Project Vindicator

[Raev]

So I think I will have some spare time in the near future to clean up Sakuragi's Warrior Guide (http://wiki.project1999.com/Sakuragi's_Warrior_Guide) which is somewhat outdated now that Velious is out. Among those updates: I believe AC works now, and I'd like to figure out exactly how well. So I'm looking for parses of warriors tanking Derakor the Vindicator with differing amounts of armor class. Vindi is convenient because he is doable by a lot of guilds and generates a lot of attacks. Also, he can't hit for 450 against tanks who aren't defensive. So, you can boot up GTT and post your percentage of min hits (# hits for 200 / # total hits), max hits (# hits for 450 or 700 / # total hits), and interval hits (the rest).

Example submission: Cucumbers (Iksar)

AC: unknown (can't see his screen, but probably around 1450?)
Min Hits: 4.5% (24 / 523)
Interval Hits: 67.6% (170 / 523)
Max Hits: 27.9% (146 / 523)


Hopefully we can get posts by warriors all the way from 1100 to 1600 AC, which should allow us to do some pretty good math on the AC/HP tradeoff and maybe roughly where the AC softcap is. Feel free to submit multiple fights with the same character; more data = less randomness. Also please note your race so we can see if the Iksar AC bonus is working.

The one thing I am little worried about here is bard buffs. I'd prefer not to allow them if at all possible. The problem is that the AC calculations client side are unrelated to the AC calculations server side. Example: let's imagine the server softcaps AC at 400, with a 50% return, but the client doesn't softcap it all. Warrior A has 500 AC, effective 450 server side but displayed 500 client side. Warrior B has 400 AC and 50AC from bards, effective 450 server side (thus resulting in the same distribution of attacks) but displaying only 450 on the client (oh god, AC is broken, WTF). So ideally, no bards. If everyone just has Aegolism (and ideally avatar for capped agility or close) then the only variable will be item AC, which is what we want to measure.

[astuce999]

I like it.

Then or at the same time, if you could figure out exactly how Shield AC works on p99 that'd be great too.

If you find out that it does, then can you find out if it has to say "shield" in the name or be tagged somehow as such, or do any items with AC equipped in secondary slot give said "shield" AC.

thanks! :D

(got my drums btw)

Astuce

[Vicatin]

Why cant we just get mod/gm clarifications on how these things are calculated?

[Raev]

Why cant we just get mod/gm clarifications on how these things are calculated?

I haven't had a lot of luck there, but yes it would save a huge amount of time if Haynar or Rogean posted their AC/ATK model . . .

[khanable]

Yeah the devs are like a Christian chick on prom night - they just won't give that shit up

Is that a real parse from our recent vindi? Or do I have to do this still? lol

[eisley]

it'd be great to see this project fleshed out - it blows my mind that the hivemind think AC is broken on this server. As one example, I duo'd the Eejag, Gwan, Trunt cycle (monk epic mobs) on two occasions, with two different warriors, with a sizable AC difference, and the damage taken and average hit was around 40% higher, the difference was dramatic.

However, that doesn't exclude the possibility that AC loses most of its its value vs. mobs with higher level/atk.

[jpetrick]

I'll help out in the CH chain if you want to actually get a bunch of clerics together to heal you while you parse this. In trade for this I want your excel sheet with warrior weapon aggro formulas so I don't have to make one myself. I have a little theory on some oddball weapons that are better threat generation than most people would think and I'm too lazy to do the math myself.

[Nune]

I'll help out in the CH chain if you want to actually get a bunch of clerics together to heal you while you parse this. In trade for this I want your excel sheet with warrior weapon aggro formulas so I don't have to make one myself. I have a little theory on some oddball weapons that are better threat generation than most people would think and I'm too lazy to do the math myself.

hustlin' and rustlin'

[eisley]

I'll help out in the CH chain if you want to actually get a bunch of clerics together to heal you while you parse this. In trade for this I want your excel sheet with warrior weapon aggro formulas so I don't have to make one myself. I have a little theory on some oddball weapons that are better threat generation than most people would think and I'm too lazy to do the math myself.

Curious, which items?

I've generally found proc aggro to be surprisingly basic: stuns seem to be 500 no matter the duration, poison counters 650ish no matter the number of counters, ac debuffs 600ish no matter the amount, etc. Other non-aggroish debuffs seem to be 100 aggro per cast. ie. Malo, Dispel, Root, etc. It's almost disappointing how benign aggro generation through procs seems to be. I love the fact that theres a huge number of warrior weapon possibilities though.

[Raev]

Cucumbers: yes, because a) I don't know your ac, b) you were probably bard buffed/not agi capped, and c) I want multiple parses anyway. Would love a few thousand hits per AC.

Elzhi: I was hoping to just piggyback on normal guild slayings of Vindi. Turn off bard buffs, get avatar to cap agility, and spend the 5 minutes checking GamParse and posting the results. Hopefully we can get 10-20 reported parses and that will be enough to draw reasonable conclusions. Also, AFAIK procs are usually either 'good' (stun, slow, -AC, blind, poison/disease counters) or bad (everything else).

Eisley: when did you go warrior? I can never keep the gigantic army you maintain straight.

Also 'Project Vindicator' just sounds fucking cool. Would be an awesome guild name IMO.

[jpetrick]

Curious, which items?

I've generally found proc aggro to be surprisingly basic: stuns seem to be 500 no matter the duration, poison counters 650ish no matter the number of counters, ac debuffs 600ish no matter the amount, etc. Other non-aggroish debuffs seem to be 100 aggro per cast. ie. Malo, Dispel, Root, etc. It's almost disappointing how benign aggro generation through procs seems to be. I love the fact that theres a huge number of warrior weapon possibilities though.

Tserrina's Whip has two different aggro components to it (poison counter and a snare). Each proc generates roughly 1350 hate (I have tested this personally). I wanted to find out how that compared to other weapons threat generation but I need the excel sheet that has warriors dual wield % & double attack % factored in before I can figure out exactly how much threat it generates compared to other weapon combos. Basically I'm curious if the massive aggro generated from the proc beats out the threat generation of a faster mainhand weapon. I'm way too lazy to create this myself and I know Loraen has this file sitting on his computer already because he made a table for his original warrior guide.

[Raev]

It might be possible to paste this into Excel and make it a bit more readable, but:

Primary ID Secondary ID DPS MH/s Hate/s Rating
Upgraded Gaudralek, Sword of the Sky 68 65.29 63.95 85.61 75.12
Sceptre of Destruction 44 Sceptre of Destruction 44 56.40 53.56 92.96 73.97
Feverblade, Bane of the Shissar 19 Sword of the Shissar 54 52.80 50.70 89.04 70.39
Blade of Carnage 5 Blade of Strategy 6 56.50 52.76 86.09 70.36
Upgraded Palladius Axe of Slaughter 71 66.96 64.80 69.80 67.84
Willsapper 61 Blade of Strategy 6 52.42 49.52 84.52 67.74
Tserinna's Whip 91 Sword of the Shissar 54 38.32 37.61 95.95 66.96
Upgraded Jagged Blade of War 70 54.65 55.32 77.82 66.40
Ykeshan War Club 64 Ykeshan War Club 64 34.32 33.84 62.59 48.34

It tops the charts in pure hate (2nd column from right 95.95 vs 92.96 for double SoDs) but the overall rating (25% dps, 25% melee hate, 50% total hate) isn't quite as impressed. I suspect you might be disappointed in it after actual use; IMHO the worst case (no procs) is the most important which is why the overall rating gives points for melee hate. Still, it's a good find, and Poison based snare is legit. There could be some interesting strategies there.

[Nibblewitz]

Because no one is willing to let the tank naturally gain threat.

[Gain]

Has anyone parsed threat on Infestation?

[Lanuven]

Also 'Project Vindicator' just sounds fucking cool. Would be an awesome guild name IMO.

Its 10x better than < Monk Death Squad > ;)

I'll submit logs later from my most recent Vindi tank.

[Kelor]

How much do you think the actual iksar AC boost is at 60? i think around 35 - 45?.

[Jimjam]

What it is worth varies (varied) with level. On live worn AC is capped at 23 (level 1) to 239 (level 49) (shields count twice for worn AC in this formula). This hard cap is hidden from the inventory window so it can look like you are gaining more ac from worn items even though you aren't!

For iksar, their racial bonus is added after this hard cap, meaning level 1-49no amount of worn ac will catch you up with the mitigation of an iksar if he is also capped on worn ac.

The bonus starts at 10, then increases by 1 per level from level 11 to 35, capping at 35.

If P99 matches the live dev posted formula, then your thinking of 35 AC is spot on, Kelor.

source: http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Armor_Class

Another interesting note, is the devpost claims most NPCs don't exceed 600AC, with the exception of Plane of War NPCs which have a more 'player like' AC of 3000+.

[Tarskin]

I thought that there was also still uncertainty about how the Iksar racial thing actually works, e.g. while the UI adds it as a flat increase to AC it actually works more like avoidance (and is calculated post hard/soft caps).

[Jimjam]

I thought that there was also still uncertainty about how the Iksar racial thing actually works, e.g. while the UI adds it as a flat increase to AC it actually works more like avoidance (and is calculated post hard/soft caps).

I believe before the AC system revamp around POP iksar ac might have actually been an avoidance, rather than mitigation boost. I have no source for that, and my memory is very sketchy. Perhaps p99 functions that way.

[Raev]

Its 10x better than < Monk Death Squad > ;)

I'll submit logs later from my most recent Vindi tank.

Zing! Also, it would be really awesome if we could get a screenshot of exactly how to check the min/max hit rate in GamParse. I'll try to make that happen the next time Rustle does Vindi, but it's a little annoying because I can't run GamParse on Linux (though, I haven't tried since my last upgrade of wine).

And yes, the Iksar ac bonus is one of things that would be nice to test. I have no idea if it even works!

[jpetrick]

Has anyone parsed threat on Infestation?

It's really good. Fast weapon with a massive threat proc (750 hate + dot damage).

[Jimjam]

Do you want only level 60 warriors with capped agility/defense for this?

Otherwise how will you control for AC (displayed) changing based on the mitigation component?

Would you also find it useful for posters to contribute the sum of their worn AC?

[delfi]

Eisley: when did you go warrior? I can never keep the gigantic army you maintain straight.


He's talking about differences between Gorruk and Yummytum(my war, PoGrowth armor mostly at the time) I believe. He was able to heal all three monk epic fights with his druid easily with Gorruk using robe and maybe a spot or two. However, Gwan dunked Yummytum hard with just druid robe heals...couldn't keep up with dps.

The differences I've noticed since my monk has gotten raid geared has been dramatic. Anytime someone says AC doesn't matter, I just shake my head. Maybe against AoW/raid bosses I dunno, but against small group content it is massive.