Spell penetration buged?

[KILLATON]

Can anyone confirm that spell pen is buged?

[deadwownoob]

what do you mean by bugged? As in spell penetration is not working at all? Have you tested this somehow?

I am not with warmane but anyone trying to troubleshoot this will certainly require more information.

[KILLATON]

Well, there is **** tons of people resisting my stuff and i also resist alot.
Also sometimes in raid half the dmg of my spells is resisted

[Luthendis]

it is important to know, that in TBC missing spells are also shown as resists. So be sure to get to the spell hit cap.

[Whiksey]

Spell penetration will not do much for you in PVE encounters (questing, dungeons, raids). Most mobs do not have any natural spell resist, and so penetration is an ineffective stat.

PVP encounters, spell penetration is a functional mechanic, as many players have resistance buffs (Paladin Auras, Shaman Totems, Priest Buff). Typically, this manifests as reduced damage being dealt to other player characters. Penetration will negate that effect, and allow you to deal full (or closer to full) damage.

The stat you SHOULD be looking for is Spell Hit Rating (not to be confused with Hit Rating, which is for melee). There is some math you can look up elsewhere, but at level 70, in end-game raids, you will need enough rating to achieve 16% extra chance to hit. Your current improved chance to hit can be seen by hovering over the "Spell Hit" stat on your in-game character card.

In PVP, the math works out that you only need 4% extra chance to hit in order to avoid Missing/Resisting on most other players. Some classes and races have skills/talents/attributes that increase their chance to resist you.

[jakobn123]

Spell penetration will not do much for you in PVE encounters (questing, dungeons, raids). Most mobs do not have any natural spell resist, and so penetration is an ineffective stat.

PVP encounters, spell penetration is a functional mechanic, as many players have resistance buffs (Paladin Auras, Shaman Totems, Priest Buff). Typically, this manifests as reduced damage being dealt to other player characters. Penetration will negate that effect, and allow you to deal full (or closer to full) damage.

The stat you SHOULD be looking for is Spell Hit Rating (not to be confused with Hit Rating, which is for melee). There is some math you can look up elsewhere, but at level 70, in end-game raids, you will need enough rating to achieve 16% extra chance to hit. Your current improved chance to hit can be seen by hovering over the "Spell Hit" stat on your in-game character card.

In PVP, the math works out that you only need 4% extra chance to hit in order to avoid Missing/Resisting on most other players. Some classes and races have skills/talents/attributes that increase their chance to resist you.

Good effort Whiskey, but a couple things here are inaccurate.

Regarding spell penetration in PvE, you're quite right about most mobs not having any resistances. Enemies above your level though (such as bosses considered to be level 73) have a chance to partially resist spells in a way that has nothing to do with spell resistance. The way the game works, their level advantage gives them an unavoidable 28 resistance, so you will get partial resists every now and again and there's nothing you can do about it.

In PvP, spell penetration is a different story. Whiksey only mentions the effects on non-binary spells, which is that they can partially resist. Non-binary spells aer basically all direct damage spells that don't also apply a CC effect. Fireball and Mind Blast are non-binary; Frostbolt and Mind Flay are binary. For the non-binary spells, resistances can result in a 25%, 50% or 75% damage reduction. This obviously has an element of randomness, but having 70 resistance will on average result in a 15% damage reduction. (In case anyone cares, 70 resistance to a given school will give you a 54% chance to take full damage, a 33% chance to take 75% damage, an 11% chance to take half damage, and a 2% chance to take 25% damage from a given non-binary spell).

For binary spells, the deal is a bit different. The short version is: your average damage reduction (which was 15% at 70 resistance) becomes your resist chance. So, if you have 70 resistance and a mage who doesn't have any spell penetration tries to Frostbolt or Polymorph you, you'll have a 15% chance of resisting due to him not having enchanted/gemmed spell penetration.

This also means that the 20 spell penetration you can enchant on your cloak becomes a 4.2% damage increase (non-binary spells) and a 4.2% increased hit chance (binary spells) vs any target that has at least 20 resistance.

As for the spell hit rating, Whiksey is correct in that you'll need 16% to be capped for PvE, but in PvP you only need 3% spell hit, since the baseline hit chance is 96% and the last 1% is unavoidable in TBC.

TLDR: Cap your spell penetration, AT LEAST against mark of the wild, but for frost/shadow spells especially you should really get 70.

Also, I need to get a life.

[DukeLetoII]

So, for a priest who doesn't want her psychic scream resisted in PVP....

I already have 3% chance to hit, but I am definitely getting resisted more than 1% of the time.

Would acquiring spell penetration help with this?