This is just a listing of my current theories. I am looking for feedback and if your really outgoing, parses.

Based on my thread and study on Attack Reduction (http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.php?t=13107) I am going to infer a few things.

1: Weapons hit for set values. This appears to be a 5 part formula, which is unknown to the player base. It is believed that you will hit for specfic values based on your: Skill, Strength, Weapon Damage, Class and Damage Bonus.

2: If this is true, then we can assume that much like a mob, we will hit for a specfic spread of values.

3: We can also assume, that this spread is tilted one way or the other, based on the mob's mitigation AC.

It my belief, that the AC Reduction on our Ro's line of spells thus, has the following logical functions.

We know players have a Modal Hit. They hit for this value verus a given Mitigation AC more often then any other.

My theory is the AC debuffs is detracted against the mob's mitigation ac value - and possiably, the avoidance, but I have no confirmation of that.

This is important for several reasons, this means:

Debuffing a mob's AC does not make you hit harder then you normally would. You will still have the same max hit. As I have seen no claims of people hitting harder then their normal max hit, we can assume this is true.

This would however, provided the ac adjustment was large enough, possiably push you to a higher modal hit. This would raise your average hit total - and very likely your Damage Per Second.

This also, we can infer, means you hit for closer to max hit, more often. This would be due to the mob not mitigating the incoming damage as well. This would push your hit values to the higher end of what you can hit for.

That is, if a player can hit for 50 values (made up number as it is unknown) the player may hit for values 30-50 more often with AC debuffed then values 1-30.

Which begs the question, how do we prove this?:

We would need parses against one given mob.

One of the parses would need to be without AC reduction. We would be looking for the Players Min and Max hit, as well as their Modal Hit. Yaulp as a parser can calucate all of this. For ease - a player using one weapon (2-Hander, or just a single 1hander) would be perfered. Using Yaulp would would calucate the hit range based on every value the player hit for.

Next, we would have the same player (same buffs, weapon, haste) attack the same mob, but with reduced AC. We would again be looking for the Players Min and Max Hits, as well as their Modal Hit. We would chart out the hit range based on every value the player hit for.

Using this information we would look for the following:
1: A increase in the players Modal hit while mob is debuffed
2: An increase over the players max hit
3: An increase in average hit
4: We would see if the player's hit values shifted to the right on the second parse chart over the first.


This would require extensive parsing against the same mob, realistically we're talking several hours worth for strong results, tho 2 spans of 30 minutes each should generate some theories to support or dispell various aspects of my theory for sure.

-Fenier

I have access to 2 monks and can probably do some parses tomorrow morning. Will be happy to help.

Just tell me which mob, and what buffs.

Just tell me which mob, and what buffs.

I don't think it matters that much.

What matters is:

It is the same mob.
The Buffs are the same, for both parses.

Has to be more than buffs being the same. Gear needs to be the same, weapon augs need to be the same, melee effects have to be the same...Best bet is to parse with the same monk, twice. If I can when I get back from classes today ill head to ssra and do some parsing with my monk.

Best bet is to parse with the same monk, twice.

Yes.

VT's courtyard could be a decent place to test this out on - trash mobs have 80,000+ hp, put out very low dps, and hand / immo + glacier usually land without a problem. VT mobs also generally have high AC as well.

VT's courtyard could be a decent place to test this out on - trash mobs have 80,000+ hp, put out very low dps, and hand / immo + glacier usually land without a problem. VT mobs also generally have high AC as well.

Aye we where talking about that in serverwide last night. Other mobs would be like, The Va'dyn or maybe the Umbral Plains named. Quite possiably Rhags, or 3rd floor Guards near Emporer's room would work well also.

-Fenier

Has to be more than buffs being the same. Gear needs to be the same, weapon augs need to be the same, melee effects have to be the same...Best bet is to parse with the same monk, twice. If I can when I get back from classes today ill head to ssra and do some parsing with my monk.

That would be impossible!

Heh, and I thought the boards would explode when words "Nimchip" and "impossible" are placed too closely together.

lol

well i was misunderstanding what many people said when i posted that. I realized my mistake on the Atk thread. :(

I'll leave the graphs and math to those more inclined but incase it helps I took these 2 logs

With out debuffs (http://www.catsinhats.net/hosted/withoutdebuff.eqlog_Monstar_beta.txt)
With debuffs (http://www.catsinhats.net/hosted/withdebuff.eqlog_Monstar_beta.txt)

With out is the beta geared zerker (time lvl) only buffs were spiritual accendance and elixir of speed X. 4hrs of just straight melee on the base lvl 70 test toon. (oh and I didn't notice crits were filtered out till after this parse)

With is the same zerker, resummoned mob, same buffs, same gear, but mellen cast hand of ro (-15), sun's corona (-19), glacier breath (-31), then kept immolation of the sun up (-27) for a total of -92ac. Hand or immo occasionally went down for at most about 6seconds. This parse was only for about a hr.

DPS and accuracy actually took a small hit but it was pretty small difference so it could just be related to the sample size/rng. Avg hit with debuffs went up 7. It could be though that there's a 100pt rule here and breaking 100 would ramp up the changes.

The most notable change seemed to be the min hit went from 50 to 72.

Another idea for a mob could be IV or Grieg or really any of the Luclin boss mobs although the raid mobs usually have higher AC values than normal mobs or named mobs.

I suspect that AC debuffs will have less effect than the atk debuffs, because the dps increase will be multiplied by the numbers of attackers.

so i was thinking a bit tonight while grinding out xp with a war.

is the converse of what was determined in ATK debuffs then true?
that is, debuffing mob ATK is like giving the tank more AC. is debuffing mob AC similar to giving all attackers a higher ATK ?

also, while listening to the war and tank discuss AC vs HP, i got to wondering if there really is an AC cap per se. using the same logic used to show that our ATK debuff scales with expansions without needing a percent version, would it be fair to treat AC like that, too? yes, AC reaches a "cap" for a given expansion based on general mob ATK, but when the next expansion comes along with mobs that have a higher ATK, higher and higher AC means more?

I will have to admit that most of the theory and logic listed in all of Fenier's great work is way beyond me (passed statistics with a C) So, what I need is the hard core basics.

Stacking ATK debuffs Hand of Ro and Sun's Corona will decrease the mobs ATK. Got it.

For the AC debuffs... I am still a bit confused. And to be honest, I don't have enough spell gems to keep all of these spells, my heals, and Dot's memmed.

Is there a way that you could list the best possible spell gem line up? I do have pneumonic retention, but 9 spells gems still doesnt seem to be enough!! :confused:

Hand of Ro + Sun's Corona + Fixation of Ro
for attack solely.

Immolation of Ro + Hand of Ro + Sun's Corona + Glacier Breath + Fixation of Ro
for complete AC debuffage.

I believe Glacier Breath does not stack with Sun's Corona?

I believe Glacier Breath does not stack with Sun's Corona?
Yes it does.

so i was thinking a bit tonight while grinding out xp with a war.

is the converse of what was determined in ATK debuffs then true?
that is, debuffing mob ATK is like giving the tank more AC. is debuffing mob AC similar to giving all attackers a higher ATK ?

also, while listening to the war and tank discuss AC vs HP, i got to wondering if there really is an AC cap per se. using the same logic used to show that our ATK debuff scales with expansions without needing a percent version, would it be fair to treat AC like that, too? yes, AC reaches a "cap" for a given expansion based on general mob ATK, but when the next expansion comes along with mobs that have a higher ATK, higher and higher AC means more?

The is no cap per se, it is dependant on the mob you are tanking. It is a comparison of atk vs hps, just as you mention. The exact formula is unknown even to us math-whore warriors.

There was once a cap, but that was lifted in luclin I think. The cap you may be speaking of the return of AC over the mobs atack, which acts like a soft cap, reducing the effect of further AC over this value and it entirely dependant upon the mobs atk (I would assume). Tank classes have higher return over this value and therefor their armor is very effective.

Mob attack is usually lowish compared to player characters. For warriors 1200ish AC seems to be about the median atk on mobs for pop era mobs, With the release of later expansion that value has increased on mobs, making the effect of 3k AC still return significantly with added AC.

Long story short: Cap is not the correect word to use to describe the behavior, but it is a carry over from when there was one (hard cap).

I just thought I would like to bring up a possible hiccup for people who are looking into doing any parsing with this.

The three which definately stack are the following:
Hand of Ro (61)
7: Decrease Fire Resist by 72
10: Decrease ATK by 100
12: Decrease AC by 15

Immolation of the Sun (67)
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 174 (L67) to 178 (L69) per tick
3: Decrease Fire Resist by 40
10: Decrease AC by 36

Glacier Breath (67)
1: Decrease AC by 30 (L67) to 31 (L70)
5: Decrease Cold Resist by 55

The iffy one is this:
Sun's Corona (67)
1: Decrease AC by 19
5: Decrease ATK by 90

All of the above spells will land (and not cause any of the others to wear off), however, Glacier Breath and Sun's Corona both have their AC debuff in the same slot. What I expect, is that the highest number takes precedence. Then again, for this sort of shared slot effect, it may just be the most recent to land. There is a chance they could stack, too (however, I doubt this is the case).

I just wanted to chime in on this one.I took Fenier's ideas with atk debuff theorys to the extreme to great effect.Now i'm currently exploring the AC side of debuffs and hope to ultimately include other classes into the mix and find out just how big of a difference i can make.

If i'm understanding things correctly (and please let me know if im wrong) atk and ac seem to be interchangable variables opposite one another in the same equation, used to calculate mob damage? i know i'm over simplifying things greatly.I just want to make sure i'm following the logic correctly.

If a reduction of atk on a mob translates to the equivalent of more ac to the tank (again oversimplifing it), would the opposite then hold true? Would lowering the mobs AC have the same effect of increasing the atk rating of the player? I.E. shifting the players damage output to the higher side of the spectrum?

Any thoughts on this subject would help alot. Thanx in advance =)

If i'm understanding things correctly (and please let me know if im wrong) atk and ac seem to be interchangable variables opposite one another in the same equation, used to calculate mob damage? i know i'm over simplifying things greatly.I just want to make sure i'm following the logic correctly.


Kinda. Mobs work differantly then players. Players seem to use at least a 5 part formula to determine damage, where Mobs's mitigation AC is only one part of 5.

If a reduction of atk on a mob translates to the equivalent of more ac to the tank (again oversimplifing it), would the opposite then hold true? Would lowering the mobs AC have the same effect of increasing the atk rating of the player? I.E. shifting the players damage output to the higher side of the spectrum?

Yes, but not to the extreme we see with Attack Reduction since we're only adjusting 1 part of a 5+ part Formula, as opposed to the half of a two part formula.

Parses seem to indicate AC reduction is a 1-3 point adjustment in average dps. This may seem small, but when multipled by a raid of 54 people, your looking at a rather nice increase in damage simply due to mob debuffing.

-Fenier

Still confused So..whats a good debuff line up for a group, and a good debuff line up for a raid ..if a druid casts his whole ac debuff line up will he not get insane argo and die?

Still confused So..whats a good debuff line up for a group, and a good debuff line up for a raid ..if a druid casts his whole ac debuff line up will he not get insane argo and die?

In groups I use Hand of Ro and Corana, I am normally more concerned with lowering the attack rating then the AC.

AC reduction is useful, but does not seem to be as powerful as Attack Reduction unless you have a large number of people meleeing on the mob.

In a Raid Setting, Ideally, you should be using all debuffs. I recommend splitting them up between druids, but normally on Raids I can do the following in the first 2 or 3 percent.

Hand of Ro, Sun's Corana, Epic 2.0 Click (I use Early so that it recycles and I click it again either midfight or near the end) and sometimes Immolation of Ro (if Corana's is having a hard time sticking).

If the mob is really melee heavy damage I also add in Fixation when I can.

I have SCS and 2.0 Aggro Reduction tho, and the tanks typically have decent enough aggro I can do this early on. Your results will vary based on your aas and the tanks ability to hold aggro.

-Fenier

Posted today on EQlive:

There's actually no soft cap on attack. A high attack simply increases your chance to hit for more damage when you actually hit the NPC. It's directly opposed by the opponent's AC. If your attack is far enough over the AC of the opponent, then you'll see diminishing returns when you add more, but attack itself doesn't scale down. NPC AC hasn't changed much since PoP while player attack has grown dramatically so when fighting most NPCs, you tend to have far more attack than needed to hit in the top of the damage range.


During the last expansion beta, I spent some time with the combat code and broke down the actual formulas. I plan to set up the NPCs in the next expansion to have AC appropriate to the attack of our current average player, which will return value to increasing your attack rating.


Rashere



I take this as meaning our AC debuffs will be more useful as of SoF.

I take this as meaning our AC debuffs will be more useful as of SoF.

I take it that this is an effective melee DPS nerf and expect that the dev's think this will address the balance concern.

And for those wondering still what stacks and what doesn't with regard to those ac debuffs...
http://www.s123722642.websitehome.co.uk/AC_Debuffs2.jpg

So, based on the developer quote this confirms several things for us
AC debuffs lower a mobs mitigation AC value (mAC), they do not increase player accuracy
AC Debuffs are thus similar in function to raising a players attack value. This is significant since the effect of lowering AC on the mob is similar to adding attack to every person attempting to hit that mob in Melee.
The value of AC Debuffs (and Attack Buffs) has steadily gone down since Planes of Power due to the fact mob mAC has not improved by much, in conjunction with it being easier to raise Player Attack. This explains the minor gains done by earlier parsing. Rashere has done work with SoF to bring back the value of the Line.This poses a interesting question

What is the value of lowering a mobs AC? Best phrased as - If I lower Mob AC by X, it's equal to raising player attack by Y

The only stacking issue ive found is between SC and HF ...