8 talent points into demonology, to max out the taunting skill of the voidwalker (for which you first need to max out the imp, and add 20% bonus to your healthstones.) Then I switched to the affliction tree, and started adding points into Suppression. A lot more useful than the alternative, which only decreases the casting time of one of your dots. Why would I want to decrease the casting time of a spell that I can't chain-cast?
 
Most players, if they go into the pet tree of talents, snag that other top tier one - Demonic Embrace - for the stamina.

Y'know, I had 2 sentences here about Improved Corruption that I just deleted. I think you may be right & I may drop that talent when I respec.
 
Hi Tobold -

The warlock I play took Improved Corruption, and when maxed it makes Corruption an instant cast. Point taken about chain casting, but it allows you to cast Corruption while moving - just like a curse. Nice for reapplication at the low end in the event of a resist. Then I can use the remaining time to pop a few Life Taps and begin to Drain Health from the baddie. While chain casting is nice, it's also a huge mana drain.

Can't say much about it at the high game. Possible it might just be a personal playstyle issue - I hate waiting for spells to cast.


(long time lurker first time commenter - found my way here about a year ago via Terranova)
 
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