AC issues are starting to be really problematic.

[Splorf22]

Maybe that's why everyone loved Gharn's Rock of Smashing? 6/13 on the face of it should suck.

Also Shiftin, did you have avatar?

[Splorf22]

I parsed Derakor the Vindicator.

Vs Sakuragi w/evasive disc:

• 718 attempts
• 368 misses (52.6%)
• 238 hits (31.2%)
• 139 hits for max (58.4%)
• 589 average hit

Vs Kental (rampage tank)

• 215 attempts
• 117 misses (54.4%)
• 72 hits (33.5%)
• 45 hits for max (62.5%)
• 603 average hit

Note that Kental is full cobalt; Sakuragi does have 2x Bracers of Benevolence and the Barbed Dragonscale boots but otherwise is basically in his Kunark gear. So Kental had about 50-75 displayed AC on me, but he got hit for max almost 10% more. Now this isn't a small sample size, but it isn't exactly big either. So I am not jumping to conclusions here. But these are the kind of parses that make everyone question the value of AC for raid tanking. I would be very curious to see Derakor's average hit vs 150, 200, 250 etc item AC. Maybe his ATK value is simply so high that we are all scum to him.

[Rogean]

The kael mobs had higher attack than intended. We're looking at lowering it. In our own testing, we saw good results for AC against temple of veeshan mobs, which have better tuned attack values then Kael.

We are also looking at increasing mob chances to hit. This should change the balance of evasive vs defensive but only slightly.

Thoughts?

[Splorf22]

Would you be willing to post those internal test results Rogean?

First, it seems we were really unlucky last night:

Originally Posted by http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=424

Out of ... 40+ ? or so total Vindic Kill in my life if seen 25i+BP, 15+ Boot, 1 Earring

http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...hread.php?t=13 suggests that evasive should be used up until the DI/DB ratio is 0.14. If we let E be the % hit reduction and AC be the average DI number (20 = always max, 0 = always min) we can write:

• E * (DB + (AC * DB * 0.14)) = (DB + (AC * DB/2 * 0.14))
• E * DB * (1 + 0.14AC) = DB * (1 + 0.07AC)
• E = (1 + 0.14AC)/(1 + 0.07AC)
• E = 2.4/3.8 = 63% (AC = 20 -> always max hit)
• E = 1.7/2.4 = 71% (AC = 10 -> median hit)
• E = 1 / 1 = 100% (AC = 0 -> always min hit)

So probably evasive should result in being hit 2/3 as much - maybe a bit more, if the old school warriors gave the edge to defensive to reduce spikes. So something like being hit 65% of the time with defensive and somewhere between 40-45% of the time with evasive feels right. Instead both Kental and I were down near 30%. That's actually a 33% increase in damage.

Originally Posted by http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12347

Kael Drakkal.........................Pause........Resis ts
Derakor the Vindicator....T1........30.............-
Statue of Rallos Zek........T1........75.............-
King Tormax...................T2........35............ -
Avatar of War.................T2........20.............-

That is a 5.25s chain. Now they did have to deal with more lag, and obviously it depends on the tank (and the thread degenerated into a flamewar quickly) but we were using a slower chain last night. Also, I suspect this is a troll, but who would actually think to drag Kyenka all the way to the arena to try this?

Originally Posted by http://thetrilithhub.yuku.com/topic/815

Slowing Vindi

Derakor the Vindicator (Vindi), in Kael Drakkal, was once a significant raid target and remains an NPC upon whom growing guilds test their mettle. Until far into Luclin, and in some cases Planes of Power, he was the scale by which mobs were rated. People would say "X is harder than Vindi" or "...slightly easier than Vindi" or "...like fighting 2 Vindi's at once". Vindi himself was a measure of power, and a stepping stone, for many, to the "high-end" content. One of the reasons for this is that he was fought full-on. He wasn't slowed, he was thought to be immune. Vindi was the first significant mob people practiced advanced "CH chains", "Positioning", and "Main Tank" theory on. While he has largely been replaced by more difficult measures of power, many people developed a respect and hatred for him that lingers yet today. While his loot is unimpressive, he still gets killed. If more people knew that he could be one-grouped, he'd be killed even more.

It is true that no player can slow Derakor, nor can they snare or root him. However, that's as far as the statement goes; and this does not make him unslowable. In fact, because of certain mechanics in the game, it is very difficult for any mob to be immune from any single spell without having to make it resistant to everything. Derakor the Vindicator is not immune to slow.

While no player may land slow spells on Vindi, an NPC can. Mobs can do many things that players can't, and the ability to land spells on "immune" mobs is one of them. In order to slow Vindi, you will need to charm another NPC and get him to cast the slow. Kael happens to have such an NPC, a level 57 giant named Kyenka. He can be found in the King Tormax area.

TL;DR: Derakor is supposed to tough. IMO he should hit for max a bit less, but miss much less (especially with evasive) and generally not be easier. Remember, we had 2! clerics. With 4 we would probably have won. And we had under 30 total players I believe.

[Splorf22]

Also: I don't understand why we have a softcap on AC here when we have an EQ dev explicitly stating that there was a hardcap (and exactly what that hardcap was) all throughout classic. I'm not saying that hardcap system is better or more balanced, but is the goal to be classic or not?

[Rogean]

Vindi's chance to hit a level 60 warrior, after level and skill calculations, is currently around 68%. Evasive is a 50% reduction to chance to hit, which makes it 34%. Are you saying Evasive shouldn't be dropping it that low? It's possible evasive is not being applied at the correct spot. Perhaps only to the mob's base chance before those extra calculations are applied (level and skill).

A level 60 warrior also has around a 6% chance to trigger either Dodge, Parry or Riposte. However, these abilities are all checked separately. That's three separate 6% chances to completely avoid an attack. I'm not convinced this is working as it should.

Let me know your thoughts. This is one of the systems we have to best guess on as we have no idea of the real sequence of processing and math behind the eqlive system.

[wycca]

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

Vindi's chance to hit a level 60 warrior, after level and skill calculations, is currently around 68%. Evasive is a 50% reduction to chance to hit, which makes it 34%. Are you saying Evasive shouldn't be dropping it that low? It's possible evasive is not being applied at the correct spot. Perhaps only to the mob's base chance before those extra calculations are applied (level and skill).

A level 60 warrior also has around a 6% chance to trigger either Dodge, Parry or Riposte. However, these abilities are all checked separately. That's three separate 6% chances to completely avoid an attack. I'm not convinced this is working as it should.

Let me know your thoughts. This is one of the systems we have to best guess on as we have no idea of the real sequence of processing and math behind the eqlive system.

I wanted to jump in on the defensive skill thing. I was in a pretty unique position to discuss these things with Maddoc while he was working on skill revamps/increases and in regards to various AA. I also did extensive parsing for years. Most of this is from memory, since I long since deleted the emails and I don't think my old SoE PM's are around since they changed forum software. I can try to dig for some self-quotes on Monkly Business, but I know I never talked very much (or at all) publically about fire rates because over time, the monk fire rate for block became quite insane (Maddoc wanted to nerf it).

Check order was -
Block
Parry
Dodge
Riposte

Each check obviously reduced the next skill's overall fires a bit, since a block rate of 10% meant you were checking Dodge on only 90% of the attacks you were checking Block on.

Each one fired the same % for skill, except for Block, which fired exactly 2x that of Parry (and the others).

The fire rate of 6% for Parry/Dodge/Riposte may be about right - at least for a Monk (not sure how different Warrior values are offhand). This would give block a rate of 12% - also seems about right, maybe a tad bit high. I seem to remember alot of sub 5% Riposte parses, while others were higher due to the nesting and Riposte being checked last. They SHOULD NOT be checking independently, the checks are always done in order. Ie, 3x checks at 6% fire rate should not = 18% mob melee hit reduction, it's -6%, -(6% of 94%), -(6% of (94% of 94%).

The neat thing is that this is probably easy to test on live still since (even tho he wanted to) Maddoc never changed how these fired (and I doubt devs post-2008 mucked with those systems). The skill levels did not change much by level at least thru 2008 when I quit, so it should be easy to remove the +% items and Improved focus on live from this era to test values that you can extrapolate comparable values from in your system. I think I still have a lvl 70 monk with 30million hp and GM regen on test leftover from assisting Rashere one time. This character could also be a good option for testing resists (which I think are off here vs. on live, altho there have been resist revamps since then on live, including ones that I think may have made resists less effective than they were in Velious (bards ruled Velious IMO)). Is there any interest in this? Obviously can't quite create the same test on live with a lvl 60 toon as we could here, but can do the reverse - ie cloning the live toon's level/skill values/gear. If we're lucky, maybe the AA was reset at some point since I was on test or maybe I can get a GM to reset it, so may even be able to remove that variant (if its not in code for some reason). Given the buffs on that character, it would be an easy matter to test about any mob in Classic-Velious for defensive skills and resists. If the numbers match at that level in a very long parse, then they should tell you if the system/npc values are fairly close even if we can't test lvl 60's. I just don't know how I might de-level the character without removing the GM buffs or having to explain to a GM that I have some buffs I shouldn't have.

This may also work well for naked AC parsing if that's helpful, altho due to the many AC/returns revamps on live, it won't show anything for geared mitigation past your softcap levels. However, if I went down to say, 0/100/200/300 raw ac, it may be comparable. Hopefully they haven't removed classic mobs or wiped test, since I haven't been on that server/live in forever.

[Splorf22]

Kael Parses

veteran hjrek: shissar (1089 displayed AC)
Accuracy: 56.1%
Hits: 101
Min: 46 4.9%
Max: 168 16.8%
Average Hit: 109

veteran sjrelt: shield of elders (1155 displayed AC)
Accuracy: 60.1%
Hits: 134
Min: 14.9%
Max: 12.7%
Average Hit: 94

a protector of zek: shissar (1099 displayed AC)
hits: 72
Min: 5/72 = 6.9%
Max: 13/72 = 18.1%
Average: 290

a protector of zek: shield of elders (1165 displayed AC)
Hits: 129
Min: 20/129 = 15.5%
Max: 13/129 = 10.1%
Average: 261

looks pretty good here I would say . . . maybe even too good? Anyway, AC clearly works on these two mobs.

is there any way we can copy over the Veteran's atk/str to say the cliff golem and such?

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=4503

Increase Chance to Avoid Melee by 50%

32% chance to avoid -> 48% chance to avoid would make a lot more sense based on this and the previous math.

So if you change evasive to 33% chance to hit reduction and decrease his hit % and max hit % slightly, that should be more classic.

Caveat: I never played Velious on live

[Rogean]

Hmm... I like it.