Dodge mods vs. hp/ac for tanks in the level 70 era

Does anyone know any rough parses or theorycrafting of how good dodge mods are vs. hp/ac augs? Specifically, I'm looking at this aug (10% dodge mod up to 45 points of skill):

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=45041

And trying to figure out whether it's better than other type 7 options like 20ac, 25ac/25hp, and so forth

You're better off using AC augs. Eventually once you get to the eras with type 3 slots regularly on gear you should get the dodge percentage t3 aug from Miragul LDoN merchant.

You may not be better off using AC augs. You need to parse your tanking, and look at the hit distribution. AC increases your mitigation, causing you to take smaller hits more frequently. If you are already getting hit for minimum the majority of the time, you would be better off focusing on avoidance through dodge/Hagi or HP to take more hits. Try both, see what works better for your gear. It may change as you acquire more too.

It's been parsed very extensively in the past. He's talking about the skill percentage mods, not the melee focus. You'd have to have so much more AC than you can get for this to be worth more than 20ac.

Well shoot. Was hoping the dodge skill mod was more powerful than that.

I think parsing it for his gear situation is his best bet. AC also gets to a point where the returns from 20 more AC don't have any real effect, as the theoretical maximum mitigation is already achieved. In general I agree that AC is a tank's primary stat and it is usually safe and a tank's best bet to focus on it. Speaking from my experience on Phinigel, I was achieving a hit distribution that favored lower hits pretty easily. I understand that there was a lot of research on thesteelwarrior and other sites in the past, but that research doesn't account for changes to player power that have occurred since.

The dodge skill mod is VERY minimal in terms of mitigation. Improved Dodge is a BIG increase however.

Here's a parse I ran last go around on Phinny using a bard and test dummies.

I found an interesting post from a developer on calculating dodge chance:

The post Dissent is talking about is https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/illusions-benefit-neza-10-dodge.246757/

You can figure out your increase in dodge from the 10% aug with his formulas. It increases it more if you have improved dodge as well.

It comes out to somewhere in between 1 and 2% increase in dodge rates if I remember correctly.

No idea what 25 ac equates to, but I'd bet it's nowhere near the 2% avoidance increase.

All the tanks in my guild wore the 10% dodge aug until type 3s became a thing.

Rough math and guessing is cool and all, but have y'all seen Bobbybic's actual DATA? There's no argument that the aug causes a significant difference in those numbers.

i parsed this years ago (many others did as well on the old steel warrior forums) and it never came out to more than a half a percent increase in dodge rates, and there were parses where youd actually have more dodges without the aug than with it.

which basically means its impact is less than the margin of error to parse out. i notice bobbybic's parse is 0.34% difference, which seems to fall in line.

A 1 to 2% increase in dodge rate is not a 2% avoidance increase.

Bobbybic's parse shows a closer to 4% increase in dodge rate (8.81 * .04 = .35% more dodges) and that worked out to less than a 1% increase in avoidance for him.

Notice that with the dodge increase, your parry and riposte % actually go down, because it checks for dodge first iirc. So while you get more dodges, some of them are irrelevant because they would have been parried or blocked had you not dodged.

Also, the OPs base AC is going to be pretty low if he's talking about type 7 slots, which is group gear content, so that will skew it in favor of AC augs even more. The type 3 version later on is fine because it's basically free.

By the standards of the expansion we're in (DoDH), my AC is actually pretty high. Certainly higher than it would be in the Fallen Saint demiplane tank gear. I'm using cultural gear with last bloods, which have comically inflated AC values in this era. Part of the reason for my ambiguity about how to gear up, I love love love AC but given how soft caps work, it's really hard to tell exactly how good it is.

Right I had totally forgotten about crafted gear. His comment about theoretical maximum mitagtion is way past the point you can actually achieve though.

That parse is great and all, but it has imp dodge 3 alone the best of the bunch, better than ID3 + 8% dodge mod and sense. Which is an anomaly in his parse. If you go by his parse the dodge mod makes you dodge less, so don't wear it.

I did the exact math based on niente's formulas back then and I don't feel like doing it again. It's something like 1.832% increase in dodge with ID4. The 10% dodge mod is at the level 70 skill.

And even if you think that's insignificant, what does 25 ac get you? How much mitigation is that? It's probably so minor that it would be very hard to tell from a parse.

I still think the 10% dodge mod aug is better than 25 ac, but that's just my opinion, because it's impossible to know for sure.

All that shows is that the benefit from Talisman of Sense and the 8% dodge mod are minimal, less than the margin of error in his parse. When every parse using improved dodge 3 bumps him from ~9% to ~11%, and the other combinations don't, that's significant.

And, we can know. This is not just a matter of opinion. If you don't like his parse, go parse your own, but there is a definitive right answer here, and it is possible to know the answer.

It may be small, but it improves your dodge rate at least some, which improves your avoidance. And no one has still even talked about how much 25 ac increases mitigation, because that's what you're comparing it to.

Let's say it's 0.25% increase in avoidance, a couple people mentioned around that. That means 1 out of every 400 attacks you will get an extra hit avoided.

So if the mob hits for an average of 2,000 damage, that's 2,000 damage avoided every 400 attacks.

For the 25 ac aug to match that it would need to mitigate at least that much damage in 400 attacks.

For the purposes of this example we'll say you don't avoid any other attacks, all 400 hit you. That puts this way in favor of the ac aug. So 2,000 / 400 = 5, so the 25 ac aug would have to mitigate 5 damage a hit in order to mitigate 2,000 damage in 400 attacks.

The more the mob hits for and the more you also avoid other attacks, the more the ac aug has to mitigate to make up the difference.

Does a 25 ac aug mitigate 5 damage per 2k hit? Maybe?

I don't think there is a knowable answer, because it will differ based on mob. The harder a mob hits the better the extra avoidance is. Maybe if you parsed a test dummy for days and days and days you would know which one is better, on that test dummy.

Wait I have an AC parse somewhere too



Thats on a zerker, idk if the Knight tables would give more mitigation per aug AC point or not (I would assume so but don't know the exact number).

On a zerker, at 70, 85ac worth of augs will reduce average incoming dps by 2.54%. Assuming it scales linearly (it likely doesn't but lets pretend), 25ac would reduce incoming melee dps by 0.74%.

Apparently I was dumb to use my researchers symbol until sof. It seems like ac augs aren't even worth it if you have sufficient healing power and aren't concerned about efficiency soloing or with shaman hots. I'd be curious to see these tables for knights or warriors.