Of course all the following is based on formulas ( maybe not up to date ) I found and some reverse engineering from parsing data. I wish I could have some enlightenment from Devs if they read that. I won’t go into formulas and mechanics in detail, you can find then searching the forums. If you parse, you will see that no mob ( thrash to raid ) will hit you “normally” or very very unlikely. ( less than 0.2% of time ). You can check your logs, every hits are done because of Strikethrough. This is rising my first concern, the defensive skills checks ( for my case raiding warrior with shield stance are in order : riposte, parry, dodge, shield block ) do not let a blow hit us if Strikethrough does not exist, even for a thrash mob. Meaning even in group content, Strikethrough might be >90 according to my model. My second concern is raised from the frequency of Shield block trigger. The probability to shield block is supposed to be fixed at 25%. Parsing in group content, It is very unlikely triggered ( a bit less than 1% only on named, almost 0% for thrash). Of course, because it is the fourth skill check, the probability to trigger it depends on all previous probabilities ( miss, riposte, parry, dodge ) and it is mechanically less likely triggered than others. But reality of less than 1% means that others probabilities are pretty big in order to trigger it so few times. This is raising my second wondering about heroic strikethrough (Heroic Strikethrough is negating our hDex and hAgi boost to riposte/parry/dodge ) : the fact that the probabilities of previous skill checks are still very high implies that the Heroic Strikethrough is not used in the game or set to very very low value. If It was correctly set, all the previous abilities before shield block will be less likely triggered and we will more likely block with Shield Block. ( in parsing group contents, others abilities trigger in the range 5%-10% ) If you look at a skill check formula, you can easily pass 100% chance with Heroic Stats with Heroic Strikethrough set to zero. If you put 100 Heroic Strikethrough and let say the miss rate of the mob is 25%, it ends with a probability of 30% to hit us ( which never happens according to concern 1 ) So either the number of defensive skills checks in Everquest is too high or either the formula is poorly designed. ( or both ). Even if it is not fully comparable, can you imagine a second playing a non-video game RPG and apply the Everquest algo for combat ? Ok I successfully hitted the mob. Now I check If he ripostes, after I check if he parries, wait now, I check if he dodges, and now the shield block etc. A bit long no ? Why not incorporating all our defensive skills inside a unique brand new Hit/Missed formula ? Will speed up the whole process and we wouldn’t have to use the “Strikethrough trick” which just kill everything.
That's a pretty rambling post, but I think your thesis is that the combat calculations from a 20+ year old game that has accreted multiple new systems along that journey is too complicated and that a better way could be devised. Perhaps, but my argument would be from a cost/benefit standpoint it's just not worth it - you would likely have to re-balance a lot of equipment and content with all the attendant headaches from that process. And of course, there is an xkcd for everything. Also - this may be helpful for reference if this thread continues (from niente): "Accuracy debuffs are part of the hit/miss calculation, which is first. hit/miss riposte > heroic strikethrough (dex) block > heroic strikethrough (dex) parry > heroic strikethrough (dex) dodge > heroic strikethrough (agi) shield block staff block regular strikethrough" More useful information - in current content (live) regular strikethrough for group content is reported to be 85-90%, raid mobs @ 100%. Group content heroic strikethrough is reported to be "low" ("perhaps too low" was the actual dev quote) assuming raid content heroic strikethrough is 100% because that's the summary of multiple hAgi vs. hDex vs. hSta tank aug discussions.
Heroic Strikethrough is irrelevant anyway as soon as regular Strikethrough is 100. I thought regular Strikethrough test was done after each defensive abilities and not at the end as you mentioned. Indeed, you only log ripostes on raid mobs and never have a chance to test all following skills.
As long as their isn't a heroic strikethrough for the associated defense - you should still be able to log effects that are dependent on the other defensive skills (procs etc) if you fail to riposte.
Is the hit/miss line missing hAGI bonus to make it's value more clear? E.g. shouldn't it say something like? hit/miss > heroic ... (agi)
It's a problem of a long time of the devs pushing #'s without a thought into the effects on mobs, then on the character side pushing overpowered heroics significantly from tbm and on with no thought into their effects So now you get it where Avoidances basically do nothing, and classes built on this idea being a big part of their overall kits (such as the Monk class) lose a large chunk of their defensive value - which they were being tuned against having vs other DPS classes It also makes it even harder for non-tanks to do much in the group game since they take so much more damage with minimal to no Avoidance power, compared to say CotF and prior expansions
Good luck getting some dev answer about Strikethrough set to 100 % in raid. Other threads have tried before, and never got a word on it. This is pushing many tanks to choose to stack one Heroic Stat that is not the Heroic Stat that I think devs favored for tanks. Imo, if you wanted to favor avoidance, reduce Strikethrough a bit, and increase hits to compensate, so that we are back to the old tank guide formula which was : "it's better to avoid a hit than being hit for less".
Haha! "Open the ..." Recall that Savvy augs have 2nd stat of hSta and 3rd stat of hAgi / hDex. Just what the paladin ordered while the devs saturate and defeat all the melee combat checks. At least we have lots of mana and HP. "We" joked about parsing this build a couple years ago
Stack hdex, dps is the only metric that matters in raids and the two defensive checks it has in group content are superior. Prob not what devs wanted but it's how to play the game as a tank. Obligatory "no heroics are a substitute for skill" disclaimer, learn the ins and outs of your class and I sincerely doubt any tank who stacks sta or agi will have anything on you outside a marginally inflated Magelo. Seriously, don't fret over the formulas or calculations - just stack dex and learn to play your class.
Whoops, jumped in here without reading first :3 carry on Should've changed "tanks" to "warriors" as well.
Zaknaffein goes full hdex. He is lucky to have a raid leader that is willing to throw him in a premier dps group and with his skill and gear setup he can and has often managed to top our dps parse on many, many events. He is also lucky that we have other warriors that follow more conventional tank paradigms that puts my guild in a place that I can let Zak burn rather than tank. With the amount of dps that he does, he very often pulls agro and with his predominately hdex setup he explodes quite spectacularly if a hard hitting raid boss takes interest. Tanks using hdex are glass canons and can achieve fantastic dps numbers, but they can NOT tank raid bosses as effectively as conventional, hsta or hagi tanks, regardless of their skill. I'm sure there are many instances on his twitch streams of him topping the parse, to go along with the many where he explodes when he pulls agro! https://www.twitch.tv/zaknaffein_warrior WTB Bandolier that swaps all my type 5 augs, my belt and mask to go along with my weapons for when I want to apply the deeps. I can make no argument against that in a group scenario, hdex is the premier stat for tanks, but it is not on raids.
"Glass cannon" is a bit of an overstatement given my personal experiences but I'll agree to disagree here since this debate (in general) has been done in so many other threads. I'd like to see this too, it'd put a whole lot of the back-and-forth to bed and allow us more agency and situational use over our characters. Something we've all wanted for an eternity
I would also dispute this conclusion. Zak "exploding" is almost certainly a function of 2-handing with little to no defensives running while also potentially running abilities that increase damage taken. I think in the current raid game hdex makes little to no meaningful difference to survival compared to hAgi. hSta has a stronger case, but I like my deeps.
