Balancing AC and HP (For Paladins/ShadowKnights)

[Splorf22]

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

http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...33&postcount=1

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

Originally Posted by above link

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:

Originally Posted by Kahvok

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