Many years ago I heard devs say they would not be adding these AA anymore because it would break something. So do the AAs actually do anything these days? Just curious beings so many AA have no real description to them after the first few ranks.
0.00001% effectiveness Marginal gains but still meaningful in a world of incremental gains, never know when that 0.000000001% will save you from the RNG.
Something like that. Elidroth said were reaching a cap, who know if they tweaked the equations to allow for more upgrades or if the return is getting smaller and smaller. But the return perceived or real at the top end is very small. I'm sure someone who has the actual numbers will jump in and correct my fake percentages.
If you are a tank apping to a raid guild, the guild's recruitment guidelines will tend to expect it to be maxed out. Not because it means you are that much sturdier than someone who skipped a few ranks. More like it shows you are that dedicated to your character. Otherwise there is law of diminishing returns in play.
yes, they do something - just each rank does less and less of it. CA increases your chance for a mob to 'miss' you per rank. from ranks 1 through 19 it's multiple percentage points per rank, after 19 it's 1% per rank up until i think around 50 and then it might start being 1/2 or less per rank. CS increases your AC softcap and that i'm aware of currently has no sub-1% increments or other such code-related issues. ranks 1-19 are multiple percentage points per rank, and then it's 1% from 20 onwards.
i can tell you that i went from rank 30 CS/CA and falling over dead in heroic adventures if a mob looked at me to ranger tanking the last 20% of the EW raid dragon at max ranks. the numbers might be small, there might be a point of diminishing return, but its a useful line.
He said this back in HoT I think, and only added more ranks when he got a ton of PM's from people that didn't care it added nothing they just wanted it. So I'm pretty sure that the ranks add nothing at all anymore and just exist so people wont complain, but parsing this stuff is so horrible that I don't think anyone has bothered to see if that's the case or not.
They add something. It's diminishing returns but they add up. Someone posted a cool link to a breakdown of it, kinda spreadsheet style, but I can't find it this minute - sorry. -Rat
Found it! http://eqaasearch.org/aainfo.asp?search_fd1=*combat*&search_fd9=Survivability&search_fd12=Ranger -R
I still noticed a difference between the ranks before CotF...and the ones after CotF. I always notice when they add in new ranks of CA/CS that I can molo better against the same mobs than before. Before I had trouble with Chelsith, etc mobs (I'm a rogue, mind you...so my fights tend to be a lot longer than most other classes moloing, heh) and sometimes Evantil mobs were really spikey. However, post-CotF Evantil mobs don't really cause me any issues, while Chelsith and HoF are spiky but much more doable. Of course, I don't have numbers to actually back that up...because...*ugh* that's a pain, lol. XD
I think the new ranks of CA/CS are there mainly to keep in check the increasing mob strikethrough and accuracy statistics. They increase with every new expansion, CA/CS ranks in that expansion brings the Player mitigation/avoidance back to what the devs consider the "sweet spot" for their formulaic damage calculations.
I would have thought it's more likely that this is the cause of the mobs hitting through strikethrough bug we have seen in the last expansion and this one.
The opposite is more likely. Increase in player defensive abilities and mitigation causes the devs to find more ways to increase mobs damage capabilities to achieve the balance. It's players asking for better defensives to make old content easier that causes current mobs to need to be "overtuned." If the player base would stop asking for more ranks of CA/CS, mobs wouldn't need to have increased strikethrough and larger attack/damage values. They could just merely be tuned to the natural increase in gear and skills.
If so, listen to this. No more required defensive AAs that just put us back where we were an expansion ago!! There are soo many AAs for someone starting a new character. Lets not keep adding on essentially pointless AAs - whose gains are countered by content.
But.... but... that's whole point of the "great hamster wheel" of MMOG design. You let the players earn "more power". Power, that you then negate by creating more powerful mobs and harder content. Rinse and repeat. The real trick is to keep the hamsters coming back for another sip of the water bottle. Same flavor, different food coloring in the water. -Rat
Welcome to "Artificial content extension 101" If you don't have the time or resources to give more content, make the content you CAN make last longer by any means necessary. I agree CA/CS should have been a closed line expansions ago. But then Tanks would have less required AAs per expansion to farm than other archetypes(Healers still need gift/boon/adept, caster dps have their destructive fury/fury of magic) etc etc. I wish the dev team had more time/manpower to get more content in so this wouldn't need to happen. But I guess this is how it is nowadays.
