Analysis of Mit/Avoid for different Sub-Classes Write up

[Thanous]

 If you have ANY comments, please post them here or PM them to me and I will do what I can to investigate or impliment said comments... <b> Initial Disclaimers:</b>    1. This analysis is strictly theoretical.  It may or may not reflect actual game mechanics.  My tests are only for melee defense measurements against same level, no arrow NPC’s.      2. There is no measurement of player skills and tactics.  This is simply just a attempt at a fair metric to see how different fighters’ defenses stack up against each other.    3. I cannot take into account some things like the Paladin’s ward.     <b> Description of Test: </b>   Avoidance and Mitigation determine melee defense performance for fighter classes.  These two numbers work in different ways to reduce the amount of damage a tank will take.  Avoidance is taken to work exactly as it sounds, that the character will dodge or somehow make the attack from the NPC miss/inflict zero damage.  Mitigation is a damage reduction.  It reduces damage by a percentage of the original value.  For this test, a standardized attack with a mean of 100 damage, on a normal (bell) distribution, with a standard deviation of 15 was used.  This produced an effective minimum damage of 50, and a effective maximum of about 150.     Once a damage done that turn is randomly selected from the damage distribution, avoidance is then randomly selected.  Based upon the player provided percentages, the damage will either be avoided and apply zero damage, or it will hit the player and go to mitigation.  If it goes to mitigation, the damage is reduced by the percentage provided by the player.  If a mitigation percentage was not selected, the formula for mitigation percentage is Mitigation Percentage = Mitigation/(Level*100).  The final damage for that round is then stored, and the process starts all over again.  Currently, five-thousand (5,000) damage rounds are randomly run for each data set provided to produce the results of this exercise.   The results consist of the percentiles of damage taken.  The percentiles from zero to the avoidance percentage will be all zero, as all the damage in that range was avoided.  The rest of the percentiles show what damage actually hits the player.  In order to increase resolution of this area, a damage range without avoidance was also calculated.     <b>Results:</b>   I will not repeat all the results here.  They are all publicly posted in each of the various class boards.  I will continue to collect data, as I am not yet satisfied with the sample size I’m working with for each fighter subclass.   <b> Conclusions:</b>   For purposes of each fighter subclass against a even con no arrow mob, the melee defense for these classes seem to all be approximately on par.  The mean damage taken would seem to be in a range from 23 to 27 for well equipped and similarly buffed players in this test.  Brawlers avoid a much higher amount of damage, but take more damage when it is not avoided.  Warriors avoid more damage then expected, but also take less when it does hit.  The total effect between Brawlers and Warriors is that they are quite equal.   Crusaders however seem to be sub par when it comes to melee defense so far when only the avoidance and mitigation are looked at.  Some Crusaders have similar stats to those of the Warriors; however there were quite a few with mean damages in the low to mid 30’s.  I suspect that part of this is due to such a small sample size among Crusaders, and also due to their system of buffs (such as the Paladin’s wards) which cannot be taken into account currently.   <b> OPINION   (This is simply the author’s opinion after examining the information provided) </b>   First, I do not have enough information to make an informed opinion about Crusaders.  My impression is that they may be the class subclass most dependant upon player skill.  They lean more heavily upon their spells and combat abilities then any other fighter class.  This makes them very difficult to measure fairly.  For that, I apologize to the Crusaders.  I will keep working to collect data from you all.   As for the Warrior and Brawler in-fighting…   For everyday tanking, these two subclasses seem equal.  They have very different tactics for dealing with damage, but arrive in about the same spot over time.     My concern is talk of encounters that ignore mitigation.  In those encounters, Brawlers are without question the best tank.  My question is if there is an opposite situation in the game, encounters that ignore or reduce avoidance?  Not being a high level player, I do not have the answer to this question.  Against anti-mitigation encounters, I would be interested to see fighters try non-plate armor sets to try and increase their avoidance.  Just as players may have resist equipment, it might be time for plate players to have a avoidance set of armor.  While they may not obtain the same level of avoidance as Brawlers, it might help increase survivability.   My last observation is that buffs under the new combat system are very important.  The difference between a Guardian using their 30 second buffs and not using them is very visible.  The difference between raid buffs and self buffs is incredible.   I would like to spend more time looking at how various buff sets affect these test results (i.e. a bruiser in a group with a guardian, having both self buffs and guardian buffs). <div></div>

[milg]

these Tests have been Run over and over on beta and its still a witch hunt agenst bruisers So why are we gona throw more Gas on the Fire for the Few Guardians who dont like the changes. and i know many of my brothers and sisters in arms will not take part in in antyghing that forces us to be put on trial and then shot cause we do things better then plate tanks <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Malfu Permafrost <div></div>

[Thanous]

Ummm, honestly, take a look at the results.  Brawlers are about the same as Guardians (theoreticly) when it comes to even con encounters so far as I can tell.  I have not been interested in a witch hunt at any point in putting this together.  I have posts on each class boards where I collected and ran the data.  The only ones that seem down are the Crusaders I'd say when it comes to even con encounters.  As for epic raids and such, I can't say as I do not have enough information to do a good theoretical test.  However, I am interested in designing a in game experiment if anyone is interested in helping out.  And hey, if things are fine, no one has anything to worry about, right?  I tried to be fair in this analysis, heck, I even had Gaige review this write-up and experiment to get his comments before posting. <div></div>

[milg]

now i dont want to start another Tank fight here but i realy dont understand the point of you running these Tests unless its going to be used to fuel the Fire. Every guard i know in game loves the Changes to there Class and on beta we ran all these tests a million times and Sure Brawlers can Avoid better then a Guard but every plate tank i know owns me in Mit by at least 700 and im in Full augmented  and there in Ebon. and ill tell you this little Fact that my Avoid at level 40 is 55% befor Revamp it was 74%. and as for Utlitys go Guards have awsome skills for groups and i have also stated this on all the other Guard Rant pages That  Guardian + Bruiser = WAVE OF DEATH everyone just needs to Relax and learn to work together cause Fighter + Fighter Teams are awsome after the Revamp Malfu Permafrost <div></div>

[Thanous]

<span><blockquote><hr>milgin wrote:now i dont want to start another Tank fight here but i realy dont understand the point of you running these Tests unless its going to be used to fuel the Fire. Every guard i know in game loves the Changes to there Class and on beta we ran all these tests a million times and Sure Brawlers can Avoid better then a Guard but every plate tank i know owns me in Mit by at least 700 and im in Full augmented  and there in Ebon. and ill tell you this little Fact that my Avoid at level 40 is 55% befor Revamp it was 74%. and as for Utlitys go Guards have awsome skills for groups and i have also stated this on all the other Guard Rant pages That  Guardian + Bruiser = WAVE OF DEATH everyone just needs to Relax and learn to work together cause Fighter + Fighter Teams are awsome after the Revamp Malfu Permafrost <div></div><hr></blockquote>I don't dislike my Guardian after the change, and I was in Beta too.  There are lots of reasons for doing this besides faning flames.  I would love to be able to come up with a matrix like was shown for healers during the comabat revamp.  Wouldn't it be nice to numaricly see where everyone's strengths and weaknesses are, but also that it is all about balanced?  It is one of the things I really wanted when they were still in beta, but never happened.  </span><div></div>

[milg]

Well ok then now i understand your motives and your doels behind this whole thing. and i respect that but you understand why i was so Skiddish about this whole topic you saw the Fighter forums ob beta it was nothing but a Rant First by Brawlers who didnt want to tank then by guards who think Brawlers are some Uber tank that can lay waste to Epic mobs with a wave of our hands <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> and it seems liek your some Crazy mad Professor and have to graph everything lol... but thats cool but its not my cup of tea and like Like a brief Description on what my class does and then i Try like hell to do things my class wasnt ment to do <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> and what server you doing your tests on cause my bruiser is level 40 and on permafrost <div></div>

[Turb]

So now you admit you're fanning flames.The "My only concern is..." paragraph is the giveaway in an otherwise well reasoned post. You make some hypothetical hand waving without using any facts to back it up.Yes, crusaders are weaker in damage absorption, BECAUSE they can use wards. If you don't factor that in, you can't compare, so don't bother. I was in Nek Castle last night and me (L36 bruiser) and a L36 SK were tanking between us. Where a pair of L35 ^^^ mobs would rip me hard, the SK had better survivability with his wards, which also help him keep aggro (which is another dimension of 'best tank' that you have carefully ommitted...).Talking of concerns, mine is that when I face higher level mobs my avoidance means less to me and they hurt me more than a plate tank who will have a much smoother and a somewhat less painful ride. An analysis of performance against yellow/orange con opponents would be interesting.I wouldn't be surprised if brawlers fare a little better soloing blue con and under, but likewise I'm very happy to be OT to a plate wearer when I'm in a group fighting yellow/orange con mobs (heroics) and the good old RNG can be more fickle to me. I may be able to tank overall just as well, but it's less stressful for the group if the MT health bar isn't moving up and down too quickly <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

<P> I may be able to tank overall just as well, but it's less stressful for the group if the MT health bar isn't moving up and down too quickly </P> <P>And this is exactly the reason why avoidance tanks are not as good, regardless of how "even" the numbers look, theoretically. The fact that randomness can push a brawler to the point of no return, whereas the mitigation tank doesn't ever get that problem (since he relies on a more stable, non-random damage reduction), means that avoidance is inferior.<BR>Avoidance will have more opportunities to have the tank die, therefore it is a lesser form of tanking. If they boosted avoidance so that it's a little higher, then that's because they are aware that randomness is not ever going to be as good as the solid numbers. Even with a boost, in anything that counts (raids, contested mobs timers for updates, mobs higher in level), it's going to be to the benefit of the group that the mitigation tanks take MT.</P> <P>Especially since healers have had their ability to recover from low health taken away (since the revamp and timer change, they can no longer heal as much as quickly, meaning recovering from massive attacks are very very hard to do). Hence why raiding oldworld is so nasty right now.</P>

[Thanous]

Hey, folks, this is no final product, so don't treat it as such.  All models are wrong, some models are useful.  I don't pretend to be 100% accurate, but I've gotten more good feedback and information from all classes by doing this then I've ever gotten by just reading the boards.  This also is not the last step.  There are experiments till to be tried, some in theoretical space, some in game space.  With that in mind, keep the comments coming. Thank you <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>