Hren's Guide to Mitigation

[tedahmeister5]

Many thanks to you Celeritum and Brabble for pursuing and/or correcting my first post. I will try to go on further today.

Beforehand I will comment previous post...
Celeritum, your post is easily understandable and fully comprehensive; the different approach (with tables) has the advantage of being much easier to understand than a long story. But I will keep my first form for this new post.
Brabble, thanks for making clear this little paragraph and for checking my spelling, my grammar, and my expression, I haven't see any deviance from my thought.
Smashed, I completely agree with you, avoidance AC is not affected by worn AC but only by lvl, stat, and skills as you mentioned. I planned to speak about avoidance when getting on the worn effects.
Thanks Gobsmash Emgood for prolonging my post, but I may correct a little bit the second part of your post (about melee damage). Indeed warrior's RNG is still 1-20, it's its DI that change by 95%, thus if you want to translate it into the RNG it becomes 0.95-19 (floating values instead of integers) and not 0-19 because the min hit isn't DB (1000 in your example) but DB+95%*DI (1142 with rounding to the lowest for your example). And avoidance isn't 2% per 10 for a cap at 20%, it is commonly valued at the half: 10 avoidance gives 1% more miss for a maximum of 10%. Moreover, Frodlin's parse gives that 10 avoidance is 0.62% (+/- 0.56%) thus it is possible for it to be at 1% but it is highly improbable for it to rate at 2%.

Ok back to my work...




third step: about softcap and class (de)advantage
This part of the game has a very long history, I won't tell anything about that since I am neither a storyteller nor an historian. But what you have to understand is that with all the expansion coming out and their increased-stat gears, developers had to implement a system that will make your gears less effective the better they are to keep the balance between expansions.
Indeed the main purpose of the gears, when tanking, is to reduce the damage you globally take. So in this part we will mainly focus on the global dps you may receive depending on your AC. Such kind of research is quite old but the most recent results are the more interesting. It appears that the dps you take from a given mob depending on your AC is multi-linear (see thread on Monkly business, fig here, and fig here). These figures show what the community call "AC sofcap". They are breakpoints in the linear law of the dps upon your AC. For a long time we though there were only one AC softcap per class but monk's parses highlight that there is more than one along all the spectrum of AC you can reach.
Moreover what is clear is that all the different classes have their own "AC softcaps" and their own "return after the softcap". I mean that the slope of the linear law after (and even possibly before) the AC softcap will differ depending on your class. Currently (see Dev's post on Monk section of EQ board, sorry but I lost the link) warrior have the best "return after the softcap", which is shared with knights, shortly followed by monks, but warrior keep the higher softcap over all classes.
On a side note I would add that softcaps aren't fixed values but that they depend on mobs' characteristics (developers' statements).


step four: and how do I get hit for less?
Obviously you just have to get better AC and you will take less damage, but it's not the only possibility you have.
you can purchase the mitigation line of AA (CS +10%, PE +2%, LI +5%, DI 2.5%) ~20% total dps reduction. They all have the effect of increasing your softcap and thus improving the efficiency of your gears (a naked toon's AC is below the first softcap).
you can use a shield. Indeed a shield-flagged item (thus neither a mug nor a weapon) equipped in your secondary slot (doesn't work on your back) will not be affect by the softcap. In other word, a shield will raise both your AC and your softcap by the same amount so that you will always have full benefit of the shield's AC.
you can use a rune buff to buffer the amount of damage you can take. Samely with a vie-like rune that will partially reduce total melee damage by a fixed amount, and a fixed percentage of each hit (note that knights have now a disciple with that exact same effect except it is limited in time too).
lastly, there are two other effects that change the formula of the hit's damage. Remember that we found the damage being DM=DB+x*DI, actually we will complicate this formula to explain what does the two next effect. Now we will use this formula:

DM = INT( DB*mod1 + x*DI*mod2 )
x->INT(x) being the function that truncates a floating number into an integer.
mod1 and mod2 being two parameters used to model the effect of the last two possibilities to reduce damage : shielding and defence.
shielding is the worn effect of the same name. It has the effect of reducing all incoming hits from a mob by a constant value; and this value is based on mob's characteristics: shielding is represented by mod1 in this formula.
Thus shielding is very valuable on mobs with high minimum damage and even more when the mob has on top of it a low DI. Shielding is very effective for a tank since all the AC he can pile on him will only translate all the hits into more minimum hit, so that a tank with infinite AC should be hit only for minimum, and thus will still receive damage. Thus shielding brings what all the AC can't, which is reducing the min hit. Thus shielding and AC are a good pair that need to be raised together. But keep in mind that shielding caps at 35%.
defence is named after the famous warrior defensive discipline. Defence is obviously the mod2 parameter of the above formula. Currently the warrior class has innately 5% defence and thus moving immediately a 125-600 hitter into a 123-575 hitter. The only other source of defence in this game is currently the disciplines: defensive and stonewall for warrior (45%, stackable with innate, for 3min), Earthwalk (monk) Protective Spirit (beastlord) and Stonestance (rogue) for 90% and less than 18s.
what is very important to highlight is that even is such effect gets less profitable for reducing the dps on an heavy tank (since more AC yields more min hit and that def has lowest effect on min hit), but actually, as monks cry it for years, having a low dps as income isn't enough to make a good tank since monk have the lowest dps among all classes (see this) but still are unwanted as MT. Indeed you have to take into account the chance of dying due to an unlucky series of hit (no miss and multiple max hit in a raw) that won't be healed quickly enough. Thus what makes healer's life easier is the decrease of the number of “spikesâ€

[Hrendra]

Bump, new raiders askin questions.

[Xyndail]

Thank you Hrendra, thank you Tedah, very informative and interesting read. Thought I knew, but did not. Learned lots.

[Aerowen]

Thanks much Hrendra, now i better understand what you were talking about last night Much better compilation than ive read in the past. The other posts ive read on other boards about ac softcaps and damage intake mostly just had equations and nothing to explain them.

[Grez]

10/10


Thanks Hren , very good indeed.




Grez.

[Hrendra]

AC Parse from the SK boards by Brael.

Further information about his testing procedure, plus comments, are found here:
http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showthr ... ight=parse

Note the continued decrease in ADI and spike%.

Done on Test Seventy with 5 increase offense commands.

135 ac shield in all tests, ADI=Average DI #, Spike=Double DI17+ Round
1213 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 460 item) = 9.44 ADI/4.748 spike%, 1285 hits
1302 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 549 item) = 9.73 ADI/2.962 spike%, 4486 hits
1399 displayed ac (731 defense 39 avoidance 629 item) = 7.02 ADI/2.002 spike%, 1585 hits
1504 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 751 item) = 7.20 ADI/1.369 spike%, 1719 hits
1608 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 855 item) = 6.88 ADI/1.098 spike%, 2729 hits
1709 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 956 item) = 6.56 ADI/0.901 spike%, 3222 hits
1805 displayed ac (731 defense 33 avoidance 1041 item) = 6.61 ADI/0.835 spike%, 12300 hits
1903 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1150 item) = 6.33 ADI/0.632 spike%, 4303 hits
2002 displayed ac (731 defense 28 avoidance 1243 item) = 6.36 ADI/0.676 spike%, 3712 hits
2102 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1349 item) = 6.13 ADI/0.572 spike%, 9640 hits
2203 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1450 item) = 5.82 ADI/0.437 spike%, 4569 hits
2304 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1551 item) = 5.67 ADI/0.315 spike%, 3136 hits
2400 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1647 item) = 5.73 ADI/0.392 spike%, 2429 hits
2501 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1748 item) = 5.69 ADI/0.325 spike%, 1901 hits
2600 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1847 item) = 5.44 ADI/0.320 spike%, 3061 hits
2703 displayed ac (731 defense 22 avoidance 1950 item) = 5.50 ADI/0.319 spike%, 2971 hits
2798 displayed ac (731 defense 28 avoidance 2039 item) = 4.63 ADI/0.246 spike%, 3403 hits
2900 displayed ac (731 defense 28 avoidance 2141 item) = 5.30 ADI/0.193 spike%, 2691 hits
3002 displayed ac (731 defense 39 avoidance 2232 item) = 5.11 ADI/0.157 spike%, 8997 hits
3101 displayed ac (731 defense 55 avoidance 2315 item) = 5.07 ADI/0.177 spike%, 3067 hits
3207 displayed ac (731 defense 50 avoidance 2426 item) = 5.08 ADI/0.117 spike%, 3111 hits
3309 displayed ac (731 defense 61 avoidance 2517 item) = 4.72 ADI/0.038 spike%, 2821 hits
3402 displayed ac (731 defense 72 avoidance 2599 item) = 4.91 ADI/0.072 spike%, 2778 hits
3499 displayed ac (731 defense 88 avoidance 2680 item) = 4.83 ADI/0.135 spike%, 2830 hits
3611 displayed ac (731 defense 105 avoidance 2775 item) = 4.73 ADI/0.096 spike%, 13784 hits
3698 displayed ac (731 defense 105 avoidance 2862 item) = 4.73 ADI/0.065 spike%, 4672 hits
3783 displayed ac (731 defense 105 avoidance 2947 item) = 4.69 ADI/0.056 spike%, 3324 hits

[Vadian]

II. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT?

Accuracy most important. Hit more more aggro bigger dps faster kill less damage taken. End story.

[Koutarou]

Some interesting parses showing the value of shield AC for non-melees:

http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20952

Look at parse #2 vs. #3: same AC but with a pimped-out shield in the mix - max-hits reduced by 40%

[Eagles]

II. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT?

Accuracy most important. Hit more more aggro bigger dps faster kill less damage taken. End story.

Aggro is based on swings, not hits. Misses give same aggro as hits gives same aggro as critical hits. Which is why Fero is much better then cleave for aggro. Also you can proc on a miss with a weapon.

[Vadian]

yea, i don't even begin to understand dps in the context of aggro, since my aggro is spell based. ^_^

[Xslia]

/BUMP for Savoya !!!!

[Savoya]

>.<