Doing some quick math using level 20-30 merchant purchased light and heavy armor as a baseline. I computed the following using just their AC values as a raw measure of mitigation: (I won't bore you with the calculations, unless you really, really want them.) The difference between heavy and and light armor is: Heavy armor mitigates 75% more damage than light armor. After this patch the difference changes to 45% more damage mitigation. Since we do not truly know the mitigation power of armor (it could be tested I suppose) it is hard to say how the numbers really play out in terms of damage we take vs. damage they take. It would be interesting to see how much you get hit for without armor vs. how much you get hit for while wearing armor. One would have to collect a lot of data to determine even reasonably accurately how much your armor's AC reduces the damage. The test would have to keep each kind of attack from the mob separate and determine the average damage of each attack with and without armor.
I would be interested in these calculations. Would also be interested to see light vs medium vs heavy.
Ok the armor pieces in question are both vendor bought and same level: Boiled Leather Tunic: [Light Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(135) Carbonite Platemail Breastplate: [Heavy Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(236) Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for Heavy:Light = 236 / 135 = 1.748 This means that the heavy breast plate should mitigate 74.8% more damage than the light one. Now applying the new, adjusted ACs using +11% for heavy and +35% for light: Light Armor BP AC = 135 * 1.35 = 182.25 Heavy Armor BP AC = 236 * 1.11 = 261.96 Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for Heavy:Light = 261.96 / 182.25 = 1.437 This means that the heavy breast plate should mitigate 43.7% more damage than the light one. Feel free to correct me. Clearly at higher levels there may be a bigger difference in two similar breast plates, the gap could be wider.
Okay, I went and reread Moorgards Balancing post and the Test Server Release Notes and contemplated the following: "As part of Live Update #3, we are improving heavy armor to mitigate 11% more damage and light armor to mitigate 35% more damage." "- Heavy armor now mitigates 11% more damage. Light armor now mitigates 35% more damage." Feel free to shoot this down: Note that these reference the damage. By these statements, if a mob hit for 100 points of damage, Light Armor would reduce the damage by an additional 35 points. Heavy Armor would reduce the damage by an additional 11 points. Of course, we don't know what the original reductions were. This would mean that this modification would close the gap between Light Armor wearers and Heavy Armor wearers by 24%. That's significant. Edited for spelling. Message Edited by FamilyManFirst on 02-10-2005 03:00 PM
MEDIUM COMPARED TO LIGHT: Boiled Leather Tunic: [Light Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(135) Carbonite Brigandine Chestguard: [Medium Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(203) Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for Medium:Light = 203 / 135 = 1.504 Light Armor BP AC = 135 * 1.35 = 182.25 Medium Armor BP AC = 203 * 1.00 = 203 Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for Medium:Light = 203 / 182.25 = 1.114 MEDIUM COMPARED TO HEAVY: Carbonite Platemail Breastplate: [Heavy Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(236) Carbonite Brigandine Chestguard: [Medium Armor] MinLvl(20) MaxLvl(30) AC(203) Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for Heavy:Medium = 236 / 203 = 1.163 Heavy Armor BP AC = 236 * 1.11 = 261.96 Medium Armor BP AC = 203 * 1.00 = 203 Mitigation Difference = Ratio of AC for HEavy:Medium = 261.96 / 203 = 1.290
You are confusing AC with midigation, midigation effects the damamge once a hit is scored, ac determins the hit chance. Your theory would say that a 500 ac plate would asorb the same damage as a 500 ac light piece.
Who told you that AC on an armor piece modified your chance to get hit? I am fairly certain that the AC value on any armor or jewlery has little to no effect on the wearer's avoidance. I have heard countless times that the AC on a piece of amor was purely a measurement of its mitigation. And yes, I am saying that a 500 AC heavy breastplate would absorb the same damage as a 500 AC light tunic, but unfortunately I do not believe there is such a thing as a 500 AC light tunic.
There is an interesting comparison that should be made as well. And that is the sum of the entire AC of a plate wearer, including all jewlery and the sum of the entire AC of a leather wearer including all jewlery. Since in the jewlery slots the plate tanks and the leather tanks would have equal standing AC-wise, this could further narrow the gap.
Not sure why you guys are worried about damage mitigation cause no tank will be able to hold aggro with the NUKES DOING 300% MORE DAMAGE
I would think that mitigation is a whole separate value in itself. Otherwise plate wearing clerics would make good tanks. But that's just a hypothesis on my part. Its just all guesswork from our side unless we could see the coding.
From one of Moorgard's posts: To put it simply: Item AC (excluding shields) = mitigation Skills and shields = avoidance This seems to me to be a strong indication that the AC value of an item soley references its mitigation. Edited for layout. Message Edited by FamilyManFirst on 02-10-2005 03:25 PM
Traditional item AC is your mitigation. What seperates fighters from other classes with seamingly the same gear are our skills, abilities, and hp.
So what happens to all the points I put into AGI? One of the things I really thought was great about my monk was that fact that in EQ2 a high AGI actually meant something. I completely understand that SOE knows damage mitigation and can do it well. Now is the time to learn avoidance. Don't keep putting it off. FIX IT RIGHT. If i wanted a low damage high mitigation char I would have made a guardian.
(Sigh) I agree with you, bezltrikk, but we've got to take what we can get. I (and others) still have hopes that SOE will tweak Deflection or reduce the Agi nerf or do something else to make us Avoidance-with-a-little-Mitigation tanks instead of Mitigation-with-a-little-Avoidance tanks, but at least this may (we'll see) make us viable tanks again. All of this rebalancing after an overenthusiasic nerf, however, is going to make my re-selection of Traits, etc. agonizing once it's implemented. Before I went all Agi. Now ... I just don't know. Edited for grammar. Message Edited by FamilyManFirst on 02-10-2005 03:58 PM
You still avoid more damage than a Monk with lower agility. However, your boosted agility provides less of an improvement than it used to. Assuming you have two Monks with gear that is identical but one chose strength and one chose agility, the agility monk will take less damage over time. It's up to you as to you would rather do a little more damage or tank a little better... but really, the training choices are pretty small numbers. I wouldn't really worry about 5 stat points here or there.
The best way to test current mitigation is to find a guardian and buy them a full set of store bought light armor. Have them find a single mob for testing and compare the average damage taken per hit. Remove the chest piece and test. Put the chest piece back on, take off the legs and test. Put the legs back on, take off your arms and test. Put arms back on, take off boots and test. Then, get the guardian a full set of store bought heavy armor. Follow the same steps as above. Have the guardian remove ALL armor and test again. If the guardian wants an even better comparison, do the same with medium and very light armor. Do not let the guardian wear a shield. They must only use the armor with no buffs or additional methods to defend themselves. If anyone knows of a guardian who can do this, that would help get us a good idea of how mitigation really works. If I had a guardian, I'd try it myself. You don't want to use a monk, just a fighter who can wear all armor types. Message Edited by WackyDakky on 02-10-2005 06:18 PM
No matter how they "fix" deflection and avoidance it can never be too good. If it becomes that way, as the last patch shows, then it gets nerfed because avoidance is way more overpowering than mitigation. I think a balance of mitigation and avoidance is the only thing reasonable in an MMO, you can't have full avoidance because two scenarios exist: 1) Oh man I can't tank, I take too many hits. (Now) 2) Wow I can tank anything, I never get hit! (Before) What Moorgard stated makes perfect sense. They are using mitigation as a tool to balance both types of tanks, and its really the only reasonable solution. They can't realistically let us avoid every hit. That just crazy. They can't realisitically let us avoid 80% of them that's still overpowering. Why? Because avoidance is streaky and if you get on a good roll... wow you need no heals, and if you get on a bad roll, NOTHING can save you. The easiest and fairest way is what they are doing: a mix of avoidance and mitigation, with the mitigation helping to lessen the fact that not every blow will be avoided. Mitigation is constant, avoidance isn't. By using mitigation as a tool, it allows avoidance to be the primary defensive ability of our class. Without mitigation helping it, it will always be skewed one way or the other. Like it or not, this with maybe some additional small tweaks is probably the best scenario. What everyone should be shooting for is this: The ability for a monk to tank what a guardian can, with reasonable efficiency. I'd like to know how you guys would have that done with avoidance and deflection alone. I for do not see it as a feasible option. You can avoid 50 maybe even 60 percent of all attacks, but eventually you are going to get hit. We know they are not going to have us avoiding 80 to 97% of the attacks, as they've stated and made patches to change it. We also know that in the high end mobs hit hard. If we want to be a tank class, we need to take all the tools provided to us to do it, and mitigation is one of the ways to make avoidance work. 50% avoidance + mitigation = reasonable damage taken over time 50% avoidance + no mitigation = not fun, not a tank. 80% avoidance with no mitigation = either really good or really bad, too streaky. I think we take this and work with it, and as always provide our feedback and suggestion ans use our mitigation increase as a way to make avoidance a reliable tactic. Message Edited by Gage-Mikel on 02-10-2005 06:07 PM
Completely agree there Gage, The more I've thought about it the more I've begun to buy into the increased mitigation for light armor, as Moorgard said, mitigation is predictable, and avoidance is not. Avoidance is purely random at this point from what we've all seen, so the extra damage mitigation should help us greatly on bad streaks, though I can possibly see it being a problem with good streaks, in the end if it all balances out though, which will take some additional testing i'm sure, we should be at least viable, if not good tanks.
I don't believe my eyes Moorguard has answered! I'm thankful for this,.. Thank you sir. Feedback has arrived.. heheh *astonished* .. No disrespect there hehe.. Anyhow,.. I do think it was rather vague like the others mentioned.. but it has to be TESTED,.. I'm happy to see the test server being used, and actually updated here .. I hope they become daily or some such. Will be nice now that a movelog has occured for it. Message Edited by Neofate on 02-10-2005 09:54 PM
