Ranger ac parsing (I'm serious)

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Vivitron [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If I count how many times I got hit for each specific amount of damage this is what I get:

It would be interesting to compare this distribution to a parse against a lowbie mob (just high level enough to have 20 distinct hit buckets*), and also against parses vs desired targets.

This is the analysis that I think will prove the most fruitful. Looking at average hit can provide hints, but looking at the full distribution has a lot more detail.

My understanding of the damage calculations is that it's meant to be a normal distribution with some mean that gets shifted around the DI values depending on the ac/atk comparison, with tails clipped. The number of hits you recorded obviously isn't enough for definitive conclusions, but just eyeballing it I bet 57 is the mean value. Since it's so far below the middle value of the DI, the clipping on the lower tail provides a huge number of minimum hits. I bet if you took a longer parse, the missing 20th value would be the highest number, 152 or 153.

So your AC is fairly completely blanketing the mob's attack value here. Obviously it would be way too much work for anyone to do, but a really interesting experiment would be to play with the worn ac value until you get the mean hit to be the 10th and 11th values of the DI of 85 and 91, then finding how much worn ac you need to add/remove to move that up or down by one AC interval.

[sogundordor]

I keep reading this post but quite busy working in these days to reply~
about the distribution thing,
the following chart shows the hits distribution of 97 worn ac:
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

this chart is shows 1396worn ac:
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

*Higher ac = higher chance for minimum hit = lower chance for max hit
*Lower ac = lower chance for minimum hit = higher chance for max hit
*no idea how those middle value works

Maybe how ac work is very simple~ just control the chance of min/max hitting =P

*I excluded bash/kick lines from all of my analysis too~

[busted]

I like this thread. Nice work sogundordor and friends.

sogundordor have you tried any parses messing around with AGI stat? I'm curious what you find

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by sogundordor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Maybe how ac work is very simple~ just control the chance of min/max hitting =P

That was understood long ago I think. The higher the AC the lower you'll sit on the distribution. It seems like defense plays a big role in avoidance though and rangers lower def compared to knights and warriors is possibly where it hurts a lot, considering the AC soft cap is supposed to be the same for everyone.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by sogundordor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the following chart shows the hits distribution
Maybe how ac work is very simple~ just control the chance of min/max hitting =P

Thanks for including that! Definitely doesn't look like a normal distribution, so maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe you're right - AC just controls the min/max hit distribution. I'm gonna do some parsing on my cleric - at least I can heal myself. I'm using Shiel Glimmerspindle as my target - considers blue, but probably on the lighter end.

[Goregasmic]

Old 2010 thread referencing all this:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=20689

"Mob damage is two parts, DB (Damage Base/Bonus or Fixed Damage /Vig), and (1-20)*DI, which is Damage Interval. You can see this by parsing, that there are 20 discrete amounts of damage any mob can deal on a successful hit. It's not quite /random 1 20, because AC makes a big huge difference in how many low hits you have, but you still have the whole range.
If a mob has a damage base of 200, and a damage interval of 20, then (once they hit you) they'll deal either 220 damage, or 240, 260... etc ... 580, or 600 damage."

"High AC (from gear /Vig) reduces the damage taken from the (1-20)*DI portion a lot, making many more low #*DI than high."

The other part of AC is the "avoidance AC" which is defined by your Defense Skill and your AGI stat. Taraddar writes: "Normally your defense skill and agility contribute to your "avoidance" ac and increase your chance of being missed. AC from gear doesn't effect this at all."

Note some of the AC numbers they go on about are no longer applicable on here since AC caps were changed in 2014.

[Goregasmic]

Thinking about it, the most simple explanation is that there is probably no "mob level cap" on AC but a floor value where AC can't squelch the DI portion of the calculation any lower, which is why you'd see a seemingly hard cap on AC even though there is only supposed to be a soft cap way above observed values. Also explains why AC buffs do nothing and why avoidance shines.

Like, on the storm giant escort you still get the full 1-20 bracket and the full damage range but wether you have 200 worn or 400 worn you're almost only gonna random 1 past 200 so it seems you're hard capped but you actually just can't go below getting a whole bunch of minimum hits with some small randomness thrown in.

[bcbrown]

In addition to worn AC and defense skill, the level differential matters as well right? Against the same level 50 mob, a level 50, 55 and 60 character with same class, gear, and skill levels will have different amounts of damage taken?

On my 54 cleric against Shiel, the damage is completely squelched. A quarter of the hits are for min damage and all the other DI values are roughly the same at about 3-4% each. 194 worn AC and ~65 self-buffed AC. Running more experiments at lower AC later today.

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In addition to worn AC and defense skill, the level differential matters as well right?

Not sure. I haven't seen anything that suggests it but not impossible. Skill caps go up as you level and your gear should get better so that could account for the difference.

At high level, low level mobs often just miss, I have no idea what's the formula for their hit rate.

[bcbrown]

I ran two experiments on my 54 cleric, one with 195 worn ac and one with 132 worn ac. Both had the full cleric buff line with ~64 ac. Here's the magelo. I'd fight Shiel Glimmerspindle, a level 40 rogue, until I had 4-500 hp, then root, CH, re-engage. I'd do that until oom, then root, atone, med up.

On the first experiment I took snapshots at 755 and 1399 hits before concluding the experiment with 1983 hits. Here's the hit distribution for those snapshots:

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Some statistics on the full experiment:
Hit%: 55.6%
Average hit: 42.4
Average hit excluding min value: 51.0
Min hit %: 26.8%

The hit chart does not look normally distributed. Excluding the minimum hit, the rest of the DI intervals each had around 3-5% of the total number of hits, with an average of 29 hits per interval. Here's a chart showing each interval as a ratio of the 29 average number per interval:

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The ratios for the full experiment ranged from 80% to 125%. So still pretty noisy but it does look like a uniform distribution is a better fit than a normal distribution.

For the second experiment I took 1150 total hits.
Hit%: 58.4%
Average hit: 48.5
Average hit excluding min/max value: 50.6%
Min hit %: 19.3%
Max hit %: 12.7%

And here's the chart:
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]