The Beastlords' Den

1. Introduction.

Parsing out defensive stats and skills is a lot harder in practice then parsing out offensive stats and skills. For parsing out offensive abilities there are a number of NPCs in the game that are rooted in place, don't fight back and are virtually unkillable. Parsing against these mobs can be safely done overnight; hit auto-attack, turn off the computer monitor, go to bed and in the morning you'll have a nice large sample size. These large sample sizes are necessary, EQ is a game of subtle increases in power and a not-so-subtle random number generator. All those subtle increases together can make a big difference, but to see the effects of a single upgrade/skill often requires a sample size of tens of thousands just to see the difference underneath the natural statistical variance. The conditions of the parse are very easy to control, so its easy to distinguish the effects of a single upgrade/skill.

When parsing out defensive abilities we don't have the luxury of fighting against mobs that don't fight back, since you obviously need to get hit by the mob. No amount of natural hp regeneration is enough to offset the damage output of blue con mobs ad infinitum. It is possible to parse out defensive skills during normal xp sessions, but this always comes at the cost of introducing additional variables and additional variation because the conditions aren't so easy to control. The best way to parse is against a single mob without ever killing it. That means constant healing is required (taking care not to drop below 20% health) while keeping agro and therefore it's a very work-intensive and tedious job. You have to be at the keyboard all the time and sacrifice time that could be spent xp'ing or raiding. It's no wonder there are far less defensive parses then offensive parses and those that do exist often suffer from bad statistics due to limited sample sizes.

A way around this is by using PC vs PC fights instead of PC vs NPC fights to parse out defensive abilities. Parsing PC vs PC instead of PC vs NPC has two distinct advantages:
1) The dps of the attacker can be controlled. For instance by swapping out some rusty weapons and removing all haste items the attacker's dps can be lowered to such a point that the natural regen of the defender is enough to counter it, which makes it possible to parse overnight.
2) The stats of both parties are known exactly, and they can be varied for more depth in the investigation.

The obvious disadvantage of PC vs PC parsing is that it isn't "real". But while the actual parsed numbers may not reflect real in-game combat situations, there's no reason to assume the mechanics behind it are very different. So we can still obtain qualitative information about the effects of the defenders AC vs the attackers ATK rating, and skills like Combat Agility and Combat Stability.

There's one obvious difference between PC damage and NPC damage tho. NPCs can hit you only for 20 different values, given by DB + X*DI. DB is is the Damage Base, DI the Damage Interval and X=1..20. Each mob has its own DB and DI values, which don't change under normal circumstances (some disciplines change them temporarily, and runes can cause hits other then the ones given by the formula as well). Increasing your AC, or debuffing the mob's ATK, will only change the average value of X but min hit and max hit (and all possible values in between) stay the same.
There is a remnant of this behaviour in PC damage. Your weapon's damage bonus takes on the role of DB, and the weapon's base damage divided by 10 is DI. On top of this damage distribution is a second distribution however, which is much broader and can take on any value between min and max hit. The max hit actually comes from this second distribution, and it changes with ATK. The above applies to mitigation of damage. If there are qualitative differences in avoidance as well remains to be seen. But because the PC's max hit changes with his ATK rating, there's no point in looking at mitigation as the ratio of average hit and max hit. Instead, we can simply look at how the average damage per hit changes with AC, ATK or AA skill.


2. Parse details.

For the PC vs PC parses i duelled my druid bot, Hollis. I would have preferred a melee class because the druid suffers from low offense and weapon caps, but the druid is the only high level char i have on my second account. I found an ideal spot in the Arena to perform the parses (impossible to get trained there, just dont duel in the PvP area :) ). Unhasted, Hollis was doing a whopping 3 dps at best, so i had no problems countering that with my natural Troll regen.

Most of the parses were done awhile back when the druid bot was level 63. Base stats of Hollis (L63 druid, attacker) are (no buffs):
- 1HS skill 160, Offense skill 195. ATK = 745.
- Weapon: Bone handled scimitar, 12/24 (no damage bonus)

Base stats of Coprolith (L65 BST, defender) are (no buffs, steins instead of weapons):
- Defense skill 240, dodge, block and riposte at the cap (no modifiers)
- 1049 AC, 137 AGI
- relevant defensive AAs: CA3, CS3, PE

I've performed 5 series of tests:

a) Mitigation/avoidance vs AC with Hollis at base stats
b) Mitigation/avoidance vs AC with Hollis' ATK rating increased. These required buffing (druid's wolf form and strength buff, beastlord Spiritual Vigor) the druid and therefore occasional keyboard intervention. Care was taken to remove all parts of the log where a buff had faded.
c) Effect of Agility, tested in 2 ways:
 c1) Encumbrance test. By moving 25 lbs. blocks of ore from a weight reducing bag to a normal bag, AGI was artificially lowered.
 c2) Mitigation/avoidance vs agility at constant AC
d) Frontal/rogue position
e) Effect of the AA skills Lightning Reflexes and Innate Defense

Series a and b are each split in two parts. Starting from Cop's base stats, AC was lowered by removing only gear with worn AC while keeping AGI constant at 137. Since i can only lower my AC by so much this way i did a second branch,where I start with a totally nekkid troll at 88 AGI, adding only gear with worn AC.

During series a, b and c Hollis was always in the Rogue position.

After series d this I took a break from parsing and did some xp'ing to get LR5 and ID5. During this time Hollis got to L65 (and got some skillups) and i got some gear upgrades on both toons, so for series e I made a new baseline parse before testing the LR and ID skill


3. Parse results and discussion.

3a. Mitigation/avoidance vs AC with Hollis at base stats (745 ATK)

test#	2	5	3	8	9	10	11	12	13
AC	1049	976	894	834	665	753	879	808	920
AGI	137	137	137	137	88	88	88	88	88
Swings	9439	5829	11817	7226	7801	6878	13255	9300	5739
Hits	4011	2464	4981	2969	3351	2912	5716	3901	2426
Misses	5428	3365	6836	4257	4450	3966	7539	5399	3313
Hit%	0.425	0.423	0.422	0.411	0.430	0.423	0.431	0.419	0.423
- error	0.010	0.013	0.009	0.012	0.011	0.012	0.009	0.010	0.013
Miss%	0.575	0.577	0.578	0.589	0.570	0.577	0.569	0.581	0.577
- error	0.010	0.013	0.009	0.012	0.011	0.012	0.009	0.010	0.013
Max hit	34	34	34	34	34	34	34	34	34
Avg dmg	8.18	8.41	10.12	11.72	19.04	15.02	10.54	12.38	9.59
- error	0.13	0.17	0.12	0.16	0.14	0.17	0.12	0.15	0.17

3b. Mitigation/avoidance vs AC with Hollis' ATK rating increased (879 ATK)

test#	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
AC	1049	976	894	834	665	753	819	879
AGI	137	137	137	137	88	88	88	88
Swings	6532	6521	6403	6513	6726	6531	6419	6644
Hits	2718	2741	2691	2748	2821	2862	2755	2733
Misses	3814	3780	3712	3765	3905	3669	3664	3911
Hit%	0.416	0.420	0.420	0.422	0.419	0.438	0.429	0.411
- error	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012
Miss%	0.584	0.580	0.580	0.578	0.581	0.562	0.571	0.589
- error	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012	0.012
Max hit	43	43	43	43	43	43	43	43
Avg dmg	11.70	11.98	13.86	16.17	22.56	19.27	16.69	14.53
- error	0.19	0.19	0.19	0.20	0.17	0.19	0.19	0.20

Graphed, the mitigation data (that is, average damage per hit) from a) and b) looks like this

(http://members.chello.nl/~pg.deheij/d1.jpg)

The first graph shows the average damage per hit as a function of the listed AC. We see that with increasing AC the average damage decreases rapidly up to an AC of about 950 (about a factor 2 going from 665AC to 950AC). Beyond that, adding AC hardly changes the average damage anymore. This is what is known as the 'AC soft cap'. Let me emphasize right away that 950 AC is the soft cap when you are duelling a L63 druid; it's been known for a long time now that the soft cap is mob-dependent. Mobs in PoP, LDoN and GoD zones for instance have been known to have a much higher soft cap. So while its not worth increasing your AC over 950 when duelling a druid, it can definately be worth it when fighting mobs.

Increasing the druid's ATK (with str and pure ATK buffs) does not change the soft cap, but it does increase the average damage per hit dramatically. I can only guess that the AC soft cap depends on either the offensive skills of the attacker or even that it is hard coded as a mob-specific property. It would be interesting to test this using a melee character instead of a druid.
This observation agrees with parses posted on the Steel Warrior's board some time ago (done against a PoFire mob iirc in the 1500-2100 range. I've lost the url but i've still got the data on my HD). Going from 1500 to 2100 AC lowered the mob's average hit from roughly 290 to 260, or ~10%. A 100ATK debuff (druid's Hand of Ro) at 2000AC lowered the mob's average hit ~260 to ~220, a decrease of ~15%.
The conclusion is that ATK debuffs are still very useful even when the MT is well over the AC soft cap. Perhaps not in fast killing xp groups, where the mobs is at half health by the time Hand of Ro finishes casting, but in tough fights it can make a big difference. Also it makes a weapon like the Shinai of the Ancients which procs a 50 ATK debuff all the more valuable.

There's a strange difference between the 745ATK data and the 879ATK data. There'a a definite 'kink' in the 745ATK data at ~800AC. Below 800AC, the avg dmg decreases very rapidly with AC and from 800 to 950AC it decreases moderately fast. At 879ATK, the kink is not present at all and the avg dmg decreases steadily until the soft cap is reached. I have absolutely no clue what could be the reason for this behaviour.

The next graph shows avoidance (= miss rate when in rogue position) as a function of listed AC.

(http://members.chello.nl/~pg.deheij/d2.jpg)

Its hard to see any differences in avoidance underneath the statistical uncertainty of the data, even at these sample sizes. It's certain tho that worn AC does not change avoidance, and increasing ATK with strength and pure attack buffs does not change avoidance either. Off course that last part we already knew from my offensive parses ;) . Only when we average out all the data obtained at 88 AGI and all the data obtained at 137 AGI (these numbers are represented by the dotted lines in the graph) can we see a very small improvement in avoidance at 137 AGI.

If worn AC affects only mitigation and agility affects only avoidance as is generally assumed then we would expect that the 2 branches of each avg dmg vs AC curve in figure 1 do not match up perfectly (if you recall the first branch was obtained at 137agi and then removing worn AC only, the second branch starts with no gear at all at 88AGI and adding only worn AC). In the region where there is overlap between the two branches the same listed AC would actually be made up of different amounts of 'avoidance AC' and 'mitigation AC'. However in the graph we do see the branches overlapping. Does this mean that agility affects mitigation as well as avoidance? No, its too early to tell from this data alone. The 49 pt difference in AGI translates to only 14 pts of listed AC, and on the scale of the graph a 15 AC pt difference would hardly show up beneath the statistical uncertainty. A larger AGI range is necessary, and i will dig deeper into this in the next section.

3c. Effect of Agility.

The first test of agility i performed is an encumbrance test. By moving heavy block of ore from a weight reducing bag to a normal bag. As my encumbrance increased, my agility lowered and the listed AC with it. I used a run at 137 AGI as baseline, and did 2 more runs just above and below the 75 AGI breakpoint

test#	3	6	7
AC	894	876	834
AGI	137	76	73
Swings	11817	7669	17004
Hits	4981	3215	7115
Misses	6836	4454	9889
Hit%	0.422	0.419	0.418
- error	0.009	0.011	0.008
Miss%	0.578	0.581	0.582
- error	0.009	0.011	0.008
Max hit	34	34	34
Avg dmg	10.12	9.97	10.13
- error	0.12	0.15	0.10

We see the large drop in listed AC when crossing the 75AGI breakpoint. What we don't see is any effect whatsoever on the average damage per hit. The drop in listed AC is now 60 pts, and if agility did have an effect on mitigation it would have shown up. So the conlusion has to be that AGI only affects avoidance as assumed. There's also no difference in avoidance in this test, but we've already seen that it takes a far larger sample size to test the effect of AGi on avoidance with statistical certainty.

I did just that by buying some cheap AGI-gear in the Bazaar and performing a very long parse at 188AGI, and combined the results with the average of all the 88AGi data and the average of all the 137AGI data.

test#	Sum88	Sum137	22
AGI	88	137	188
Swings	69293	60280	43941
Hits	29477	25323	17862
Misses	39816	34957	26079
Hit%	0.425	0.420	0.406
- error	0.004	0.004	0.005
Miss%	0.575	0.580	0.594
- error	0.004	0.004	0.005

And here's the data graphed:

(http://members.chello.nl/~pg.deheij/d3.jpg)

We now see a small but significant increase in avoidance as a function of agility. Linear regression yields a (3.2+/-1.0)% increase in avoidance per 100 AGI (in this range that is). That's the same kind of number you'd expect based on the equations used by Magelo, with which the effect of AGI on listed AC are calculated. Assuming therefore that these equations scale properly over the whole range of possible AGI values, there's no reason to expect the benefits of AGI to continue above 200, since you get diminishing returns to your listed AC from AGI above 200. As it is, a 3% increase in avoidance for a 100 AGI increase is a joke anyway, SOE might as well remove the stat completely and reduce the CPU load of having to calculate its effect.

3d. Frontal/Rogue position

test#

1< Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on April 23, 2004, 11:19:22 AM (continued from main post) 3e. Lightning Reflexes and Innate Defense As i mentioned before i took a break from parsing before doing the LR and ID parses. I made a baseline when Hollis was L65, and there were several gear upgrades on both toons. For the baseline, Cop's AC was 1059 and AGI was at 144, with CA3, CS3 and PE. Hollis' ATK rating was 763 with a 166 1HS skill and 197 Offense skill. I didn't do parses at intermediate stages, but only of LR5 and ID5 (most if not all PoP AA abilities seem to be linear in level). By the time i had LR5, Hollis default ATK had increased because of some new gear with +STR on it, but since STR does not effect avoidance this does not affect the LR5 parse. For the ID5 parse i removed the new STR gear so his ATK was back at 763. But by this time Cop had gotten a few upgrades (mainly augments) and his listed AC was 1062 at 160 AGI. Since we're well above the soft cap and AGI doesnt affect mitigation anyway, this does not affect the ID5 parse either. Druid was back in the rogue position again. Here's the table with results: test# 23 24 25 Base LR5 ID5 AC 1059 1059 1062 AGI 143 143 160 ATK(*) 763 787 763 Swings 12566 12219 15779 Hits 5305 4487 5868 Misses 7261 7732 9911 Hit% 0.422 0.367 0.372 - error 0.009 0.009 0.008 Miss% 0.578 0.633 0.628 - error 0.009 0.009 0.008 Max hit 34 35 34 Avg dmg 8.09 8.20 7.49 - error 0.11 0.12 0.10 (*) Druid's ATK rating. - LR5: A very clear increase in avoidance from (0.578+/-0.009) at LR0 to (0.633+/-0.009) at LR5, a total increase of (9.5+/-2.1)% - ID5: The average damage per hit decreases from 8.09+/-0.11 at ID0 to 7.49+/-0.10 at ID5, a decrease of 7.5+/-1.8%. However it must be noted that this percentage will be lower under normal circumstsnces. Druids don't have a damage bonus. If they had a DB of 13 just like us, the percentage would be much lower, because damage bonuses can't be mitigated. In this case the numbers would be 21.09 and 20.49, a decrease of only 3%. And while this is an extreme case, against normal NPC mobs the effectiveness of ID will be decreased also. It all depends on the ratio of their DI and DB (or the ratio of their min and max hit if you like). Against most normal NPCs, ID5 would have netted a damage reduction of about 5-6 %. (Additional note: mind you it is the ratio of DI and DB, or min and max hit, that matters. I've seen posts stating that the harder a mob hits, the more valuable avoidance becomes compared to mitigation. This is not true. Against a mob with a max hit of 1000 but a min hit of 1 you'd get the full 7.5% from ID5, but against a mob with a min hit of 100 and a max hit of 101 ID5 is useless.) 4. In conclusion. As I've said before, PC vs PC defense parsing doesn't give mitigation and avoidance numbers that are applicable to PC vs NPC combat. You're not going to get a 60% avoidance unless you're fighting greens, the number will be more along the lines of 40% or less. But for qualitative parses, that is investigating the game mechanics and determining the value of stats and skills, PC vs PC defensive parses are very useful because of their controlled circumstances and superior statisitics. i now declare this paper open for discussion. ;) /hugs Title: Thanks Post by: Kitvear on April 23, 2004, 12:30:34 PM That's a long read and kinda hurts my befuddled brain lol but thank you very much for quantifying the affects of agi.  I will prolly raise my agi to 200 even though it is that much of a avoidence increase. I already have LR5 and am just starting on ND & CS so this data is timely and will help me stay focused on getting ID.  Thanks and rock on! Title: ... Post by: Valse on April 23, 2004, 12:42:11 PM Would be interesting to see parses with items with avoidance modifers (time gear) to see how they really effect you.  Maybe parsed at 5 then 10 20 30 and so on. Valse Feral Kitty of Appotus Dominus Vaz~ Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Aneya on April 23, 2004, 02:47:06 PM QuoteI've always just assumed that ripostes, dodges, parries and blocks are 'converted hits', that is, the hit/miss check is made first, and only if it rolls a hit the r/d/p/b checks are made (thus avoiding a lot a r/d/p/b checks and reducing the CPU load). While this would reduce CPU load I beleive it makes less sence from a simulating combat perspective. In RL one would not wait to see if an attack hit before trying to block it. By that time it would be too late. Instead one would attempt to block all incoming attacks regardles of whether they would actualy hit if let through. So it does not seem strange to me that they check r/d/p/b before calculating misses. Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Hrann on April 23, 2004, 02:56:02 PM So, this pretty much verifies what we've believed all along.  Agility has a an effect, but it is tiny and hardly worth paying attention to.  LR5 is usually better than ID5. Actually, I'm a little disappointed with the performance of ID5.  I don't see why the effect shouldn't be of the same magnitude as LR5 (i.e. ~9.5% less damage taken, at least under ideal situations - fighting a mob with a large hit range). I'm pretty impressed with the effects of AC and Atk.  Do you think it would be possible to correlate the two - something like 100 atk negates the effect of 100 AC or something?  Perhaps an analsys of that kind could lead to more insight on the atk/ac softcaps? And, as usual, Bravo Coprolith! Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Jkal_Shihar on April 23, 2004, 04:26:24 PM im naming my next kid after Coprolith  :D but thanks for the brain twister of a post, it was very informative. had to cut and paste onto word page so i can sit and read it more throughily though  :wink: Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on April 23, 2004, 05:14:30 PM QuoteActually, I'm a little disappointed with the performance of ID5. I don't see why the effect shouldn't be of the same magnitude as LR5 (i.e. ~9.5% less damage taken, at least under ideal situations - fighting a mob with a large hit range). Well technically they are of the same magnitude. (9.5+/-2.1)% is no different from (7.5+/-1.8 )% :wink: They dont give actual numbers for LR and ID in the AA description, but im betting they are the same just like CA and CS. The prob is that the 7.5% mitigation number is a "best case scenario" number, which you only get when there's no BD around. In practice this means ID is 15-30% less effective then LR QuoteI'm pretty impressed with the effects of AC and Atk. Do you think it would be possible to correlate the two - something like 100 atk negates the effect of 100 AC or something? Well that's the thing, there's no direct correlation between AC and ATK, as evidenced by the fact that increasing ATK increases the average damage, but not the AC soft cap. Adding 100AC is not the same as decreasing the attackers ATK rating by 100. In fact, you can't pin a single number on it, X AC for Y ATK, since it will depend entirely on where you are in the mitigation curve, pre-soft cap or post soft cap. First you'd have to completely break down both the ATK and the AC number to its constituent elements; mitigation AC, avoidance AC, to hit ATK, damage ATK, what part of each is affected by what skill, etc. I've done some of that with my ATK analysis, i'd have to do the same for AC, and then find a way to test all the variables one by one. That's a lot of work! QuoteWhile this would reduce CPU load I beleive it makes less sence from a simulating combat perspective. In RL one would not wait to see if an attack hit before trying to block it. By that time it would be too late. Instead one would attempt to block all incoming attacks regardles of whether they would actualy hit if let through. So it does not seem strange to me that they check r/d/p/b before calculating misses. True, but you dont have to simulate real-life combat to get a working game model. I've parsed over 200000 swings, of which ~120000 were misses. That's 360000 r/d/b checks wasted. And speaking of realism, my trollie backside is as broad as a barn, you'd have to be blind to miss when you're in the rogue position  :D /hugs Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Hrann on April 23, 2004, 06:38:00 PM The "kink" in the graph you mentioned (on the 745 atk line), there seems to be one on the 879 atk line as well; and both of the "kinks" seem to right around the same AC as the atk.  Or am I just making patterns where there are none?  What do you think? Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Kashmiir Battlekat on April 23, 2004, 06:51:40 PM Moving to the Library. VERY interesting stuff man. Leaving Shadow so other can follow link. Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: TerjynPovar on April 23, 2004, 07:12:56 PM Ok, then I absolutely have to ask. Warriors have now parsed AC up to the 2200 range or so, and have shown that there is no universal soft cap, AC of 2200 still helps with some creatures and not with others. What can determine this and still fit in with your parse?  Level difference possible changing the soft cap point?  Or is it just that it really is different with plate classes vs. other classes? Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Noriko on April 23, 2004, 07:34:40 PM I think it was mentioned before and Cop mentioned it again in the first half, the soft cap is mob dependent.  I would imagine the only way to test this is to run the parse against differen NPCs, which is what Cop is trying to avoid. Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on April 23, 2004, 08:07:58 PM QuoteWarriors have now parsed AC up to the 2200 range or so, and have shown that there is no universal soft cap, AC of 2200 still helps with some creatures and not with others. What can determine this and still fit in with your parse? Level difference possible changing the soft cap point? Or is it just that it really is different with plate classes vs. other classes? Well first of all the average damage vs AC graph doesnt level off completely when you're past the soft cap, but the return is not even a 1/10th of what it is before. Most notably the % all hits that are min damage hits keeps increasing, and this decreases the chance to get 'one-rounded'. Having said that there are boss mobs where even at 2000+ AC there's a notable difference in average damage per hit. Mob level will be one factor for sure in determining the soft cap but its not the only one. I've seen L50 PoP mobs with a higher soft cap then 'old world' L50 mobs. Skill, or difference between mob offensive skill and player defensive skills could be another. However skill differences can only go so far, unless NPCs can have skill values much higher then the player cap. It wouldn't surprise me if mobs have an additional parameter or property, set at creation, that also affects the soft cap for that particular mob. This parameter could then be set to a higher value for boss mobs. To get a better idea of what's underneath i'd have to repeat the entire experiment several times preferably with a melee toon as attacker. For instance by deliberately neglecting a particular weapon skill the effect of weapon skills on the soft cap could be investigated. Effect of level could be done by using for instance a lvl 40 paladin with his skills capped. They will remain capped until L51 so this gives 10 levels at constant skill to play with. Parsing against a bunch of toons of the same level but with different Offense skill cap could shed some light on the effect of that skill. Prob is: I've just listed about 6 months of nightly parsing  :roll: QuoteThe "kink" in the graph you mentioned (on the 745 atk line), there seems to be one on the 879 atk line as well; and both of the "kinks" seem to right around the same AC as the atk. Or am I just making patterns where there are none? What do you think? I don't think there is a kink in the 879ATK data, Hrann. Maybe i shouldn't have put in the dotted lines in the graph, they just connect the dots and were meant as a guide to the eye and not as an interpolation in between data points. Looking back i think it might be misleading you to think there is a kink in the graph. There's no data between 894 AC and 976 AC so there's no way to tell how the transition from the linear behaviour below 895AC to the soft cap evolves. Still, i can't rule it out either. I would rule out a kink at AC=ATK behaviour on principle tho. The listed AC number is made up of both mitigation AC and avoidance AC, and listed ATK is made up of a 'to hit'-rating and a 'damage'-rating. The graph looks only at mitigation, but as a function of listed AC and listed ATK. I would be happy if it turns out the kink showed up where mitigation AC = damage ATK rating, but I'd have to delve a lot deeper into the matter to see if that is even a remote possibility. Quoteim naming my next kid after Coprolith You'd name your kid Coprolith? How cruel is that!?  :mrgreen: /hugs Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Hrann on April 23, 2004, 08:28:22 PM OK, one last crazy question - sorry it's a Friday. How sure are you that avg damage is linear prior to the particular mob's "soft cap".  Could it be a steep curve, perhaps something like if damage were porportional to x/AC+Atk, where x is some unknown modifier that possibly contains a portion of Atk as well? Just curious.  It would be nice to think that someday a universal, covers-all-bases, formula could be discovered.  Wait, were we discussing the universe or Everquest? Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on April 23, 2004, 08:39:26 PM Put a ruler or even just a piece of paper against the the 879ATk curve, you'll see that the average damage vs AC graph is linear all the way from 660AC up to 900AC Oh and after seeing the complexity of the ATK rating unfold before my eyes i've pretty giving up hope of finding a simple universal covers-all-bases formula. I don't think we'll have a Grand Unification Theory of Everquest soon.  :) /hugs Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: TerjynPovar on April 23, 2004, 10:31:37 PM Yes, indeed, I did miss that Coprolith stated in the first post that the soft cap varied by mob, my bad.  But I'm still glad I asked the question cause the followup post was very interesting. I wish I had the patience you have Coprolith. Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Helben on April 25, 2004, 10:23:41 PM Soft cap has to be set independently on each mob. A fine example would be Innoruk and Rallos Zek in Time Both are of same level, and both has about the same max hit. The problem is that RZ can and will hit your tank for max 1 or more hits every round while it can go several round without Inno hitting your tank for max. When RZ takes some pleasure hitting me, he usually max on all 4 hits it takes to kill me. Inno seldom hits for max. When he has taken the pleasure to hit me, I usually have lasted 7-8 hits before he kills me. Btw, from the formulas that SoE has published about skill ups, I hardly think that we will find a universal formula for hit ratio and damage. For those not reading the tradeskill boards, the skill up formula is actually two tests with two different formulas, and if you pass both tests when using a skill, you get a skill up. The basics of the formulas are that you skill up more on success than on fail, you have higher chance of skilling up on fails if you have a high stat, it is harder to skill up with higher skills, and that one of the formulas has an unknown X that changes with the skill in question. It would not surprise me at all if they used multiple formulas in combat too, and that the formulas include some X that changes with the circumstances. Cleben Lege, archon of Istid, AB Title: Thanks for the parsing & analysis Post by: Romidar on April 26, 2004, 06:18:06 PM Thanks for the very detailed parsing and analysis. What you post with respect to LR5 and ID5 is pretty much dead on to what we've discussed on Paladins of Norrath, but the data I collected came from actual fighting instead of controlled parsing. (That is, we found that ID5 was not nearly as good as LR5 at reducing damage.) Interesting (and not surprising) to see the very tiny effect of agility. What makes me go "hmmm" is that the magnititude of the effect you observed there is of the same sort of magnitude that we observed for the effect of strength on damage output years ago - so tiny that you need a huge and change and a big sample to see it. In my parses of fighting with and without Ferine Avatar, it's easy to observe the offensive increase due to that buff (damage went way up) but almost impossible to see any change defensively. We've known for a while that defensive skills are checked before hit/miss (e.g., riposte damage does not go down when your avoidance goes up), but it's always nice to see it measured again. Thanks again for the data - I'll post a link to this on PoN if one hasn't been posted already. :) Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on April 26, 2004, 09:03:01 PM I know that for people who've been around long enough and have been following the parsings over the years there won't be a lot of news in the parses; they can consider it a summary  :) . This is actually the point; the results are very similar to what has been parsed against real mobs, even tho the mitigation and avoidance numbers themselves have virtually no bearing on everyday EQ life. Classes for which tanking is their business (knights and warriors) would probably like to see numbers that are more applicable to real situations, but if your interest is in the game mechanics then parsing against PCs is, in my opinion, superior. I started this because i got frustated about the tediousness of getting good enough statistics in defensive parses against NPCs. About a year ago i tried to parse out CS and CA during the aaxp grind and simply couldnt get proper results even after thousands of lines (mitigation going down 4% going from CS1 to CS2 with 4k samplesizes). The statistical variation during normal xp sessions must get magnified by factors from the combined effects of stuns, lag fading buffs etc. I then tried parsing CS2->CS3 using a single mob, without killing it, but my brain started dribbling out of my ears after just an hour. Its no surprise that high quality defensive parses are few and far between. Those people on the SW board who did the parses i mentioned must have incredible patience. Anyway, I hope others will pick up on this method instead of just dimissing it as 'not realistic' so that we'll see more defensive parses in the future. /hugs Title: Re: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Moghedred on June 18, 2004, 10:31:25 AM Quote from: Coprolith Does this mean that agility affects mitigation as well as avoidance? No, its too early to tell from this data alone. Hi Coprolith. Very interesting post there. I would like to add that Magelo calculates Avoidance and Mitigation AC separately even though it shows just one all-inclusive number. According to their formula, AGI does indeed seem  to affect both Avoidance and Mitigation AC. I also noted that they seem to calculate that your base AGI (i.e. naked) has a larger impact on AC than worn AGI. But in the end I think it confirms what you say. See below! Here's what Magelo spits out for me: AC Formula from Magelo:                         Agi   T   Items   Avoidance   Mitigation    Total    +AC Base   90   42   0   490   84   677   677 Base + mod1   90   42   432   490   660   1357   680 Base + mod2   178   58   0   506   84   696   19 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total AC from formula: 1376 Correction value for AC: 10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL AC 1386 To see this just type "&debug=true" after your profile URL. edit: just can't get that table to format right... sorry did some mroe testing on Magelo. So: from left to right you get AGI (total) then T Value then Items, Avoidance then Mitigation then Total then AC added. Top to bottom you have base (I assume this is naked + my base AGI is indeed 90 and my fully+geared AGI is 178). Mod 1 and then Mod2. The worn AGI is Mod 2 and as you can see it adds nothing to the mitigation AC. However, the Base AGI does appear to add 84 to my Mitigation AC. That's how I read it anyway. However, testing this by buying the +Agility AAs in Magelo does not change the base mitigation AC and only very slightly raises Avoidance (even at base). Also note that Base AC is 490 Avoidance and 84 Mitigation with 90 AGI. With almost double that in fully-geared AGI I seem to only get an additional 16 in Avoidance AC and nothing in Mitigation (after buying AGI AAs it's only 15 added).   So, I'm guessing that the base mitigation AC is derived from your defense skill or such. Tested in Magelo: set Defense to 0 in Magelo and you get 0 base Mitigation AC. And also most of your base Avoidance goes. Your left with just avoidance of 48 at 120 base AGI. That suggests you need 2.5 AGI per base AC (Avoidance only) and 5.8 AGI per AC gained for worn AGI. This also solves the T Value riddle. It's just the Avoidance AC gained from AGI. Hope this helps! Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on June 18, 2004, 11:37:09 AM Its not so much a difference between base agility and agi gained from items, its just that the effect of agility isnt constant. You get a bonus to your AC (which is pure avoidance AC) for having agi over 75, which also depends on your level. After that avoidance AC increases steadily by about 1 pt per 4.5 AGI up to 200AGI, and 1 pt per 20agi above 200. Since most people will have their base AGI at or above 75 this makes it look effectively like base AGI gives more avoidance per point. But its really just your actual AGI that determines your bonus to AC (if your agi drops below 75 because of encumbrance or getting low on health you loose everything, not just the part you gained from worn AGI). Basically, Magelo takes your avoidance AC from this graph: (http://members.chello.nl/~pg.deheij/agility.jpg) /hugs Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Moghedred on June 18, 2004, 11:52:18 AM Nice! thanks a lot /wave Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on June 19, 2004, 08:29:07 AM Some interesting info from Kavhok (one of the EQ devs) on the Steel Warrior board (in this thread (http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7643&page=1&pp=15)) QuoteThe cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap; it was a hard cap that had been there from day 1. After a certain point, which differed for each class, the benefit of more AC didn't just diminish - it dropped to nothing. The change I referred to, just before PoP, changed that from a hard cap to a soft cap. You get a percentage of the amount over that soft cap. Shields increase both your total and your soft cap, making them more effective than any other item with equal AC. Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it. Separate from this, there are diminishing returns if your AC is much greater than the NPC's attack. This is due to the nature of the formulas that produce the probability distributions Quote Quote3) if mitigation AAs are figured into the AC softcap, do you need a certain level of AC before you get full benefit from the mitigation AA's? You folks do a great job of parsing and figuring out the mechanics of the game. I don't want to leave you with no mysteries at all =) I will say this: 3) Yes, the mitigation AAs will not do anything for you if your AC isn't high enough. However, the median level 65 warrior is over the cap even with both Luclin and PoP mitigation AAs maxed, so you can safely assume you're getting the full benefit out of them. The interesting part about this is that the mitigation AAs actually increase your AC softcap, and that you don't get full benefits from them until you've reached that cap. What is true for the median warrior prolly wont be true for the median BL. I did my parses PvP against a L65 druid, for which ~1000AC was enough to reach the softcap w/o ID5. Purchasing ID5 might have put me over the cap (since i was just on the edge of the softcap before that), which would explain why i didnt get the same % increase as from LR5. Something to remember: CS and ID get better as your AC gets higher. If your AC isnt high enough to reach the soft cap against the mobs you usually fight against, then getting CA/LR will be a lot better then CS/ID. /hugs Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Toln on July 08, 2004, 03:50:10 AM Coprolith, is it your opinion that the soft cap returns we see on AC are entirely specific to each NPC and its ATK, or are there other factors too such as the player's Class? I ask, because I stumbled across this detailed parse posted on the Monk forums which suggested that different classes all have different "soft AC caps", which are independent of the NPCs they are fighting. http://p201.ezboard.com/fmonklybusiness43508frm2.showMessage?topicID=1259.topic The parsed commentary seemed to indicate that two classes with identical avoidance/mitigation AC, such as Beastlord vs Warrior, would mitigate damage much differently. Prior to reading that I was under the impression that the big difference between plate tank mitigation and leather/silk caster mitigation for example, was simply due to the itemization and difference in AC bonuses for the classes... resulting in those non-tank classes having a much harder time getting their AC high enough to mitigate effectively, but in theory if a person could get it up there high enough, they could tank just as good as a plate class with the same AC rating. Is this incorrect? And if so, do you have any theory on what other game mechanics are affecting it? Title: PC vs PC defensive parses (long!) Post by: Coprolith on July 08, 2004, 06:35:07 AM It is entirely possible that the soft cap is class dependent as well as mob dependent. Or it could be that different classes are on different mitigation tables, that is, the AC soft cap is the same for all of them, but the level of mitigation above the soft cap is different. The parses on the MB board do not distinguish between these 2. If we believe the quote of the Dev in my prev post however then both are true: "Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it." We also know that SOE can program specific bonuses to mitigation for certain classes as in the case of warriors. And finally, we now also know that the AC from a shield is also added to the soft cap. That's a lot of variables in total. You'd need to parse extensively over a whole range of AC values for each class and for each variable to get a complete picture. With defensive parses being the chore they are, that's not going to happen anytime soon. /hugs Text only | Text with Images SMF 2.1.4 © 2023, Simple Machines