Weapon skill represents your proficiency with a particular Weapon. The basic formula for your maximum weapon skill at a particular level is (5 * level). The rate at which you gain them depends on the speed of your weapon. It's typically better to use a fast weapon to train up your skills. Instant attacks like Sinister Strike and Hamstring help to increase your weapon skill faster. Note that attacking Evading enemies will not increase your weapon skill.
In patch 2.3 stats on melee weapons which granted an increase to weapon skill were replaced by an increase to expertise rating. Items which granted ranged weapon skill increases instead now grant increases to hit or critical strike rating.
Effects of Weapon Skill
NOTE: With respect to the impact of Weapon Skill on miss rates and +hit, both the supplied pre-BC information and the Crezax post are no longer accurate. For the correct information, please see the updated "Chance to Miss" section below.
For each point that your weapon skill exceeds your opponent's defense, you gain the following:
Note: These numbers are from pre-2.0, and may or may not still be correct. Crezax on the EU forums has made a post contradicting these values (see below).
- Your chance to miss decreases by 0.04%.
- Your chance to score a critical strike increases by 0.04%.
- Your opponent's chance to block your attack decreases by 0.04%.
- Your opponent's chance to parry your attack decreases by 0.04%.
- Your opponent's chance to dodge your attack decreases by 0.04%.
CM Crezax made a post[1] on the EU forums outlining the effect of weapon skill on higher-level mobs. Note that this refers only to monsters 3 levels higher than the player in PVE (i.e. boss level mobs). Corresponding numbers for 1 and 2 levels higher than the player are not known, but are likely lower.
Let's say you increase your weapon skill by 4. Against a mob 3 levels higher than you, you get: 0.8% lower chance to miss, 0.4% lower chance to get dodged, 2.4% to be parried, and a 0.8% higher chance to crit."
Note: These numbers given by the CM are also questionable and should be taken with a grain of salt. It is difficult at this point to determine which numbers are correct without more player-collected data.
Effectively, you can consider weapon skill to be the inverse of the defense skill.
Additionally, the 2.0.1 patch notes said:
- The player will gain 0.1% to their critical strike rating per weapon skill against monsters above their level.
Presumably this is only for Weapon Skill over your level's natural cap (Level * 5). It was not known if you also got the additional 0.04% crit chance per additional +skill.
Weapon skills are maxed in pvp combat. While this means leveling a weapon for pvp is unimportant, racial attribrutes, talents, and weapons with +skill still affect pvp hit/crit rating. Many players, however, see the +skill in PvP as unimportant and you will still see many Orcs with PvP reward weapons besides the Axes.
Glancing Blows
Against mobs with defense roughly equal to or higher than your Attack Rating (i.e. your weapon skill), you will have a chance to land a Glancing blow instead of a normal hit. A glancing blow only occurs on white melee damage, cannot crit, and does less damage than a normal blow. If the attacker's weapon skill is less than his level * 5, the damage reduction will be proportional to the difference between the attacker's weapon skill and the target's defense.
Back before patch 2.3, when Weapon Skill could be raised above your level * 5 from gear or racial bonuses, doing so never affected the chances of landing a glancing blow, although the damage reduction from glancing blows was affected until patch 2.0 or so.
Chance to Miss
It has been definitively proven that, at least with respect to calculating miss rates and chance to hit, both the pre-BC formula and the Crezax post are inaccurate.
- If the difference between the mob's Defense Skill and your Weapon Skill is less than or equal to 10 then the formula for calculating your base miss chance against that mob is: 5% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill)*.1%
- If the difference between the mob's Defense Skill and your Weapon Skill is greater than 10, then the formula for calculating your base miss chance against that mob is: 7% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4%
Note that these 2 formulae only govern attacks made against mobs. With attacks against players (either by mobs or by other players) where the attacker's Weapon Skill is lower than the target's Defense, the base Miss, Dodge, Parry, and Block chances are much less; see the Defense article for details.
Applying these formulae gives the following base miss rate for a Level 70 character with a 350 Weapon Skill:
* v. Level 70 mob: 5.0% / dual-wield: 24% * v. Level 71 mob: 5.5% / dual-wield: 24.5% * v. Level 72 mob: 6.0% / dual-wield: 25% * v. Level 73 mob: 9.0% / dual-wield: 28%
* v. 15.77 hit rating reduces your chance to miss by 1%
Thus if you are a Level 70 character with a Weapon Skill of 350, you need a Hit Rating of 142 (9.00%) to almost never miss a shot against a Level 73 boss (or skull mob) with a special attack or single-wield auto-attack. What this means is that there is a big +hit benefit to keeping your Weapon Skill within 10 levels of the mobs you are trying to fight. For example, by improving your Weapon Skill from 340 to 345, you effectively reduce your chance to miss against Level 71 mobs by 3%! However, after getting to 345, increasing your Weapon Skill the next 5 levels, to 350, only reduces your chance to miss by an additional 0.5% (or 3.5% in total). Also, note that there is a huge jump in miss rate reduction by going from 344 to 345 Weapon Skill. This is the point where you switch from one formula to the other, and so this particular single point of Weapon Skill is worth a dramatic +1.4% hit against a Level 73 mob/boss.
Chance to be Dodged, Parried, and Blocked
The formulas for determining Dodge, Parry, and Block rate for attacks made vs. mobs are different from the formula above for determining Miss rate, and are not all definitively known. As of patch 2.4, the best working models seem to be the following:
- The base chance for your attack to be dodged by a mob is: 5% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill)*.1%
- The base chance for your attack to be parried by a mob:
- If the difference between the mob's Defense Skill and your Weapon Skill is less than or equal to 10, your base parry rate is: 5% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill)*.1%.
- If the difference between the mob's Defense Skill and your Weapon Skill is greater than 10, your base parry rate will be much higher. Exact figures are not known, but base parry rates of Boss mobs (effectively level 73 when attacked by level 70 players) are estimated to be between 10-15%, and may vary from one Boss to the next.
- The base chance for your attack to be blocked by a mob is probably the same as the base dodge rate, i.e.: 5% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill)*.1%
Crit Cap
Prior to version 2.1, white-damage attacks made by a player with fully-trained weapon skill against a mob 3 levels higher had a fixed 40% chance of being glancing blows.
Therefore, with no +skill/+hit gear on, attacks made by a level 60 dual wielder against a level 63 mob prior to 2.1 had the following table from the front:
| Result | Chance |
|---|---|
| Miss | 28.0% |
| Dodge | 5.6% |
| Parry | 5.6% |
| Glancing Blow | 40.0% |
| Block | 5.6% |
| Combined hit + crit | 16.2% |
A patch changed it so attacks from the back cannot be blocked or parried (thus get no parry haste from attacks to the back either). Losing those values from the chart makes the "combined hit + crit" entry appropriately larger. Players cannot dodge, parry, or block attacks from the back.
It is not as bad if the same character attacks the same mob with a two-handed weapon:
| Result | Chance |
|---|---|
| Miss | 9% |
| Dodge | 5.6% |
| Parry | 5.6% |
| Glancing Blow | 40.0% |
| Block | 5.6% |
| Combined hit + crit | 35.2% |
This is a 35.2% + your +hit crit cap.
All these crit caps could have been increased by increasing your Weapon Skill (.16% increase per point from the front) and by +hit (1% increase per point).
Post 2.1 the glancing blow chance for boss mobs has decreased by 15% which means the crit cap has also increased by 15% for both dualwield and two-handed use. Weapon skill no longer affects the crit cap since patch 2.0.1.
Dual wield full raid buffs (including mongoose and elemental sharpening stones) example from the front:
+0 hit +50% crit: 5.6% dodge, 5.6% parry, 27.0% miss, 5.6% block, 40% glancing blow, 16.2% crit
= 33.8% of your crit rate did nothing
+6 hit +40% crit: 5.6% dodge, 5.6% parry, 5.6% block, 21.0% miss, 40% glancing blow, 22.2% crit
= 17.8% of your crit rate did nothing
+15 hit +31% crit: 5.6% dodge, 5.6% parry, 5.6% block, 12% miss, 40% glancing blow, 31.2% crit, 0.2% hit
= no +crit was wasted in this example
Dual wield full raid buffs (including mongoose and elemental sharpening stones) example from the back:
+0 hit +50% crit: 5.6% dodge, 27.0% miss, 40% glancing blow, 27.4% crit
= 22.6% of your crit rate did nothing
+6 hit +40% crit: 5.6% dodge, 21.0% miss, 40% glancing blow, 33.4% crit
= 6.6% of your crit rate did nothing
+15hit +33% crit: 5.6% dodge, 12% miss, 40% glancing blow, 33.0% crit, 9.4% hit
= no +crit was wasted in this example
DPS Implications
Prior to 2.1, Hit Rating was very important due to the crit cap. The following shows the difference in white damage between various pre-2.1 stat options
Assuming 25.2% crit and 0% hit its 5.6% block for say 80% damage (depends on a lot of things) 18.6% crit for 200% damage (impale doesnt work!) 40% glancing blow for 70% damage 35.8% no damage per swing its an average of .056 * .8 + .186 *2 + .4 * .7 = 69.68% of your damage per swing
Assuming you have +5 hit, the numbers become... 5.6% block for say 80% damage (depends on a lot of things) 23.6% crit for 200% damage (impale doesnt work!) 40% glancing blow for 70% damage 30.8% no damage so per swing its an average of .056 * .8 + .236 *2 + .4 * .7 = 79.68% of your damage per swing
Increasing your weapon skill beyond (level * 5)
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The subject of this article has been removed from World of Warcraft.
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Itemization
Itemization for +weapon skill is spotty. The following is a list of known items with +weapon skill
2.0.1 Skill Rating conversion
The Weapon Skill figures in the above item chart used to be from the old pre-2.0 system, where +weapon skill was given to items directly. Under the new combat rating system, the above items now all have a Weapon Skill Rating bonus instead.
It takes 2.5 points of Weapon Skill Rating at level 60, and 3.9 points of Weapon Skill Rating at level 70, to increase your actual Weapon Skill by 1.
In applying the miss rate formulae listed in the "Chance to Miss" section above, fractional Weapon Skill levels are dropped, not rounded. So, say you have are a Level 70 character, and you equip a piece of gear that gives +15 Mace Skill Rating. In theory, this equates to 3.8 +Weapon Skill Level. And, in theory, Blizzard could have used the fractional .8 in its subsequent calculations of hit and miss, or, perhaps, rounded it to 4.0. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the fractional .8 Weapon Skill is simply dropped altogether. You get 353 Weapon Skill for purposes of all hit and miss calculations.
Another interesting point is that if you are able to stack your Weapon Skill above 365, you will find that each additional point of Weapon Skill above 365 continues to decrease your chance to miss by .1% per Weapon Skill level. So if your, Weapon Skill is 366, your chance to miss is 4.9%, if 367, 4.8%, etc.
Talents
[Weapon Expertise] talent increases skill with Swords, Fists, and Daggers by 5 (rank 1) or by 10 (rank 2).
[Mace Specialization] talent increases skill with Maces by 2 per talent point spent (max 10).
[Weapon Mastery] talent increases skill with all weapons by 2 (rank 1) or by 4 (rank 2).
[Combat Expertise] talent increases skill with all weapons by 2 per talent point spent (max 10).
Racial Bonuses
- Humans: +5 sword skill, +5 mace skill, +5 two-handed sword skill, +5 two-handed mace skill
- Dwarves: +5 gun skill
- Orcs: +5 axe skill, +5 two-handed axe skill
- Trolls: +5 bow skill, +5 throwing weapon skill
See also
External links
- 2.0.1 Patch Notes
- Slant's ToHit FAQ
- Zoroaster's Crit, Hit, Weapon Skill and damage formulas
- ElitistJerks' Roguecraft 101 (contains mention of base Dodge chance of bosses)