Q u o t e: Glancing blows are something you are not likely to see go away. They are a big tool we use to balance melee versus bosses.
This is all well and good, but I'm just wondering one thing... Isn't mana a tool you use to balance casters vs bosses? Because going oom isn't really happening to the biggest damage dealers.
Afaik it's because melee scale with both increased dps stats (AP, haste, crit, expertise, hit, armor pene) and with increased weapon dps. The multiplying of AP with weapon damage would otherwise make melee outscale casters in high end gear.
I could be wrong though :p
Afaik the only melee that is underperforming atm is rogues. What could be useful of course is to give rogues a talent or ability to reduce glancing blows allowing them to increase their dps with 0 effecg on PvP. To remove it for all dps would make fury warriors for example, overpowered.
Mana has never meant to limit a correct damage rotation for casters. it stops silly things like spamming mana intensive instants and aoe, but is more regared as a healer control tool.
Currently there is no possible way to reduce glancing blows, so a hit capped rogue would still get quite a few of them on a boss.
Like you say, there's no way to reduce glancing blows, and any melee, not just rogues, will suffer ~25% glancing blows vs +3 levels no matter their hit cap. Reason why rogues could negate this in the past, was their old Weapon Expertise talent which reduced glancing blows.
This is all well and good, but I'm just wondering one thing... Isn't mana a tool you use to balance casters vs bosses? Because going oom isn't really happening to the biggest damage dealers.
Glancing blows for melee are like partial resists for casters. Just like a melee will always get a few glancing blows despite hit, expertise and so on, casters will always get partial resists despite hit, penetration and so on.
I'm sure that one gets more of their balancing mechanic then the other does, but that's irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that melee boss dps gets balanced around the inclusion of glancing blows and casters get balanced around partial hits. It wouldn't matter if you got glances 70% of the time and they reduced your white melee damage by 90% if the classes are still designed to do competetive damage under those circumstances. Weither you do 3k dps with a 90% penalty or 3k dps with a 30% penalty, you're still doing 3k dps.
Now I'm not saying that they couldn't remove glances and partials if they wanted to, it's just that for whatever initial reason, the game is designed around having them and removing them would do more damage then good.
Go back to your starting zone, and aggro a bunch of melee mobs and a bunch of caster mobs (making sure to not damage them back for a wee while at least).
See how many melee hits get through.
See how many spell hits get through.
Unless you have seriously wacky luck, the melee hits will almost all at least glance you, while the spells will miss most of the time.
I'd trade melee mechanics for spell any day.
Q u o t e: I shouldn't generalise, but I think two letters are missing from DK in many cases.
Go back to your starting zone, and aggro a bunch of melee mobs and a bunch of caster mobs (making sure to not damage them back for a wee while at least).
See how many melee hits get through.
See how many spell hits get through.
Unless you have seriously wacky luck, the melee hits will almost all at least glance you, while the spells will miss most of the time.
I'd trade melee mechanics for spell any day.
Yes, because that's how it works against bosses, level 1 against level 80. With hit gear melee gets a huge lot more glancing than you get partial resists.
