Has anyone ever seen a formula for augment value calculations? I would like some input from others on this subject. With the help of some guild mates, we came up with the following: Cleric: HP + Mana + 2*AC + 10*HStam + 18*HWis + 10*regen + 10*Heal + clair + HAgil
It is highly unlikely that AC has double the value of hAgi for clerics, or that regen, +heal, or clairvoyance have any value at all.
+heal, no value? we must be mistaken as to what it does then? Let me pull up the info ... Heal Amount increases the effectiveness of direct heals according to the following formula: [ (Cast_Time + Recast_Time) / 7 ] * Heal_Amount = bonus healing per hit of spell Where Cast_Time is the spell's base casting time in seconds, Recast_Time is the spell's base recast timer in seconds, and Heal_Amount is the caster's total Heal Amount stat. so according to that, it adds more hps healed to a spell. How is that of no value? I will grant you that it is small impact compared to the overall amount a heal spell does, but it is something. The same way regen is something. 1 hp per tick is more than 0 per tick. so it has some value, not 0 value? Clairvoyance: Gives a chance to gain mana equal to the total amount of the modifier when casting spells. This believed to apply to spells close to your level and possibly of minimum amount of mana to cast. So if you get up to 1000 clairvoyance and cast a 3000 mana spell, you can gain back 1000 mana when you cast it. do that 3 times and you have a free spell. how is that no value? As a cleric, my main job is to heal. As such, I value things that help me 1) cast more heals (beneficial spell haste) 2) cast stronger heals ( heal focus and heal amount) 3) maintain or regain mana so I can cast even more heals ( mana pool, mana regen, HWis and clairvoyance) 4) stay alive longer so I can do my job ( hp, hp regen, AC for when mobs hit me, HAgil, HStam). I think that covers it. I understand a lot is of minimal value and if you try to rely on a few points here and there to do your job then you have other issues. I use the formula to determine which aug is better than another, which you can mostly do just by making a judgment call looking at it. Its just a tool to use
Yep that's the formula. 3/4ths of a hp per heal amount on Remedies. The Remedies, with base heal values of 9k & 8k, that good clerics use instead of Ardent Light with a base heal value of 26k. Amount healed is clearly not an issue. With every spell cast, you have a 2% chance (not a typo, or a guess. two percent.) to recover half your Clairvoyance stat in mana, capped at the cost of the spell. Averaged out that's 1 mana saved per 100 Clairvoyance. Your 1000? gets you a 10 mana discount per cast. You have to cast 100 spells for your entire 20-item 20-aug outfit's worth of Clairvoyance to equal the value of one Horn of Unity click. These factors aren't actual nothing, but evaluating choices at the granularity of augs based on them doesn't feel like a useful exercise. They're nice, small but nice, benefits to see on augs that are otherwise already good. I guess, to be convinced those factors should remain in the formula, I'd want to see some example of a good decision that they influence.
Brogh, You've probably answered this somewhere else before, but this seems to be a good enough place to ask. What stats do you look for in an aug and why? You've mentioned why a few stats mean nothing, but what stats do matter (if only a little)?
The clerics I admire and try to emulate mostly employ the all-around-good augs, the Quest/achievement/anniversary things. They fill in with AC/hAgi/hWis, since gains on those stats are larger in proportion to the base than hp/mana. Some maximize hWis for hella deep mana pools (also adds a very little bit to mana regen), some maximize AC/hAgi for survivability tanking with Negation of Subtlety on, or versus AE ramp / adds / etc., or even loot the nec/shm +sta augs for "resistance" to AEs. Frequently, the choices that any camp makes will wrap in little bits of the other sides gratuitously, and add on some spell damage (which you don't mention, but should have non-0 relevance to grouping cle ) / heal amount incidentally. I don't disagree with you that all the bits have some value; my... not problem, per se... issue is with the prescriptive specificity of the arbitrary-seeming formula. That's why I asked for examples of decisions that each part helped with. I hope that clarifies my position
I agree that a formula is odd. I'm curious on your position on a few other stats. For reference, I'm a shaman so my experience vs a cleric might be different. I've found very little use for ac. Doesn't seem to help much as a shaman. Is it different for clerics since they are plate instead of chain? Also, because shaman main healing spells have long recast times, does that change the usefulness of + healing stat? I thought it did but math isn't my strong suit. Also, how important is hsta? With mobs and aes hitting as hard as they do, is a few k hp really going to help? Same for hagi. I know it helps with avoidance, but how well? As a shaman, I almost never find myself in a situation where I run low on mana. So ignore hwis for the most part. Shaman dps is pathetic so I ignore +spell dmg too.
We went with : HP + Mana + 2*AC + 10*HStam + 18*HWis + 5*Heal The point to a set formula s to have a way to compare one aug with the next. I am a strong advocate ofeach player having their own formula based upon their play style and needs. But a person does have to have some method for choosing / comparing augs. With no reasoning behind it, you might still be using a random zone drop aug over something which arguably is better. That's why I asked for some input openly from others here in this forum. Thanks to the opinion of Brohg ( and to be sure, its pretty much all just opinion here, nothing anyone else has to use, this is not the end-of-all-discussion on the subject and it is all I wanted - opinions), we altered the formula and (for now) we use the one posted above. Again its for comparison reasons. To evaluate an augment that someone is using vs another one they might try to get to replace it.
Personally I go for survivability. Dead healers are a major setback to the raid / group, and minimizing that can go a long way (though with the obvious point that minimizing healer death is an expansive and complicated topic that goes well beyond aug selection, which is relatively low yield when it is compared to much bigger things such as being aware of one's surroundings, aggro control, self cures, positioning, good tank pick up and crowd control etc etc). Heal amount and clairvoyance are just so poor on return, the later especially, that they aren't worth picking one aug over another on. hWis, mana, mana regen are even worse in that they don't have any real impact on, well, anything worth mentioning. The event will be over well before you run out of mana even with high output / max healing (assuming of course your mana isn't outright abysmal, and you are maximizing your various mana return abilities, and your group / raid DPS is solid.). Extra mana or mana regen doesn't help you at all once you already have enough to not run out. Healers run out of mana cause they died - not cause they exhausted their available mana (low dps marathon fights and unnecessarily eating mana drain effects are not mana issues; they are symptoms of some other issue that mana doesn't correct). In the end I go for HP, AC, (non-vis gear as well as augs) and some mixture of hAgi, HSta being kinda tied to just high AC / HP augs in general. Spell related dmg is a bigger threat to me than melee related dmg, for the most part, so been favoring HP slightly, but AC still up there. No real formula per se. All this being said, the better augs tends to have a mixture of everything so it isn't like anything gets 100% neglected. And of course, regardless of whatever aug route one goes for, at least have the best AC aug you can get in your secondary.
I tend to be a little more simplistic in my personal choices (no fancy formula like the one above), but even I do have a formula of sorts that takes into account part of the aug stats. AC HP MANA CORR HWIS HAGI HSTA HSTR HDEX HCHA "HEAL AMT" "SPELL DMG" CLAIR ATK "STUN RESIST" "DOT SHIELD" "SPELL SHIELD" AVOID ACCUR CE (Some of these are from years ago and I just didn't remove them from the worksheet yet.) Then I do a calculation for HP+heroic sta (HP) and wis/int+heroic wis/int (for mana) to see what the total HP and mana offerings are on an aug. I'd do the AC one but that's a bit harder to calculate. My excel file then uses conditional formatting and has a box for me to plug in the stats on the new aug (for that calculation above) and it turns any total mana/hp columns a certain color if the aug is better than what I currently have. Then, I look among those first and look at the other stats I might be gaining or losing to see whether the aug itself is of value for me to swap out. The file started more as a quick way to see where each aug is located but then started getting adjusted to determine which is the best aug to replace. Image is HERE. ~~ In the most easiest viewpoint, I look for combination augs. I don't go straight AC or straight HP or straight mana. I want good mana augs with some HP and preferably some AC (or if no AC, it has to be higher in heal amount, spell damage, etc.). And overall I mean heroics are counted in those. The raids I do are 20, 40, 60, 80-90 minutes long (every event) so I don't have the luxury of quick fights. So my thoughts are going to come from a different perspective than Tour's. Doesn't make either of our views wrong as it's all perspective.
My perspective is a raiding shaman. Not hardcore but I'm in a mix of TDS and CoTF raid gear, no group gear on me. I've just heard (and personally felt) that as a shaman, AC is pretty useless. Your survivability isn't going to improve in any meaningful way with a bit more AC (because of softcap, wearing chain, being a caster and the fact that *normally* you're not being smacked by something). Sounds like clerics still find some usefulness out of it, and I'm wondering if it is because clerics are plate class and AC calculates differently. For HP and heroic stamina, you're looking at (if you're getting the best augs out there) around 400 hp (when you include HSta) per slot. If you max out all 21 slots, you're talking a total of around 8k added HP. Is that 8k going to save you when group crap has 100k dmg spells? I used to think HP was king for shaman and all my augs (and item choices) were HP related. Still tempted to go this route, which is why I was asking about Hsta and other folk's preferences on augs. Another thing I was curious about was Hagi, and how much it helps with avoidance. Because shaman AC and mitigation is so poor, it has always been best to avoid being hit in the first place. However, I don't know how useful it is. Particularly since most of the time, again, I'm not being hit. If I'm getting beat on as a shaman something has gone wrong. I believe that shaman (of all healers) get the most out of +healing because of the recast delay on our major heals. Our "oh !" heal is a 90sec recast delay, but that is fully hasted with AAs and such. Does the healing formula use the base recast delay or shortened with AA? Our other group heal has 24 second recast. Surge has 10 second recast. Reckless is 13 seconds. Unlike cleric spam spells that are basically no cast time and almost no delay. Also, +heal might not add much, but what am I doing 99% of the time? Healing! So why not do my main job better? Or at least that has been my thinking. I could be completely delusional as I haven't dug into the math and all that stuff yet, but I'm curious to see what others think.
One way to remember to look at things - this game is a game of small additions. In today's EQ, there is no one single large "good thing" anymore. Everything is additive. Clerics (to answer the question above) are on a different AC scale for softcaps than shaman or druids.
One of the major problems with augs for priests, is that none of stats actually do anything. Heal amount: Does adding 20 non-crit or 80 crit to your heals change the survivability for anyone? Nope. Clairvoyance: LOL. garbage. AC: One out of every 50+ hits on you lands for 1 DI less, does that actually matter? Nope. HP/HSTA: Does 250hp matter for someone with 120,000+ HPS dealing with 40,000 to 90,000 AEs? Nope. (under 1%) Hagi: One out of every one or two thousand attacks will miss thanks to the extra evade chance. Does that matter? Nope. (under 1%) Mana/Hwis: Does 250 or 500 mana matter for a character with 100,000+ mana pool? Nope. (Under 1%) All of these things are, AT BEST, changing the lower end of the 3rd decimal place of effectiveness. 1-3% changes. If you actually parse over a raid night or a week of exping, they're in the 3rd or 4th decimal points of effectiveness, or worse. This might be my perceptive from playing a lot of idle games that ramp up through order of magnitude, but things that are in the 1% or less range of changes are worthless for anyone dealing with normal instance across normal time spans.
1 AC aug.........meaningless 15 AC augs.....now we are getting somewhere Decide on a theme and stick with it, this will maximize the effect. I decided on AC when I started, regardless of what anyone told me about needing mana more. 30 ac from 1 aug does nothing, but if all your augs are ac then your talking 500-750+ ac, which does matter. I don't understand complex formula stuff, but I do have 3 clerics I box. 2 have around 10k ac, Roxx pushes 12k. She has all the best augs she can get her greedy hands on. It ain't gonna change the fact that a Raid boss will splatter her in one hit, but in group content, she can tank, the others can't. But I think the most important thing is the chase for gear gives us somthing to do, there's still a couple of nice augs I want when I'm bored. Will I spend millions on a purity aug....no. Will I camp an ac aug for hours...........hell yes. Will either on make a difference in of itself.......no.
They're called augmentations for a reason. Get the best ones you reasonably can, but don't expect them to work any miracles on their own.
I disagree that augments don't actually do anything. That is typically something said by a min/maxer where if the result isn't significant it falls into the 'useless/worthless' territory. There is a bid difference between having significant value and actually doing nothing. Heroic intelligence on a priest aug is the definition of actually doing nothing. All of these stats we're talking about above actually do something; just that its independent value becomes less over time (as stats, mob hits/inflation, etc.) occurs so the amount of aid given is small. Some augs (tome of manipulation, helping hand, ldon avoidance aug) are still things many clerics will deem valuable. But the regular stat augs become the response "where the total is greater than the sum of the parts".
Are you in a guild that steamrolls raid content? Or a group that slices thru content like a hot knife thru butta? Then no Augments, or any portion of your equipment that is roughly 10% or less of your total stats is not going to make a huge difference, certainly not on whether you win or lose and event or wipe to a named mob. The less efficient the people around you are, the more difference an individual can make. Did that one evaded hit or crit heal or last drop of mana allow you to take that one extra action that saved the raid? Down here in the mid tier and lower, it might have. i don't feel that happens often in my current situation (or perhaps even the current state of the game), but ive certainly witnessed it. Back during another era i was part of raids where the last wizard's nuke took out Trakanon right before the dot killed him, and we had to organize a rescue party to get to the corpse. (probably some banished paladin made his way back and rezzed a cleric - its been a long time.) That's just one example but there were definitely heroics that took place and depended on an extra 50 hps or 10 AC or whatever other base stat made things possible.
