Ranger ac parsing (I'm serious)

[Duik]

When stunned do u still use defensive (disc) and dodge/defense? That would make ogre better. /shrug

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Duik]

So (to me it's) trust the data given (even if it is small in some peoples opinions) until a more robust set is provided.
But how big is big enough?

This scenario is really only applicable to a p99 server locked in one finite min/max era.

There is a literal max HP available.
There is a max mana and AC etc.

Many on live would not have had the option to test 3 BIS items for a given slot to even be able to discern a difference large enough to make an impact. (Given that they most likely went on to luclin etc).

Seems weird to me that a 55AC bp with 100hp (in this era) has much less/more impact than a 45AC bp with AoB.
Either would have been fine for all but the MT back in 2000. Guilds went to the Nth degree to outfit an MT for good reason.
I do enjoy the probability discussions though.

[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.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

So (to me it's) trust the data given (even if it is small in some peoples opinions) until a more robust set is provided.
But how big is big enough?

I would say samples have merit when multiple samples from different mobs match a proposed math formula. P99 uses math formulas for all of the combat calculations, including the chance of being hit. Once you know the math formula, you can apply it to every scenario the math formula is designed for, unless there is some exception in the code somewhere. While that is always possible, it is typically bad practice to add these exceptions coding-wise. Sticking to the existing math forumlas as much as possible is more consistent and easier to debug.

I think my post about the player melee damage formula is a good example of samples matching a proposed math formula:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...&postcount=440

I proposed a math formula based on EQEMU code, and got parse data from a few different mobs of varying level (and different expansions). The data matched the math formula fairly closely, and the sample size of each mob tested wasn't huge. The Epic Fist + SoS data was a sample size of roughly 1000 hits/misses per mob if I recall correctly.

It isn't as likely multiple samples from different mobs in different expansions would just so happen to line up with my formula by chance. Obviously this isn't a guarantee I am correct, and people can try to disprove my post. But I think it's a good starting point for determing if a sample size has merit, without assuming you need a large sample size like 1 million hits/misses.