New Defensive Disc

[Bumamgar]

Defensive used to work by taking the difference between max damage and min damage, and dividing it in half.

For example, if a mob hit for 800 - 1650, while defensive was running, it hit from 800 - 1225.

The new Defensive discipline (and Stonewall) supposedly boost "Damage Mitigation" by 45%.

This doesn't seem to be the same thing.

My understanding of Damage Mitigation (as it applies to things like Combat Stability and Innate Defense AA lines) is that it reduces overall damage by X percent (ie: CS3 reduces overall damage by 10%) however, it does so over time and is only really noticable in long term parses. A mob with a hit range of 800 - 1650 will still hit someone with CS3 for 1650 some of the time.

So, does the new Defensive discipline just boost the same Damage Mitigation that we may already have from CS3/ID5 AA? In other words, over time (3 minutes) it will reduce the damage we take by 45%, but it doesn't actually reduce the maximum hit value?

I'm confused, please enlighten me!

[Kavhok]

It operates in almost the same way. Instead of reducing the damage interval by half, it reduces it by 45%. The other 5% comes from the innate warrior mitigation that also went in. You will take the same damage while in defensive that you did before the patch.

[Ainorli]

Does this 5% migation thing work while under evasive too?

[Gunrack]

And are we sure that the new 5% stacks with all the CS style AAs?

[Fafnir]

i don't really see the point in not keeping it at 50% (and also adding in the 5% mitigation) - sure, sure, it would have meant we got upgraded a tiny bit whilst using defensive... but... if we weren't far enough ahead in tanking as must be the conclusion, wouldn't this be warranted anyway?

[sineral]

warriors already tank well enough while defensive, far better than anybody else. we only needed help when tanking while not defensive. so now we tank the same while def, and while not def we get DIx1 shaved off each hit from the mob.

[Gharghael]

Does this 5% migation thing work while under evasive too?

And are we sure that the new 5% stacks with all the CS style AAs?

The 5% mitigation boost is innate and permanent for all level 1+ warriors and stacks with defensive, evasive, AAs, you name it.

[Bumamgar]

I parsed our VT raid last night. I save all my logs in general, so I also parsed our VT raids for the intire month of December.

Looking at boss fights only, it appears that while the max hit/ min hit numbers are the same with defensive/stonewall as they were before the patch, the average hit has gone UP.

Non-Defensive, the max hit is indead 4% less than it was before the patch, but again, the average hit is higher.

Kaas Thox Xi Aten Ha Ra vs YOU (hit):
OLD - defensive
        Attacks: 969
        Hit: 482 times (49.74%) for 246796 damage total (512 avg)
        Min: 257        Max: 950

NEW - defensive
        Attacks: 172
        Hit: 84 times (48.84%) for 44354 damage total (528 avg)
        Min: 257        Max: 950

OLD - normal
        Attacks: 3164
        Hit: 1618 times (51.14%) for 1211225 damage total (748 avg)
        Min: 288        Max: 1650

NEW - normal
        Attacks: 12
        Hit: 11 times (91.67%) for 11465 damage total (1042 avg)
        Min: 317        Max: 1580


Thall Va Kelun vs YOU (hit):
OLD - defensive
        Attacks: 841
        Hit: 452 times (53.75%) for 172747 damage total (382 avg)
        Min: 198        Max: 600

NEW - defensive
        Attacks: 188
        Hit: 98 times (52.13%) for 38750 damage total (395 avg)
        Min: 198        Max: 600

OLD - normal
        Attacks: 4150
        Hit: 2063 times (49.71%) for 1145451 damage total (555 avg)
        Min: 216        Max: 1000

NEW - normal
        Attacks: 1072
        Hit: 530 times (49.44%) for 320470 damage total (604 avg)
        Min: 215        Max: 960


Va Xi Aten Ha Ra vs YOU (hit):
OLD - defensive
        Attacks: 747
        Hit: 365 times (48.86%) for 143863 damage total (394 avg)
        Min: 252        Max: 754

NEW - defensive
        Attacks: 194
        Hit: 104 times (53.61%) for 46390 damage total (446 avg)
        Min: 251        Max: 754

OLD - normal
        Attacks: 1717
        Hit: 882 times (51.37%) for 503414 damage total (570 avg)
        Min: 274        Max: 1254

NEW - normal
        Attacks: 525
        Hit: 282 times (53.71%) for 174545 damage total (618 avg)
        Min: 302        Max: 1204

Ignore the non-Defensive numbers for KTXAHR, as I died within seconds of defensive dropping, then the server crashed, and all hell broke loose. So the average hit, non-defensive, is skewed quite high due to it being only over a spread of 12 attacks that also happened to include 2 or 3 1580 hits in a row (love that RNG)

Anyway, it seems that the actual Mitigation boost granted to warriors is 4%, as the new max-hit values for mobs are 4% less than before. Also, this works differently than CS/ID line of AA, as they do NOT reduce the max hit of mobs (in fact, do they actually do ANYTHING? boggle)

A perfect example is TVK. His max hit is 1000. Ask anyone, including casters, and they'll confirm this. Even with CS3/ID5, which should provide what, 17.5% mitigation boost (10% for CS3, 1.5% per level of ID?) his max hit is STILL 1000.

Anyway, the point is, the change to warriors in the patch dropped the max hit by 4% non-defensive, yet we now take on average 8% more damage.

Something ain't right in Warrior land.....

FYI:
"OLD" values are for a total of 4 fights on each boss (ie: I had logs for 4 VT raids in December before the melee patch)
"NEW" values are, of course, for a single fight on each boss.

[Splaktar]

I was going to say that wasn't enough data... but then I kept reading and scrolling down... and it looks pretty convincing.

In each and every case the average damage per hit is increased. Very strange.

[Haass]

That's fuckin great. I'm gonna look thru my logs and see what I can see. I didn't fight anything last nite that I've killed in awhile, so I wasn't able to gauge the amount of damage I was taking. Maybe it's time to go back and compare some old stuff to new stuff.

[Mourningloree]

Going to parse logs as well now =/ It *FELT* like I was taking far more damage in LDON then I normally do. (Tank 3 mobs at once, needing a heal once a minute.) But since Divine Arbitration was also messed up it could have been the fact i wasn't getting the heals when I thoguht i was getting them.

[Minna]

I noticed this as well on my parses last night. Max hit was lower, avg damage was higher. Can't say I understand why..... You would think a boost in mitigation would reduce both over time. Something else was changed somehow....

[Tarkas]

I wouldn't read alot into those yet. Could be something as simple as no druid doing both Ro's. All those VT bosses are low level and atk debuffs will swing DPS by alot. Get 1 or 2 more trips worth of data and compare.

[Kavhok]

There were no changes made to the normal combat formulas aside from the damage interval reduction for warriors. The variance in damage taken from fight to fight can be quite high with EQ's combat system because of the many random elements. When parsing your DPS while fighting through an LDoN adventure, you'll see a lot of fluctuations. Like Tarkas said, small changes like whether or not druid debuffs were in can also affect it.

[Haass]

Kavhok, with all due respect, let me ask you this.

We know how the combat formula works. It's Damage Bonus, + (N, [where N is a number between 1 and 20] multiplied by the damage interval), which is at least partially influenced by AC, and probably the rest by the RNG. We determined that the boost in mitigation you gave us removed the possibility of a mob hitting us for DB + (DIx20). So where did the other hits go? Did you simply change the formula for warriors so that N is 1 to 19? Did you make some kind of backend change where it removes one DI if the target is a warrior?

I'm just wondering because I fought Dozekar last nite for the first time (and owned his candy ass, btw), and my log showed a spike at minimum damage (DB + DI), and one at the next step up (DB + DIx2). That's the first time I've ever seen that happen, but like I said, it was also the first time I fought him. All I'm asking is exactly how you modified the damage formula for how warriors take damage...perhaps there is an issue in there. You can use the ol' "RNG is streaky" argument, but you have to admit that some pretty sketchy data has been posted here.