PvP Mechanic: Hit Chance

[Mentat]

Hopefully someone can confirm this because I very specifically remember this mechanic in Vanilla:

Your chance to hit against an enemy player (weapons & Spells) was not determined by weapon skills or difference in level. This gave a fair(er) chance to lower level characters who got jumped by higher level characters. I very specifically remember this because I knew that weapon skills were handled as "Maxed" when fighting in PvP, so I would run up to people on my mage with a staff (for that humiliating staff kill), with a weapon skill of 'low # here' and do damage proportional to what a maxed weapon skill would do. I otherwise would have been missing enemies constantly.

I attempted to find some patch notes or some 2004-2006 articles on this but was unable to procure anything sadly. If someone knows an article that mentions this, please link it.

This mechanic NEEDS to be recreated because even when getting jumped a by a player 3-4 levels higher than myself, my spells as a mage are being resisted at an unusually high rate. And could a Dev confirm if they know about this mechanic?

[Helbjorn]

Weapon skill didn't affect your hit chance in PvP but it did affect your crit chance.

[Hatson]

Spell resistance is not the same as melee hit chance. Or melee weapon skill formulas for that matter.

These are entirely different things and they do not share the same properties or rules at all.

Spells being resisted 24/7 by higher levels is normal. Otherwise a few lowbie Warlocks and Mages could poly and fear a lvl 60 all day long. That wouldn't make much sense now, would it.

[Mentat]

No it would not. But PvP "Hit Chance" mechanics behaved differently than vs normal mobs, I am sure of this. You are correct, lowbies could not chain fear / poly a character 15+ levels above them. But for enemies within their range (roughly 10 levels) their spells were not resisted and their melee attacks were not glancing blows every time.

I'm going to keep looking for an article / patch note on this. I've talked with some friends playing and they remember this as well. Just looking to see if anyone else remembers / has some info on this

[cigss]

Yes player and mob hitchance is calculated differently. a mob 10 level higher will resist pretty much everytime while a player 10 level higher will resist as well but not as much as mobs. a mage could still kill a much higher level warrior with a bit of luck

[Youfie]

Spell miss chance IS determined by level.

The base (against same level) miss chance is the same against both mobs and players, but rises much more sharply when fighting higher level mobs than players.

That's it, and it works properly on Nostalrius as far as I know, or at least it was the case during beta.

Higher level mobs also have some "innate resist" (or whatever you may call it), that players don't have. These "resistances" are unaffected by Warlock curses or spell penetration of the caster (about 20-25 resist for a 63 boss attacked by a 60 player iirc ; this does NOT translates to the same amount for a level 33 mob attacked by a level 30 player, but comes down to the same overall damage mitigation).

This is why you can get partial resists (or more full resists on binary spells) when fighting higher level mobs who don't have any particular spell resistance.

[Goobles123]

Both spells and melee are supposed to affect anyone of any level in PvP situations. It was literally one of the major selling points of WoW at the day. I remember, plain as day, pvping on my level 22 druid with a bunch of level mid-30s and 40s specifcally because my Root was still able to effect ?? targets. Someone even has fraps of it.

Level 20 Mages are supposed to be able to polymorph level 60s. Level 20 Warlocks are supposed to be able to land fears. Because they're supposed to at least have a fighting chance of surviving. Again, this was one of the major selling points of wow of the day.

The fact that I can't hit totems with my staff is complete and utter horse shit. Weapon skill and resist are simply wrongly done. The fact that low-level melees can land attacks without fail, where low-level spellcasters can not, should be alarming enough.

[Marisi]

Here's a group of level 29s killing a level 60 from a mage's perspective in Vanilla:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3GsLK2o7Xk

The mage gets a lot of resists but about ~50% of his spells land. I'm fairly sure this would not have happened on Nostalrius. Melee rolls have a mechanic where chance to miss caps at 60%, is there supposed to be something similar for spells?

Post something on the bug tracker if you care about this issue.

[Youfie]

Both spells and melee are supposed to affect anyone of any level in PvP situations. It was literally one of the major selling points of WoW at the day. I remember, plain as day, pvping on my level 22 druid with a bunch of level mid-30s and 40s specifcally because my Root was still able to effect ?? targets. Someone even has fraps of it.

Level 20 Mages are supposed to be able to polymorph level 60s. Level 20 Warlocks are supposed to be able to land fears. Because they're supposed to at least have a fighting chance of surviving. Again, this was one of the major selling points of wow of the day.

The fact that I can't hit totems with my staff is complete and utter horse shit. Weapon skill and resist are simply wrongly done. The fact that low-level melees can land attacks without fail, where low-level spellcasters can not, should be alarming enough.

You have absolutely 0 proof of what you say, just some gut feeling / memories.

I've seen a number of threads recently on the boards pertaining to +spell hit chance and I've gathered some information for you which I hope will dispel some of the confusion. Please feel free to post your comments in a reply to this thread.

+1% spell hit chance increases the base chance for a spell to land against a target by 1%

If your target is the same level as you, a spell has a base chance to hit of 96%.

If the target is +1 level compared to you: 95%

+2 levels: 94%

+3 levels: 83% if the target is a mob, 87% if the target is a player.

+4 levels: mob: 72% player: 80%

+5 levels: mob: 61% player: 73%

Etc...

https://web.archive.org/web/20060529065 ... p=1#post37


The spell hit formula is clearly stated by a Blizzard official, and it no way it would allow level 20 Mages or Locks to land Fear & Polymorph on level 60 players (even if the formula was different versus Mobs & Players).

[Marisi]

Blizzard doesn't actually state the formula for spell hit though, we're just given a table of miss rates within a certain level ramge. It's not reasonable to extrapolate this out to level differences of 20,30,40+. The level 29 mage in the video above has a 50% spell hit rate over 20 casts vs level 60s. This isn't an enormous sample size but it's enough to rule out of the idea that low levels had effectively 1% chance to land spells on level 60s.