Has anyone seriously parsed AC?

[koros]

You guys are both generally correct. But vs high atk mobs, Pasi is slightly more correct.

[pasi]

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

You guys are both generally correct. But vs high atk mobs, Pasi is slightly more correct.

I intentionally left some variables out so that I wouldn't be writing a book of a post [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

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

If you can't live through a max round, AC may/will be the better choice, depending on the mobs mean DI, number of hits per round, etc. There's an equation we could plug in to determine the probability exactly. There's 2 intersecting lines where one or the other is the superior choice.

I agree with this in theory, but not in practice. My example for this earlier is Vindicator. Evasive will come out to be better than Defensive from a mathematical standpoint, but evasive is inferior from a practical/strategy standpoint. Minimizing damage intake and surviving are usually the same side of the coin, but they can be separate in some instances. This is due to healing being entirely pre-emptive in this era.

Originally Posted by Raev

I mean, I just did this earlier in the thread, although it was a simulation and not a closed form equation.

Obviously it will look different for every mob of course, and I have no idea how the Spiroc Lord is tuned vs Velious mobs

Two things.

1) You're comparing hardcap AC returns with your Spiroc Lord. I'm talking softcap returns here. This is complicated by the fact that I have no idea how good softcap returns are gonna be over here. I will concede that the more unclassic we go with AC, the more I'm gonna be wrong.

2) Spiroc Lord (should) have a lot lower ATK than Velious mobs.

Originally Posted by Raev

ATK is not what is important; it's the number of attacks.

I think we're including number of attacks in # of rounds. I thought this went without saying! Obviously, the more attacks (rounds) that you're looking at between CHeals, the more we're gonna see a normal distribution. No need to go further than koros did in his previous post!

[pasi]

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

This is almost exactly what I did, except rather than measuring the proportion of tank deaths I measured the maximum damage over 100 parses of 30 attacks.

The 0.75 interval hits (25% max hits) vs 0.60 interval hits (40% max hits) come from parses of Sakuragi (in resist gear), Bobbarker, and Argh against the Spiroc Lord.

Velious was originally launched with a hardcap in place on live. Meaning, AC was literally worthless for people for players with more than 289 raw AC from gear. Later on in Velious, they put in a softcap with a small return for melee only. It wasn't until the Luclin mitigation/avoidance patch where softcaps gave reasonable returns (along with a host of other changes that I won't get into).

Obviously, that doesn't necessarily apply over here (for good reasons, EQ has enough useless stats). So, I'm going to write the rest of this under the assumption that the server will have an AC softcap with decent returns.

It's a pretty simple idea, you need to be able to reliably survive in the short-run before you should be concerned with reducing damage intake in the long run. I typed up a long post explaining this in detail, but figured I could illustrate this concept in a much easier matter.

Let's take Derakor the Vindicator for example since you brought him up.

Vindicator has a DI of 25 and a DB of 200. Mathematically speaking, evasive discipline will be superior at reducing average damage compared to defensive discipline. However, any intelligent tank is going to be using defensive instead of evasive on Vindicator.

Why is this?

Because with defensive, you can guarantee that a tank can live 3 rounds while defensive. While it is unlikely that an evasive tank will die in 2 rounds, it is a possibility. Obviously, it is a larger possibility with 3 rounds (what I can guarantee a defensive tank living through).

The argument against AC is similar to the argument against evasive. With AC, you're looking at an effect that is seen over the duration of the entire fight. But, in reality, we're really only concerned about tiny sections of the fight (damage spikes) since CHeal is going to 'reset' combat every 1-3 rounds (pending on our rotation). As you decrease the number of rounds, the effects of AC on a smaller number of hits makes for far more variable rounds. With a mob like AoW, you're looking at 1-2 rounds of combat.

Yes, you'll have more of these tiny sections (damage spikes) of the fight with HP stacking, but less of these will matter (be lethal rounds). With AC, you'll have less of these tiny sections, but more of them will matter.

I was one of the biggest proponents of AC stacking on TSW, it's just a very, very dumb thing to do in the Velious era if raid tanking is your goal. With that said, I mentioned item availability in my prior post - it's not like you have much of a choice in stats until augs come along.

[Raev]

I understand your argument quite well: you are saying "well, if +X AC reduces your damage taken by 10% on average, that is inferior to +10% HP, because the worst case damage for the higher AC warrior is the same. Eventually in the CH chain you will hit that worst case". The problem is you are forgetting about two other effects. First, total damage is the sum of IID random variables, i.e. the individual attacks. This means that Central Limit theorem applies, and reduces the variance. Second, AC itself reduces variance by reducing the frequency of max hits. If AC simply reduced the value of max, interval, and min hits by X% it wouldn't be nearly as effective.

[pasi]

The issue you're going to run into is PC AC versus mobs with incredibly high ATK. I'm actually arguing that AC doesn't make a lethal scenario come up that much less in the scenarios where you actually want gear. The shit you actually want some gear for in Velious is going to have really fuckin' high ATK.

Take a look at the AoW logs from beta:

http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=150045

You have tanks who are presumably already at the softcap for AC getting smashed. Looking at the short logs, the DI (when you account for defensive) curve appears centered ~18-19ish. If your non-defensive DI curve is centered around a DI of 18 with AC stacking vs a DI of 19 with HP stacking, it means fuck all if you're mitigating a bit better if you still have a large chance of being one-rounded.

[Pint]

I always see these ac threads and think cool maybe ill learn something new this time... I guess this is just another ac thread though = \

[Sage Truthbearer]

Pasi, you're going way over my head. I'm gonna need someone to explain this to me like I'm 5 years old.

[heartbrand]

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

Pasi, you're going way over my head. I'm gonna need someone to explain this to me like I'm 5 years old.

[Raev]

ATK is not what is important; it's the number of attacks.

[koros]

Both are determining factors. But you're right, the more a mob attacks the more likely it is that central limit theorem applies. However, if you can get your hp total greater than the damage a mob can do in x rounds, it's going to be the superior choice. Imagine an extreme example of +10,000 ac or +10,000 hp. With complete heal, the HP will guarantee your tank doesn't die, but the ac allows for the possibility.

If you can't live through a max round, AC may/will be the better choice, depending on the mobs mean DI, number of hits per round, etc. There's an equation we could plug in to determine the probability exactly. There's 2 intersecting lines where one or the other is the superior choice. So it's definitely not a certainty either way (unless you can live through a max round with more hp, but couldn't with more ac)