Climbing the ranks: Melee on Krosus and the no-miss bug

Last time I looked at how ranged can increase DPS to rank on Krosus and found they can increase their DPS by 4-10% by timing up their movement better. Since melee players don’t really get penalized from movement, there isn’t one big overall tip that applies to all classes. But there are a few interesting tidbits worth taking a look at.

A couple of extra seconds

When Krosus breaks the bridge, melee are out of DPS range for about 6 seconds. However, I noticed that Fury Warriors, in particular, stay in 2 seconds longer and leap out, generating quite a bit of extra DPS.

In the case of Fury Warriors, they have a buff called Juggernaut. Juggernaut increases the damage of Execute by 5% per stack (stacking up to 99 times). But the buff lasts only 6 seconds before the stacks drop, so staying in for that extra time makes a pretty big impact, otherwise stacks of  75+ fall off. On average, Fury Warriors gain 3% more damage by staying in longer while in execute phase.

Other melee specs benefit as well, between roughly 1-3% DPS. To figure out the impact this would have on your character, this guide walks you through the simulation setup. Use the “Fury Special” version of Krosus for a shorter bridge break.

To review your performance on logs, go to Warcraft Logs and look at your timing during bridge breaks which happen at 1:30, 3:00, and 4:30 minutes into the fight.

Why Dual Wielders rank higher

All other bosses function normally, but dual wielders can’t miss on Krosus — which I assume is an in-game bug. Normally when you are forced to hit a boss from the front, the boss mechanics that make it dodge or block your hits is deactivated. However for the Krosus fight, it looks like the ability to miss was also turned off, which is not normal, hence the bug.

Dual wielders are getting between a 3% and 8% damage boost from this bug, with the exception of Fury Warriors only gaining a small amount (~ 1%). Fury Warriors have a lower chance to miss than other dual wield classes, so they are impacted much less.

The classes benefiting the most from this are Enhancement Shaman, Subtlety Rogues, and Havoc Demon Hunters. I asked Swol why some specs are benefiting more than others. He does a lot of theorycrafting across specs and a lot of deep-dives into interesting class mechanics. He explained:

“Specs that have significant non-rppm procs benefit greatly from not missing. Sub Rogues get more combo points from Shadow Techniques, Enhancement Shaman get more Stormbringer and Windfury procs, and Havoc Demon Hunters get more Demon Blade procs. They end up being able to use their hardest hitting abilities more often than usual as a result.”

How to take advantage

Gear for it! Generic guides give you a starting point, and the next step up is to sim your own stat weights. But the real boost comes from specifically simming for this fight with the no-miss bug. How much of a difference does this make? Quite a bit! Gear suggestions can be noticeably different when accounting for every single hit and never being able to miss.

For example, Nighteyez volunteered his Enhancement Shaman up for my tests. I generated two different gearing strategies: one based on a regular boss where you can miss, and another with the special Krosus script I have where you can’t miss.

Then I used each of those strategies to find the best set of gear, and then I tested each of those sets against the Krosus script where you can’t miss.

• Regular gear advice: 759,592 DPS on the no-miss Krosus script
• Advice tailored around not being able to miss: 782,640 DPS

That’s a 3% DPS increase, just by gearing differently for the ‘right’ boss situation.

To measure the impact this has on you, compare the regular Krosus script in the simulator to the “DW No Miss” script (talked about in this guide). If you want to gear specifically for the no-miss bug, follow this tutorial for custom stat weights.

Increasing your rank

For every 1% gain in DPS, you move up 1-2% spots in the rankings. You move up faster in ranks below 90%. For the 95th percentile and above, you move up 1% per 1% gain in DPS.

So if you normally rank at 75% and increase your DPS by 3%, you’d move into the 81st percentile. If you normally rank at 94% and increase your DPS by 3%, you’d move into the 96th or 97th percentile.

A future article

I’m working on an article that looks at reasons why people do (or don’t) swap specs. Take this survey to help me collect some data.