theres been a few threads recintly showing that hstr for dps is kinda a waste and hdex is the way to go for dps classes . as for why a monk would use a sheild other then for wall decaration is beond silly weather its pulling trains or ramp tanking which in itself is kinda silly. it would be awsome and would make a lot of sense if the devs would fix/redo all the heroics
None of this is relevant to what I was trying to say. What i was trying to say is, if Hstr augs effect shield AC, then why are Hstr augs heavily slanted toward classes that do not use shields? If a tank class wanted to test Hstr at the highest possible cluster, they'd essentially be auging themselves with pure HP augs to do so.
Is there any hope of redoing the display so it shows mitigation in a % and avoidance in the same way? Something like: Avoid: 38% Mit: 54% Rather than AC: 8793 I mean the AC value is in your words an obfuscated incomplete calculation. There's no way we can glance at that and say, yeah I need more mitigation, or more avoidance. But if we saw the end numbers for mitigation or avoidance we'd know which gear we needed for which situation.
Mitigation AC isn't a percentage. Damage in EQ is calculated on a D20 die roll - more AC increases your chances at lower rolls, but never offers any sort of "xx mitigation." Even with 30,000 mitigation AC (rAC), a lowly orc pawn in Crushbone can land a DI20 hit - although of course most rolls would be DI1 in this scenario. I don't know how the nature of EQ combat can be relegated to a percentage. I might guess that avoidance AC is done in a similar D20 roll fashion, where your avoidance AC rolls against your attacker's accuracy ATK. Avoidance AC is always a roll against a mob's accuracy (and strikethrough) - there is no consistent percentage. Remember that orc pawn? With 30,000 avoidance AC, chances are avoidance will be quite high (perhaps north of 90%), but against, say, Vulak from RoF, even with 30,000 avoidance AC one's avoidance might rank below 30%. Like others have mentioned, I'd love to see someone out there write a script for us to calculate our rAC. I'm not sure if the values belong in Magelo, the nature of EQ mechanics always changing, but I'd love to plug in my relevant data and get a result back. If you'd rather not be EQ-famous and host it, a simple Excel line to copy and paste with instructions would be most welcome!
Either way, looking at an incomplete number doesn't really give us any baselines to work with. One tank with 8600 AC might do an encounter easily. Where one with 9000 might struggle, despite having the same HP or even slightly more. Simply because their AC is coming from different sources. Mitigation and Avoidance need to be two stats that are displayed. This way if we know if one tanks Mitigation is enough for an encounter, we know what the par is for other tanks. This helps groups and raids alike. It would really benefit new tanks who are gearing up and need to know exactly where they need to be to start. Or what they need to have with them in order to cover their weaknesses. Right now its stack on as much gear as you can, make the value as high as you can. Then pray its enough.
There is only one way that the number will lend it to do this and that is if the 8600 AC tank has a higher defense value and/or a higher shield AC value (a LOT higher) Avoidance is shown and taken into consideration in both displayed AC and mitigation AC. what your asking for is the same as everyone else, the other half (3/4s?) of the equation that Dzarn didn't post.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I'd love to see a raw mitigation AC value. Whether or not it's in the game, I don't care a whole lot - in the past we've been able to calculate this out roughly, but now, thanks to Dzarn, we can really know precisely how much rAC we have. The RNG is EQ is a streaky mistress, and the difference between 8,600 and 9,000 is always going to be less of a difference than your luck. I'm not sure if Avoidance AC can be an accurate number. As a monk, going from dual wielding a couple h2h weapons to using a singular 2hb increases my avoidance greatly (staff block!), but doesn't affect my (avoidance) AC. Clicking your shoulders buff is another way to increase your avoidance without touching your avoidance AC. As far tanks on raids, what portion of avoidance AC can be struck through, and how much of that avoidance AC will still defend hits? Don't get me wrong, more numbers are better, and I enjoy transparency; I do, however, wonder if even we got these two numbers we're left with too many unknown unknowns that it's still a red herring.
this, pretty much - knowing precisely how you get your mitigation AC number is interesting, but mostly irrelevant since we have no idea how the formula for translated AC into less DI works.
Exactly. What the poster above you fails to realize is that AC value cannot be translated into a percentage basis as the returns on AC are relative to what you're fighting. Returns will vary from expansion to expansion, mob to mob, and class to class. The only thing that matters is what your effective AC is against the mob you're choosing to fight. A few graph style examples of what is possible when your AC values completely destroy the attack value of the mob you're facing: These graphs are old (really old) from over a decade ago - my personal defensive parses. Back then, an ac centric tank using the best available ac augments (25-35 at the time - shockingly close to what is available now) on current content could hit ac values (relative to mob attack value) that these DI spreads were possible on current raid targets. Tanks who focused on AC back then ... before it was popular ... enjoyed this huge advantage until some time after SoF. AC doesn't give you raw percentage mitigation. Higher ac values shift the hit spread to the left. Lower ac values shift the hit spread to the right. Most people not "in the know" feel ac is important is in lowering average hit and average incoming dps. While this is a value of ac, it's not the real meat and potatoes. The REAL power of ac then and now is it's impact on the statistical probability of getting one of those bad killer rounds. As you can see in the first post - my chances of taking a max hit any given swing that connected on current content group gear in TSS was 0.1% - that's 1 in one thousand hits that connected landing for max. On raid targets in/around the DoDh era - I had a one in 200 chance that any given connecting hit would land for maximum damage.
Here's an example of extremes of AC back when this content was relevant. You'll notice that the probability of having those high DI hits was low enough that for the duration of this fight - the highest DI I saw was 17 with minimum DI chance approaching 60%. Because of ac powercurve back then - I opted to tank with Avoidance vs Defensive disciplines more often than not. My chances of getting hit for max were so low and getting hit for minimum were so high that avoidance yielded far superior results. TSS Raid back when it was current expansion content (Ashengate North) here. First photo is the DI spread, the second is percentage of total damage done based on DI. Secrets of Faydwer (continued in next post) Spindlecrank low ac: Spindlecrank high ac:
And then we started to see the decline in SoF of "ac overpowering". You'll notice this is still a much better DI spread than tanks can expect even in current group content, but it's a far cry from what I could manage prior to SoF. Since SoF - ac relative to mob attack values has stagnated even further. Meldraths Mansion: This was right before my retirement. At the time I briefly had the serverwide highest ac in the game. My gear wasn't the best in the game, but this was also the time when the "best" geared warriors still foolishly chased the HP leaderboards to the neglect of their ac. Sorry for the board spam, but hopefully this will help some people understand *what* ac actually does. It is a fixed variable on your side that is used in a dynamic way vs whatever target you are fighting. It represents your chances of how bad each individual hit/round will be. The graphs above are not reflective of modern EQ. AC on augs has been horribly stagnated since SoF and tanks are not capable of hitting these extremes of ac relative to their targets on any content that is remotely relevant. You won't likely ever see tanks getting minimum DI hits > 50% of the time and certainly won't be seeing the crazy examples that a few of us were able to pull out where the mob never - EVER - really had a chance to hit you for max DI during the duration of the fight. Theoretically if you fought the same mob for hours on end they'd eventually nail you - but the probability would be so stupidly low that you certainly wouldn't take one of those nasty max rounds that kill you. Tanks don't die from average mob DPS. They die from spikes - single rounded vs back to back spikes vs a bad round right after a major AoE. High ac dramatically decreases the chances that any given round will be a bad one, and exponentially decreases the chances that back to back rounds will be "unlucky". In closing, sorry for the crudeness of these graphs and the fight lengths. Back then we didn't have testing dummies to afk parse on. These graphs were created for the purposes of the "AC vs HP" debates that raged for the longest time on TheSteelWarrior.
Shamefully brief string of parses, but this is what a more or less max group geared paladin will see from a DI spread standpoint on current content: Short parse I know, but even in this short string of fights you'll see 4 maximum hits. Compare that to my very first photo on this page of an ac centric tank vs then current TSS group content. That's not to say ac is less valuable these days - quite the opposite. AC has diminishing returns. It is most valuable before you get to the crazy ranges we used to be able to reach. Because we can't hit the same levels of relative mitigation, ac is far more valuable today than it was back then.
Daegun, do you have corresponding numbers for defensed hits? Even for the heaviest plate tanks, I suspect the game has shifted from mitigation-based towards a more avoidance-based approach, which is definitionally streakier and at the whims of the RNG.
Unfortunately those logs died a long time ago (at least 2 laptops ago). I did not save them because I did not anticipate returning to EQ. Those are simply screenshots I had saved on photobucket. I have no raw data to back it up, but subjectively it doesn't *feel* like mobs are missing me a lot more these days. If you step back into very old content with modern era combat agility, shield block, and heroics - they're going to miss you a truckton more than they did back in the day, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that current content is tweaked to keep a constant balance of power with current gear/ability/aas. From a tank standpoint, the biggest change between now and then are the number of ancillary abilities each class has. Part of me hates having more buttons to click, but it makes my own defense something active. Yesteryear, as a warrior most fights were simply *turn on auto attack* with the odd disc thrown in as needed. From the standpoint of someone being healed, a big change also are the speed of heals and various heal abilities out there. I remember using Complete Heal on my cleric box all the way up into DoDh as my primary lazy boxer's heal, only busting out the blast heal for emergencies. My health bar ping pongs a lot more these days, but my healers have capable abilities in their toolset to keep me alive. The game just moves faster.
Definitely agree 100% with what you've said. APM (actions per minute) was incredibly low back in the old days - a cleric having a handful of emergency buttons felt like a lot! These days I just run a monk, and I feel like my avoidance has taken a significant increase (thank you, staff block!) - but when I get hit, it hurts! The difference between running earthforce (90% mitigation, essentially DI1-2 rolls) is incredible - I just have no chance of getting those low DI rolls with the great consistency of the past despite stacking AC. It's nice to see a chart from a knight. I am curious if the game has shifted towards becoming more avoidance based, or if your chart is indicative of "LOL not enough AC."
I made a spreadsheet incorporating about 99% of what was explained. .xlsx Excel Version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5IQjfut_pMgaml0MUx3ZUludFU/edit?usp=sharing .xls Excel version (for earlier versions): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5IQjfut_pMgbmxNcm1FN2toN2M/edit?usp=sharing Google Docs Version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dJh41TawGWSCxUHgwo1g4luWhERB3eOV4cI9oD24xnQ/edit?usp=sharing
I understand that you can't get a % based stat based on every situation. A 60% mitigation from gear and such against a level 80 might only be 55% against a 84. Level plays a big role, as does Attack (ATK stat is almost as convoluted as AC, so I'm steering clear of that for now). What I'm asking for is that Avoidance and Mitigation be separated. I mean the AC value that is currently shown isn't useful. We know this already. We've known this for many years. Basically give us the calculations in some sort of form that is completed before taking mob level and attack into account. This way the players can set a baseline of what is needed for each mob, or even zone. The current AC doesn't give you that option. You're stacking on gear and hoping it works.
This reminds me of something I did back in 2010 when I was planning on cracking the AC vs Atk formula. I got distracted alas, but there are ways to really get a handle on what it is doing. Eg from http://www.thesafehouse.org/forums/showpost.php?p=500629&postcount=93 This is me attacking a dummy looking for my DI 1 and DI 20 rolls (easily observable if you know how to crunch player dmg formula) vs NPC with various "increase mitigation" messages. With hindsight NPC on me would have been far easier, but they're just too slow and it's a pain to have to do lots of increase attack messages on multiple dummies. Anyway the concept was clear. Don't gather data at one specific set of AC vs Attack. Instead gather it over time as one variable continually changes to then chart the impact on the other. A few obvious findings here. 1) It's possible to have enough attack (or insufficient AC) such that you never roll DI 1. The red points basically hit the zero axis at a distinct angle and the left portion (between 0 and 30ish on X axis) are basically all zero - ie never roll DI 1. The angle is approaches implies this to be so. 2) The blue dots show my DI 20 rolls. As mitigation increases they occur less and less, but they asymptotically approach the zero point, so even after 400 increases to mitigation it still has a small chance of occurring, implying something like a 1/x component in the math.
Dzarn: So I finished my calculating program using the information you provided. As far as I can tell, it works correctly as it matches my Displayed AC perfectly, and it matches the example character you gave in the second post. I do have a few questions though: AC Sum: Is this "Base AC" the same as: Or are there two separate fields, 'player/shroud base ac' and 'npc base ac' ? It -looks- like you meant they are separate. Monk Weight: Is there NO cap until level 15, or is 32/15 the cap from level 1-14 the same as from 15-19? As stated, you are saying that If weight > hardcap + 1 or Weight < Hardcap -1. This would leave a 3 point range (weight = Hardcap +/- 1) where neither applies, (aka no bonus or penalty). Did you actually mean "If weight > hardcap / If weight < hardcap" ? This would leave a single point (weight = hardcap) where neither applies, (aka no bonus or penalty). Rogue Bonus Only applies if Level > 30 (aka 31-100). Beastlord Bonus Only applies if Level > 10 (aka 11-100) Does this only apply to "Real / Server" AC or also to Display AC? Example: IF on step 8 Real AC is, say, -10, but displayed AC is 50, when it reaches the check on step 9, real AC should be set to 0, but what will happen to displayed AC? Does it remain at 50? Assuming this was just a mistake and you meant SPA1 (SPA3 is movement speed). By saying "Reference point" are you implying that Hero's Fortitude scales and is only 10 points @ L100? Or did you just mean that different levels allow for different ranks of AoW, which in turn gives different amounts based on class? Additionally: Is there any functional difference between Buffs of SPA 1/416 and the AA Armor of Wisdom, or did you just break them apart to show the different values per class? (aka: Can I combine step 13/14/15 into one "SPA 1/416 AC" Box, or do I need to do buffs, AoW, and Hero's Fortitude separately? (I did them separately for now).
