Caster Defense Skill
 

A little unclear on how defense is or should be working.

Old web sites, and my memory, suggest that it is something like (level+1)*5. This means my level 16 mage should max out at 85. However, he is maxed out at 63. For the past few levels, I get 3 skill ups, and they occur pretty quickly. By the first bubble of experience I am done and get nothing more.

Offense, incidentally, is stalled at 64... and in the ole' days, offense would cap slightly *below* defense!

Anybody shed light on how it works here?

Defense and other melee stats cap at a much lower value than other skills, so I believe they increase at a much lower rate per level.

Yes, the cap is lower, however that is not the mechanic I am referring to. I understand that piercing is (and in classic was) limited to fewer skill ups per level than (say) a warrior. But that wasn't the case for offense/defense. Those would cap lower, but skill up the same per level, so a caster would hit max around level 30ish while a warrior would keep chugging right along. On P1999 I haven't quite figured out what is going on. At 3 per level for instance, how does a lvl 16 mage cap out at 63?

I don't think 63 is an actual cap at any point. Get hit more (by non-green mobs) and your skill will increase.

Yeah, I know about the get hit by blue+ part.

Anyway, dinged 17 a short while ago. As expected, *immediately* got skill ups again... 3 each to Defense and Offense... less than 10 percent into the level. Will see if the pattern breaks.

Just to bring this to a close.

Skill ups at level 17 behaved predictably. Max 66 Defense, 68 Offense, all achieved very early in the level with nothing thereafter.

Offense gains level*4. Defense begins at 5 per level, but goes down, so somewhere in the teens it is down to 3 skill ups. Documenting how this was in live has proven somewhat more complicated than I thought. The interesting part about the back research is that someone else proposed that defense skill ups were based on a look-up table, and not a formula, nearly 15 years ago.