Ranger ac parsing (I'm serious)

[Jimjam]

Sorry for that block of text with atrocious spelling. Not so well recently and clearly the paracetamol hadn’t kicked in yet.

[Vear99]

Yelinak is MR immune I believe, so there was no cripple and I do not think there was any Rune. Sakuragi is Iksar; Catzi is Halfling, and Ruba is a Barbarian (no ogres). No one used a shield although I was using Dagas (MH, though). But ultimately this was a quake raid, not a scientific experiment. I remember doing much more significant experiments before, and being quite convinced that AC was very effective, so I am not going to bother to do more at this point.

Also, I thought Yelinak's min was 150; I missed the hits for 125. I redid some of the calculations but they do not change much. If Yelinak had the DI/DB of a burning guardian, AC is only 2.5 HP (1.5 when defensive).

Anyway, I am pretty happy with these results because Sakuragi feels like the only warrior on the server that stacks AC; everyone else loads up on the BP of Vindication and HGLs and talks about their 'X HP warrior' without even mentioning AC. Of course, those aren't bad items at all, and Sakuragi is never going to be a legit velious main tank, but unless significant new evidence comes out I'm satisfied with the gearing choices I made.

[Goregasmic]

Yelinak is 70. Except for kerafyrm I think that's the highest mob level. If there's a mob based cap it is surely lifted on the level 70 mobs so you could find the true softcap, if attainable.

If there's truly a mob cap we still don't know what goes on between level 45 - 70 though.

[Snaggles]

This is a sample of a lot of hits but there still is a chance of the relatively small sample pool providing scatter. Someone like bcbrown could probably use the right terms for what I’m trying to say.

The AC difference between the iksar and Ruba is just over 3%. The results between Catzi and Ruba about 10%. So either there is a significant break at 1400, iksar’s have some sort of small cap advantage due to racial ac, or more parses would even out these results.

I’m not sure. There is no argument that AC scales well for warriors and monks, only that at some point you are trading raw hps which depending on the target or goal might not be worth it.

As for knights and rangers, they don’t take hits nearly as well but that won’t change their usage. No other class can generate more hate per second outside maybe a bane wizard and nobody uses those to tank Lord’s and Lady’s.

[bcbrown]

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

This is a sample of a lot of hits but there still is a chance of the relatively small sample pool providing scatter. Someone like bcbrown could probably use the right terms for what I’m trying to say.

I don't have a snappy name for the principle you're trying to describe, but I can probably illustrate it. Imagine you have two coins, and you're trying to figure out which one is more likely to come up heads - one or both of them might not be exactly fair. Imagine that although you do not know this, one has a 50% chance of heads and one has a 60% chance. Lets say you decide to flip them each ten times, and then say that the coin with more heads is the one that's more likely to come up heads than the other one.

If you flip a 50% coin 10 times, there's a 37.7% chance you get at least 6 heads. If you flip a 60% coin 10 times, there's a 36.7% chance it comes up no more than 5 times. Since these probabilities are independent, there's a 0.377 * 0.367 = 13.8% chance that this scenario happens.

If you instead flip each coin 100 times, there's a 2.8% chance that the 50% coin has at least 60 heads. There's a 2.7% chance that the 60% coin has no more than 50 heads. There's a .08% chance that this scenario occurs.

You can plug your own numbers in here to run any variation on these calculations: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i...2C+X+%3E%3D+60

Neither of these calculations is exactly answering the question "what's the likelihood that the 50% coin has more heads than the 60% coin with n flips", but they illustrate the principle that the likelihood that you pick the wrong coin drops as you increase the number of flips. This page discusses the exact answer to this question, but the answers are too filled with jargon to be readily understandable.

Perhaps this is a succinct description of what Snaggles was trying to say: "Are we confident that the sample size for each toon is large enough that the possibility that the one that appears to do better was just exceptionally lucky, and/or the one that appears to do worse was just exceptionally unlucky, is small enough that we can conclude that the one that appears better actually is better." Maybe that's not very succinct. It's hard to put into words.

I cannot help myself but to note that in the past on this forum I've had interactions with people who were aggressively uninterested in this question when an experiment with a small sample size resulted in an outcome that supported their argument.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I cannot help myself but to note that in the past on this forum I've had interactions with people who were aggressively uninterested in this question when an experiment with a small sample size resulted in an outcome that supported their argument.

This is not a very good way to put it.Typically what happens is posters like OP provide real in-game data for analysis. Other posters who dislike the implications of the data will claim the sample size is too small. It's basically a "god of the gaps" argument. You can throw away all data you disagree with, because there is always a chance the data is wrong in some manner.

I think most people understand there is always a risk of the sample size tainting any conclusions drawn. However, most people who claim a sample size is too small do not provide a larger sample size themselves.

So we end up in a conundrum: Do you trust real data that may be flawed due to sample size? Or do you prefer trusting detractors of the data who merely have anecdotes and no data themselves?

Personally I prefer to trust data over anecdotes generally speaking. This is especially true on P99. People have memories from Everquest live, current P99, and previous P99 patches. It's always possible for anecdotes to be from live or a previous p99 patch, rather than how P99 currently works today.

[Snaggles]

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

This is not a very good way to put it.Typically what happens is posters like OP provide real in-game data for analysis. Other posters who dislike the implications of the data will claim the sample size is too small. It's basically a "god of the gaps" argument. You can throw away all data you disagree with, because there is always a chance the data is wrong in some manner.

I think most people understand there is always a risk of the sample size tainting any conclusions drawn. However, most people who claim a sample size is too small do not provide a larger sample size themselves.

So we end up in a conundrum: Do you trust real data that may be flawed due to sample size? Or do you prefer trusting detractors of the data who merely have anecdotes and no data themselves?

Personally I prefer to trust data over anecdotes generally speaking. This is especially true on P99. People have memories from Everquest live, current P99, and previous P99 patches. It's always possible for anecdotes to be from live or a previous p99 patch, rather than how P99 currently works today.

Not wanting to stamp something into scientific law doesn’t mean trying to maliciously squash the test. Much of EQ knowledge is really lore that has become law. The OP has run a lot of really good tests though and should be applauded for getting closer to this than most have.

At the end of the day this is a game, we aren’t getting paid to run 8hrs or 80 hrs of experiments in a controlled environment. The best thing we can hope for is many people testing similar situations over time. You can draw some basic truths from that data, even with a few disclaimers.

As for AC vs HP’s, the crux of this is for rangers. Personally I wouldn’t gear a ranger for AC for sake of other things I’d rather gear it for. I spent 3 hours tonight in HoT and took about 8 melee hits. Warriors are a different topic all together.

[Goregasmic]

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

This is not a very good way to put it.Typically what happens is posters like OP provide real in-game data for analysis. Other posters who dislike the implications of the data will claim the sample size is too small. It's basically a "god of the gaps" argument. You can throw away all data you disagree with, because there is always a chance the data is wrong in some manner.

I think most people understand there is always a risk of the sample size tainting any conclusions drawn. However, most people who claim a sample size is too small do not provide a larger sample size themselves.

So we end up in a conundrum: Do you trust real data that may be flawed due to sample size? Or do you prefer trusting detractors of the data who merely have anecdotes and no data themselves?

Personally I prefer to trust data over anecdotes generally speaking. This is especially true on P99. People have memories from Everquest live, current P99, and previous P99 patches. It's always possible for anecdotes to be from live or a previous p99 patch, rather than how P99 currently works today.

Data means nothing until you interpret it. You can disagree on the interpretation but if you're going to throw out a data set with no counter argument you're just acting in bad faith.

Anecdotal evidence isn't meaningless but people have to understand it sits below the bottom of the "levels of evidence" pyramid.

I, for one, have only been on these forums a couple months and already saw two instances of a major "this has been parsed to death and we already know the answer" being wrong. So I'll take a sketchy parse over common knowledge any day but if the parse isn't great you have to keep your certainties in check when it comes to your interpretations.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Data means nothing until you interpret it. You can disagree on the interpretation but if you're going to throw out a data set with no counter argument you're just acting in bad faith.

Anecdotal evidence isn't meaningless but people have to understand it sits below the bottom of the "levels of evidence" pyramid.

I, for one, have only been on these forums a couple months and already saw two instances of a major "this has been parsed to death and we already know the answer" being wrong. So I'll take a sketchy parse over common knowledge any day but if the parse isn't great you have to keep your certainties in check when it comes to your interpretations.

Agreed! And yes, it is sadly not uncommon on these forums to get the "it's been parsed to death but I won't/can't give you said parses" answer. That is why I am glad to see posters like OP provide data so we can look at it.

[Vear99]

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

I cannot help myself but to note that in the past on this forum I've had interactions with people who were aggressively uninterested in this question when an experiment with a small sample size resulted in an outcome that supported their argument.

Who are you talking about? I was interested enough in the OP to run my own experiment, and if you want to tank 10,000 hits on a L55+ NPC with multiple AC levels and classes and do all of the appropriate confidence interval math, I'd be very interested.