Thanous
10-04-2005, 12:12 AM
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). *Note* It has come to my attention that "+ to hit" encounters negate avoidance. This may provide a balance against anti-mitigation encounters, however I have no details, data, or experience to state how effective it may or may not be. <div></div>