WoW Classic Warrior Fury & Tanking Math Compendium
This page is going to go indepth about all of the math involved in tanking and with the Fury Prot spec. Even if you aren't a math nerd this is something you should go through and try your best to understand since it'll help you tank better. For those of you who are math nerds, I hope this page serves as an index page for you.
I did my best to compile all of the available information and link to it from this page as well as provide examples of what I believe are the most important "maths" that you should understand as a Warrior.
Marrow's Compendium of Warrior Math
Random Important Note: The first 1% of hit gained from gear or talents is suppresed/not counted by Blizzard. This has been confirmed/backed up on most Math posts I link to and have read.
Miss Chance
Understanding miss chance helps you understand how the Hit Cap works and why it's so important. By default players have an 8% chance to miss enemies that are at least 3 levels above them with 300 Weapon Skill. There are three different calculations that are used depending on if you're Dual Wielding, what your Weapon Skill is and what the mob's Defense skill is.
Player Default Miss Chance: 5 + ((Target Level x 5)) - Weapon Skill) x 0.2
If the difference between your Weapon Skill and the mob's Defense is 11 or higher.
Player Default Miss Chance: 5 + ((Target Level x 5)) - Weapon Skill) x 0.1
If the difference between your Weapon Skill and the mob's Defense is 10 or less.
Player(DW Miss) = ((Player Miss) x 0.8) + 0.2
If you're dual wielding, this formula is used.
As you can see, based on these formulas you have a much lower chance to miss when you have at least 305 Weapon Skill. This is the reason racials are so important and that most Alliance Warriors roll Human and most Horde roll Troll or Orc. One thing you should keep in mind though is that Dual Wielding exponentially increases your chance to miss and is one of the main reasons % Hit is so important for melee users in general.
To explain these formulas in layman terms, let me break down two of the formulas for you:
Formula 1: 5 + ((63 x 5)) - 300) x 0.2 = 8% ((Type the problem into your calculator and you'll get 8%))
5 = Default Miss Value
63 = Mob Level
300 = Weapon Skill
5 + ((63 x 5)) - 305) x 0.1 = 6%
The only value that you have to input differently for this formula is the Weapon Skill, which is now 305.
Glancing Blows
Aside from lowering the total amount of Hit % you need on your character, the second reason Weapon Skill is so important is because it decreases the damage lost from Glancing Blows. A Glancing Blow is something that happens when you're fighting an enemy that is equal to or higher level than your character. Only white attacks, meaning your regular Auto Attacks, can be Glancing Blows. You can check your Combat Log ingame and it'll tell you when an attack is a Glancing Blow.
To make this all easier to understand, I have pilfered some of the charts from Marrow's Warrior Compendium. Before we jump into the charts and what they all mean, let's look at the baseline readings for Glancing Blows.
With 300 Weapon Skill Against a Level 63 Mob there is a 40% chance for you to deal a Glancing Blow which will result in the hit dealing 35% less damage. Glancing Blows are the greatest DPS loss there is for any melee user.
As you can see from the first and second charts, the usefulness of Weapon Skill really tapers off once you reach 307/308. The third chart demonstrates how Weapon Skill decreases the amount of Hit % that you need and much like the first two charts, you see a serious drop off in usefulness post 305.
This is the reason that Humans using Swords or Maces and Orcs using Axes don't need a pair of Edgemaster's Handguards. However, every other Warrior Race typically uses Edgemaster's Handguards as it's their Best in Slot until Naxxaramas.