To be honest, when gear is equal, in my experiences, Monks tend to tank better than Rangers do these days. But that might be due to the fact that Monks can stun mobs and have a plethora of defensive abilities.
So ... just how much of an impact does the Tears of Alaris provide, then, Dzarn? Seeing as it adds 10 defense when maxed.
Kelefane, that is due more to better Monk defensive abilities. Rangers have a few of them now, but not as good as Monks do. Also, Block still has a significantly better firing rate than Parry, giving them that advantage as well.
Im sorry if this was asked at some point and I skipped it. Im very curious as to the reason that why the devs decided to do this complex math instead of a simple plug in number and balance around that? barring that, why display the ac number the way they do?
Monk avoidance is generally higher than rangers, and if they have a tier-appropriate 2hb (dps is pretty close to DW with a monk-specific 2hb), staff block avoidance >>> shield block for rangers. A ranger, to even compete, would have to take a fairly large hit to their personal dps by equipping a shield and still end up behind. My understanding is that for total damage over time (spikes not withstanding), a staff for a monk confers a much larger defensive advantage than a shield does for a ranger. The statistical probability of one of those "killer rounds" on either class is debatable. The ranger with the benefit of shield ac would be much less likely to take a string of high DI hits, but the flip side is the monk, though having a higher average incomming DI, would be less likely to have a round where all hits landed on target. Add to that a 30 second instant mend, stunning kicks, and more numerous defensive discs ... Yes. Monks tank much much better than rangers. In maxed out group gear for both, my monk tanks circles around my ranger. This thread intrigues me. What I find most intriguing is that the old mantra that ac > hp > all from over a decade ago still stands. When the best tanking augments out there have hAGI/hDEX more often than not, making choices isn't that difficult. For those very high ac augments out there without agi/dex on them ... whatever decision you make isn't going to be earth-shattereing. To go one step further for the raid tank, given the 100% strikethrough on raid bosses and in light of these newly released equations - I don't think anyone could find fault in just slapping the highest ac augments in your gear. Most of those best augments will have ample heroics, and the raw heroics on your raid gear already makes the one facet of the game (group content) where avoidance works properly trivial. If, however, they did away with 100% strikethrough on raid targets - it wouldn't be hard to make the case that hdex/agi trump ac in most circumstances. To be realistic, I doubt in all practicality that the various min/max'rs out there would have a big parsable difference if they're all using the same general caliber of tanking augments. The only "wrong" choice would be to choose augments without ac or foolishly hold on to a very old augment in lieu of a higher ac and more content appropriate augment simply because that old one has +3 or +5 hdex. I bet someone is going to eventually create an online calculator where you can input your class, race, gear ac (minus shield), shield ac, trophy/food/etc ... and have it spit out your "REAL AC" as the game sees it.
Game mechanics made by one guy in his garage? Implementing a bunch of ~*flavorful*~ modifiers that don't make any sense today, but made the game more immersive at the time? I would certainly want to remove or consolidate a bunch of that, but doing so would probably break bards, raid scripts, and pathing somehow. As for why the game smooshes the two difference ACs together, story goes that they were separate in beta for some amount of time. Then were combined to simplify the display, or obfuscate the mechanics.
More likely, it is that you cannot riposte a riposted riposte. IE you attack me; I riposte; then you riposte my riposte; the game will not allow me to riposte again. That would be how certain disciplines would make defensive skills "work" against 100% strikethough mobs. You're both kind of right. Prior to the change during SoFear Beta; Monks and Knights shared the same over softcap returns but significantly different softcaps; Bards and Clerics had a softcap closer to knights but much lower returns. With SoFear Beta they increased two things: everyone's returns (Bard, Cleric, and Ranger got more increases here than monks did since we had been on a higher tier than them); and everyone's softcaps (here is where Bard, Cleric, and Monk were put onto Knight's old one (and Rangers put a little higher) and Knights were increased even more to keep their softcap 2nd to the Warrior softcap.
Awesome post. It shows just how wonky and tweaked EQ math really is. Another vote here for removing AC stat in display and replacing it with the two fundamental stats instead, although it'll always be a little strange to interpret. Regarding AC vs Attack. I made a start on that but never really finished my analysis. One interesting way to observe it is to keep up a battle with an arena dummy and at regular intervals do "increase mitigation" or "increase attack" (depending on who is attacking who). Over time you then get graphs showing how a linear change in one causes an interesting curve in the other. It looked like the chance to roll DI 1 crossed the zero axis at a significant angle (meaning it's possible to never land a DI 1 roll in some circumstances) while the DI 20 was asymptotic, so no matter how much AC you have you'll always have a chance of it landing that much. (Barring specific code to forbid this.)
I'd vote first on the AC display change. People have been looking at their stat progress for years now on their characters. If all the sudden, AC went down I think it would have some kind of negative mental effect on people and upset some folks (even when the displayed AC is finally correct) - People are creatures of habit and get used to certain things and the way things are. I just have a feeling that it could potentially turn off some folks. I could be wrong though, but you never know where the EQ community is concerned. EQ is an old game after all and folks tend to get set in their ways in this game and get used to how certain things are. Its what keeps a lot of folks around and keeps them playing.
It seems EQ may become more open about some long hidden things. Dzarn's post here is quite revealing. Running around on Test I got a message saying exactly how many points my faction changed. The Kromrif gave +1 to Claws of Veeshan while the Zek types gave +5. My faction capped just as I spotted Derakor up planning to see how big his hit is. It is surprising to see changes after so long but I think they are good. My first reaction was oh no, Dzarn is killing off one of the mythic hidden mysteries which can be so entertaining to puzzle out. On further reflection I see there is no risk player knowledge will move from mystical to scientific. Having played a ranger all this time I am pleased to see my armor is not silently nerfed to oblivion by hidden tables. Yes, it is nerfed, but not as badly as I thought. Mostly it is just weaker than the plate tank's armor as we knew all along. I do find the numbers a bit surprising even though they were telegraphed by comments about Armor of Wisdom giving the same internal returns to all classes. The hit distributions I see against my ranger are so much worse than plate tanks in similar gear I thought the numbers were worse. When I equip a shield I see a better distribution, but only a small part of the difference. Oh yes, monks are harder to beat down than rangers. They have good tools on short re-use timers like 3 minutes for Earthforce Discipline. Ranger tanking tools are small in number and more like 20 minute re-use. Passive mitigation is just a part of tanking. It works this way for the true plate tanks as well who have deep bags of tricks to go with their good armor. I don't think this is obviously wrong, more a matter of balance. I do think raid bosses having 100% strike through is obviously wrong. Do they really? I guess yes as so many who should know write it here. I can see it being a feature of a particular boss but ripping the active defense skills out of raiding doesn't make sense.
My understanding, actually, is that you can have three Ripostes involved in a single attack, not just two. You attack me, I Riposte. You Riposte my attack, and I Riposte yours. That is as far as it can go. SoF era special attack Riposte AA's however, have stopped this, as did the level 70 Monk aura. Strikethrough, however, has always been wonky with regards to Riposte. This was apparent when we hit an effective 100% Strikethrough, between the 35% cumulative from gear, and whatever AA's, as we would still take damage from striking through the NPC's Riposte. Riposte does two things : it completely nullifies the incoming attack, and it launches a counter-attack. Strikethrough gets past the nullification, but does nothing for the counter-attack. I do not know the specific mechanics behind how avoidance discs were made to work on mobs with 100% Strikethrough. I suspect that the reason he sees Ripostes while under his Parry disc (I was not aware that Warriors had a Parry disc, I thought that was Rangers!) is that whatever they did may have simply made all defensive checks work while under such a disc. One change made during SoF, presumably to enable those aforementioned SoF era special attack Riposte AA's to work, was to change the defensive skill check order, from Parry/Block->Riposte->Dodge->Shield Block->Hit/Miss to Riposte->Parry/Block->Dodge->Shield Block->Hit/Miss. If that is what they did for such discs, then he would very well get Ripostes while under such a disc normally, and then while using that disc, get Ripostes while under it on those raid mobs, as well. That's just supposition though - I do not play a Warrior.
Uh, no. Different size Ints have size limitations. Long int and the others hold larger numbers. You have to use the Int that holds the maximum calculation result, not just the numbers being used in the calculation. It would vary by operating system and compiler, but I found a page on wikipedia. longword int 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 in 64 bits long int 0 to 4,294,967,295 in 32 bits short int 0 to 65,535 in 16 bits Some of my university hmoework was done on a DEC VAX 11/730, and the short int, long int, etc. held different maximum numbers. When I did work in A desktop computer compiler, the compiler couldn't handle integers as large as the VAX could. further down this link you will see different compilers. The C++ stuff came after I graduated, so did Java. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_(computer_science)
This is the soylent green/matrix/patriot act argument: Won't it be better for everyone to never know the reality of the situation? If this change finally goes through, it will end years of speculation combined with flawed parsing to try to prove imbalances. This should have been done long ago. Seeing something like "Avoidance: 26.45%, Damage Reduction: 35.87%" in the UI won't just make things simpler for the player to understand, but will allow the devs to better predict the consequences of class itemization, AAs, etc.
While monks take damage better than rangers, its wrong to say they are a better tank. Monks cannot grab and hold agro consistantly. Sure, they have 1 ability to help hold agro for a fight, but do not have consistentand reusable agro tools like a ranger does. It doesn't matter how well you take damage if the dps needs to throttle themselves or they get hit instead. But a monk cannot tank for a group of equally gear people. Other dps would have to throttle their dps, or risk pulling agro. Yes, it works for a raid geared monk with group geared players, but thats not a fair comparison.
This is no longer a valid argument. In order for a ranger to close the gap on incoming damage with a monk he would have to equip a shield. Equipping a shield will dramatically decrease the amount of hate a ranger can generate. Summers will have to spammed for the group to operate. A ranger cannot spam summers in a group unless that group wants a lot of downtime. And don't underestimate the amount of agro a monk generates. I know when our raid tanks go down monks and rangers are next in line and on raids I'm spamming summers when its up.
