Agility, what's it good for?

[Nunyabiz]

This thread is pretty angry for the most part, and I personally don't know why.

Im sort of unclear on that myself, personally in not "angry" im actually finding the whole thing quite funny.

But like you i do sense some leather panties in a tight wad from the parse fanatics which i can only assume is brought on from hours of staring at numbers becoming obsessed it sort of like some religious fanatic obsessed with thinking 'Thier" god is THE god and all others are false and the followers are Infidels.
Hence since Copr is so obsessed with these parses(his lil God) then absolutely anything else is heresy and anyone that doesnt bow to his god is an Infidel<---that be ME.

JIIIHHAADDD you go Copr preach it.

Meanwhile im just wondering wtf is all teh rukus about :roll:

[Grymlok]

Hmmm yet somehow for some odd reason YOUR AGI is the second highest stat you have on YOUR char. LOL
How can that be?
I guess you must have "sacraficed" something to get it there eh?

Well actually I will gladdly point out to you that you have done just about exactly what i did.
You will notice your AC & HPs are pretty decent, when you actively try and raise your AC/HPs AGI naturally follows. DOH.

Your Wis is good because your starting to get a few pieces of Eplane gear.
get a grip people.

Actually, if you look at that eplane gear I have (3 pieces), they are the reson my AGI is up there, not my Wis.  Each piece of gear has 20+ agi on it (as do my VT legs, another recent aquisition), while having roughly half that much Wis.  Frankly, it amused me the day I noticed that I capped Agi out buffed, as I have never put any work into raising it.

My gear is focused towards +hp, +mana, and +atk.  Everything else can rot.

[Grymlok]

Putting aside the rather pointless personal attacks I have to wonder how worthless agi is when you do in fact clearly gain ac from it.  SOE maintains the following (taken friom the Ruins of Kumark Prima Guide:

"Agility helps determine your defensive abilities, it affects how often you are hit, and to a lesser degree how much damage you take.  The higher your agility the less likely you are to be hit by melee combat.  It also affects how quickly you learn some defenseive skills."

This is from the people that actually made the game, I would think they knew best how their own progam works.

A) Prima guides are the biggest joke on EQ.

B) When I first started, I had a lowbie SK who died far from my bind point.  Being late at night, I looked in the eq manual that came with the game I had just installed.  It said my corpse would last for 24 hours, so I went to bed.  In the morning, I woke up, and made the trek only to find no corpse.  After getting in contact with a GM, I was told that my corpse only lasted for 3 hours, and that there was nothing he could do.  That manual was included by the people that actually made the game, I would think they would know how their own program works.

[Nunyabiz]

noticed that I capped Agi out buffed, as I have never put any work into raising it.

My gear is focused towards +hp, +mana, and +atk. Everything else can rot.

Same difference, point is even focusing on HP mana atk you maxed your AGI without even trying.

Reason that is that majority of decent Beastlord gear has AGI on it PERIOD you cant help but from raise your AGI unless you just actively avoid it

And all ive said from the beginning is i simply think AGI is a bit more usefull than most of you seem to think it is. not sacrafice ALL or anything to raise it. especially since it would actually be hard to do so anyway after you get past lvl 60.
_________________
coupl eof you people are just rabid, need shots or something.

[Thrashum Gud]

Please provide me the PROOF verified by ANY ONE from SOE that you and all those others that parse have it right.

Until then I'm sticking with what the guide says, I don't have any idea what guide you looked at but the one I have clearly states: (guide that came with Kunark)

"Corpse decay rates vary by your character's level, by whether or not you are logged into the game, and whether or not you're carrying any items."

Sorry you got faulty info but I've yet to have the guides be wrong while a player was right.

[Nunyabiz]

The higher your agility the less likely you are to be hit by melee combat

Things change, a book cant be updated. Oh well
BUT the only thing thats changed about the above statement is they made AGI slightly more effective on Monks, no mention about Beastlords.

Ive yet to hear SOE make the statement "Oh btw we made it so AGI has virtually no effect on your char after its past 75"

Its always been the higher your AGI the less likely you are to be hit by melee combat if thats 2.5% for 100AGI then fine, that means the extra 230 AGI ive added to my char bumped his avoidance by over 6%.
Ill take it.
add that to the 20% from CA3/LR5 and im 26% more likely to avoid a hit plus my dodge and block.
Sounds good to me.

[Grymlok]

How exactly is this a verifiable claim?

My problem with your claim is very simple, you say your parsing and that of other players parses are accepted, has SOE ever once said that?  Have they verified that you are parsing correctly?  Have they verified you are actually looking at the right data the right way?  Have they openly stated that you are correct with the information you are presenting as facts?

Now if they have acknowledged what you are saying I'll happily apologize for being wrong but I'd like to see proof of your claim vs that which Verant/SOE has released.

How do we have verifiable equations for physics without God (or some creator being, or whatever) telling us we are on the right track?  With trial, error, and statistically large sample sets, you can determine the underlying mathematics of many things.  And with EQ, it is SO much easier than irl, as we are provided with a timestamped log that give us all the information we need in a nice little bundle.

With the EQ log file, you can test almost anything you want, and as long as you set up proper controls, and have a large enough statistical sampling, you can present data as true.  There is a whole branch of mathematics dedicated to statistics and sampling data just like we are provided in the EQ log file.

As far as asking for proof from Sony, what is the purpose?  They are unlikely to give us their calculations for every stat in the game just because we want them to.  And there is no need.  Data is proof, all else is speculation.  

If you think we need SOE to tell us we are right, head over to The Steel Warrior, and check out the information there about the effects of /disc defensive on the damage capabilities of different mobs.  And then tell them they might be wrong because SOE never told them they were right.

[Coprolith]

How exactly is this a verifiable claim?

My problem with your claim is very simple, you say your parsing and that of other players parses are accepted, has SOE ever once said that?

It is verfiable because parsing avoidance is simply counting numbers. You count the number of swings that are misses. Then you up your AGI and count again. SOE doesn't have to say anything, the parse results have been accepted by the player community (with Nunya being the obvious exception). In fact, after the parse results on AGI came in SOE admitted that AGI doesnt have much effect. They didnt have much choice, denying it would be like saying the players couldn't count. Its rather shameful that new players are still being misled. When you create a new character it still states that AGI and DEX are important for a rogue for instance, even tho the entire rogue community knows this isnt true.

The type of armor you wear has no bearing whatsoever on avoidance

BS, just like wearing Plate has no bearing on your Mitigation from AC to i guess eh? LOL

LOL? He who laughs last laughs best. Armor = Worn AC = mitigation only. Your avoidance doesnt change by one bit from worn AC or are you going to deny that as well? Therefore Armor has no bearing on avoidance whatsoever. Avoidance = Defense skill. You get a small but decent bonus to avoidance as long as AGI is above 75. Adding AGI above 75 makes just the tiniest difference. Warriors have recently been given a small bonus to mitigation. Monks get a small bonus to avoidance. Priests and casters get a penalty to their mitigation and avoidance. Other then that, the basic underlying mechanics are the same for all classes, therefore all those parses are relevant

Show me where i EVER said to sacrafice ANYTHING in favor of just AGI and only AGI just for the sake of having high AGI and to hell with anything else.

It's your refusal to add that all-important "as long as you don't sacrifice any other stats" that is the problem. Instead you say things like

and it certainly doesnt hurt to max your AGI regardless what all the neysayer/parse fanatics say.

to a guy who clearly stated that his gear is Bazaar bought and therefore cannot possibly max out his AGI without sacrificing a huge number of his other stats. You advised everyone and their grandmother to up their AGI without mentioning they get much better benefits from other stats. You maintain that the effect of AGI is more then the few percent that parses claim based on your in-game perception, which is like saying the parsers can't count and your in-game perception of a quantity with statistical variance is infallible. You make these claims at every opportunity you get. You've denied that the benefits of raw AC, HPs, STR, STA, WIS are bigger then the effect of AGI in this very thread. Any attempt to show that this is indeed the case you meet first with twisted logic, and when that's countered you just flat-out deny everything again because you dont "believe" it, or conveniently skip over it to move on to next part of your rant. This entire thread is full of it. But you'll prolly deny that as well.

So, for the zillionth time: are you or are you not going to provide evidence to back up your claims?

If not: shut up, you have no claim, your belief in the effect of AGI has no weight whatsoever against all those parses. If yes: /applaud, im looking forward to it.

[Grymlok]

On the "SOE is never wrong" line: read the PoP book, and its description of Dexterity.  It states that dex affects "the time between attacks".  Woo, now Dex is innate haste!

[Aggy]

well ive always said RNG>all.

Parses especially the so called "Longer more accurite" ones are pathetically skewed for that reason alone.

Rarely do most fights go for more than a Min or so, hell even major Eplane Gods your rarely up there at his heals whacking away the whole fight non stop. your in and out or healing, buffing, manuvering, etc etc.

So the vast majority of real fights are wildly dependant on the RNG for what you do or dont do, wether you get the shyte beat outa ya or hardly a scratch.

All the parsing the world is really going to tell you very very little about anything other than theoretical DPS between various weapons.

Thats about the only parsing i pay any attention to at all, rest of it is just about meaningless. smoke and mirrors and in the end may prove some theorectical minute percentage that really dont mean squat.

RNG>All

Nuny: Just because you don't UNDERSTAND statistcs (and therefore parsing) doesn't mean tht statistics don't MEAN anything.

ROFL...it just means that you are ignorant about statistics.

Long parses are done to get statistically significant data....data that is MORE accurate, more representative of the AVERAGE.  

A long parse of the effectiveness of AGI (or lack of efectiveness ;) ) shows the AVERAGE effect of AGI.  Obviously there will be variation from fight to fight...but overall they will AVERAGE to be very close to the data from a long, well-executed parse.

We call that STATISTICS.

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that you don't know jack about gravitational theory....but your butt STILL stays planted in that seat when you sit down...and bowling balls and tennis balls still fall at the same velocity  (and hit at the same time) when you drop them off a building.  

Your lack of understanding of a subject does NOT mean that the subject is not valid.

[Aggy]

ROFL...I just finished reading all of Nuny's posts....and realized that he is basing his "logic" on what Sony/Verant "says".

:roll:

[Rippykin]

Profound ignorance isn't profound. It's simply ignorance. I think anyone with some common sense can read through this thread and figure things out for themselves. Don't get too hung up on trying to win a debate with someone who has no intention of offering any proof or justification beyond "It's my opinion."

On a different matter, Thrashum raised the issue of SOE's reliability for game lore/information. At a glance, one would assume that the company that writes the game software should be a completely reliable guide to their product. However, their direction, which has some merit to my mind, has been to avoid disclosing information about the internal workings of various aspect of EQ. This challenge has been left to the player community to either investigate or ignore as they chose to do. The downside of this policy is that it can be very difficult to confirm if a given game mechanic is working as intended. Human falibility still enters into the programming process and just because game designers intended a given result simply doesn't make it so.

One discovery that comes to mind involved INT/WIS buffs and tradeskills. A while back SOE belatedly discovered that INT/WIS buffs did NOT factor into determining skill up successes. To my recollection this was changed in a subsequent patch. The possibility for an error in code makes it quite possible for developers to be wrong about their game. Add that into the SOE position of silence about many game mechanics and it leave a lot of room for confusion.

Now consider combat parsing is simply taking output from EQ and subjecting it to independent study. Looking at a combat log it's easy to see how many hits landed, for how much damage over a certain amount of time. Various factors can be adjusted: player stats, armor, weapons, and the results compared. So, altering a character's agility can be looked at as can changing AC, etc. SOE's not going to start jumping into the general debate over these issues: why should they? In a sense this discussion is as much a part of EQ gameplay as anything else.

Now, if one wants to simply play EQ from a roleplaying perspective, then feel free to load up on CHA items if your view of your character is a charismatic leader. On the other hand, if the concern is over how game mechanics actually work within EQ then parsing is one of the tools for making those discoveries. EQ is hardly the first computer game to come along where some character stats are virtually useless and others are key. But make no mistake - this is a *computer* game. It's a program and procedures calculate results based on predetermined formulas. The results are far more suceptible to statistical interpretration than any messy real life circumstances.

Bottom line: if game developers were infallible, there wouldn't be a /bug feature.

[Laba]

I wouldn't bother arguing with nuny you would have to use a 2x4 to hammer any ideas into his thick skull.

[Thrashum Gud]

[Nunyabiz]

Yada yada yada. /Yawn