Egoish wrote:Correct me.if i am wrong but in the old system my "base" chance to avoid from stats is basically removed by my attackers main stat so only the tactic/rr/other bonuses applied...
So in the old system 35% avoid was more like 25% - strikethrough, for example 10% strikethrough leaves me with 15% chance to avoid..
In the new system i'd have 35 out of 120 chance to avoid, so 29.166 chance to avoid...
However the stat contribution is now much higher so i'm actually mord like 35 out of 150ish?
So more like 23.333 chance to avoid.
They have definately lowered the value of strikethrough and increased the chance to avoid, though it seems like a beneficial change based on the minor "actual" increase in evasion. If anything they have made main stat more valuable, strikethrough worse and overall abilities which modify evasion more valuable.
With testing it may be worth while inceeasing the strikethrough values on gear, but if the intention was to make defence more viable the changes seem to be successful.
The stat-based contested part of the old system for parry, dodge and disrupt (for equal-level toons) was:
contested defence % = 7.5% x defender's defensive stat / attacker's offensive stat
Block used a 20% multiplier at the start instead of the 7.5% multiplier, and the defensive stat was the shield rating.
Added to the contested defence % were the + x% values from tactics, abilities, renown, morales, and gear. Subtracted from this were the attacker's strike-through % bonuses from tactics, etc.
total defence % = (7.5% x defender's defensive stat / attacker's offensive stat) + defender's defence % bonuses - attacker's strike-through % bonuses
This is how the system worked in Age of Reckoning.
The problem with this system was that the defensive stats didn't contribute much actual defence and that most of the defence came from the +x% bonuses. For example,
attacker's strength = 1050 and a tactic that provides an additional 10% strike-through such as the high elf racial tactic
defender's weapon skill = 450
defender has a tactic that supplies +10% to parry
total parry % = (7.5% x 450 / 1050) + 10% - 10% = 3.2% + 10% - 10% = 3.2%.
So that 450 weapon skill was providing only 3.2% percent parry against an attacker with 1050 strength, while the percentage bonuses cancelled each other out. If the parry % bonus had been +20% instead of +10%, the total parry % would have been 13.2%. Generally, it's easier to stack defense % bonuses than extra strike-through, defense values could be stacked fairly high, especially by defensively-specced tanks.
The new system appears to be based off remnant code on the client. Note that the new system was not used in the live version of AOR, although it may have been used in alpha or beta testing of the original game. The character sheet stats for defence came from the server in the live game, not the client, and used the system described above.
The new system gives more prominence to defence from stats. Using the figures above, the new system would give a base parry value of:
base parry = 100 x weapon skill /(350 x 7.5) = 100 x 450 / 2625 = 17.14
This is compared to the attacker's strike-through value which is calculated:
strike-through = 100 + 100 x strength / (350 x 7.5) = 100 + 100 x 1050 / 2625 = 100 + 40 = 140
So the total parry chance = 100% x base parry / strike-through = 100% x 17.14 / 140 = 12.2%. Compare this with the 3.2% from the previous system and you can see that the same weapon skill now gives an extra 9% parry.
But what about the +10% bonuses mentioned in the original example. I'm going to add them in two steps so you can see how the implied new mechanic treats the defensive and strike-through bonuses differently. First, I will add the +10% parry bonus that the defender has.
The post made by Secrets implies that this 10% is added directly to the base parry value. So the new parry value will be:
total parry value = weapon skill contribution + the 10% tactic bonus = 17.14 + 10 = 27.14. (The calculation of the 17.14 value is shown above.)
So let's apply the attacker's initial strike-through to this to find the parry %:
parry% = 27.14 / (100 + 40) = 19.4%.
Compare this with the 12.2% value calculated earlier and will see that using the +10% parry tactic has only added an actual 7.2% of parry against an attacker that has 1050 strength. So the tactic description is now misleading.
Now let's add the attacker's +10% strike-through used in the original example. The devs posts appear to imply that this 10% is simply added to their current strike-through value. For our current example, this would give:
new strike-through = 100 + 40 + 10 = 150. So their strike-through has increased by the 10 points shown on the tactic tooltip. You might think "well, that seems fair enough", but let's see how it affects the contested roll.
The new contested roll is now:
total parry % = 27.14 / 150 = 18.1%.
Comparing this with the previously calculated value of 19.4%, we see that adding the +10% strike-through tactic has reduced the defender's parry chance by only 1.3%!
Another way to look at this is from the attacker's point of view. Initially, they had a 100% - 19.4% = 80.6% to hit the defender. Adding the +10% strike-through tactic has increased this to only 81.9%. So using that tactic will provide them with an average dps increase of only 1.3/80.6 = 1.6%. Dps tactics that are generally slotted would normally give an increase of between 10%-15%. So a tactic that provides only 1.6% extra damage is basically worthless.
The above analysis of the new defence mechanics is based on the devs' posts in this thread. They haven't explicitly described how the +x% bonuses are going to work, so some of my analysis might be wrong. This is why I have been asking for clarification of how the new mechanic will work in these situations. If the mechanic does work as I have described (and that the devs have implied), then you can see that many ability, tactic, renown ability, etc tooltip descriptions will be extremely misleading and that +strike-through bonuses on gear, tactics, etc will have been made pretty close to useless.
