Initiative Scaling/Stacking: An Experiment

[Samejima]

So after reading about the way initiative debuffs suddenly and dramatically (logarithmically?) increase your chance to be critically hit if it gets your stat low enough, I got to wondering how the stat would scale at higher levels, and how high I could pump the stat with currently available gear.

It's always been my impression that ini is considered pretty junky as a defensive stat and not worth focusing on, but since I had the Dom and Rare Fortune set bonuses on my Runepriest, and several ini talismans rotting in the bank, I decided to run a little experiment and stack it myself and see.

All combined, talismans, ini from gear and set bonuses, renown points on the ini stat, and full points in mid-tree to cap the RP ini buff (+80), gives me a grand total of 779 initiative. I suspect I could get it somewhat higher but probably not by much--at least, not on a Runepriest.

With no bonuses from gear and no points in futile strikes, that gives me a 4.5% chance to be crit (if the paperdoll is correct).


Not so hot, right? But ini doesn't just reduce crit, so how about bonus to dodge? Well, it does seem to provide a modest amount of that (have ~29% dodge with no gear bonuses and no points in dodge-disrupt), but it's my understanding that the strike-through provided by ballistic skill works against the dodge provided by initiative, and any ranged class worth their salt has far more than 779 Bal. That said, I don't know if the strike-through works on a 1-1 basis, that is, whether 100 bal cancels out the dodge provided by 100 ini. Can probably dodge the heck out of thrown daggers though

Beyond that, initiative also provides a chance to detect stealthed enemies. Since I do feel like I detect Witch Elves more often and from further away at ~330 ini (my normally geared RP) than I do with ~200-250 ini on other characters, I had some hope here that initiative stacking might provide some laughs by giving me a reverse x-ray vision to see into the secret world of Witch Elves.

Unfortunately, in some (admittedly limited) testing I don't seem to detect WE's that much more often at 779 Ini than I did at 330. So if Ini provides a bonus, it's low enough that it's difficult to notice a significant difference by stacking it.

Some questions I'm left with:

Does crit reduction provided by ini scale logarithmically(?) at very high levels (approaching soft-cap) as it does as very low levels?

How does strike-through provided by main damage stats scale against defensive stats?

How does stealth detection work generally, and how much does %chance scale with initiative?

[ragafury]

[Akalukz]

What's the difference between chance to be crit normally say at your 300 ini. I was always under the impression that over 300ish the returns on investment drastically dropped. And that is what made the -% chance to be crit so valuable, because the return was so much better for the flat rate.


EDIT:

I think Idrinth used to have a bad ass calculator that you could enter numbers and see how it affected your stats. not sure if that is something still maintained or not.

[stillwaterww]

What's the difference between chance to be crit normally say at your 300 ini. I was always under the impression that over 300ish the returns on investment drastically dropped. And that is what made the -% chance to be crit so valuable, because the return was so much better for the flat rate.


EDIT:

I think Idrinth used to have a bad ass calculator that you could enter numbers and see how it affected your stats. not sure if that is something still maintained or not.

`
https://tools.idrinth.de/tank/? This?

[Dabbart]

1. don’t use stat doll. Use .getstats
2. Avoidance checks was fundamentally changed. Use the search function to find the exact math, but basically, if a defender has 30% dodge, and the attacker via BS and gear has 20% striketheough, the attacker rolls 1-120(100+20%) and on 1-30 the attack is dodged.
3. Stacking initiative in regards to crit rate is almost entirely to avoid ini debuffs from giving you a super high chance to be crit. On Live it was around 400 initiative was the target, currently around 350ish on RoR with some FS or gear will keep you below 10% even after debuffs.
4. Crit rate reduction CAN go negative, and it will impact your opponents chance to crit you. IE, you can have -23% chance to be crit, opponent has 30% crt rate, their attackers have a 7% chance to crit you.


Also use .getstats, don’t trust the stat doll

Edit: and stealth is just a Vs check of initiative. I believe it’s within 30ft of the front and 15ft to your sides. Not positive in the range. But again, it’s not automatic just cause you have higher initiative.

[Akalukz]

Thanks Stillwater, that's what i was talking about,

After 400 or so each additional 100 changes your percentage less and less. The differnce between 300 and 400 is almost 3% swing, while the difference between 700 and 800 is like .75% swing

[footpatrol2]

The initiative function does seem logarithmic.

[Ramasee]

%Crit
350/<defender initiative>/10)+(<attacker crit bonus> - <defender crit reduction>)

That's the formula that I have from live. I am not sure if that's how it currently works on ror.

[Bozzax]

Afaik the only diff is you get debuffed to 0 or less ini where you get flat 100%

[roadkillrobin]

By my estimation, 550 Intitiative is the sweet spot you need to have to cut down the crit chance to tollereble numbers for Destruction incase you end up meting the High Elf trio.
This will give you a net base chance to be crit of around 10% vs that group. If you add their own base chance it's around 35% in total - any other crit reducers you have.
To reach this numbers on moast classes you need to invest in 8 talismans slots of Initiative and 32 points into renown.
This will grant you a bonus of around 300 Initiative. And best case scenario without any debuffs you'll be at 6,5 base chance to be crit.
It's an insane amount of investment just to deal with this fotm trio tbh.
If you don't invest this you're sitting at around 95% chance to be crit - any crit modifiers with 10% or less armor mitigegration on light armor classes or around 30% medium armor classes vs a class that does 5000-6000 on its 2 button burst rotation when they crit (WL).

Meanwhile is there anything Order really need to look out for in the same degree when it comes to spec investment?