Re: Feed back on soft cap
Kavhok
EQ Designer
Posts: 14
Your AC cap was lowered. That was absolutely and unequivocally a nerf. I didn't mean in any way to imply otherwise.
Let me give a more full explanation of what happened, though. Here's how the AC formula used to work before the patch immediately preceding PoP:
The AC from your items was added up, but the value used for it was hard capped based on your level. This was the same for all classes. Once you had 289 raw AC from items (or 385 as a cloth class, since they get less effect from item AC), that was it. More AC from items wouldn't do anything.
After this, it added your class bonuses (including the monk bonus, which is equivalent to your level + 5 in raw item AC), defense skill bonus, agility bonus, and the AC from spell buffs.
Total AC at this point was capped again, this time based on class. In the Kunark-era code, this was a hard cap, but sometime during Velious it was changed to a soft cap for melee classes only. The return was fairly small, though.
The pre-PoP patch did a few things:
- The cap on item AC was no longer used except at lower levels (twinking was a concern since that was before recommended level items were in heavy use).
- Shield AC was added to the class-based cap to give shields more viability
- Class AC caps were changed. Monks were lowered the most, but beastlords were lowered to the same level as druids (yes, they were nerfed too). Cleric and shaman caps were raised above druids. The caps generally followed the armor archetypes of plate/chain/leather/cloth.
- All classes were given returns on AC over the cap, not just melee classes. All casters and priests received the least, followed by the melee classes. Rogues got the same return as monks, as did berserkers when the class was added. Beastlords and rangers got slightly more, followed by bards, then knights, then warriors.
The overall goal was to make the average dps (including mitigation, avoidance, block/dodge/etc.) taken for melee classes to be approximately:
Warrior > Knight > Monk > Bard > Ranger = Beastlord = Rogue
Aggregate data from live servers at the time was taken to determine median-AC stats for each class. Parses were run against NPCs 3-4 levels lower, facing front. The characters had cleric AC and shaman agility buffs and faced the NPC. The results of the parse were consistent with statistical analysis of the formulas in code:
Class War Pal Mnk
Level 51 51 51
Raw Item AC 184 181 107
Agility 157 144 169
Dodge 3.4% 3.1% 4.4%
Block 0 % 0% 10.2%
Riposte 4.4% 3.9% 4.1%
Parry 5.2% 4.6% 0%
Skill Evasion 12.9% 11.5% 18.7%
Hit Rate 61.2% 61.3% 58.2%
Avg Hit 72.6 72.9 74.6
% Hits for Max 10.2% 10.5% 11.5%
Avg Dmg / Round 59.7 61.1 54.5
DPS 28.2 28.8 25.7
Class War Pal Mnk
Level 60 60 60
Raw Item AC 296 281 163
Agility 177 152 187
Dodge 4.3% 3.9% 4.9%
Block 0 % 0% 11.4%
Riposte 4.8% 4.3% 4.5%
Parry 5.8% 5.2% 0%
Skill Evasion 14.9% 13.4% 20.8%
Hit Rate 59.4% 59.7% 59.3%
Avg Hit 107.3 109.9 113.6
% Hits for Max 10.4% 11.7% 13.6%
Avg Dmg / Round 87.4 91.7 86.1
DPS 50.8 53.3 50
The problem was that the average plate-equipped warriors and knights had barely any lead on monks in mitigation, due to the monk bonus, but the monk still had the lead in evasion. Contrary to popular belief, this is what prompted the nerf to monk mitigation, NOT high-end monks being rampage tanks.
The changes had little effect on average level 51 warriors and knights, but since the average level 51 monk was over the new nerfed AC cap, it increased their average damage taken per hit and increased the percent chance of max hits (in the above example) to 13%. Monks who had better than this median AC were hit harder by the nerf since it lowered their effective AC even more. Level 60 monks with exceptionally high item AC (Ssra+) weren't hit quite as hard because the uncapping of item AC gave them more returns on AC over the class cap. The median level 60 changes looked like this (evasion, of course, remained the same):
Class War Pal Mnk
Avg Hit 106 108.9 121.3
% Hits for Max 9.8% 11.2% 18.4%
Avg Dmg 86.4 90.9 91.9
DPS 50.2 52.8 53.4
Several months into PoP, the nerf was partially repealed and the monk AC cap was raised to the same level as druids and beastlords. Their return on AC over the cap was left at the same level. The reasoning at the time was based on a number of factors: the percentage of hits for max made taking damage even more unpredictable and raised the likelihood of one-round deaths more than we wanted, median AC increased for nearly all levels 51+ due to the new armor in PoP and trickle-down of old armor into the economy, and other issues were brought up.
Addendum:
Why were monks below 1160 AC affected?
The AC number you see is a composite of mitigation and avoidance. Defense skill increases both mitigation and avoidance, so gaining skill levels 50+ makes both numbers go up. At level 51, before the mitigation changes, a monk with no buffs, 150 agi, and 163 raw item AC was at the original AC cap with a displayed AC of 985. The nerf made it so that same monk with 118 AC, or 914 displayed, was now at the soft cap. Any level 51 monk with more than that would've experienced the nerf to varying degrees.