What is the Lunar Crit Cap?
In short, the Lunar Crit Cap is the level at which a combination of Crit Rating and Intelligence will make your Starfire Crit chance go above 100% with full raid buffs.
It has actually been around for a while. Several moonkin were able to reach it with a combination of 2T8 and high level gear our of ToGC. I've just chosen not to comment on it in the past because I thought it would be a temporary issue that very few people would have. However, with the changes to Eclipse in patch 3.3, the Lunar Crit Cap is alive and kicking. Lets take a quick look at some numbers.
We each have a base crit chance of 1.85%. On top of that we have a ton of bonuses we get from both self buffs and raid buffs.
| Buff | Crit Chance |
|---|---|
| Base Crit Chance | 1.85 |
| Moonkin Aura | 5 |
| Nature's Majesty | 4 |
| Imp Insect Swarm | 3 |
| Imp Faerie Fire | 3 |
| Lunar Eclipse | 40 |
| Imp Scorch | 5 |
| Totem of Wrath | 3 |
| Total from buffs | 64.85 |
As you can see, If you have full raid buffs you have a 64.85& chance to crit during Lunar Eclipse without including any Intelligence or Crit Rating into the equation. Some of you may be thinking that 35.15% crit chance from Crit Rating and Int is a lot, and it is, but it is probably closer then you think.
Looking at my own gear, I have close to 1200 Int unbuffed. I know that I am better geared then a lot of people, but I have only one piece of ICC gear. Everyone's gear is going to improve a lot over the next few weeks. With full raid buffs my base 1200 int will turn into 1620 Int ((1200+52+60)*1.1*1.1*1.02). If you divide that number by 166.66 you can see that I will get 9.72% crit chance from Int alone. Combine that with what I get from buffs and all of a sudden I have a 74.57 crit chance.
To pick up the last 25.43% from crit rating I would need 1167 points of crit rating. Once you take the 220 Crit rating I will get from [Idol of Lunar Eclipse] then you can see my Lunar Crit cap drops down to 947 crit rating.
Again, It may seem like I am a long way away from the cap since I only have 699 crit rating currently, but it's important to remember 2 things. First, we are only at the beginning of ICC. Being only 248 below the cap with very little gear from the highest level of content is very close. Second, as your gear improves the Crit rating cap will come down as you pick up more Int. If I pick up just 100 more Int then my Crit Cap comes down to 913 Crit Rating. With 200 more Int the cap is down to 880. If you get Focus Magic from a Mage the Cap is even lower.
How do I calculate my Crit Cap?
Since the Crit Cap depends on a combination of Int and Crit Rating, our individual caps will be different. Therefore you may be wondering how to calculate your own. Well, I know of two quick ways and both of them come from Hamlet on the Moonkin Think Tank post.
- The Rough Estimate: This equation will give you a rough estimate 1575.5 - Int/3. Lets see how this equation apples to me. My armory has me at 1227 Int. Plugging that into the equation says my Lunar Crit Cap is 946.5 (1575.5-(1227/3)). As you can see that is really close to the number I calculated above.
- WrathCalcs: If you plug your stats, talent build, and raid buffs into WrathCalcs it will calculate the cap for you at the bottom. You can find WrathCalcs at the Think tank linked above.
Why this Matters?
Both WrathCalcs and SimulationCraft are valuing Crit Rating more then Haste Rating if you have more then 400 Haste Rating. That doesn't mean Haste is useless, but it does mean that you will probably favor Crit a little more then you will favor haste while you gear up. Knowing your Lunar Crit Cap is important because it operates like the Haste Soft Cap. Crit rating won't be worthless after the cap, but it will drop in value. At that point, you will likely want to favor Haste a little more then Crit Rating.
18 comments:
I'm actually at the crit cap now, I realize looking at my gear. I am fairly certain that I'm still getting non-crit starfires while in eclipse. I'll pay more attention to this when I raid again. (Armory = Draugir)
Are you getting all the raid buffs? I don't get scorch. There's no way to convince one of our mages to do anything other then arcane, and I'm not having much luck getting a warlock to venture out of destruction. :)
Seca
"This equation will give you a rough estimate 1575.5 - Int/3. Lets see how this equation apples to me. My armory has me at 1227 Int. Plugging that into the equation says my Lunar Crit Cap is 946.5 (1575.5-(1227/3)). As you can see that is really close to the number I calculated above."
Something is off in the numbers here. is it supposed to be int/2? otherwise, this equation says your crit cap should be ~1100
Not to nit pick, but your math is a bit off. 1227/3 = 409. 1575.5 - 409 = 1166.5.
It's kind of sad that, thanks to Eclipse, we can relatively easily soft-cap ourselves in two different ratings simultaneously. Once we're haste-capped on Wrath and crit-capped on Starfire, what the heck are we supposed to do then? From that point on, both crit and haste are worth a shadow of their former selves.
Graylo, what is your pick so far on the best off-set piece? I am getting ready to use my T10 token, having a hard time deciding.
About the Math. My numbers are correct, I just left a part out. You have to account for your idol also which is another 200 - 220 Crit rating. I will update the post.
In response to Seca..
Imp. Scorch doesn't stack with Imp. shadow bolt, which the majority of locks already have. It's the same debuff and you're most likely to encounter the lock debuff over the mage debuff considering the amount of arcane mages over fire mages these days.
Cynic
I see no point on talking about the lunar crit cap , it´s true lunar eclipse is the main source of our overall damage , but as we go for more crit we have better wrath spell damage output and faster eclipse ( 100% uptime )
Thanks for the reminder Graylo but I think after hitting 500ish haste we should go for MOAR crit.
Yoghurt - Ragnaros.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ragnaros&cn=Yoghurt&gn=Dreamstate
Im not sure i agree that we should value haste more than crit after soft crit cap. Haste only really benefit us when we get enough to get an extra starfire through (i calculated that to be around 712 haste). Crit, however, gives us a lot of nice wrath crits (wrath scales a lot better these days, during solar eclipse), and the extra crit will allow for faster eclipse proccing. And, ofcourse, the real kicker is "More crit = more tier10 4 piece procs".
It's still a matter of how well we scale in relation to other classes. If we stop benefitting as much from our stats, then we'll plateu sooner than they will.
Hello Graylo,
I´m wondering if we reach both caps, would not be such Items as Nibelung, who offer a Proc thats worth around 200 dps form what I read, be much better than let´s say a Mainhand/offhand combo with loads of haste and crit?
would be nice to see some math at this point.
I intend to go for Nibelung for that reason, it seems I'll be past the haste soft cap and approaching crit, so sacrificing stats on a weapon in favour of that awesome proc may not be such a bad move after all.
I have no stats to back it up, just a gut instinct :)
My current ICC build without any HC content is putting me at about 600-700 haste I think and a good amount of crit.
yeah im around 37% crit raid buffed with t10 idol up and then another 40% from eclipse and i have 616 haste at the moment
Diredruid on Jubei'thos
Thanks for the crit buff breakdown Graylo. Very helpful.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the other badge gear.
I tend to favor badge gear because I really just don't know what will drop in our raids, and predicting what things like hit rating needed becomes easier.
I think I'm going to do the head, shoulders, chest, and legs for my 4piece t10, because the sp haste crit badge gloves look quite nice. And so does the belt.
I think I'm also going to have someone make me the tailoring boots with hit on them.
That's almost double the badges needed for set items just to pick up the other items too. (I don't even want to think about gearing my resto set right now).
I'm not sure we should really be talking about soft caps with T10. We'll be well in excess of both haste and crit soft caps, each of which only affect one of our two nukes and only for part of our rotation. Is it something to write about? Eh, sure. Is it something to worry about? Not really.
The value of haste beyond 400 rating is to get more Starfires in during lunar Eclipse (obviously, it helps un-Eclipsed Wrath and Starfire as well), while the value of crit beyond 30.35% is to get harder hitting Wraths during solar Eclipse (and to proc Eclipse faster).
Of course, Graylo knows this, as do many of his readers, but I cannot begin to count the number of people who pass a soft cap and think the world's about to end. Continue on gearing as always, and don't worry about soft caps this time because there's no avoiding them without going for spirit (read: nerfing yourself).
Xiera it is something that needs to be talked about. Blizz has to get information from somewhere they are not almighty and know every bit of theire own game.
Some areas its quite stunning how little they seem to know about it.
Moonkins as far I can tell and know will fall behind on damage the further our guilds progress in ICC. Just the fact both haste and critt has alot less value as for any caster should make most worried.
Post a Comment