Testing Improved Crusader Talent - Inconclusive

I did an experiment this week and last where I went from 3/3 Improved Crusader to 0/3 Improved Crusader.

I recorded both attempts in WWS, so now I can do some comparison. I'm going to use Hydross because it was a fight where I was able to keep Improved Crusader up the entire time and both attempts were one shots. The sample size may be too small, but let's see what the data reveals.

Remember that Improved Crusader gives 3% crit to the entire Raid.

First I'm going to look at one of our Hunters, Araxe. I know from my dealings with him that he is a skilled player and knows his hunter well.

In the attempt where I had Improved Crusader, his crit was 23%. In the attempt where I didn’t have it, his crit was 30%. He actually crit more when I didn’t have Improved Crusader.

Well, maybe he made changes to his own spec, or he got a new piece of gear. There are a lot of variables, so let’s keep digging. Looking at Lococrazy, another hunter, his Crit with Improved Crusader was 33%, but only 18% without.

One Hunter crit more with Improved Crusader, and one Hunter crit less. I love good conclusive evidence /sarcasm.

The Mages don’t help much more. 2 of our 3 Mages crit less the attempt where I had it, and the variance in both the case of the Hunters and the Mages is larger than 3%.

Then we get to melee. The two melee DPS (1 Warrior and 1 Rogue) who were in both attempts both saw more Crit on the attempt where I had Improved Crusader and the variance was almost exactly 3%, the very amount added by Improved Crusader. This would leave me to think that Improved Crusader is only affecting the melee, but then our Feral Druid crit more when I didn’t have it by about 6%.

What I didn’t do that I should have was to note what group each person was in so I could see what other buffs, if any may have affected their crit like a Feral Druid who gives his group crit as well.

Raid DPS was higher when I didn’t have it by about 150DPS.

There are just too many variables for me to say conclusively if Improved Crusader was a good idea to drop or not.

The two WWS reports are http://wowwebstats.com/tewcmbzdit3dw?s=1054-1602&a=5 and http://wowwebstats.com/xj6oxotuc3uzy?s=849-1392.
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http://honorscode.blogspot.com/

I don't think you really need to look at WWS parses to evaluate Imp. Crusader. It's a raid DPS increase. Unless it's bugged or something (in which case it would be better to test in more isolated conditions with a much larger sample size) it's going to cause your raid to crit 3% more of the time.

It's a purely optional talent that can help your raid DPS out a bit.
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You wanted to raid but didn't get far, cuz everyone transferred to the P! T! R!

Yeah. Two differnent one-shots of the same boss on two different nights isn't conclusive of anything. To start, you have factors of raid composition, how people are grouped, difference in food buffs/flasks for that night, difference of gear between the two fights and even luck.

Honestly, I don't see a good way to get a real assessment of the skill and just take it with a grain of salt.

For example: You could raid for a month with Imp Crus and a month without Imp Crus. However, between those months, players could change, the encounters you're on could change, but most importantly GEAR is going to change. Your raid DPS should be increasing anyway as the 2 months go by. Therefore, a real assessment is difficult.

Without any analysis, you can logicaly verify that an increase of crit to the raid (no matter how small) is an increase to the overall raid DPS as a whole. That's a given.

Overall, it's the odds. Take the hunter you described above. We'll assume a virtual hunter as an example with a crit of 30%. Given a boss fight of 5 minutes, his crit may end up being 25% or even 35% over the course of the fight. What that 30% means is that if you took his combat log indefinitely at that crit %, it would approach 30% as the average. It is possible that he could crit for 0% over a 5 minute fight or even 60%, however both are improbable (not impossible).

This is something everyone should know:
Statistical Significance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

What I need to do is find a mob that I can have me and Rogue attack. I need to record about 1000 attacks with Imp Crusader and 1000 attacks without it, and I'd need to be able to do the tests back to back.

Something like a Dr. Boom for melee.
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http://honorscode.blogspot.com/

Are you trying to see if it's bugged and not working? Or just trying to see what it does? Cuz you don't need to parse a WWS log to tell what +3% crit does.
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You wanted to raid but didn't get far, cuz everyone transferred to the P! T! R!

Well, if you know someone's class, spec, and playstyle, it's pretty easy to tell how much benefit +3% crit is going to give them. Here's a few examples:

Hunters: Nearly everything they do can crit, for at least double damage, so +3% crit will be at least a 3% damage increase. It'll be a little higher if they have Mortal Shots.
Mages: Nearly everything Mages do can crit. Fire and Frost mages will get about a 3% increase, Arcane mages will get around a 1.5% increase
Warlocks: Affliction warlocks will get a very slight increase. Demonology and Destruction warlocks will get anywhere from a 1.5% to a 5% increase depending on spec.
Rogues: Most likely a little over 3% increase. Garrote/Rupture rogues will get a little less.

The problem is, there's WAY too many variables to make any sort of "This is how useful Imp SotC will be" statement. Really, the bigger question what your primary concern is - raid DPS, or whatever else you could get with those 3 points.
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You wanted to raid but didn't get far, cuz everyone transferred to the P! T! R!

Bottomline is: +3% crit will give exactly that... +3% crit to all raid members. For some classes crit translates nearly 1 to 1 to DPS once hit capped. For others it's more or less so (dot classes would not benefit much, if at all). The benefits should be fairly obvious.

It's a great talent if you're producing more threat on the target than you know what to do with or you have a threat lead on your DPS.
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It also really depends on the class in terms of what affect crits have. Druids get a lot of mileage out of extra crits, for instance (at least feral do). Rogues as well - and neither are a direct damage output.

Just a consideration to take in mind in terms of its utility.

The short of it.

You're downing bosses, so does your raid need DPS increase of probably < 3%?

The easiest solution to the problem is to hire on a Retribution Paladin. Then you can have your cake and eat it too (even more so since you can now keep JoW and JoL on the target).