Feign Death Oddities

[NamaeZero]

<DIV>Feign death being not the most useful Monk skill in our skillset means that I still have it hotkey'ed for Dire Emergencies, but focus on a much more reliable combination of knowing the exits, and using /yell, then Sprint in an emergency. So I didn't notice this until the other day, so I'm left to wonder... has Feign Dead and it's upgrades always worked this poorly?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Background: I'm a level 36 Monk using 'Play Dead: Adept I' </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I was in Varsoons yesterday, finishing up some quests, notably the one for 20 enchanted books. To save myself the respawn, I decided that using my FD would automatically reset the book encounter, and allow me to kill 3 of the enchanted books of the encounter over again, thus sparing me a lot of waiting around for the books to return (and agony of dealing with the possibility that the mobs would get stuck if I ran, thus rendering the encounter broken for everyone). Keep in mind these are grey mobs, and *way* under my lower limit on Play Dead. (level 26, I think?)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It took me pretty consistantly 3 times FDing to actually get the books to believe me! That leads me to believe that either I have horrible luck (I'd believe that) or the odds are much worse than the 75% listed in the Play Dead description. Closer to 33% at best.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Even more, later on I grouped with a friend, and helped him fight the Varsoon jailer for his CoD access quest starter. He did not fight, or do anything, while I killed the jailer and FD'ed to reset the encounter. Or I attempted to anyway... no amount of FD attempts would convince the skeletons I had died. I tried at least 12 times. Then I yelled to break the encounter and FD did work, but they attacked my friend even though he had not attacked them and I had greyed them out for him.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So I guess my question is: Does anyone know of any plans to make this a useful skill in the future? It was pretty much class defining for Monks and Shadowknights in EQLive. It's kind of sad to see it in such a poor state 500 years later.</DIV>

[OgApostrap]

<DIV>Why dont you just kill these grays? lol.. But anyways, you might have horrible luck, I can fd blues and evens and stuff with app 1 play dead.. lol. I never use fd though, and when I do.. I always die from a dot, or a bugged mob that is fooled by fd but then runs away and then comes back for some reason adn hits me, usually killing me since in fd you are basically nothing.</DIV>

[NamaeZero]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> OgApostraphe wrote:<BR> <DIV>Why dont you just kill these grays? lol.. But anyways, you might have horrible luck, I can fd blues and evens and stuff with app 1 play dead.. lol. I never use fd though, and when I do.. I always die from a dot, or a bugged mob that is fooled by fd but then runs away and then comes back for some reason adn hits me, usually killing me since in fd you are basically nothing.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I would, but then I'd have to wait for the respawn time and it can be 15+ minutes.. times 7 that's an hour and 45+ minutes of staring at an empty bookcase, waiting for respawn.. this is much faster. (Have to kill 20 enchanted books.. only 3 in a group, and only one group available)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The jailor can sometimes take half an hour to respawn, and you have to kill him twice for the quest. and he's not always there when the respawn happens.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I just hate camping, is all. I want to get through a quest and be done with it. This seems like the logical way to do it.</DIV>

[OgApostrap]

<DIV>Or you could just do 1 thing.. then go do others till the respawns happen... But you do have a point.. </DIV>

[ShashLigai]

<DIV>Statistically speaking, three mobs, at 75% chance to FD is .75*.75*.75 (if we assume independence) resulting in an actual FD possibility of 42.2%, which seems much closer to what you were experiencing. </DIV>

[NamaeZero]

<P>Hmm.. but I thought it said '75%' chance of success, not failure.. so I should only fail to correctly FD 3 independent trials 1.565% of the time. (1-.75)*(1-.75)*(1-.75)= .01565</P> <P>It should work much better than this. The odds of failing this much at FD as listed on the Art itself like the odds of rolling the same particular number (1, 2, 3, or 4) on a 4-sided dice 3 times in a row. In game, the odds seem much higherthan statistically predicted.</P>

[stfields]

<DIV> <HR> Statistically speaking, three mobs, at 75% chance to FD is .75*.75*.75 <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>While I do think the OP was talking about one encounter failing 3 times, it is worth it to point this out.  Shash is "kinda" right in some ways.  If its 3 separate encounters, you would think it was a 0.75 * 0.75 * 0.75 chance.  However, if you are looking for a successful FD where you feign all 3 encounters, it is just your success against the highest level mob.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you have 20 mobs chasing you... and they are all the same level, they have all the same "see feign" value (barring any named mobs that sometimes see through).  Therefore, you either succeed on all 20 or fail all 20.  So, the chances are much higher than what Shash posted.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you had 20 mobs chasing you... 19 were level 39 and 1 was level 40.  If your feign is "38" you failed on all of them.  If its 39, you failed on 1 of them.  If its 40, you succeed on all of them.  (Not exactly how it works, but for demonstrative purposes, it will do).  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As for low FD rates noted by the OP... at 36, your Play Dead skill is kinda "old."  I think it should've been working anyway, well certainly at a better rate than what you were seeing.  However, you get a new one shortly which works on higher mobs.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It could've been more imagination, but I think I successfully feigned off some level 50 epic mobs the other night.  If it was true and not just a fluke, that makes me very happy.  </DIV>

[LittleStuart]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> ShashLigai wrote:<BR> <DIV>Statistically speaking, three mobs, at 75% chance to FD is .75*.75*.75 (if we assume independence) resulting in an actual FD possibility of 42.2%, which seems much closer to what you were experiencing. </DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Yeah, but Feign Death doesn't really work that way. Instead it functions in a way similar to Wind Walk.</P> <P>When you attempt to Feign Death you either succeed or fail in using the skill. This seems to be a flat chance and really has nothing to do with the number of mobs attacking you, their level, or anything else. You can tell whether you succeeded or not if you have any concentrations running because if you succeed they will turn off and if you fail they won't.</P> <P>Obviously if you fail to use the skill then they mobs will continue to attack you. If you succeed in using the skill then it gets a bit more complicated because even though you have successfully used the skill it is still possible that the mobs will continue to attack you.</P> <P>Essentially, once you have successfully used the skill the game will determine a 'Feign Level' based on your Tranquility score, the specific version of Feign Death used, and a bit of randomness. Mobs compare their level, with possible modifiers, against this number and if their score is high enough they won't be fooled.</P> <P>So as a result I could very easily succeed with Feign Death against a gray mob and have it continue to attack me if I'm a level 48 monk and I use my lowest FD against a level 40 mob, Sure, it's gray but my skill capped out back when I was around level 30, so he's not going to be fooled. Likewise I could use my best FD against a mob that's red to me and even though I succeed he keeps beating on me.</P> <P>Overall it sounds like the OP just had rotten luck. Sometimes it happens. Randomness means that sometimes you hit bad patches. As for the usefullness of the skill, at 47 I used FD to travel all the way through Lavastorm to Solusek Eye solo. Yeah, I died a few times but I was still able to do it and after shard recovery the debt was very small. Trying to simply sprint and yell for help to achieve the same effect? Certain death. In fact, the real reason that I died the few times that I did was because rather than using FD early so I had time to retry it if it failed I would occasionally sprint and pick up a few too many mobs. FD failed and 'Boom! Loading. Please wait'.</P> <P>As for FD being useless because it's not resetting encounters, well, that's really not what it's intended for.<BR></P>

[LittleStuart]

<U></U><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> NamaeZero wrote:<BR> <P>Hmm.. but I thought it said '75%' chance of success, not failure.. so I should only fail to correctly FD 3 independent trials 1.565% of the time. (1-.75)*(1-.75)*(1-.75)= .01565</P> <P>It should work much better than this. The odds of failing this much at FD as listed on the Art itself like the odds of rolling the same particular number (1, 2, 3, or 4) on a 4-sided dice 3 times in a row. In game, the odds seem much higherthan statistically predicted.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>You might think so, but basically 1.565% works out to 1 in 64.</P> <P>Consider how many times in the life of your character you have tried to escape by using FD. It's probably a lot more than 64 times. </P> <P>Statistics are really tricky things. Just to illustrate, if you assume that between all the servers there are 1000 monks and each monk uses FD against 100 mobs there is an almost 80% chance that one of those monks is going to fail <U>8 times in a row!</U> Failing 8 times in a row has about a .0015% chance of happening. No, I didn't forget to account for the conversion to percentage. That really is a fifteen ten thousandths of one percent that it will happen.</P> <P>When you see someone fail eight times in a row your immediate assumption is that there's something wrong with the stated percentage chance of success or that there's a problem with the random number generator, but the truth of the matter is that the actual odds don't simply make it a possibility but they make it extremely likely.</P> <P>Now obviously you aren't going to watch every monk in his 100 attempts. Instead what happens is you log onto the forums where someone has posted 'Feign Death is Broken' and provides screen shots showing how something with a 0.0015% chance of happening has happened. Suddenly everyone assumes that either the skill is broken or the random number generator is off when everything is actually working perfectly well.</P>

[Perfidiou]

<DIV>as a lvl50 monk I have no troubles at all to FD lvl58^^^ epic x4</DIV> <DIV>usually works right away and if not it works at the second try. 3 tries are rare...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>adept1 Play dead</DIV>

[SykeAuttic]

NamaeZero, I know exactly what you are talking about and I just chalk it up to a bad streak in numbers.  More often than not, there is usually a couple casters that I am trying to evade, but I do not believe, nor do I have specific data to back up this issue being caster related (unlike EQ1).   I will say that I noticed that it tends to happen a lot more when near a wall of some sort...which makes small rooms and caves my bane.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Dandeli]

<DIV>I notice it often fails if the mob is swinging or gonna hit you.<BR>If I know I"m gonnaFD, I take two, three steps away from the mob and it seems to work a lot more.<BR><BR>If I just hit it while fighting the mob, It seems to fail a lot, and even to blue mobs when my stop heart is adept III.</DIV>

[purrsona]

<P>I am level 50 and have Master Play Dead.  I have noticed it sometimes too that it fails quite a bit.  Sometimes when im doing it when im not engaged it even takes 3 or so tries.  Im sure this has no bearing on how often it works but I swear it works more often when I do it.  When you realize that you are going to FD, start to run...Run a few feet and click it.  From my experience it seems to work better this way.  Like I said im sure it has nothing to do with it but seems to work better for me so im stickin with it!</P> <P>Purrfect lvl 50 monk  Steamfont</P>

[diamondma]

if ur gonna fd a mob do like bonita said and put some distance in between u and it. if u get some distance u will notice fd start to work just fine. i usually fd mobs first try wit ap4 fd.  although occasionally i do run into that stubborn mob that wont be fooled. <div></div>

[stfields]

I'd also agree with the "theory" that if the mob is attacking you, your chances are less.  I say this after most of the time only needing to hit FD once to feign successfully vs a 55 raid mob, but needing to hit it 3 times when one of the 55 adds were on me before it worked. 

[BLOODka]

You do know you have to take off auto-attack to make FD work effectively right?

[GeishaG]

<DIV>I'm lv46 monk have Stop Heart appIV.</DIV> <DIV>FD is worthless, that is my opinion.</DIV> <DIV>At my stage,once FD failed I have very very high risk to die by DoTs, physical attacks that is unresistable and</DIV> <DIV>un-evadable. Even grey enemies hit me all their attacks successfully. </DIV> <DIV>In addition that, even if I could success FD, all my buffs gone away, there is no advantage from just run away from encounters,</DIV> <DIV>but HUGE risk and penarties. I can't find any tactical uses of FD. </DIV> <DIV>Remember in EQI , SOE desired to remove FD itself from the game. They nerfed FD time by time.</DIV> <DIV>Even I wonder why SOE put FD on monk's arts list. </DIV> <DIV>FD is fun spell. Don't use it in serious situation.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Though I wonder, What is monk? Third-rate tank and third-rate attacker. Shouldn't tank if there's any plate tank, and if not have to tank,we are very odd damage dealer which should be replaced to mages or scouts. We are just a place keepers. If there is no replace,monks would be good to be. Because we are better than nothing. </DIV>

[stfields]

<DIV> <HR> <DIV>FD is fun spell. Don't use it in serious situation. <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There are uses for it.  Everything has a risk.  I've found many uses for it myself and still use it at 49.  </DIV></DIV>

[Babayaaga]

At that tier, I took the special FD training "Beslin's Still Mind", and as a result never used Play Dead. FD is a skill I have used rather religiously as a Monk. I think it's one of the greatest advantages brawlers get. <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Feign Death is based on chance success that includes two major mitigating factors: The level of mob associated to the tier of your ability, and the % chance associated to that level range. Another less major, but seemingly important mitigating factor is the quality of your FD spell itself, is it App or Adept quality? This does seem to matter.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Play Dead claims to have a 75% chance of success for mobs level 25 and lower, and 0% 34% or higher. The cap on Beslin's is one level higher.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>One thing I noticed is that the 0% chance is not entirely correct. I have succeeded against mobs usining Beslins that were over level 35, however, the success rate was substantially diminished.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Using Stop Heart (the Tier 5 version of FD), I regularly successfully feign versus 51+ raid mobs. Indeed it fails, but this is an intended tradeoff. After all, we're not supposed to be immune... there should be a risk involved.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Babayaaga on <span class=date_text>06-16-2005</span> <span class=time_text>09:26 AM</span>

[40ma]

<P>ive been reading the boards over the last couple months but i never posted til now. main is a 28monk but havent gotten the fd upgrade yet. what i do know is, fd freakin blows in its current state. i played both a necro and monk in eqlive and despite a couple changes they made i felt the skill worked perfectly and in noway was over powering. so for sony to do what they have done to feign in eq2 is, for lack of a better word, baffling.</P> <P>the fact that fd stopped raising at lvl 26 is garbage. it makes me wonder how [Removed for Content] those monks that dont take the upgrade at lvl 20 are when they relize for 2 and a half lvls they have a 0% feign chance versus 26+ mobs.  i mean as a monk how do you just forget for 2 lvls how to pretend your dead as well as you could before? yes, it works sometimes but the failure rate is ridiculous. the fact there is no failure or success msg as was in eqlive makes me wonder what they were thinking when they added the skill into the game. the fact buffs drop when you feign is crap and dont get me started on the 10sec recast when it used to be 6. i dont get the logic in this, any of this. yup ima say it, buffs didnt drop in eqlive either. you can say eq2 is a different game all you want but unless somehow the old way was overpowering which i dont see how it was, i just dont get the changes. like some1 else said, how much has changed in 500years? monks get jelly on the brain or what? too much meditation not enough practice in the feild?</P> <P>i get the whole fd is risky and you shouldnt rely on it bla blah blah but i do rely on it and i think i should be able to rely on it. damnit it should work much better then it does, and it does seem to fail 3+ times in a row quit often. too often. bottom line is fd is a staple of monks. if not for fd there is no point to a monk, like having a bard that cant run fast or a scout that cant invis.</P>

[Groovemeist]

<DIV>I FD orange raid mobs all the time, and it pretty much works first try if I do it right.  Here is my experiences with FD.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you are the active target of a mob you will have a much harder time of FD than if they are just agroed on your group/raid.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It seems to be harder in increments the more mobs that you have agroed on you.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you have auto attack on, you pretty much fail all the time.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>FD is a great tool.  I use it to scout all the time, res up a priest after a wipe, or save my own [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot].  It feels like it works how it is supposed to, to me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[bonesbro]

Please note that the description on FD is bugged.  Add 5 to the level of mob it says you can't FD against. <div></div>