Claw of Lightning is disappointing (ranger)

[bcbrown]

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

A couple months ago common belief was ranger AC capped around 100 and it has been parsed to hell and back and when someone actually bothered parsing it, it was inaccurate. We still don't know what the actual caps are.

Careful you don't overstate conclusions. What Sogundordor and I found was that against level 40-45 mobs, worn AC has an effect. Sogundordor found that against a storm giant escort, adding AC up to around 200 reduces damage taken in a similar manner to SKs. What I found is that against Shiel Glimmerspindel, worn AC has an effect up to around 160 in a similar manner to a Cleric and a Druid.

What I discovered (or re-discovered, as I learned nothing Torven hadn't already found) was that there's mob-specific squelch points above which adding AC provides little or no benefit, and that the benefit of AC is effectively just shifting the ratio between max-hit and min-hit. There's almost certainly a lower squelch point below which losing AC doesn't increase damage taken.

My understanding of what the "ranger AC is broken and doesn't matter" people have been saying is that it's specific to tanking harder raid mobs. I would caution against extrapolating results tanking easy blues all the way out to tanking red raid mobs. I can think of several ways consistent with my findings that could lead to "ac doesn't matter" against those kinds of targets.

Furthermore, even if AC does matter when raid tanking, rangers aren't gonna be a good choice. Your only defensive-minded discipline lets you act as a speed bump for 15 seconds. Your Defense skill is lower. Gearing for tanking is gonna have tradeoffs with resists or DPS.

On topic, I suspect that if you get some good parses, you'll find that the +attack of Swiftwind leads to a higher hit percentage, and a high proportion of hits will be at or above the "2*damage + bonus" modal value. One interesting experiment would be to use a piercing or 1hb mainhand and get some parses with and without the swiftwind. That'll give you a sense of exactly how the +attack is helping and might give some insight into exactly where the crossover point is between added attack and a better ratio.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

On topic, I suspect that if you get some good parses, you'll find that the +attack of Swiftwind leads to a higher hit percentage, and a high proportion of hits will be at or above the "2*damage + bonus" modal value. One interesting experiment would be to use a piercing or 1hb mainhand and get some parses with and without the swiftwind. That'll give you a sense of exactly how the +attack is helping and might give some insight into exactly where the crossover point is between added attack and a better ratio.

Attack doesn't help your hit percentage. Hit percentage is determined by Offense Skill and Weapon Skill.

Attack will help your damage rolls.

[Solist]

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

A couple months ago common belief was ranger AC capped around 100 and it has been parsed to hell and back and when someone actually bothered parsing it, it was inaccurate. We still don't know what the actual caps are.

What are you going to do on a 25 years old game emulator other than mess around anyway.

What bullshit are you talking about?
We did this over a decade ago. Why do you think it became common vernacular in the first place.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

What bullshit are you talking about?
We did this over a decade ago. Why do you think it became common vernacular in the first place.

Can you actually post the data? Saying you did something without evidence is not really worth much. Never seen the data for quite a few things "done a decade ago", and it never gets posted.

[bcbrown]

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

What bullshit are you talking about?
We did this over a decade ago. Why do you think it became common vernacular in the first place.

I'd love to get your thoughts on the last four pages of the Ranger AC Parsing thread: https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...438517&page=10. What I found against a level 40 mob was that:
* Cleric, Druid, Ranger all saw similar benefits to adding AC
* The impact of AC is to change the ratio of max hit to min hit
* Above ~160 AC there was no more benefit to adding AC against this mob because there were almost no max hits
* The "squelch point" where there's no marginal benefit to adding more AC is mob-dependent

I'm explicitly not drawing any conclusions about ranger AC against raid targets. When you talk about ranger AC not mattering, are you talking about versus xp mobs, versus raid mobs, or both?

[Goregasmic]

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

What bullshit are you talking about?
We did this over a decade ago. Why do you think it became common vernacular in the first place.

When I researched how to gear a ranger a couple months ago I came a lot of threads (not all) stating the AC cap for ranger is around 100ac worn if ac is not downright useless "and its been parsed a ton before" (parses that were never provided).

"We" parsed it a couple weeks back and it turns out there's a hidden AC cap based on mob level and you benefit up until that point. The cap seem to be the same across all classes too, rangers being no exception. It is also much higher than previously thought. Rangers getting trampled post 50 compared to knights/war seemed to be an avoidance problem more than a mitigation one.

See the link bcbrown gave you if you want to learn more.

[Snaggles]

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

ive tried to tell folks that spending that dkp on 1h is a waste for most part, grab a cek if ya wanna dps.

I know but I wanted a BoF anyways. I didn’t expect it would be more than something to play with.

Velious was won with Kunark gear. Burning DKP is just giving reasons to keep playing.

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

rips been showing his parses for years and theres still people worrying about 1 handers lol

Nobody is worried. I’ve been parsing for years too

I’m just trying to determine if someone has a chance to pick up a CoL for a small bit of DKP if it’s even worth it.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Blerv

[Samoht]

It's pretty standard for Swiftwind to be permanently glued to secondary on a ranger. The attack buff makes it better than anything else.

Ranger DPS comes from white swings, and applying the 50 attack to every white swing is pretty huge.

Now you just need to find a matching main hand to go with it.

[Goregasmic]

Yeah, that's why I mentionned the "100 worn AC cap" claim, which I've often seen. Doesn't make ranger tanking gods because they seem to suffer from lower defense past 50. 100 isn't hard to reach and that advice is highly detrimental to all rangers doing solo/group content.

I don't think you should extrapolate results from easy blues to high end raid content either but the other way around is also true; you can't extrapolate a parse from vulak to discredit the value of AC for easy blue mobs. I suspect with around ~250ac you would probably get good returns for most of the group content, which is good unless all you do is raid.

All this to say I don't see the value of giving flak to people testing stuff even if it gives the expected results.

[bcbrown]

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

Attack doesn't help your hit percentage. Hit percentage is determined by Offense Skill and Weapon Skill.

Attack will help your damage rolls.

Adding strength can increase your hit percentage. I assume that's because adding strength increases your attack but I don't know.

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

All this to say I don't see the value of giving flak to people testing stuff even if it gives the expected results.

Fully agree!