Nor the parry, block, dodge, or shield/staff block. The change made last year was to the evaluation order so that hit/miss checks first and short circuits the rest of the calculations. I'm sure this reduced server load somewhat (not enough) and it does scale with swarm size. The benefits of this change are limited because max level grey con mobs still have very high accuracy and strike through. They are grey to level 115 and soon 120, but they are fighting into the full calculation (as a hit) and computing defense skill checks. The strike through is a short circuit too, so the sooner they do that (riposte, parry/block, dodge, s. block) the more load is reduced. I.e. it's better for the server that they strike through riposte (2nd check) rather then a dodge.
Well, a masterful fighter need not react or flinch to a missing attack other then to counter attack (riposte) if they assess it as an opening. So I agree with the riposte loss (and posted as much last year).
I like this idea ala warrior class /shield skill. Introduce similar skill that does /strikethrough and let some NPC classes (warrior, berserker, rogue, monk) activate it as their swarm grows.
On gamparse it still has miss/hit as the last thing checked. If they checked for hits and misses first, i would think that would have thrown the % in gamparse off. If it's checking hits or misses for 5000 hits first, and gamparse has that listed that it checks hit/miss last after riposte, parry, block, and dodges come off the total, the % would be way off, but they arent. Also # nerf strikethrough, cause it sucks getting a riposte but instead the mob hits me 6 times in a second. Specially with mobs on beta hitting for over 100k.
That's not quite correct. GamParse actually checks DA (invulnerability) first, then hit/miss. Then defensive skills. The reason it works this way is because of how EQ's messaging works: When an NPC swings on you, Riposte (was) checked first. You could successfully Riposte (or Dodge/Block/Parry) and THEN it would check Hit/Miss and if it rolled miss, you would ONLY get the message that they NPC missed you. You would NOT get the message that you successfully dodged/blocked/parried/riposted. This means that when trying to calculate your actual riposte/dodge/block/parry chance, it was going to be incorrect because there were "phantom" successes. The same applies to DA, which is checked (still is) AFTER defensive checks and hit/miss. So, in order to correctly calculate your defensive %, GP checks DA hits firsts, and excludes those hits from the calculations going forward. THEN it checks Hit/Miss and does the same. Then it calculates riposte/parry/dodge/block %s. (Basically, you should always ignore the raw #'s of block/dodge/parry/riposte and only look at the % columns).
Let's face it, tanks pulling 50 mobs and riposting them all down in 10 seconds was OP when it came to farming. It was nice to be able to do when it was possible, but you can't really say it was balanced.
