We're not worried about previous expansions right now. We are focusing on velious and getting the system good for those mobs. Once we're happy with where it is, we can go back then.

AC in eq was never comparable to newer games with significant and noticeable increases for each small gain. It was more subtle, I remember the same arguments on if and how much it really mattered back then as well.

The difference should only really be noticeable in large sample size logs of 10k+ hits. Not short 100 hit logs that can be hand chosen specifically to push your view of how it should be and/or take advantage of the RNG.

I'll also mention that we do have tank characters with different AC values that we use for testing, some of which have far more hours in at taking a beating from raid bosses then any normal character. AC most definitely works when comparing different AC values on the same NPC over a significant time period.

Side note, if it helps for verifying resists or AC/NPC dps/stats - I've got a lvl 76 monk on Test who cannot die. Can easily parse anything in Velious you want (if I can find it up). I also reset the AA, so those wont be a problem.

While a lvl 76 toon isn't directly comparable to P99, I'm guessing that you guys could duplicate the character/skills & lvl 76. A velious npc parsing/resisting the same on both P99 and live would suggest the systems are very similar.

Added some changes to the code, so if you remove armor against lower level mobs, it will be more noticeable. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement.

So maybe next patch, you will see some differences.

Maybe we can got from "AC is broke" to "AC is overpowered" or "AC works" or "AC needs tweaked when _________" (insert specific case here).

H

nice!

One of the problems with this is that we will never get all the values.

Attack, multiple layers of AC, accuracy, haste, strength, individual resists, dex, attack speed, hps, special attack flags, agility etc etc. and this is only the value side of it. The code would also have to work exactly the same for both NPCs and players for each value to get an exact replica. This is simply not feasible even if we worked on velious for the next 10 years.

Since that is not feasible, we work to balance bosses and npcs to the approximate difficulty or slightly above through testing.

What is useful is listing comparison data such as so and so is really resistant to disease or this boss attacks superninjafast or like Haynar mentioned, AC doesn't seem to work in this range or for this NPC. We need the little corrections such as "this boss is not supposed to enrage" or "this guy is really easy/hard to hit".

Changing things at this point will mean retesting and rebalancing everything done so far, when we know that AC is working in normal situations.

Given that it can't be recreated perfectly, I really do hope you guys are erring on the side of making the content slightly more difficult in your calculations when there is uncertainty. The game is so much easier now than it was back then.

Hopefully shield AC will be working well when Velious comes out. Back in the day my guild actually had to start using a warrior with a shield to tank things like AoW and ToV dragons. We usually started out with a ranger tagging off of a monk and then weapon shielding / flame licking (warriors all bow shot for rampage) after about 5-10 secs warrior would spam taunt and either ranger would die or MT would taunt off mob. This gave warrior a HUGE threat lead so dual wielding wasn't necessary to keep aggro, and using a shield gave a warrior a nice boost in damage mitigation.

How much does a compilation of all boss min/max hits help? Or you already got this?

Is there a focus on getting resists capped at 255 for this expac? It will be VERY easy to hit 350+ with gear/bards. I linked a video of classic Klandicar where fear is landing even on the bards (who are in full Velious gear), I'm not so sure having the entire raid fear immune on a fight like that is a good thing.