Lull line -- some empirical testing on CHA and crit resist rates

[TomisFeline]

awesome awesome
the 250 Cha test would also be super interesting

[Atmas]

Very nice work.

I've long been wondering if the different spells in the line Lull, Soothe etc. have different resist rates and effectiveness against varying mobs levels. It was my understanding on live this was not the case, that they only varied in their duration and agro/social radius. However, P99 may have been coded differently.

[Abominog]

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

Very nice work.

I've long been wondering if the different spells in the line Lull, Soothe etc. have different resist rates and effectiveness against varying mobs levels. It was my understanding on live this was not the case, that they only varied in their duration and agro/social radius. However, P99 may have been coded differently.

I wonder the same. I believe the higher spells have fewer critical resists based on my experience playing enchanter on blue and red. However, my charisma also increased around the time I acquired the spells so I might be mistakenly attributing the reduction of critical failures to the spell.

[fadetree]

Nice work. So, you say these are immune to soothes...is that because they are actually flagged as immune or just because they have some kind of very large resistance? If they are actually flagged as immune, I wonder if that might affect the mechanics.

[Puluin]

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

Nice work. So, you say these are immune to soothes...is that because they are actually flagged as immune or just because they have some kind of very large resistance? If they are actually flagged as immune, I wonder if that might affect the mechanics.

The mobs he tested this on were immune to the spell used due to mobs level. Soothe has a lower level cap.

From a bard point of view; we get 1 lull song that caps at 55? Will not work on mobs 56+... however I will not get agro off of the higher level mobs unless lull actually critical fails.

I don't have numbers or logs, but from appearances, I seem to have a much much easier time consistently landing lull on high level mobs compared to pal or enc.
I rarely have more than 150 cha and typically float at 141 during these lulls.
However, regardless of what other people say about wind modifier ( claims that it doesn't work ) I have personally experienced a consistent lower rate of critical fails while using the 25mod flute from PoG compared to no flute.

[A1551]

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

I don't have numbers or logs, but from appearances, I seem to have a much much easier time consistently landing lull on high level mobs compared to pal or enc.
I rarely have more than 150 cha and typically float at 141 during these lulls.

I've got a mid 40's bard and I really did feel like, even compared to my (almost) max cha enchanter, I could lull all day with very rare crit resists, with a cha in the ~110 range. I always hypothesized this was inherent to the song line to balance the very short duration of the song (ie, a bard often needs to lull and then re-lull multiple mobs before a pull where a pally/chanter/cleric stick it and are done). I wonder if this is my imagination, or by design, and or accurate for the era, haha. Regardless, not something im interested in testing! But I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if it was true.


Finally as to a 255 cha test, I'll do one with a sample of 200 as well. Except it'll be CHA 247 because that's what I got!

[abyssalstalker]

Originally Posted by A1551 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Finally as to a 255 cha test, I'll do one with a sample of 200 as well. Except it'll be CHA 247 because that's what I got!

I'm willing to lend items that will make up the difference to get you to 255.

Please contact me and we can figure something out.

[Zipity]

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

The mobs he tested this on were immune to the spell used due to mobs level. Soothe has a lower level cap.

From a bard point of view; we get 1 lull song that caps at 55? Will not work on mobs 56+... however I will not get agro off of the higher level mobs unless lull actually critical fails.

I don't have numbers or logs, but from appearances, I seem to have a much much easier time consistently landing lull on high level mobs compared to pal or enc.
I rarely have more than 150 cha and typically float at 141 during these lulls.
However, regardless of what other people say about wind modifier ( claims that it doesn't work ) I have personally experienced a consistent lower rate of critical fails while using the 25mod flute from PoG compared to no flute.

I have on multiple occasions lulled PoZ’s in Kael which are lvl 56. Also some lvl 56 neriads in SG can’t definitively say I’ve lulled anything 57+ though!

[A1551]

Ok, abyssal actually hooked me up with a few things to bump my charisma to 255 (thanks!) and I was able to run another 200 attempts.

in 200 attempts, at 255 CHA, 12 crit resists, or a 6% rate.

Just as a reminder, the results from original test were:
95 Cha, 200 tests -- 71 critical resists (ie 35.5% crit rate)
200 Cha, 200 tests -- 15 critical resists (ie 7% crit rate)

So it sounds like CHA over 200 has a much reduced impact on crit resists, and it is possible it has none at all, although my money is on "much smaller impact." The differences are so small, I think substantially larger sample sizes would be needed to confidently elicit the differences. Unlike 95 vs 200, where a few crits here or there doesn't meaningfully change the results, comparing 200 vs 255 the difference between "does nothing" and "diminished returns" is very easily lost to a little bit of random noise.

I will, at some point, still do the test on mob level and crit chance. I'll probably just do one set of 200 attempts at either 200 or 95 cha vs a lvl 50 gate guard and compare it to the results I got vs the lvl 61 mob.

ps -- lojik! whats up!

[A1551]

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

Nice work. So, you say these are immune to soothes...is that because they are actually flagged as immune or just because they have some kind of very large resistance? If they are actually flagged as immune, I wonder if that might affect the mechanics.

As another poster mentioned, they are immune by virtue of the spells not working on mobs past a certain level. I was concerned this would cause issues, but based on the actual results I think it is fairly safe to say the game just treats the immunity as a resist and then checks for a crit. It is certainly possible, if not likely, that something else goes on behind the scenes, like maybe the game reports each cast out as a resist, but in reality, behind the scenes some of the non crits are factoring as "immune" successes and then some as resists, and only checking for crits vs the resists. But I'd say it is pretty unlikely for many reasons. Of course I'd never rule it out completely.

A much more plausible shortcoming of my testing (which I do want to do another trial on when I have some time) is if there is a level component to the crit chance -- IE are higher level mobs more likely to crit resist than lower level ones. That would change the conclusions and make the rules less easy to weigh, although it wouldn't invalidate the findings as much as make them more complicated. It would turn the above analysis into more of a "worst case scenario" of when you're lulling high level mobs. My guess is the "level" component is factored in via the resist rate, ie, you get more crit resists on higher level mobs because you get more resists (and thus more chances to crit). But it is entirely plausible there is a double penalty and level increases the crit rate too!