WoW Classic Stats and Mechanics - Part 2: Hit Chance, Weapon Skill, Attack Tables Explained

Time Stamps:
Skills 0:40
Attack Results 1:45
Glancing Blows 4:00
Melee DPS Attack Table 5:40
Ranged DPS Attack Table 6:52
Dual Wielding DPS Attack Table 7:04
Crit Cap 7:45
Hit Cap 8:40
PvP Attack Table 9:05
Tanking Attack Table 9:35
Crushing Blows 10:10

Cheat Sheet: https://imgur.com/a/YSvvuMr

Part 2 Sources
Youtube - Valreth - “Vanilla WoW [Elysium] Melee Guide”
   • Vanilla WoW [Elysium] Melee Guide - H...  
This is where I initially learned general info on hit tables back in the day. Valreth did a very good job, though I felt like I could add some more!

Wowwiki.fandom - “Weapon Skill”
https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Weapo...

Neyrissa - “Overview of Stats on Classic WoW (Mitigation Stats)”
https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/cl...

Mirayne - “forum post/experiment” + Blue post https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow...

Vanilla-wow.fandom - “Hit”
https://vanilla-wow.fandom.com/wiki/Hit

Vanilla-wow.fandom - “Attack Tables”
https://vanilla-wow.fandom.com/wiki/A...

Retrowow - Maggot - “Hit Tables”
https://retro-wow.com/forum/printthre...

Lusse - “Glancing Blow Explanation"
http://vanillagaming.org/forum/index....

Vanilla WoW Wiki - “Crushing Blow”
https://vanilla-wow.fandom.com/wiki/C...

Wowwiki.fandom - “Defense”
https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Defense

Mangos - “Mangos classic code - Line 1330 and up (attack result chances) (2158 ranged)”
https://github.com/cmangos/mangos-cla...

Part 2 Source Discussion:
Most of what I wanted to say was at (timestamp). I do want to add about Glancing Blow theories. It’s technically possible what theory 1 states but it has too many qualifiers to seem legit. We could technically test theory 1, but I’m willing to side more with theory 2. Reason being, it states that it’s chance to occur is just never dependant on weapon skill, and that weapon skill overage is simply what affects the final damage of a glancing blow.
Moving onto weapon skill, and Dodge and Miss percentages. I say there’s nothing we can do to negate Dodge and that’s effectively true. We can increase our weapon skill, but not by much. However, if we get a combination of a Racial Passive +5 weapon skill (Orc Axes, or Human Sword/Maces), on top of something like [Edgemaster’s Handguards] which give us +7 weapon skill to Axes/Swords/Maces, at max level, we’d have 312 weapon Skill. This equates to a full negation of the damage reduction from glancing blows (as stated in the video), but it also equals .48% reduction in your miss and the enemy’s dodge (due to how defense vs weapon skill works). That effectively increases your hit chance by an additional 1%. Let it be known, you end up getting this level of weapon skill, you essentially only need 8% additional hit chance, not 9%.
Lastly, Ares42 in the comments here told me that the way I talked about the defense cap is old meta. While it is the defense hard cap (where you lose efficacy from any +defense), if you're a warrior you should only strive for about 46 extra defense. This way, when you shield block, it perfectly pushes off both Crushing Blows AND Crit.

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