AC & AGI Questions

[busted]

Does anyone have a good sense of how AC & AGI affect mitigation?

Better yet, has anyone been able to parse any noticeable differences when AGI or AC is higher?

I've found 2 threads on the topic but didn't really see a consensus on how it works

- https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=268325
- https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=283237

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Additional questions:

1. After a certain amount of AC from items, does the AC not help anymore? (e.g. hard caps)
2. Does AGI help with more dodges, parries, etc? (It *seems* so but I don't have a hard parse on this)
3. What would be a good mob to test out these AC/AGI conspiracy theories on?

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If it turns out AGI does have a noticeable difference, it makes items like https://wiki.project1999.com/Cat_o%27_Nine_Tails +18agi worth carrying around for the min/maxxers

Thanks, friends.

[Troxx]

1. There is no point where AC stops helping. Yes there are softcaps, but even beyond that regardless of class it still helps.
2. AGI is fairly minimal as long as you're above the minimum value where the drop off occurs. It isn't worthless, mind you ... it's just minimal
3. I did a lot of this testing on Live where people had a ton more flexibility in gearing (specifically augment choices). On live where lots of flexibility existed, pursuing AC worked out better than simply pursuing raw HP. This was true for both the raid level and the group level.

Regardless of how much of a fanboy for AC I was on live, during this time-line it's really not worth doing hours and hours of parsing for a couple of reasons:

1) Most of the time your choice will be obvious. The best items have meaningful AC and HP on them (exception being the groupable chardok hp earrings). If the item doesn't have both, it's still fairly obvious. For the non end-game character ... you'll still be focusing on the important stats/resists for your class type.
2) Until you get to such a point that complete heals always hit you for maximum, it's kind of irrelevant. Even then, having the extra hp to survive the big burst quad (+/- flurry) beyond that is still of more value. For such encounters, you should have a tightly controlled CH chain rolling factoring in both mob average dps and the relative risk of tank-killing spikes. By the time you GET to that level of hp, you're already going to have BiS everywhere or everywhere ... and refer back to point 1 above. The best items are generally very obvious.

How does AC work?

When the mob lands a hit on you there is an equation that kicks in. This factors in your level, the mob's level, your ac, and the mobs attack. This hit is DB + DI (1-20). The minimum hit is DB + 1(DI). The maximum hit is DB + 20(DI).

DB= Damage base
DI= Damage interval

The higher your ac, the more it skews the hits received to the lower damage interval levels. The lower your ac, the more it skews to the high. AC's impact at the very high end is a lot more potent than simply how much it reduces your average DPS intake ... it's how it has an exponential effect on lowering your chances of one of those tank killer rounds where everything lands for DI15 or higher ... or one of those wipeout rounds where you take a full quad (+/- flurry) where it's all DI20.

For the nastiest of mobs like AoW, a full max quad + a max flurry where all hits land can take (I think) out a BIS raid geared warrior outside of defensive. I'd have to go back and double check though ... I am not sure where the best tanks on this server are buffing out to these days. A max quad/flurry on AoW is 6924dmg. If people can buff out over 7k and are at full health when it hits, surviving is technically possible. Aegolism is 1100hp. Focus is 450ish? DS is 200.

Realistically ... most people can just disregard this theorycrafting and acknowledge that as long as you have gear within the realm of intended for the content you'll be fine. Beyond that it's the job of the cleric team to keep the chain rolling with as few hiccups as possible.

All other things considered equal (HP, weapons, resists, threat generation), the tank with higher ac will perform notably better than the tank with lower ac.

[Toxigen]

75+ agi > HP > AC > CHA

forever and always, and is why max CHA wars are actually the true min/max (for DI)

(still glad Troxx is back I really enjoy his posts)

[busted]

Thanks for the detailed description Troxx!

I agree that HP/AC most important for raid mobs. I'm more curious about common game play than end-game raid boss tanking and outside of just warrior class. Like if rangers, pal, shd, sham, bard whatever wants to take less damage or be tankier

I'm curious why parsing wouldn't help shed light on the situation. E.g. fighting the same non-raid mob several times with different gear on and parsing misses to see if there is a noticeable percentage difference with higher AGI.

There's gotta be some code in the eqemu codebase that sheds light on this or someone who has parsed.

Checkout this video from Kankersaur where he parses fights and sees the percentage misses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPJScKDVnM Has anyone done this with different sets of gear on?

[pasi]

About 10 years ago, one of the developers posted the formulas for "avoidance ac"

Formulas Here

The Meat of It:

Displayed AC Value is equal to what we'll call your 'AC Sum' added to your 'Computed Defense' multiplied by 1000 then divided by 350 plus 497. What that looks like as an equation is:
(1000 * (ACSum + ComputedDefense)) / (350 + 497)

Because it's shorter, I'll now explain how to find your 'Computed Defense'. Think of the 'Computed Defense' as 'Avoidance AC', it is basically how hard it is to land a hit on you. Despite this fact, this value gets rolled into displayed AC. To calculate this, take your defense skill multiplied by 400 then divided by 225, add your 'Agility Bonus', add the capped sum of your 'Item Avoidance', then multiply this value based on your 'Drunkenness Reduction'. If this value is less than 1, return 1 instead. I'll display this as an equation then break down the steps in the next paragraphs:
Step1 = (DefenseSkill*400) / 225
Step2 = Step1 + 'Agility Bonus'
Step3 = Step2 + 'Item Avoidance'
Step4 = Step3 * 'Drunkenness Reduction'
If Step4 < 1: 'Computed Defense' = 1
Otherwise 'Computed Defense' = Step4.

Your 'Agility Bonus' is calculated as your 'Functional Agility' minus 40, multiplied by 8000 divided by 36000 added to your heroic agility divided by 10. Your 'Functional Agility' is defined as your capped stat + the amount of heroic Agility you have. I'll use the values on my avatar as an example, the second tab of my inventory window states that I have 1002/900 base agility +395 heroic agility. My 'Functional Agility' is 900+395, 1295, the value that is displayed on the first tab of my inventory window. In equation form it looks like:
Step1 = (8000 * (FunctionalAgility-40)) / 36000
Step2 = (HeroicAgility / 10)
'Agility Bonus' = Step1 + Step2

Now, this is from 2014 EQLive code and while it gives a comparison to defensive skill, it does not say much in the way of effectiveness.

This is the only agility parse that I've seen demonstrate much of an effect. And well, it's pretty minimal.

I've heard alot that normal agi doesn't do anything, but I wondered, so I did 2 9 hour parses, with the only difference being by agi score.
Low score was 710 and the high score being 962. No gear changed, this was done by having no planar power, and max planar power/planar agi.
Both times during the test, I had max CA/CS, armor of wisdom, and staff block.

My Low agi parse had a miss rate of 10% after 9 hours

The high agi parse (962) had a miss rate of 10.8%

You can read the discussion in the thread as well. The difference in block chance basically negates the observed difference.

[Jimjam]

Sometimes I am skeptical of big logs. Not because they are technically wrong, but because they use trivial targets which can be survived for hours at a time. The stat they are testing has already been swamped past the point of max effectiveness.

It would be like a level 60 testing armour class versus a decaying skeleton using a set of banded armour versus BIS. You’d have the same mitigation against the skeleton in the logs but it would be wrong to conclude adding AC beyond banded is pointless - you’d just need to test the difference between banded and BIS against higher level mobs which don’t get their atk swamped by even the basic AC provided by banded.

[Troxx]

Parsing ac is very tedious. You need the same mob (to include level), control for lots of variables, a mob that is actually within challenge range, and a long looooooooooong sample. This means having a dedicated healer just sitting there healing you.

To be statistically significant, when I parsed ac on live I usually aimed for a 2-3 hour continuous parse to even out the RnG. This was pretty easy towards the end of my time there because mercenary healers. 2-3 box and have the alts load a cleric each. Find a mob and let it whack me while afk doing chores around the house.

I forget which program I used to process it but it broke it down nicely to include bar graphs for each specific DI hit.

[Allishia]

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

Parsing ac is very tedious. You need the same mob (to include level), control for lots of variables, a mob that is actually within challenge range, and a long looooooooooong sample. This means having a dedicated healer just sitting there healing you.

To be statistically significant, when I parsed ac on live I usually aimed for a 2-3 hour continuous parse to even out the RnG. This was pretty easy towards the end of my time there because mercenary healers. 2-3 box and have the alts load a cleric each. Find a mob and let it whack me while afk doing chores around the house.

I forget which program I used to process it but it broke it down nicely to include bar graphs for each specific DI hit.

We should try this with in seb, you be the clr, I'll afk on warrior and do misc house chores /nod.

Just keep it rooted on me will be fine [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[zelld52]

How does this work for monks? I've always held on to a theory that monks have a hidden avoidance formula that is tied to weight limit. Anyone have solid info on that?

[Troxx]

Monks have some nice innate block/parry/whatever and some of their own ac perks.

But as far as how ac affects incoming damage it’s all the same (but worse compared to warriors)

In that regard it’s all math.