With that great explanation of stats this morning, how fitting that this afternoon, we have Drysc's update on what the various combat ratings mean for each of your character's combat values.

The combat ratings system was implemented when the expansion came around-- it used to be that instead of a "dodge rating" on a piece of armor, you just got a "+2% chance to dodge." But Blizzard noticed that in order to scale that gear up ten levels, they'd have to push up percentages, and eventually everyone would just be walking around with crazy high percentages-- adding enough armor up to a 100% chance to dodge would obviously break the game.

So they developed the rating system, with each armor piece giving a plus to "rating" that then translated into different percentages at different levels-- an item with 18.9 dodge rating on it actually gives +1% dodge at level 70, but more than that at level 60 (about %1.5, actually). That way, Blizzard can scale the rating with level, and gear can get better without breaking the game. Much more on this, I'm sure, when Elizabeth continues her WoW Rookie feature on stats. And don't forget that RatingBuster can give you all this automatically ingame-- from what I understand, it has been updated with these numbers.

But in the meantime, after the jump, I've posted what Drysc says all the ratings will give you at level 70. Feel free to bookmark this post for quick reference when comparing gear.

via Drysc: Below is an updated version [post-2.1.0- ed.] of the combat rating system with the appropriate level 70 values. Enjoy!

Combat Ratings conversions at level 70 (rounded to 1 decimal point):

Weapon Skill Rating: 3.9 rating grants 1 skill point

Defense Rating: 2.4 rating grants 1 defense skill.

Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge

Parry Rating: 22.4 rating grants 1% parry

Block Rating: 7.9 rating grants 1% block chance

Hit Rating: 15.8 rating grants 1% hit chance

Spell Hit Rating: 12.6 rating grants 1% spell hit chance

Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% critical strike chance

Spell Critical Strike Rating: 22.1 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance

Haste Rating: 10.5 rating grants 1% haste

Spell Haste Rating: 21 rating grants 1% spell haste

Resilience Rating: 39.4 rating grants 1% less chance of being struck by any type of critical strike, and 2% less damage taken from critical strikes