Combat Mechanics and Player Progression - Feedback/Questions

[Maroger]

How is critical mitigation calculated? I know you can get items that that stat on it BUT - I have some character that have NO ITEMS with critical mitigation on them, but yet when I check I see they have +2% (just an example) critical mitigation listed.

Exactly how did they raise critical mitigation without an item which says + XXXX to critical mitigation.

[Ambrin]

Maroger wrote:

How is critical mitigation calculated? I know you can get items that that stat on it BUT - I have some character that have NO ITEMS with critical mitigation on them, but yet when I check I see they have +2% (just an example) critical mitigation listed.

Exactly how did they raise critical mitigation without an item which says + XXXX to critical mitigation.

Fighters and scours get a small amount of critmit from agility while priests and mages get a small amount of critmit from intelligence.

Basically this means that every class has little bit of critmit from their stats, even if their gear doesn't directly give critmit.

[Yarg2]

slippery wrote:

Xelgad wrote:

Slippery: Critical was changed with Sentinel's Fate. 100% Crit is 100% Crit against everything.

Zenadina: Going over 100% Crit will only help if your character is debuffed.

You may have intended to do so while merging crits, but I promise you that isn't the way it is in game. We've been telling you guys this for 4 months. 100% crit does not give you 100% crits. It isn't some magical buff on mobs either, unless you want to tell me that training dummies come preloaded with said buff. It also isn't tied to just epics, because I tested it before epic dummies.

Please do not repeat the mistakes of Lockeye and Aeralik and assume the player base does not know what it is talking about and ignore what we say. Some people do in fact know what they are talking about, and probably have a more solid grasp on how things actually play out in game mechanicly then most of the devs. It comes from years of playing this game multiple hours a day at the top of the game on a variety of classes.

I'm going to work on the assumption that nothing has changed since the expansion launched, and this test was done mid March. Here you can very clearly see me failing to crit on a training dummy (most controlled test I could get on a higher level mob, I was simply trying to prove that 100% doesn't mean 100%. I chrono'd to 80 and got my crit as close to 100% as possible and attacked level 90 training dummies).

No, it is not a dispaly bug, the damage is what it would be for a non crit. You devs can keep telling us that 100% = 100% all you want, but it is still not true. It may have been what you desired, but it isn't how the game works.

FYI you're pictures won't show up unless the person reading the post is logged into EQ2 Flames since thats where they are hosted, so most likely the dev's won't be able to see them.

[Xelgad]

We'll take a look at the code and see what is the matter. Thanks for your feedback on the Crits.

[slippery]

Thank you.

[perm]

"What are the caps for in-combat power and health regeneration?"

Power: 135 at 90Health: 270 at 90

At 10k health/power (which is the absolute bare minimum for a level 90 character who plans on entering combat) that is .0135% power and .0270% power every update. Thanks for posting this info but what's the point of this stat if it's capped at effectively nothing?

The entire section on avoidance is a mess.

Why do we have parry which is contested and parry chance which is uncontested? Beyond parry there is block and dodge which have similar contested and uncontested semantics yet seem to be/do the exact same thing as parry. The whole thing reads like it was created simply to confuse players.

Imagine this:

A tank gets a piece of gear. That gear has +15 more parry on it than the piece he is replacing. What does that actually translate to in terms of their ability to parry an incoming attack from a level 96 raid mob? A level 96 heroic mob? A level 86 raid mob? Is there any way to actually find that information? Would the numbers be different if it was +15 block or dodge?

[Aule]

Ambrin@Nagafen wrote:

Maroger wrote:

How is critical mitigation calculated? I know you can get items that that stat on it BUT - I have some character that have NO ITEMS with critical mitigation on them, but yet when I check I see they have +2% (just an example) critical mitigation listed.

Exactly how did they raise critical mitigation without an item which says + XXXX to critical mitigation.

Fighters and scours get a small amount of critmit from agility while priests and mages get a small amount of critmit from intelligence.

Basically this means that every class has little bit of critmit from their stats, even if their gear doesn't directly give critmit.

Unless the formula changed with SF, this was Stat / 100, so 1000 in stat gave 10% crit mit.

[Aule]

Xelgad wrote:

Gungo wrote:

 Question 1:The issue i have with this post it said uncontested avoidance is a straight avoidance not effected by npc levels. "Block (Non-Brawlers): A Block is based on the player's shield. The higher the protection rating, the higher chance to block. All block that is used by a non-Brawler class is uncontested, meaning it is a straight percentage chance to avoid an incoming attack.""Uncontested avoidance is avoidance that is a straight percentage chance to avoid an attack regardless of the target's offensive skills or level."

Unless this is changed for SF this is inaccurate. At least from the prior posts of developers including the EOF patch notes that states uncontested avoidance is altered by lvl difference. Was this changed for SF?"  - Block Check:  (Shield Required).  The quality of the shield determines the block chance.  Block is only modified by mob level and is not a contested roll vs. mob skill."

Question 2:Recent data tests by several brawlers are coming up with odd uncontested block scores.For instance one would assume our minimum block ( aka minimum deflection) would be our stance(+AA aversion)22% and our myth buff 5%= 27% to be our base uncontested block chance. confirmed via in game tests.This % is then increased by our % block chance. While fairly close the number for minimum block on the persona window is slightly higher. Testing shows this slight increase is adjusted by Agility.

My question: Does agility increase uncontested avoidance. furthermore since offensive skills do not have a cap i presume Defensive skills do not have a cap and thus the same rules applies whereas the max defensive adjustment for defense/parry/deflection is obtained when you have a defensive skill 100 points higher then your opponents offensive skill.

Question 1: Uncontested Avoidance is not affected by the target's level.

Question 2: Agility should not not be affecting your uncontested avoidance. You may be seeing a display error. As for your offensive and defensive skills question, you are correct - it reverses, but you'll want all of your defensive skills to be 100 over the target's offensive skills.

Agility affects all brawler avoidances in small incremental gains past approximately 920 agil.  The gain is the same applied to dodge, parry, block and uncontested block, and is logarithmic in nature. 

After uncontested block was added to the tooltip I noticed the adjustments, and spent a few hours gathering datapoints.  There's a couple posts about it in the avoidance thread and I'm pm'ing you the data.  Our assumption is that this is correct based on the prior mechanics developer postings pre and during beta:  You may not be seeing it if you're not looking in a brawler specific area, but I assure you it is not a display bug.

Aeralik wrote: (on 10/20/09)

It's mainly all avoidance modifications and threat changes for brawlers.  There are changes to how being double attacked works for brawlers, immunity to strikethrough, and an avoidance score that adds to your base avoidance chance.  The score is kinda interesting in that it encourages you to get past the skill and attribute caps for some small additional bonuses unlike our other systems which are all hard capped.

[steelbadger]

Xelgad wrote:

We'll take a look at the code and see what is the matter. Thanks for your feedback on the Crits.

Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 90 Training Dummy. 100% Crit exactly: 333 Hits 326 Crits 97.9% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 90 Training Dummy. 102% Crit exactly: 399 Hits 399 Crits 100% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 87 Training Dummy. 100% Crit exactly. 1340 Hits 1320 Crits 98.5% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 87 Training Dummy. 101.1% Crit exactly. 621 Hits 621 Crits 100% Crit Chance.

Taken from some tests I did on a training dummy when we were debating this on Flames.  It looks to me that 101% crit is the cutoff.  We're given a base 1% crit to start with, maybe it's not being added correctly?

I'm also intrigued by the fact that debuffs can have an effect on crit chance...  looking through my parses I see that Wyvernlord Tuluun has some form of crit mit while Wyrmlord Zaos does not, for example?  What spells debuff mob crit mit?

[Ballads]

Question - If main stats are uncapped why does power gained from pirmary stat stop at 1200?

I suspect this is left from last tier when we discovered that over cap would actualy decrease your power and you fixed it, please look into this.

[Thor]

"Does the level of my armor matter?"

• Yes. Resists and Mitigation is 'worth more' on a higher level item. If an item is level 80 with 500 mitigation, a level 90 item with the same mitigation will provide a bigger damage reduction. We are looking into making this more intuitive.

Does this only apply on armor? What about other items, like cloaks and charms, that have stats and effects added to them.Does a T7/T8 item proc less frequently with less numbers when fighting T9 content than what it says when examine the item?

[Banditman]

Thorine@Oasis wrote:

"Does the level of my armor matter?"

• Yes. Resists and Mitigation is 'worth more' on a higher level item. If an item is level 80 with 500 mitigation, a level 90 item with the same mitigation will provide a bigger damage reduction. We are looking into making this more intuitive.

Does this only apply on armor? What about other items, like cloaks and charms, that have stats and effects added to them.Does a T7/T8 item proc less frequently with less numbers when fighting T9 content than what it says when examine the item?

Any item.

[Malicorp]

steelbadger wrote:

Xelgad wrote:

We'll take a look at the code and see what is the matter. Thanks for your feedback on the Crits.

Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 90 Training Dummy. 100% Crit exactly: 333 Hits 326 Crits 97.9% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 90 Training Dummy. 102% Crit exactly: 399 Hits 399 Crits 100% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 87 Training Dummy. 100% Crit exactly. 1340 Hits 1320 Crits 98.5% Crit Chance. Lvl 80 Guard vs lvl 87 Training Dummy. 101.1% Crit exactly. 621 Hits 621 Crits 100% Crit Chance.

Taken from some tests I did on a training dummy when we were debating this on Flames.  It looks to me that 101% crit is the cutoff.  We're given a base 1% crit to start with, maybe it's not being added correctly?

I'm also intrigued by the fact that debuffs can have an effect on crit chance...  looking through my parses I see that Wyvernlord Tuluun has some form of crit mit while Wyrmlord Zaos does not, for example?  What spells debuff mob crit mit?

To prove that 101% is what you need. You should do the same test with a level 70 vs 90 and 60 vs 90. Sure hit rate would be impacted dramatically, but crit % shouldn't be. If you can't get 101% crit automentored, I'm sure I could prolly do it since I can get upwards of 140% self-buffed at 90. Should still be 101 if I went to level 70.

[SkyBee]

slippery wrote:

Xelgad wrote:

Slippery: Critical was changed with Sentinel's Fate. 100% Crit is 100% Crit against everything.

Zenadina: Going over 100% Crit will only help if your character is debuffed.

You may have intended to do so while merging crits, but I promise you that isn't the way it is in game.

slip's thorough presentation proving the matter against training dummies

/sigh, and the debate continues. Xelgad gave me hope on this with his more straightforward, definite answers with a recommened followup action. As Xelgad mentioned about not critting 100% on the Fishman with 100% crit being a bug, then I guess the Training Dummies are bugged out as well. /sigh

Xelgand in response, "We'll take a look at the code and see what is the matter. Thanks for your feedback on the Crits." This is approximately the exact same answer Timetraveller gave back when he started an explanation thread like this one.

So it continues ...

To answer ya Slippery, my guess is that the Training Dummies are bugged to test Crit Chance properly so we should not be using Training Dummies to validate this issue. /sigh

[Gaige]

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

[SkyBee]

Gaige wrote:

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

Heh, yeah, well, as Xelgad stated, supposedly on some mobs 100% crit is 100% regardless of level. However, some encounters (i.e., training dummies) could be bugged, that is coding, somehow peventing the proper equation to be utilized. So gaige, you got it backwards.

Odds training dummies are bugged - 99.99%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - .01%

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

[Gaige]

SkyBee wrote:

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

I like Xelgad a lot but in this case I'm confident crit isn't working as intended, I see it all the time in various raids and on various mobs.

[SkyBee]

Gaige wrote:

SkyBee wrote:

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

I like Xelgad a lot but in this case I'm confident crit isn't working as intended, I see it all the time in various raids and on various mobs.

Yeah, well, like Xelgad's fishman mob example, if it is not working as intended, then a bug report should be submitted. So, i guess there is already one bug report to submit there about Training Dummies and many many more raid encounters.

Would be nice, if the mobs did actually debuff our chances to Crit, then it would be nice to actually show this in our Detrimental Window instead of the "behind the scenes, no way for us to know, silliness".

[Tehom]

steelbadger wrote:

Taken from some tests I did on a training dummy when we were debating this on Flames.  It looks to me that 101% crit is the cutoff.  We're given a base 1% crit to start with, maybe it's not being added correctly?

I have a number of parses where I had 101 crit chance and failed to crit on trash mobs in Lab and Palace.

[steelbadger]

Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:

steelbadger wrote:

Taken from some tests I did on a training dummy when we were debating this on Flames.  It looks to me that 101% crit is the cutoff.  We're given a base 1% crit to start with, maybe it's not being added correctly?

I have a number of parses where I had 101 crit chance and failed to crit on trash mobs in Lab and Palace.

I've checked through my parses, I have 100% crit against all trash mobs in labs (and what trash mobs in Palace?  Ring event mobs?).

But I'm unable to test in a raid situation as I'm a Guardian and thus find it almost impossible to find gear that doesn't have crit on it.  Raids are never a good place for reliable testing, there's too many variables both known and unknown.

I really want to find more about the nature of the crit mit thing that some named mobs have though.  It seems awfully arbitrary.

[slippery]

SkyBee wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

Heh, yeah, well, as Xelgad stated, supposedly on some mobs 100% crit is 100% regardless of level. However, some encounters (i.e., training dummies) could be bugged, that is coding, somehow peventing the proper equation to be utilized. So gaige, you got it backwards.

Odds training dummies are bugged - 99.99%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - .01%

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

You are not understanding why he referred to the fishman. He used that mob as an example because that mob has an ae that drastically reduces your crit chance, so if you hit the mob with that dot on you you aren't going to crit.

[Banditman]

slippery wrote:

Here you can very clearly see me failing to crit on a training dummy (most controlled test I could get on a higher level mob, I was simply trying to prove that 100% doesn't mean 100%. I chrono'd to 80 and got my crit as close to 100% as possible and attacked level 90 training dummies).

Am I the only one who noticed that the "non crit" attacks here all followed a missed double attack?  Coincidence?

[Tehom]

steelbadger wrote:

Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I have a number of parses where I had 101 crit chance and failed to crit on trash mobs in Lab and Palace.

I've checked through my parses, I have 100% crit against all trash mobs in labs (and what trash mobs in Palace?  Ring event mobs?).

But I'm unable to test in a raid situation as I'm a Guardian and thus find it almost impossible to find gear that doesn't have crit on it.  Raids are never a good place for reliable testing, there's too many variables both known and unknown.

I really want to find more about the nature of the crit mit thing that some named mobs have though.  It seems awfully arbitrary.

Yeah, the ring event mobs from the first two names. Although there's a lot of variables, most of them are pretty easy to be aware of aside from things like players being out of range of having their buffs on you when those buffs are scrolled off, so there's no visual indicator, or damageless debuffs on mobs that are beyond the icon limit. Although it's a little tedious you can even tell that just by reading logs if you know the spell effect messages. The difficulty is generally just coming up with a timeline of when things happen and what effects were active when different events occur.

[SkyBee]

slippery wrote:

SkyBee wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

Heh, yeah, well, as Xelgad stated, supposedly on some mobs 100% crit is 100% regardless of level. However, some encounters (i.e., training dummies) could be bugged, that is coding, somehow peventing the proper equation to be utilized. So gaige, you got it backwards.

Odds training dummies are bugged - 99.99%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - .01%

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

You are not understanding why he referred to the fishman. He used that mob as an example because that mob has an ae that drastically reduces your crit chance, so if you hit the mob with that dot on you you aren't going to crit.

"If you're seeing your auto-attack and normal abilities (without procs) fail to crit (when you're not debuffed like on fishman in Perah's lab), feel free to PM me with your ACT Parse or combat logs, as that would be a bug." This is exaclty what Xelgad wrote.

The "when you are not debuffed" takes into account of the DoT you are mentioning. If ya "fail to crit when you are not debuffed," then "that would be a bug." Thus, if ya fail to crit on a training dummy and there are no crit chance debuffs on training dummies (that i know of), then that would be a bug. This is exactly what he wrote, not parsing words here, since he takes into consideration of "when you're not debuffed" in his statement. So, training dummies are bugged in this regard if we are to believe Xelgad. Whether they actually are bugged or not, nobody knows this here.

[slippery]

I hate that wording. It is not a bug, it is the exactly way the game has worked since crits got introduced, and was even stated by someone on the development team to be intended to work as such. The current dev team may not want it to work like that anymore, but that doesn't make it a bug, it is still working like it was designed and intended to. It also isn't training dummies, it is every mob in the game. As for Xelgad, I'm pretty sure what you are looking for is somewhere in the con mechanics, not anything directly to do with crits or spells or anything like that. I'd almost guarantee it is tied to con (like too many things are). Also to Banditman, that would be convenient, but you can see a whole lot of my spells not critting.

[SkyBee]

slippery wrote:

The current dev team may not want it to work like that anymore, but that doesn't make it a bug, it is still working like it was designed and intended to. It also isn't training dummies, it is every mob in the game.

Xelgad also states in this thread that SF has changed this mechanic and we believe it has not been changed and Timetraveller said the samething in the thread he made.

slippery wrote:

It is not a bug, it is the exactly way the game has worked since crits got introduced, and was even stated by someone on the development team to be intended to work as such.

Yeah, I keep reading that players are only referring by word of mouth that this mechanic and these issues have remained since EoF yet nobody has the hyperlink or document thread where a Dev have stated this. I have no reason to doubt this, but I also think it is quite convenient.

[Davngr1]

SkyBee wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

Heh, yeah, well, as Xelgad stated, supposedly on some mobs 100% crit is 100% regardless of level. However, some encounters (i.e., training dummies) could be bugged, that is coding, somehow peventing the proper equation to be utilized. So gaige, you got it backwards.

Odds training dummies are bugged - 99.99%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - .01%

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

    so you would bug the entire land of norath before looking into the actual criting mechanisim?   interesting mighty efficient sir!  by the time we're done bugging every mob in game maybe we can get this matter fixed! in 2 years..

  did you play in the kos - tso times?  did you examine your crit rate as opposed to your crit tool tip nightly after raid?   if not then you clearly have no clue what you're talking about and are just examining and making statements about something a dev "said" and totaly ignoring the actual issue at hand.

Banditman wrote:

slippery wrote:

Here you can very clearly see me failing to crit on a training dummy (most controlled test I could get on a higher level mob, I was simply trying to prove that 100% doesn't mean 100%. I chrono'd to 80 and got my crit as close to 100% as possible and attacked level 90 training dummies).

Am I the only one who noticed that the "non crit" attacks here all followed a missed double attack?  Coincidence?

 expect that the fact that it swang a double attack means that double attack is indeed not contested by mob level  :p  

[SkyBee]

Davngr1 wrote:

SkyBee wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Odds training dummies are bugged - .01%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - 99.99%

Heh, yeah, well, as Xelgad stated, supposedly on some mobs 100% crit is 100% regardless of level. However, some encounters (i.e., training dummies) could be bugged, that is coding, somehow peventing the proper equation to be utilized. So gaige, you got it backwards.

Odds training dummies are bugged - 99.99%

Odds changing crit to always crit at 100% didn't work - .01%

If ya were to hold to Xelgald's statements here ...

    so you would bug the entire land of norath before looking into the actual criting mechanisim?   interesting mighty efficient sir!  by the time we're done bugging every mob in game maybe we can get this matter fixed! in 2 years..

LOL!! I am just stating what Xelgad wrote. I did not state it made sense. If ya had any sense of reading comprehension, then you would have made the conclusion that if what Xelgad wrote is true then we will have to bug report many many many more mobs.

I think we are right on about the parses (unless there actually is a hidden crit chance debuff on higher levle training dummies) we have shown that proves the crit chance mechanic does not work as how Xelgad and Timetraveller expresses. I never expressed a single doubt regarding these parses.

[Hene]

I posted this several months ago and was wondering if we could get anymore feed back on the status of wards and their half-crit-bonus-gains in terms of room for improvement of heals versus wards (for example: revamping crit bonus to apply to wards like all other heals while keeping the base crit mulitplier at 1.15, i.e. ward crit mult = heal crit mult - 0.15)

Hene wrote:

I have a quick comment about the effective crit multiplier for wards:

I know to balance wards (I'd imagine, specifically their ability/heal mod 'advantage' ), the effective crit multiplier on wards is reduced.  However, as crit bonus increases for all healers equally (from gear, AA, buffs, etc), the proportional gap in total heal potential between druids and clerics remains the same, but shamans begin to fall behind, quite drastically, I might add.

It would be awesome if you would consider this in your itemization and mechanic changes!

Edit: I'll add some number here in a bit..

Not sure if you needed numbers to illustrate what I meant but here they are:

Now consider two equally geared healers with 0% crit chance and 0 ability mod.

A druid's lv 78 master single target HoT heals for 583.5 per tick for up to 6 ticks.  This means, it can heal for a maximum of 3501 hp assuming complete utilization.

A shaman's lv 78 master single target ward can prevent up to 2100 damage.

Because HoTs are less efficient, the druid's heal does 67% more.  This means that HoTs are less efficient and gain an extra 67% in maximum healing power to offset this. 

Now consider these two equally geared healers who have 100% crit chance and 0% crit bonus:

A druid's lv 78 master single target HoT heals for 583.5 per tick for up to 6 ticks, multiplied by 1.300 for a crit, this is 758.55 per tick for 6 ticks.  This means, it can heal for a maximum of 4551.3 hp assuming complete utilization.

A shaman's lv 78 master single target ward can prevent up to 2100*1.150 = 2415 damage.

Now, a druid heal does 88.5% more.  Okay, so with the introduction of criticals, druids gained a little edge over shamans heal wise, okay, I guess that is fine and dandy, but it would make sense to preserve the previous ratio.

Now, with the addition of crit bonus, consider the equally geared healers with 100% crit chance and 100% crit bonus:

A druid's lv 78 master single target HoT heals for 583.5 per tick for up to 6 ticks, multiplied by 2.300 for a crit, this is 1342 per tick for 6 ticks.  This means, it can heal for a maximum of 8052 hp assuming complete utilization.

A shaman's lv 78 master single target ward can prevent up to 2100*(1.150+0.500) = 3465 damage.

Now, with 100% crit bonus, a druid heal does 132% more. As you can see, as crit bonus increases,  shamans become less and less effective with respect to druids.  So as druids' heal ability increases, shamans get practically nothing.

As you can see, with the introduction of crits, the bonus percentage of a druid's heals gets significantly bolstered.  And with crit bonus, it truly blows away wards.

Timetravlling said that he and Xelgad talked about it, and I was wondering if there were any plans on implementing a change? and even better, an ETA on such changes

[Maroger]

Ambrin@Nagafen wrote:

Maroger wrote:

How is critical mitigation calculated? I know you can get items that that stat on it BUT - I have some character that have NO ITEMS with critical mitigation on them, but yet when I check I see they have +2% (just an example) critical mitigation listed.

Exactly how did they raise critical mitigation without an item which says + XXXX to critical mitigation.

Fighters and scours get a small amount of critmit from agility while priests and mages get a small amount of critmit from intelligence.

Basically this means that every class has little bit of critmit from their stats, even if their gear doesn't directly give critmit.

What happened to Critical Mitigation in SF? Was it all wrapped into Critical? I don't see items with Critical Mitigation on them in SF as in TSO?