Balancing AC and HP (For Paladins/ShadowKnights)

[Stinkum]

This thread assumes AC and HP are all that should matter in choosing items as a Pally or SK (besides resists). Would like to hear the input of people who have tanked alot.

My main questions are:

1 - How "good" or "worthwhile" are returns on AC in game?
2 - How do you make decisions about AC vs HP in gear?
3 - Is Blood Ember/Deepwater gear always going to be BiS for the most part due to the high AC?

Regarding question #2.. It would be great if anyone can be specific as possible. For example, say you have an Mithril Breastplate (+30 HP but only 17 AC) and a 22 AC chest with no HP.. Which one would you use and why?

[Danth]

This depends, first, on who you have healing you. Hit points only have a significant efficiency impact on Clerics using Complete Healing. On my 60 SK, I'm virtually always running around with a Shaman as healer and only rarely have a Cleric, so I heavily prioritize AC over HP. I ended up with what I consider fair HP as well since a lot of tank gear has good values for both. My own experience with AC was that it seemed to get proportionally more effective as I got more of it. I noticed very little difference going from 900 to 1000 AC, and quite a lot of improvement going from 1000 to 1100. As such I treat it as an "all or nothing" stat--I recommend either focusing on it heavily or treating it as a tertiary stat. I feel a moderate AC level is a bad compromise--worse than both high AC, or low AC with high hit points.

You should also account for what you're tanking. High ATK monsters (particularly some raid named) devalue the importance of AC relative to HP, especially also since you'll receive Complete Heal spam probably from several Clerics. Folks gearing specifically for raid tanking therefore oftentimes focus primarily on HP and resists and simply accept whatever AC they end up with.

Blood Ember or Deepwater won't be best in slot come Velious. Prior to then, it's generally good armor for regular use that will be swapped out when you want encounter-specific gearing. Whether I'd wear that Mithril BP or 22AC BP comes down to whether I could reach enough AC for it to seem to work. Most the time I'd probably select the mithril BP; the 25 AC enameled black BP offers a tougher choice.

[Stinkum]

Thanks Danth.

the 25 AC enameled black BP offers a tougher choice.

Noob question but I have never played tanks.

Is there any difference between a 25 AC Enameled Black BP and a 25 AC Treeweave (same AC but different material)?

[Danth]

No Stinkum, there's no difference whatsoever from material. 25 worn AC is 25 worn AC. In the case of your example the Treeweave is simply a better piece of equipment.

There *is* a difference between worn AC and AC gained from agility or Defense skill (or, at least there was on Live), but that's beyond the scope of this thread.

Danth

[Vadd]

Example....

Indicolite Gauntlets (16ac, 5dex, 5sta, 50hp) > Cobalt Gauntlets (25AC)
in my opinion....

expanded: thats basically a +100hp pair of gauntlets.... with dex..... cant pass it up.

[Stinkum]

@Danthe, I think you are right about either going all-in on AC.

Two follow-up questions.

1 - Does all of what you're saying apply to low-level Paladin/Shadow Knights?
2 - What about belt slot? FBSS has 0 AC, and I definitely couldn't afford a RBG and not high enough level to get a planar haste item. Would it be worth forgoing a haste belt item for more AC?

[Danth]

If you're a Paladin or SK in the tank role for a full or near-full group, haste is effectively optional: No group is going to care how much damage you do anyway. That's not why they invited you. I never had haste on my Paladin (a character I used solely for group tanking) and it simply didn't matter. If you solo or participate in smaller groups (on my SK I mainly duo with the wife, for example), then your own damage output matters much more. As such it becomes worth sacrificing one slot for that zero AC FBSS simply because the target will die more quickly, thus saving you from additional damage intake.

If you're not sure, buy the FBSS and a cheap 8 AC Thick Leather Apron and put on the AC belt when you feel like you don't need haste. At 46 plus you can potentially head to Plane of Sky and loot a 8 AC 16% haste belt; they rot regularly due to the lack of Paladins and SK's on P1999.

I believe Warriors receive a better HP multiplier from Stamina than Paladins or Shadow Knights. My 60 SK receives 5 HP per point of stamina.

EDIT: For low-level players, just do the best you can. Hit points don't matter so much at low levels simply because they offer no real efficiency gain (no complete heal yet), though they do of course improve your time-to-death lifespan. AC helps, but it's hard to stack in sufficient values to make a good difference: AC and monster damage output have always been a little wonky on P1999 and it's particularly rough in the middle level ranges. In my opinion life is easier as a tank at 50+ than it was at 30.

Danth

[Lorraine]

There used to be a formula, later down in the EQ expansions that actually gave you the trade offs between each stat so you could balance your gear accordingly.

The biggest problem when it comes to AC is the fact that you have to play it by ear.
For example, there are a lot of people that will tell you that AC in P99 is broken. Or that it doesn't work exactly like it should. Others will tell you that AC is awesome until you hit the hard cap, and then gives diminishing returns as you reach the soft cap. Or that there is no hard cap and there is only soft cap. A lot of speculation going on about this stuff, and more so here in the forums.

As far as your questions, from a paladin stand off :

1 -- They are good, and they are worthwhile. The degree how ever, varies in regards to where you exp, what you are fighting, and what your group is consisted off. If you pull non-casting, fast hitting mobs to a group without a slower, AC will help tremendously. If you are pulling Guk/Krup wizards around corners to your group, AC will not help you much against getting Ice Cometed.

2 -- Preferably look for both. AC/HP or AC/STA. The thing is, at this moment, there's no 'magical set on stone' number that you can follow. Someone might say "Well, you should only trade 1 AC per 5 HP on gear". The other might say "I disagree, you should only trade 2 AC per 5HP on gear". Truth be told, until you reach the hardcap on AC, then you should never neglect it. As far as to choosing gear pieces and comparing, again it comes with experience and factoring in other parameters. In your example, one will argue that 17ac + 30HP overshadows 22 raw AC mainly because resists aren't into the equation. And the biggest rule of Everquest is that "A distant lack of hit points is the number one reason of deaths in the game". So, your resists are lacking? Then your HitPoints 'become' your resists. (Although basically it's Level>Resists>Hit Point pool, but you get the point here). But in the other hand, if your AC is severely lacking, then 22 AC might come out on top in the long run against 17AC+30hp. Why? Because you will mitigate more damage, making it easier for your healer to keep you up, thus managing their mana pool better. For example, it won't do you any good if you have 3k HP at 60 and be absorbing damage like a chain or leather class.

3 -- Deepwater Greaves are currently BiS. The Breastplate is very good to have during your leveling, since it's a manaless heal. Statwise, Valorium breastplate is 'better' due to +STA (since neither has any resists, hit points are kind of desirable to have). The rest of the Deepwater set, I would advise you to get, and keep it. When you start being able to click them (46), then you will find a lot of perks. Helm is a clicky (non reagent, chest eats jaspers) heal. Arms allow you to manaless lull and save you a gem slot in your spell selection. Bracer can be used as a manaless pulling tool or even as a threat generating tool during fights (yet channeling a 7sec cast which is the duration iirc might prove challenging) that you have use if you run close to oom. Gloves again save you a gem slot and can be used as a pulling tool. Boots give you access to a spell you currently don't have. They are all useful imo. Would I rank them higher than the enchanted dwarven plate armor during leveling (for dwarves)? Probably not.


Velious will change a lot of that, you'll have a lot more gear choices, and most of them will be more clear cut and easier to pick the best piece amongst the ones you compare.

[Stinkum]

Thank you to Danth and Lorraine for taking the time to type that.

<3

[pharmakos]

it also depends on your level

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=397733&postcount=1

RAW AC

Hardcap on Raw AC for non casters was 289 at level 60. Hardcap for casters was 385. Looking at the numbers at the bottom of Kavhok's post, a level 51 Monk with 163 Raw AC was at the Hardcap. Raw AC caps for every class (except Nec/Wiz/Mag/Ench) per level should look like this from 51-60. It's just an assumption but I bet AC was hardcapped per level from 1-50 also. However the increase was much smaller. It looks like 3 AC per level.

Melee (non casters)

60 - 289
59 - 275
58 - 261
57 - 247
56 - 233
55 - 219
54 - 205
53 - 191
52 - 177
51 - 163
50 - 149 or 50 - 160
40 - 119 or 40 - 130
30 - 89 or 30 - 100
20 - 59 or 20 - 70
10 - 29 or 10 - 40
1 - 2 or 1 - 10

"RAW AC" is determined by adding up the AC stat on each of your pieces of armor, not by looking at AC on your inventory screen.

[Danth]

It should be noted that reaching or exceeding 289 worn AC during Kunark as a Paladin or Shadow Knight is possible but not at all easy. Some high-level hybrids barely exceed 200. I focus pretty heavily on AC on my own Shadow Knight and sit at 264 worn AC, albeit I'd have somewhat more if I was either super rich (I'm not) or in a top raiding guild (I'm not). Somewhere in the 250-260 range should be sufficient to get you to 1100 displayed AC with standard buffs depending on your agility and what you consider "standard" buffs.

Danth

[Splorf22]

Did you ever try to measure the 900->1000 and 1000->1100 AC differences in a precise way?

[Danth]

I don't use log parsers if that's what you mean. I don't care enough to bother. I've done personal testing as well as tests with friends of a less precise sort but nothing I ever bothered to keep records of.

Danth

[Stinkum]

Reading the chart with the AC hard-cap by level...

If I'm understanding correctly, this means that the AC hard-cap is easily reached pre-level 50s. So, boosting AC will not matter much (in theory).

All of this confusion was summed up in Lorraines post about this whole matter being very unclear.

[Danth]

That's right, in theory. In practice I don't know if AC even works the same on eq-emulator as it does on Live. Certainly it did not when P1999 first opened since it didn't work at all back then!

As they say, it's clear as mud. In the end, all you can really do if find what works for you and stick with it.

Danth

[pasi]

For what it's worth, I wouldn't further reference that AC post outside of the Kahvok quote and the information from that famous post on TSW.

I know I'm not providing much information here, and that's largely because I don't know how AC works on this server, but that post addresses LIVE and more importantly, has many unsupported points about LIVE. The big red flag for me is that the post was from Velious-era and it was answering questions that folks on TSW and SK.org didn't know the answer to years later.

If you actually check the sources you'll see things such as

I realize I'm presenting this without any proof but I think you'll find it works.

I'm not entirely sure that all the factors I put under Mitigation belong there, but this is how it looks. It's even possible that Avoidance and Mitigation aren't truly seperate.

Now the catch is the P99 developers could have used all that unsupported information on this server. I have no idea. Personally, I think HP is King until CHeal is no longer a complete heal.

[pallius]

If you're a Paladin or SK in the tank role for a full or near-full group, haste is effectively optional: No group is going to care how much damage you do anyway. That's not why they invited you. I never had haste on my Paladin (a character I used solely for group tanking) and it simply didn't matter. If you solo or participate in smaller groups (on my SK I mainly duo with the wife, for example), then your own damage output matters much more. As such it becomes worth sacrificing one slot for that zero AC FBSS simply because the target will die more quickly, thus saving you from additional damage intake.

If you're not sure, buy the FBSS and a cheap 8 AC Thick Leather Apron and put on the AC belt when you feel like you don't need haste. At 46 plus you can potentially head to Plane of Sky and loot a 8 AC 16% haste belt; they rot regularly due to the lack of Paladins and SK's on P1999.

I believe Warriors receive a better HP multiplier from Stamina than Paladins or Shadow Knights. My 60 SK receives 5 HP per point of stamina.

EDIT: For low-level players, just do the best you can. Hit points don't matter so much at low levels simply because they offer no real efficiency gain (no complete heal yet), though they do of course improve your time-to-death lifespan. AC helps, but it's hard to stack in sufficient values to make a good difference: AC and monster damage output have always been a little wonky on P1999 and it's particularly rough in the middle level ranges. In my opinion life is easier as a tank at 50+ than it was at 30.

Danth

I guess its not central to the overall discussion... but as a paladin, I routinely outdamage ~55 monk/rogues with my sky haste belt, epic, and 255 buffed str.

[SamwiseRed]

I guess its not central to the overall discussion... but as a paladin, I routinely outdamage ~55 monk/rogues with my sky haste belt, epic, and 255 buffed str.

im gonna call bs unless they are just terrible players or on a corpse run.

[Sazzabi]

it also depends on your level

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=397733&postcount=1



"RAW AC" is determined by adding up the AC stat on each of your pieces of armor, not by looking at AC on your inventory screen.

I am parsing this right now with 164 worn ac vs 244 worn ac at lvl 51 to see if there is a difference. Will post results.

[pallius]

im gonna call bs unless they are just terrible players or on a corpse run.

KC groups. 4+ levels higher than a <55 char counts for something especially on low kc mobs. Higher haste than a typical 55 monk is going to have. I am talking buffed. So I am sitting at 100% haste and they are at maybe 80-90ish on a monk. An under 55 rogue isn't going to have double backstab.

I am not talking apples to apples. I am talking ~max dps 59 pally vs pick up group <55 monk/rogue.

[Jimjam]

I am parsing this right now with 164 worn ac vs 244 worn ac at lvl 51 to see if there is a difference. Will post results.

Any results yet?

Also don't forget the strength of the mob you are fighting might affect the parse; 164 vs 244 worn ac might parse the same if the mob has a really low or really high 'fightiness' (say 100 or 300 wAC eqv).

[Lorraine]

Apologies for the long post, Danth said he wasn't going to go deep into this, but I kinda felt this might shed more light into how things were/are perceived in regards to the subject.


"RAW AC" is determined by adding up the AC stat on each of your pieces of armor, not by looking at AC on your inventory screen.


I don't think anyone disputed that, unless you were further trying to clarify it in case there were people who didn't know.


For what it's worth, I wouldn't further reference that AC post outside of the Kahvok quote and the information from that famous post on TSW.

I know I'm not providing much information here, and that's largely because I don't know how AC works on this server, but that post addresses LIVE and more importantly, has many unsupported points about LIVE. The big red flag for me is that the post was from Velious-era and it was answering questions that folks on TSW and SK.org didn't know the answer to years later.

Now the catch is the P99 developers could have used all that unsupported information on this server. I have no idea. Personally, I think HP is King until CHeal is no longer a complete heal.

Kahvok's post is deep SoL / Pre-PoP. He speaks of Ssra gear, and does comparisons between classes during that era. The data on the live servers is also from that era, and between Classic/Kunark and Pre-PoP there were a few changes regarding classes and their damage mitigation and damage avoidance abilities.

Can we reference it here? We probably can (some parts at least), again with a grain of salt. Without solid equations (coming directly from the developers/coders mouth) the community was left with speculations and the hard work of people who parsed endless hours and insane amounts of logs against specific mobs, in order to reach some plausible conclusions. And then again, it was still up for debate whether or not this stood.

I remember (see what I did there?) reading about this in the very very early stages of the game (beta/early live). People were trying to explain the AC-Mitigation/Avoidance and the damage received from mobs.
There was this theory that when a mob attacks a player, the outcome of the attack is determined by the roll of two dices (to explain it in an easy way). One die to see if the attack will connect (and the outcome of that die was directly affected by your Damage Avoidance number), and another die to determine how much damage is done to you (which again is affected by your Damage Mitigation number). Some people further refuted that this die was at some point combined into one, to avoid confusion.

I also remember that the general consensus was like this:
Raw AC (or Worn AC) directly affects the amount of damage you will receive IF the die that determines if you get hit or not comes up as a 'HIT'. And what it did affect, was further explained (again I don't remember how this data or the equation came into light) into this equation: Mob Damage = Base Damage + (1-20)*Bonus Damage. So, Raw AC directly affected the d20 roll on this, meaning that the a hit that you perceive as MAX on you, will be substantially lower as a number than a hit that someone with less Raw AC will.
Defense Skill and Agility directly affected the die roll that determines if you get hit or not. Again, the general consensus was that this was further constituted by a series of die rolls. One die to see if the attack misses. If it goes through, it checks to see if it gets parried. If again it goes through, it checks to see if it gets dodged, then riposted, then blocked etc etc (You get the idea).

Now, in his post, Kahvok specifically says that the Defense Skill increases both mitigation and avoidance. So was there an error in the explanations during the early stages of the game? Did we have it all wrong from the beginning? Or did we get it right, but there were changes down the road? And if there were, which era did they take place upon, and how did they directly affect our game?

Again, even if we determine all this, and we actually KNOW what is going on, we have to then try and apply it on P99. Are our devs here using code from early classic? Have they done any changes to it?
If you try to imagine how many manhours were put into this, trying to determine what is and what isn't true during live, do you really think anyone's willing to dig ALL that information up, then spend the time needed on P99 to see what applies and what doesn't?

Imo, this is Mythbusters area, so there's no "Rock solid set on stone evidence" apart from statistics posted from the community (and Everquest had/has some pretty stubborn and knowledgeable people who did a ton of work behind the scenes to get to the bottom of this). Personally, I don't trust statistics at all, it's mankinds biggest invention to lie.

This is how theory games are played.
Go into Allakhazam (or the P99 Wiki if it has the same numbers), pick any mob, then read about his damage. Most often than not, it says that it hits between X and Y.
Now, try to find out how this X and Y was posted up there.
Were those X and Y numbers taken directly from the database? Do they apply for a naked level 50 ( 60 during Kunark) character sitting down and then standing up? Are they parsed on lower level/higher level characters, and if yes, what classes were they? Have they changed down the road to reflect later expansions?
There's literally a fuckton of questions that will arise, and each one isn't exactly easy to answer without a hint of doubt.

KC groups. 4+ levels higher than a <55 char counts for something especially on low kc mobs. Higher haste than a typical 55 monk is going to have. I am talking buffed. So I am sitting at 100% haste and they are at maybe 80-90ish on a monk. An under 55 rogue isn't going to have double backstab.

I am not talking apples to apples. I am talking ~max dps 59 pally vs pick up group <55 monk/rogue.

At 59 with sky belt and FA, I outdamaged a 60 epic rogue who outgeared me a lot, on a mob directly outside the VP entrance. I think he still carries that monkey on his shoulder since that day.

Can it happen? Yea. It's the exception that justifies the rule. 55 rogue has better Weapon Skill against a 59 paladin (225 vs 222/223 don't remember actual max number at 59 here) and a higher Offense Skill (225 vs 222/223 or w/e it actually is). His attacks are also not getting dodged/blocked/parried or avoided in a similar fashion like yours are (assuming you're tanking, it's KC you mentioned). My money's probably like Samwise, if it's happening regularly it's due to rogues not pulling their weight by positioning themselves (or you positioning the mob) and only hitting autoattack and /afk.

[pharmakos]

I don't think anyone disputed that, unless you were further trying to clarify it in case there were people who didn't know.

was just clarification, since the quote i posted was talking about raw AC but didn't define it.

[Splorf22]

I did a test with Sakuragi vs the Cliff Golem in OT with and without the Shield of Elders (40 item AC). Both tests were about 5 minutes and had about 150 hits with various damage values. I then bootstrapped the data (my new favorite technique) to get:

1120: mean: 113.5 +- 3.4 [95% CI: 106.6 120.4]
1050: mean: 111.3 +- 3.9 [95% CI: 103.6 119.1]
1120 > 1050: 66.7%

What this means is that with 1120AC, I expect the average hit to be around 113.5 and almost certainly in the range 106-120. With 1050AC, I expect the average hit to be 111.3 (yes, this is LESS. I double checked to make sure I didn't mix up the parses) and almost certainly in the range 104-119. The probability that you will take more damage with 1120 AC is 67%.

The variance in this data is quite high. From what I understand, hits are either min, max, or a purely random hit in between. So I modified the data appropriately, which removes some of the randomness:

Replacing any number not 48 or 172 by 109.5
1120: mean: 111.8 +- 2.6 [95% CI: 106.6 117.1]
1050: mean: 111.5 +- 3.0 [95% CI: 105.6 117.5]
1120 > 1050: 52.0%

Thus we can see that the 1050 parse was a bit luckier on the damage interval hits, but the variance is still quite large. The variance goes down as the square root of the number of samples, so we'd need about 50 times as much data (3 hours with each configuration) to get a confidence interval with a size of +- 1. Needless to say, I don't think I can rent Coeur for 6 hours.

My conclusions:
1. Someone not named Sakuragi should tank the cliff golem for a few hours :D
2. Pasi is correct; for raids HP >> AC. Not only is the average value of AC quite small, but you care about about the worst case more. Based on this test if you are a main tank I would not give up even one HP for additional AC. This is actually good news for Iksar warriors!
3. Even if AC is working correctly (which is only a 50% chance according to this data, heh) the benefit of a ridiculous +40AC shield is very unlikely to be more than a few percent for high-level mobs.

Of course, all of this may be different for xp mobs with lower attack values. For reference, without the shield Sakuragi has about 170 raw item AC.

[Stinkum]

That's a damned nice post.

[pharmakos]

Needless to say, I don't think I can rent Coeur for 6 hours.

the tricky part would be having Coeur not go LD for 6 straight hours :)

[koros]

Can you try to test at some various AC values keeping agi constant? Very large chance ac over a certain amount does absolutely nothing.

[Splorf22]

I guess I have a hard time believing that the hard cap for AC is 170. I'm pretty sure Kanras implemented the Kahvok post and made 289 the hard cap for melee classes, although whether or not this is classic is of course up for debate.

Does anyone have links to some steel warrior tests of AC? The best I can find is http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13 which certainly seems to match this.

[koros]

Well either you got statistically anomalous results, there is a hardcap, or there's some other mix of factors we haven't considered.

[koros]

Can you check your logs and determine the cliff golem's min hit, damage interval, and modal hit?

Maybe charting the hit distribution would shed some light on what seems to be a pure cap.

[Jimjam]

It could be his AC is way too low or way too high for the shield to make a difference.

[pharmakos]

sakuragi -- what were your raw item AC totals during those tests?

[kaev]

great post

I'd be very cautious about drawing any conclusion from this small amount of data. Given the behavior I've seen from the p99 pseudo-random number generator while crafting, I'd want to see a much larger sample as the basis for analysis.

Also curious about distribution of the hits. On live, ~ 20% of all hits were (dmg*2)+(dmgbonus), with additional peaks at min and max, the remainder were fairly evenly distributed. And the min and max peaks were affected by extreme values of ATK vs. AC (i.e. low level mob would get hardly any max and a lot of min.)

[koros]

It could be his AC is way too low or way too high for the shield to make a difference.

It could be, although if that's the case it should still have a marginal effect. 40 raw AC is a LOT, and the cliff golem is an appropriate leveled mob for a 60 war to be tanking.

[koros]

I'd be very cautious about drawing any conclusion from this small amount of data. Given the behavior I've seen from the p99 pseudo-random number generator while crafting, I'd want to see a much larger sample as the basis for analysis.

Also curious about distribution of the hits. On live, ~ 20% of all hits were (dmg*2)+(dmgbonus), with additional peaks at min and max, the remainder were fairly evenly distributed. And the min and max peaks were affected by extreme values of ATK vs. AC (i.e. low level mob would get hardly any max and a lot of min.)

It's too small to be definitive, but 150 hits should be a representative sample, *most of the time.

[Splorf22]

I think it is reasonable, even likely, that the shield performed worse due to insufficient sample size. You can see the 95 CI bars are quite large. That's why I was very careful with my conclusions. My suspicion is that the 40AC is good for 1-2% mitigation which the test is simply not measuring. But if I were Kanras I would definitely be rechecking the code for a possible bug.

Sak was at like 170/210 item AC for this test which I think is a pretty reasonable range for most people I think (a full set of indicolite is 155AC according to the wiki). One unknown factor in this whole business is the Iksar AC bonus and how its screwing with things.

Oh, and one last thing. I wrote a little sim code. Even if AC works HP is still by far the way to go IMO. Here are the simulated results for Sakuragi with various amounts of HP against the Spiroc Lord with evasive disc up (I took the numbers from two parses). So at 4500 HP, in order to have a 90% of surviving against the Lord for 100 seconds, he would need a complete heal every 14.5 seconds. AC0 means 15 and 5% chances for max and min hits; AC1 means 14 and 6% chances for max and min hits; AC2 means 13 and 7% chances and so on. I hope all that makes sense.

So according to these sims, even reducing the max hit chance from 15% to 5% (AC 10), which would probably require several hundred item AC at least, is only worth about 600 raw HP. Those results make a lot of sense to me, because even at AC10 you are basically flipping one hit from max to min. If you are getting a CH every 20-25 hits, its quite possible that you could just get unlucky once or twice, whereas HP provide more space for the hits to return to the norm. You can in fact see that each HP is worth more than the previous one. (4500->5000 is worth an additional 2 seconds per CH, but 0->4500 is worth only 11 seconds not 18).

Of course that analysis assumes AC is working . . . :D

caveat lector: i may have had a bug in my code

Increasing HP (4500): 90%: 14.5, 99%: 11.5, 99.9%: 10.5
Increasing HP (4600): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 11.5
Increasing HP (4700): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 12.0
Increasing HP (4800): 90%: 15.5, 99%: 13.0, 99.9%: 11.5
Increasing HP (4900): 90%: 16.0, 99%: 13.0, 99.9%: 11.5
Increasing HP (5000): 90%: 16.5, 99%: 13.5, 99.9%: 12.0
Increasing HP (5100): 90%: 17.5, 99%: 14.0, 99.9%: 12.0
Increasing HP (5200): 90%: 17.5, 99%: 15.0, 99.9%: 12.5
Increasing HP (5300): 90%: 18.0, 99%: 15.0, 99.9%: 12.5
Increasing HP (5400): 90%: 18.5, 99%: 15.0, 99.9%: 14.0
Increasing HP (5500): 90%: 19.0, 99%: 15.5, 99.9%: 14.5
Increasing HP (5600): 90%: 19.0, 99%: 16.5, 99.9%: 14.5
Increasing HP (5700): 90%: 19.5, 99%: 17.0, 99.9%: 14.5
Increasing HP (5800): 90%: 20.5, 99%: 17.0, 99.9%: 15.0
Increasing HP (5900): 90%: 21.0, 99%: 17.5, 99.9%: 15.0
Increasing HP (6000): 90%: 21.5, 99%: 17.5, 99.9%: 15.0
Increasing AC (0): 90%: 14.5, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 11.0
Increasing AC (1): 90%: 14.5, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 10.5
Increasing AC (2): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 10.0
Increasing AC (3): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 10.0
Increasing AC (4): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.5, 99.9%: 10.0
Increasing AC (5): 90%: 15.0, 99%: 12.0, 99.9%: 10.0
Increasing AC (6): 90%: 15.5, 99%: 13.0, 99.9%: 12.0
Increasing AC (7): 90%: 15.5, 99%: 13.0, 99.9%: 11.5
Increasing AC (8): 90%: 16.0, 99%: 13.5, 99.9%: 11.5
Increasing AC (9): 90%: 16.5, 99%: 13.5, 99.9%: 12.0
Increasing AC (10): 90%: 17.0, 99%: 14.0, 99.9%: 11.5

[Jimjam]

It could be, although if that's the case it should still have a marginal effect. 40 raw AC is a LOT, and the cliff golem is an appropriate leveled mob for a 60 war to be tanking.

Then I guess the AC cap is lower than we thought and as we would expect there is no overcap bonus for shields (unlike live)?

Edit: actually, perhaps p99 has been programmed to correct for the shield AC overcap bonus but the correction slightly overcompensates, hence the shield parse being worse? /shrug

[koros]

Also... you should parse yourself tanking either naked or with the same worn ac as another 60 war with the same agi. That could yield some interesting information about the iksar ac bonus.

[pallius]

Shield bonuses came later in the game. Not classic.

[Sazzabi]

Here is the numbers for my parses on low dark blue mobs, I am a level 51 Troll Sk

Mobs - Nro freeport guards (Guard Brendyl, Guard Stoutman, Guard Fintran), all level 40, max hit - 100, min hit - 17

The 963ac and 837ac parses were around 1 hour total tanking time each. The 916ac and 681ac were about 30 minutes each.


244 raw ac (963ac), with shield, 100agi
avg hit 41,16, hit% 47.20

164 raw ac (837ac), with shield, 100agi
avg hit 45.07, hit% 48.26



216 raw ac (916ac) no shield, 100agi
avg hit 42.13, hit% 48.89

63 raw ac (681ac), no shield, 100agi
avg hit 57.13, hit% 45.91

Based on this I am leaning towards the hardcap on this server not being exactly what it is in Kavhok's post.

[Splorf22]

Nice work Saz. Gonna copy my post from the bug forums:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=397733&postcount=1

OK, I am guessing that Kanras directly implemented the formulas Treats found. Lets assume this is so. In that case

Melee Mitigation = (Buffs/4) + (Defense/3) + (Equipment * 4/3)

So we can assume that since Warriors and Monks have almost the same defense skill, their mitigation should depend almost entirely on equipped AC. The really good part about this post is the part we can take as more or less gospel by Kahvok, an EQ designer. They ran some tests around Luclin before the monk AC nerf:


Class War Pal Mnk
Level 51 51 51
Raw Item AC 184 181 107 (effective: 163)
Avg Hit 72.6 72.9 74.6
% Hits for Max 10.2% 10.5% 11.5%

Class War Pal Mnk (prenerf)
Level 60 60 60
Raw Item AC 296 281 163 (effective: 228)
Avg Hit 107.3 109.9 113.6

Class War Pal Mnk (postnerf)
Effective: 295 281 195
Avg Hit 106 108.9 121.3

Since warriors and monks both have the same defense skill, if the information in Treats' post is correct, then we can compare them directly. Going from 195 to 228 was good for a huge 6.5% reduction in damage. Going from 228 to 289 was good for an additional 5.5% reduction in damage. If there is some sort of diminishing returns (logical) then going from 155 to 195 as I did in my test should be MORE than 6.5% (40 vs 33, and in a higher part of the curve). That's well out of the range of error of the test. Again, these are the kind of numbers that make sense. AC was supposed to be good; no one would have figured out how to stack AC if +40AC was a 2-3% decrease in damage.

If you run the numbers, you'll find that 1AC is good for about a 0.11% increase in damage. 5000HP * 0.1% = 5.5HP, which is exactly the kind of ratio people used to quote. It's probably a bit less for ubermobs with huge attack values, and a bit more for XP mobs with lower values. A bit more if your AC is lower and a bit less if its higher. You get the idea.

Actually this thread is too depressing, lets just let it die. On Live Iksar warriors didn't have to go 3 years without armor upgrades. RAGE

[pharmakos]

when did that monk nerf happen?

[jijii]

Luclin, a bit after release

[kaev]

Shield bonuses came later in the game. Not classic.

iirc, according to that old (PoP-era?) dev post, the shield "bonus" (i.e. shield AC ignores the AC softcap) came in with the mid-velious melee combat revamp that brought Monks back down from demi-godhood. was monk nerf really not until Luclin?

[koros]

Not til the end of Luclin in fact.

[pharmakos]

i was having this discussion with someone in guild chat. i swear the melee revamp/monk nerf happened towards the end of velious. guess i'm gonna have to do some research soon.

[Splorf22]

Your next toon should be Pharmakeus Escapegoat

[pharmakos]

next one is probably gonna be Escapegoatse, as per an <Azure Guard> guild chat in-joke :)

[Treats]

Monk nerf happened just before Planes of Power was released.

http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20021016.html

[mtb tripper]

next one is probably gonna be Escapegoatse, as per an <Azure Guard> guild chat in-joke :)

[pharmakos]

realized right after i posted that, that i should go register the name quick in case a forumquest troll decided to steal it from me

made him a rogue. because with a name like goatse i should be stabbing things in the back.

[mtb tripper]

forumquest troll

[pharmakos]

i know, i know, there's barely any trolls on this board ;)