AC cap and shields

[Fitemore]

Originally Posted by EmiliaEQ

So we got DT modified to 32k....
Anyone else think it was REALLY WORTH IT ? When we get this kind of feedback

Thx Kavhok

Haha, /agree. Communication, even if it's not what I want to hear, is THE BEST!

[Vikken]

So, are we sure we understand how items with shielding effects work into all this? Does it take off a certain amount damage per hit, or could it be modifying this AC softcap as we understand it now?

note: I didn't and don't ever remember seeing any explainations of what shielding and avoidance effects do in the library.

[Fitemore]

We know exactly what shielding does. It has nothing to do with the ac softcap.

[Abazagaroth]

Is anyone else thinking about the parses knights and warriors did during velious and luclin in order to determine the effectiveness of AC, and thinking that this is yet another instance of a everquest developer knowing little about their own product?

Unless this developer is claiming that the "hard cap" was something like 2000 ac or something like that which no players were hitting during luclin anyway, our parses show that there was in fact no "hard cap" at all.

[Brutul]

Good lord, can't we have one post from a developer without some <10 post person crawling out of a hole and calling them a liar? The parses done in velious and luclin showed exactly what Kavhok said, that AC over a certain point didn't help. Soft Cap vs. Hard Cap was not something those parses were accurate enough to distinguish between.

Thanks Kavhok for clearing up a LONG time mystery on this board. The good news is this means Eduin wasn't right, and the AC difference on the AoW was a change in code and not just a case of player AC getting high enough to make a difference on the AoW again.

[Haass]

Ya know, from his replies here, and what I've seen elsewhere, I'd reckon that if there's one guy that has his shit together at SoE, it's Kavhok.

I have yet to see any reason not to trust what he says. He ain't a PR monkey like Absor you know.

[Kavhok]

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.

- Kavhok, SOE

[Abazagaroth]

Oh, I'm so sorry I try and stay the hell away from the vile spewed that is a huge portion of steel warrior posts, or that I only recently bothered registering for the non-ezboard version. I stay away from here for the same reason I try and stay the hell out of the class balancing section of PoN. I followed a damn link here.

I call it like I see it, and if this developer isn't lying, then he doesn't know how this system works, because he is making claims that are completely contradictory to the evidence at hand which is the parses we did.

I did parsing tests myself, and margin of error due to the RNG used by everquest has little impact on the results when tests consistently show a reduction in mean hit a mob has on a player with increasing levels of AC. I tested ac ranging from 900 to 1450 in increments of 50 ac during luclin. I know that warriors parsed ac as high as 1600+ during luclin. All showed the same thing of there being a reduction in mean hit that became smaller with the same increment increase as you passed 1350-1400 ac.

My god, now this developer is also stating that you don't get benefit from combat stability and ID unless your AC is high enough, and that is complete and utter crap. Don't believe me? Go find some noob level 65, get both of you naked and then go to nightmare or something and get beat on and parse the results. I guaranfuckingtee you that the warrior with cs3/PE/ID5 will see a reduction in mean hit from the mob relative to the warrior with no mitigation aa.

Would it be so suprising that a developer tells us something that they think is true which turns out to be incorrect? Do you have any clue how many times in the past 5 years players had to do large parses and throw them in the faces of developers before the devs would stop making various claims?

It wasn't just parses that led to the increase in 2her damage bonuses or increases in the ac of class armors in the original eq, or any other number of changes. It was the simple fact that the developers often have misinterpreted how the game functions in reality versus what they have intended (or been told by their predecesors) for it to work.

Do you seriously believe the contentions that this guy has put forth today:

1) That there was an actual AC HARD CAP after which we saw ZERO benefit of more ac before PoP went live?

2) That mitigation aa skills have NO EFFECT if you're ac isn't high enough?

[Sanistan]

Abazagaroth

1) Actually Kavhok said it was before PoP went live so your parses could have been after the changes took effect.

2) The burden is on you to disprove it since you are making the assertions that it is false. I have not seen any extremely low AC parses of AA defensive skills, so there is nothing about his assertion that rings blatently false.

sani

[Sanistan]

This also makes me wonder if any other item types effect stats in unknown ways. Before hearing about the shield raising AC cap, I was always under the assumption that all items are equal in respect to their stats. It makes me wonder if certain slots effect something like AC mitigation or avoidance differently.

sani

[Pumilio]

I think Abazagaroth is off his rocker. a) flaming someone in a non flame area b) calling dev a liar without any supporting arguments or parses.

Abazagaroth like Sanistan mentioned if you think he's wrong and you did all these extensive parses, post links to em.

unless you run a cleric bot though I can probalby guarantee your parses aren't enough to eliminate rng. Second, I believe the mitigation bonus, or lack of, from aa at certain levels of ac.

I think to just speculate on why that is look at it this way.

we'll say mob attack = pc's ac.
mob has 50% for upper spectrum or lower spectrum of hits.
ID changes this to 40/60 or whatever other number is accurate.

change it now, mobs attack > pc ac by such a degree that it's all upper spectrum and mainly top end hits (read int casters) This would be easy to parse. I can take my 600ac wizard, get him parsed for a hour then get him cs 1 and parse. if someone can do this that would rock since I don't have the time, but I bet the results in dps would be jack and shit if khivok is right, which I imagine he is.

[Fitemore]

Originally Posted by Kavhok

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.

- Kavhok, SOE

That's interesting... This implies that the correct path for a poorly equipped warrior is CA over CS due to the chance that full CS/ID will do nothing. Interesting result of this thread.

Do you seriously believe the contentions that this guy has put forth today:

1) That there was an actual AC HARD CAP after which we saw ZERO benefit of more ac before PoP went live?

2) That mitigation aa skills have NO EFFECT if you're ac isn't high enough?

Yes, and yes. Get this: Kavhok has access to the actual code. HE KNOWS. We assume and rely on parses. There were tons of hard caps and legacy code limiting things that shouldn't have been limited. Do you remember the mana hard cap? Do you remember when people found that attack hard cap? There is no reason to assume that our parses were perfect and Kavhok is lying to us; there are plenty of examples of hard caps in EQ.

For 2): Why not? As he even said, the median warrior will have high enough ac for all mitigation AAs to be fully effective. Implication: Even CS1 will help a tank with very low ac. CS2 might not help that same tank, but his ac will likely have gone up by the time he gets more AAs. By the time you've maxed mitigation AAs, you have likely gotten enough gear upgrades to at least hit the minimum required. Again, there's no good reason to think Kavhok is lying. You are wrong. He is right. If you can prove otherwise, then do so. I refuse to take your word over his; everything I've seen Kavhok post has been very informative.

[Besrikarle]

Im curious to how exactly the mitigation AA affect this and how exactly equipping a shield changes things. And just like the other guy, a backslot shield give this added benefit?

[EmiliaEQ]

What Kavhok said (at least thats how i understood it was) :

- Go naked in PoN with zero AA, parse the avg hit
- Go naked in PoN will full AA, parse the avg hit

You will see a very tiny difference between the two parses, because of the way the system
works, you have such a pathetic mitigation, any kind of AA bonus wont help.

This makes sence :

Make a Snail go 30% faster ... its still fucking SLOW
Make an Indy Car go 30% faster ... wanna bet there will be a "noticable difference"


Now as to how shield works, while rather confusing to calculate (adding a bonus to a coded cap).
Using some home made bogus numbers

W/o Shield :
1500ac = 30% mitigation
1600ac = 32% mitigation
1700ac = 34% mitigation
....
3500ac = 70% mitigation
3600ac = 70% capped
5000ac = 70% capped

So in essence you get 2% extra avg mitigation per 100 worn/buffed AC.
Using a 70ac shield (to see +100ac bonus) just adds up 2% more mitigation.
In essence it increases the AC mitigation OVER the hard cap. (Wont quote Kahvok)

Secondly, it was also said that "A 50ac shield will help more than a 50ac BP".
We can interpretate this in 2 ways :

- A shield will help you when you reach the Hard Cap, while a BP wont. (as analysed above)

- A shield has some "hidden AC bonus" (that i doubt, still easy to analyse)
Something in the lines of "The AC of the shield counts twice" which
means that a 70ac shield, will become a 170ac shield (+200Ac worn) for
the mitigation tables, thus giving a 4% mitigation bonus, despite what you see.
And its not that hard to code.

[Brael]

Abazagaroth, do you remember the patch in Luclin when they stated they adjusted AC code and some players would see a slight change in their displayed AC (up or down a couple points)? I would be willing to bet thats when the change went in, which if I remember right would have been early-mid Luclin.