Moss covered Twig

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I don't think there were any changes that affected melee damage output in Luclin or PoP.

A level 60 in PoP with no AAs hitting a mob should do the same damage as they would in velious.

The base code for melee is indeed quite simple. All of the extra stuff like AA's don't directly change the base code, it usually just modifies the results, like adding extra damage or whatever. I don't think they did sweeping changes to the base melee code between classic and PoP.

[Zuranthium]

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

I don't think there were any changes that affected melee damage output in Luclin or PoP.

I'm not sure about those eras, except there was a Monk nerf during that time, but there were changes pre-Luclin.

[bcbrown]

Found another interesting mention:

One last item for today, and this one's going to involve mechanics talk. As of my last post, you saw me mention Damage Bonus. Damage Bonus is an extra mechanic for melee characters to watch; it is a direct bonus to damage done by a weapon. See, damage calculations in EverQuest start with (Base Damage)*2, and goes up based on your skill with that weapon and your Strength score. Damage Bonus adds a flat modifier at the end of the damage calculation, so you'll never hit for "1" ever again once you start to get it. This damage bonus starts at around level 20, and goes up solely based on your level; which is to say, that your level is the determining factor as to what level of damage bonus you get.

Now originally, the damage bonus was hugely in favor of one-handed weapons with low delay, as it was a flat number across all weapons, so it behooved you to slam as many attacks as you could out in as little a time as possible. Even relatively mundane weapons like Fine Steel Daggers (3/19) became absolute blenders with a haste item and a haste spell active on a level 50 melee character. It was changed, and we'll get to why in a moment, during Kunark to a more complicated formula based on level and the delay of the weapon involved. (It was later changed again just before Shadows of Luclin.)

The formula looked like this:

delay<29= ((level - 28)/3) + 1
28<delay<40 = (level - 25)/2
39<delay<43 = (level - 25)/2 + 1
42<delay<45 = (level - 25)/2 + 3
45<delay = (level - 25)/2 + (delay - 31)/3

Faster weapons get comparatively less damage bonus (at level 65, this is 13 points), while higher delay weapons get more, making two-handed weapons more viable. And since the Paladin and Shadow Knights' Epic Weapons are two-handers (which allow bashing without a shield), that made them more viable.

In Kunark, a weapon dropped that helped prompt the Kunark change to the formula above, some five months after Kunark's launch. This item was called the Mosscovered Twig. A comparatively lesser-known item, it dropped in the Frontier Mountains off a named yeti named Boogoog. This weapon was a 3/10 one-handed blunt.

In Kunark, there was no minimum delay. These days, 8 delay is the absolute lowest you can get melee attacks to, and it's because of weapons like this. With a good haste item, and a haste spell buff, this item could absolutely.

Positively.

DESTROY any enemy. 10 delay, plus damage bonus, even on a humble 3 damage weapon, became a completely and utterly destructive force in the hands of the two classes who only hit things - Warrior and Monk, both of whom could use it (along with Rangers, Shadow Knights, and Paladins). To say nothing of what happened when they were hasted below 10 delay; I believe with hitting the 100% haste cap, this became 5 delay, though it's been a while since I looked into the exact math haste does on delay.

To speak briefly on delay, as well - put a decimal point in between the two numbers. A 19 delay causes an attack every 1.9 seconds, for example. A 150 delay, and yes, there is a weapon with 150 delay, attacks every 15 seconds. At 5 delay, that's an attack roll every half-second (0.5), and every attack roll independently rolls for things like Double Attack and crits.

Unlike past nerfs, this was the first example of Verant straight up both replacing the item that caused problems, and nerfing the grandfathered version. The Mosscovered Twig was changed to Secondary only, and was replaced in Boogoog's drop table by the Mosscovered Branch, a 5/15 two-handed blunt weapon - which was positively useless for anything but leveling up your two-handed blunt skill. Secondary weapons do not get the damage bonus, and thus the problem was solved - and then only a few months later they changed the damage bonus calculation anyways which would have made the Twig an interesting, but only moderately useful weapon. Alas, Mosscovered Twig; your time was gone too soon.

From https://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...readid=4006486

[Zuranthium]

The link was missing a '1' at the end - http://web.archive.org/web/200107091...3&t=000082&p=1

The distribution of hits on P99 is not the same as that graph. P99 has less min hits and more hits in the higher range.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

The link was missing a '1' at the end - http://web.archive.org/web/200107091...3&t=000082&p=1

The distribution of hits on P99 is not the same as that graph. P99 has less min hits and more hits in the higher range.

P99 does have similar distributions. My DPS calculator does the same kind of distribution. I know exactly why this distribution occurs. You could test this yourself if you don't believe me. You just need to log in. Thank you for providing evidence that the damage bonus and damage formula are the same as EQEMU and P99 in the Twig time period.

[Zuranthium]

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

P99 does have similar distributions.

No it doesn't. 80% of hits back then were falling in the lower range of the scale. That's not how it works here.

[bcbrown]

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

P99 does have similar distributions. My DPS calculator does the same kind of distribution. I know exactly why this distribution occurs. You could test this yourself if you don't believe me. You just need to log in. Thank you for providing evidence that the damage bonus and damage formula are the same as EQEMU and P99 in the Twig time period.

Show us a distribution graph. All my distribution graphs are missing the spike at min value.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Show us a distribution graph. All my distribution graphs are missing the spike at min value.

008: 079
009: 020
010: 026
011: 042
012: 059
013: 039
014: 045
015: 045
016: 067
017: 058
018: 048
019: 054
020: 045
021: 078
022: 051
023: 051
024: 056
025: 235
026: 037
027: 045
028: 029
029: 025
030: 027
031: 030
032: 025
033: 032
034: 023
035: 021

This is from my DPS calculator. It is a 46 Warrior using a 9/24 weapon against a level 40 mob. Left number is damage value, right number is how many times that damage value was rolled.

Same as this guy:

http://web.archive.org/web/200107091...3&t=000082&p=1

[bcbrown]

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

This is from my DPS calculator. It is a 46 Warrior using a 9/24 weapon against a level 40 mob. Left number is damage value, right number is how many times that damage value was rolled.

I could keep posting distributions without spikes at the min value but I'm curious about this one from your DPS calculator. What values did you use for player skill, mob ac, agility, defensive skill? I'd like to replicate this.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I could keep posting distributions without spikes at the min value but I'm curious about this one from your DPS calculator. What values did you use for player skill, mob ac, agility, defensive skill? I'd like to replicate this.

Sounds like you may be changing your opinion about my calculator.

There are two ways to use my calculator. You can either use autoscaling for skills on players and defensive stats on mobs, or you can manually input everything. By default autoscaling is turned on for ease of use. Autoscaling is a bit less accurate, but not significantly so.

You can turn off player skill autoscaling by setting scaleOffensiveSkillsByPlayerLevel to false.

You can turn off Mob autoscaling by setting scaleDefensiveValuesBasedOnMobLevel to false.

Please listen to how AC works this time. Based on this comment from the EQEMU Code:

According to the guild hall Combat Dummies, a level 50 classic EQ mob it should be ~115

And the Kunark Strategy Guide, which actually posted some rough estimates of AC for the Classic/Kunark Era mobs:

https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/it...ial_eGuide.pdf

It seems like a level 50 Kunark mob has around 115 AC. That is the AC value I used for the level 50 FM giants, to confirm the DPS from my Monk parse matched my calculator:

https://youtu.be/Ub0bfwyKpE0?feature=shared

For all of the level 46 Warrior parses, the player had 100 STR/DEX, and no haste.

Autoscaling is also using this 115 AC value as the guide for how AC scales per level.

Please avoid using like 300 AC for a level 40 mob. I know the wiki says a lot of level 40 mobs have like 300 AC, but as far as I know those values were just scraped from out of era websites. Most if not all of the wiki AC values are probably wrong.

For Riposte/Parry/Dodge on the mob, just leave their skill at 1. From my parsing I noticed that mobs seem to do these less often, on P99 at least.

For the level 46 Warrior using the 9/24 weapon, I was just using autoscaling for both the player and the level 40 mob on the first parse I posted with the 79 min damage rolls.

For the second parse that had more min hits, which closely matched the Sept 2000 parse below, it was a manually tuned mob. It was like a level 40 Mob with 200 Defense Skill, 150 AGI, 120 AC, and 1 for Parry/Riposte/Dodge. Some mobs have higher AC than average according to the Kunark Guide. Frost Giants from Everfrost/Permafrost have like 120 AC, which is what I used as the harder mob.

http://web.archive.org/web/200107211...23&t=000082&p=

For the Bloodmaw parse I just used autoscaling again for the player and mob. I set the mob to level 5.

Finally, remember that my DPS calculator is a fighting simulator. It uses RNG like the real game, so each time you use the calculator, the results will be a bit different.

Use this link for how to use the calculator:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...0&postcount=41