The point I was making had nothing to do with heroics, there are other ways to raise riposte and parry that don't involve heroics. it was a hypothetical scenario to point out the fact that it doesn't matter which skill you raise your overall defense will be the same. The discussion we were having was one about how useful certain things are, even if you max out your heroics your only increasing your defense by 5% at the best, and some people seem to think that this is nothing and it most certainly is something. The game is a bit saturated but that's what makes small improvements meaningful. if I have 0% mitigation and I add 1%, well that's not very useful is it. it's going to do very little for my survivability. but if I have 90% mitigation and I add 1% I just cut my incoming damage by 10%. That's an extreme example but as things get saturated the relative improvement has to become smaller or they are absurdly powerful. Avoidance is all about eliminating that 4th swing, and the odds compound, just by adding 5% avoidance you greatly decrease your chance that all 4 swings in a normal round will hit you. because every swing now has 5% less chance to hit you. I know it's weird to respond to you about this since you weren't having that discussion but you are replying to me and I wanted to explain the point I was arguing against in general. My only real reply to what you said is to repeat, doesn't matter that it does two, all that matters is one reaches 100%. edit: also want to reiterate, I agree that HDex has other uses that make it the best heroic to go after, and I go after HDex.
no. keep a set of hdex in your bags for all group content and times when you're strictly dps'ing in raids.. we nitpick and parse extensively in my raidforce and I am our easiest war to keep alive and the parses prove it very consistently.. why? some of it is skill-based sure but it's largely because hagi is still the absolute best thing to "tank" with. had to /chuckle at some of these comments (some even from non-tank classes apparently) saying hdex..when your raid is pumping 50m or so the 100k damage increase from a set of hdex isn't going to matter.. you staying alive can sidenote: hagi also directly impacts and improves the healing amount a war will do via their shield, alliances and absorb via myrm's synergy, etc
This is the philosophy I've embraced when gearing up my alt warrior for grouping. The most important thing after getting in-era gear and recent era AC augs has been to get "something" in those Type 5 slots. hAGI? hSTA? hDex? Yes, yes, and yes. Did an CoV hAGI Type 5 drop from that shark? Yes. Do I want it? Yes. But what about all the people saying I should specialize in hDEX? Don't care. The CoV hAGI Type 5 will replace an RoS Type 5 and will provide more overall benefit. I'll worry about min-maxing when I'm at max level, 75%+ of all AAs, and have expansion currency to spare. Detail/Context: The warrior has 826 hSTA from augs 1031 hAGI from augs (I was camping the AC aug from the shark in Cobalt Scar. Got a few hAGI Type 5s in the process.) 1082 hDex from augs.
They should check dodge first, and make heroic agi possibly useful. Im assuming the mobs dont "strikethrough" a dodge, i dont really know i've only dodged 11 times in the last 7 days total.
enemies Strikethrough a Dodge with the entire facility that they Strikethrough Parries & Shield Blocks (& Blocks, for monks)
It's just that dodge is the last line of defense, so it will never amount to much for melee classes. Caster classes ... sure.
Heroic agility is extra AC which is the only stat I really care about as a knight, regardless of any dodge / riposte etc involved (pretty much equal wether you chose dext or agi): it works all the time (except AEs ofc). There could be a case for hdext because of the DPS but the tiny tiny % increase is meaningless compared to that extra survivability (which is also not much in itself). Even if that trend diminishes (the use of ETW, the blur between tank classes for tanking capacities etc...), keep in mind a knight is less likely to receive as much heal (and need as much) as a warrior in a raid environment. In any case, you should probably go as you please, the differences are so tiny and close to unparsable that it doesn't matter which one you choose and we're actually talking more about a flavor here than any big difference in your tanking performance. The quality of the healers, of yourself, and the raid around you plays a much bigger factor in your survivability than which heroic you chose to cap.
Agree with most of your post. Question tho, doesn't hagi just or mostly increase avoidance ac and not mitigation ac? A warrior once showed a screenshot of himself with full hagi augs and full hdex (type 5s that is, and they were cov) to show the stat difference between them, and his mitigation was virtually the same but avoidance was sky high with hagi. This was in a guild forum not eq. Does avoidance ac work different than defensive checks for hdex in terms of chance to actually completely avoid an attack? Do parsers show this in anyway? If so, is it actually better? Asking because I genuinely don't know and would love to know the real metrics of hagi.
Mostly right. Functional agility imparts some mitigation AC via a bonus calculation (Agi / 20) and each point of heroic agility also raises your agility. However all of your mitigation AC is subject to your class's soft-cap and soft-cap multiplier. So in practice HAgi provides a bonus of (HAgi / 20) * [warrior 0.35] or [knight 0.33] at level 100. For example: Heroic Agility := 2500 Knight AC bonus := (2500 / 20) * 0.33 = 41 41 mitigation AC bonus is < 1% of your total AC typically at level 100 and beyond. Presumably the multipliers are the same post level 100 but who knows? Fanra has a page about all this - https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Armor_Class The real value of HAgi is to improve you avoidance AC and raise the percentage of missed attacks against you. A distant second to that is improved dodge rate.
Yes, HAgi plays a small impact on Mitigation AC. In Dzarn AC formula, the total of your agi cap + your total of HAgi, all divided by 20, multiplied by the softcap, is added to your mitigation AC. So with current numbers of like 2000 HAgi, there should be 2000 / 20 * 0,35 = 35 AC added to your mitigation AC for a warrior. Atm, the difference between one HAgi type 5 aug and one HDex type 5 aug is 50 more HAgi on a HAgi one, so let's say you fill 20 slots, that's 50 x 20 = 1 000 more Hagi. That would do 17,5 more AC on your mitigation AC hence the mitigation number that was roughly the same. Yes, these are differents things. Avoidance AC is checked first against Accuracy of the opponent, two cases : if you succeed, you will miss the hit, so completly avoid an attack, EQLogParser shows this as Accuracy the % of hits not missed, but i'm unsure if the number is sure. This is why you see in old zones only misses messages in game, the opponent Accuracy is too low compared to your Avoidance AC. If you fail, then you enter in the next steps of the combat system, First there is the Riposte check (this check is boosted by HDex), If you fail to Riposte, then there is the Parry check (also boosted by HDex) If you fail to Parry, then there is the Dodge check (this check is boosted by HAgi) If you fail to Dodge, then there is Shield Block check These checks are made against Heroic Strikethrough of the mobs (except Shield Block) Now, if you manage to riposte or parry or dodge successfully, it doesn't mean you avoided really the attack. You do a last check against the mob Normal Strikethrough, and he can strikethrough through these attacks He does it often, even with ToL, the interest is that raid mob Normal strikethrough isn't 100 % anymore contrary to expansions ranging from like EoK to CoV, hence debates about HDex / HAgi versus HSta coming back again. I'm waiting from Yashna raid parses of ToL mobs with different Heroic choices to see the results. So to resume it, HDex is boosting 2 avoidance checks (Riposte and Parry), and HAgi also (Dodge and Avoidance AC). Even if the the miss check is not linked to mob Normal Strikethrough, it has been consistent over expansions, around 20 %, and I haven't found HAgi tanks to really miss more than HSta tanks for example.
agree with the part about the quality of the healers, tanks themselves and raidforce, that's the most important thing, period...but the differences between the different heroics are very parsable (especially in ToL) p2aa explained some of why that is in regards to strikethrough definitely not being 100% anymore (and it's not).. that doesn't even tell the whole story however. Parse out a tank that has 250 avoid for example vs a dex one maybe sitting at 180-190 (should be same raid, same tank role, all other factors should be consistent or close) The avoidance tank will heal a considerable amount more and take less damage and its noticeable like 10-20% improvement on both. That's big in a game that can sometime be a game of inches. Certain raids like Shei, Doom, Goranga (to a degree) all the tanks can mostly dps but others like CTG ,Swarm, probably Zeln, it helps considerably to have tanks that are setup to tank as opposed to squeeze out a tiny bit more dps...
Massive mitigation difference in favor of HAgi tanks ? Are you sure it's not due to some tanks clicking their mitigation buttons more than some Heroic choice ? I have not seen at all this comparing HAgi to HSta tanks, and I have not seen any other tanks or clerics noticing HAgi tanks being much easier to heal. Avoidance stat in heroic mod window is raised by HAgi yeah.
H-agi was a bad choice for a paladin 8 or 9 years ago and its definitely a terrible stat choice now. Even when it was good, it was mostly just good in quantity. Meaning a class that was tanking a lot of mobs like SKs got the most benefit out of it through sheer amount of defensive rolls. You used to almost exclusively see agi SKs. However the raid game changed how defensive abilities work and threw everything upside down. The current standard for SKs is all dex, because the thought is that the more damage you do and the more often you proc as an SK it ups your survivability. However there is essentially zero defensive boost by going dex in the raid game. In the group game some of your defensive abilities actually work, on trash anyways. As a paladin though, your AE agro abilities can not compare with an SKs and thus you are almost certainly going to be tanking fewer trash mobs in the raid game. Therefore agility is pretty terrible for a paladin. You arent making enough defensive rolls to justify the sheer lack of hps. Dex is also stupid for a paladin on raids though it is a good option for the group game. Outside of a raid event like Doomshade, that you can top the parse, dex is pretty useless. I've topped the Doomshade parse as a stamina tank, proving the irrelevance of dex for paladin dps. Anything with live content your dps is near laughable at best and dex adds no value at all defensively to a paladin. We also don't share the same tool kit as SKs that can dramatically improve their self healing passively with more dex. Stamina is the only option that provides a tangible, albeit small, boost to a paladins survivability. As others have said, selecting a heroic stat is basically fine tuning the top 5% of your game. If the other 95% has issues that is a much bigger factor in your success and failures. Paladins agro and survivability mostly comes down to good button pushing and good raid use of shammy splashes if we are being honest because thats probably your 2nd biggest source of healing after your own, and probably ahead of clerics who are mostly healing the warriors and sks with direct heals, not the paladin tanking a mob or two.
We know that NPC strikethrough < 100% in ToL, thanks for listening Devs, but we don't know as much about NPC accuracy in ToL. You're stating that we can raise our avoidance AC (via HAgi) high enough to see measurable benefit. The avoidance AC calculation is improved by heroic agility in three ways: 1. (HAgi * 0.222) over-cap base agility (bonus) 2. (HAgi / 10) bonus 3. (HAgi / 18) item (mod2) avoidance bonus Of these three, raising over-cap base agility (1) has the most impact and the mod2 avoidance (3) bonus the least (22.2% vs 10% vs 5.5%). All three add to the avoidance AC total. For example using a 120 paladin and the 2500 magic number used for HDex benefits: Defense skill := 460 (+10 from tear) Base Agility := 1115 Heroic Agility := 2500 Functional Agility := 1115 + 2500 = 3615 Defense := 460 * 400 / 225 = 817 Agility Bonus := (8000 * (3615 - 40)) / 36000) + (2500 / 10) = 1044 Item Avoidance := 102 + ((2500 - 419) / 18) = 217 (apx) Avoidance AC := 817 + 1044 + 217 = 2078 As we can see, the Agility bonus is the largest boost. Note: that this does not add up to displayed Armor Class Evasion value (and I think it should) so there is something missing in our knowledge of that formula. The displayed value is apx 2.22 times higher then this computed value (across a range of values). I see an increase in displayed Evasion at a rate of (HAgi * 0.825) that doesn't make sense to me. PS: Forgot about AA like CA and CS that impact above baselines. Question answered.
Yes paladins do on both counts. It's just that Sk passive healing derives largely from leech effects that convert melee damage dealt into healing. This means that an Sk wants to do more melee dps in order to heal more. This means 2h weapons, heroic dexterity (accuracy), even heroic strength (attack), damage augs. The more offensive an SK is with their melee, the more they heal themselves. This is the main reason why the Sk class is so powerful. A paladin's passive healing isn't nearly as great and not generated that way other then their reverse damage shield which is very minor compared to leech effects. This means 1h+shield, heroic dexterity (combat effects), heal focus, life-tap or healing augs. Paladins need to be more defensive in order to heal themselves well enough.
