Damage Mitigation is either broken or I completely misunderstand how it works. It appears that damage mitigation aa's do nothing for my 65 enchanter. I just spent 27 aas on damage mitigation, and after all of my effort, I notice no difference in the dps of mobs when parsing.
I had understood that mitigation meant, "If the mob would have hit you for 100 damage, the hit will be mitigated to 90 damage". Fake numbers, but you get my meaning. A couple people told me I must have it wrong because it just couldn't be broken. I was on that band wagon until they added an innate damage mitigation to warriors.
I was testing against a 56 warrior with no aa's at all. When he sat down, a mob hit him for 128 damage. When our druid (No aa's) sat down, the mob hit him for 133 damage. Same for a couple other party members. When I sat down... 133. I had expected 110 or 120... after all... 27 fricking aa's, right? Nope. I have yet to parse any difference at all from the aa's effect.
Is this specific to my class or archtype, or is this happenning across the board?
Sinaerre
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Quote:
I was testing against a 56 warrior with no aa's at all. When he sat down, a mob hit him for 128 damage. When our druid (No aa's) sat down, the mob hit him for 133 damage. Same for a couple other party members. When I sat down... 133. I had expected 110 or 120... after all... 27 fricking aa's, right? Nope. I have yet to parse any difference at all from the aa's effect
Ok, so you are saying you never parsed yourself on the same exact mob before you got all the aaexp in mitigation. So, you compare yourself to THE tank class wearing plate armour and to a leather class when you are a cloth class and find you don't measure up any better when it comes to mitigation.
Instead, find yourself a lvl65 pure caster with similar hitpoints and AC to you that has yet to spend any points in this AA and go find yourselves a mob to compare against. Not a mob almost the same, talking the same exact mob...just wait for respawns and take turns. Do this around 10 times each and compare.
I can tell you my own experience as a rogue. I did not notice myself taking any less damage after maxing out combat stability (mitigation) and combat agility (avoid incoming melee completely). BUT, once I maxed out lightening reflexes and innate defense which required the other two to be maxed to even begin, I noticed an obvious difference.
Edited, Wed Dec 31 06:02:11 2003 by Boop
i am with hammerjk on this one i have a 65 SK friend with full mitigation AA abilities and in raid situations top end mobs hit us for exactly the same MAX damage
for example on Vindi raid sk was hit for 700 damage with full mitigation. next raid i took aggro when he dropped to adds and in the entire fight i took 700 Max damage.
Surely if the Sk has 20% mitigation Vindi's max hit on him should be 630??
For those who have not fought vindi he only ever hits for even damage i.e 340 , 510, 700 so 20% mitigation on a 570 damage hit should be 456 but at no point did he take an odd damage to indicate the mitigation worked.
for example on Vindi raid sk was hit for 700 damage with full mitigation. next raid i took aggro when he dropped to adds and in the entire fight i took 700 Max damage.
Surely if the Sk has 20% mitigation Vindi's max hit on him should be 630??
For those who have not fought vindi he only ever hits for even damage i.e 340 , 510, 700 so 20% mitigation on a 570 damage hit should be 456 but at no point did he take an odd damage to indicate the mitigation worked.
I have always noticed that sitting will get you hit for max... REGAURDLESS of AC or level. (not countng aaxp or new migration never played with that)
I think comparing sitting damage is kinda silly.
Now the part about parsin is interesting... but what were you parsing on? Mobs in hunt situations? or Mobs that hit for 133 max damage (Obviously not a normal hunting mob)
I also thought that it did not Garentee a % drop in damage, only increased your chance of getting less than max damage hit.
IE level 65 SK with 1500 AC will get hit for 700 Max
same mob naked level 50 SK with 200 AC will get hit Max 700... just alot more often.
Using your example then AC isnt working either.
Maybe I dont get it. I have killed Vindi but as a caster I really dont pay attention to typical hits on other people.
I think comparing sitting damage is kinda silly.
Now the part about parsin is interesting... but what were you parsing on? Mobs in hunt situations? or Mobs that hit for 133 max damage (Obviously not a normal hunting mob)
I also thought that it did not Garentee a % drop in damage, only increased your chance of getting less than max damage hit.
IE level 65 SK with 1500 AC will get hit for 700 Max
same mob naked level 50 SK with 200 AC will get hit Max 700... just alot more often.
Using your example then AC isnt working either.
Maybe I dont get it. I have killed Vindi but as a caster I really dont pay attention to typical hits on other people.
48 posts
I have always noticed that sitting will get you hit for max... REGAURDLESS of AC or level. (not countng aaxp or new migration never played with that)
This is completely true, except for when they added innate damage mitigation to warriors. The point was to demonstrate that damage mitigation affects warriors when they sit down and take full damage. Before the patch, without damage mitigation, a mob hit them for 100%. Now, after the patch and with innate damage mitigation, they only receive 97%. This is how I assumed damage mitigation would work, and indeed that is true for warriors. I find it unlikely that they have two different meanings for damage mitigation. I find it more likely that it is broken.
The powers that be have never nailed down exactly what damage mitigation is, so how is anyone supposed to test it? What I want is for someone from SOE to say, "It works like this..." or "It is broken, and here are your 27 aas back".
Sitting down is only the simplest case I tested. I've parsed every way I can think of. My difficulty is finding an enchanter with all the lightning reflexes aas and none of the damage mitigation aas to test against. Usually, once a chanter is going up one tree, the other follows immediately. At least that is the case on my server.
That makes testing the case very difficult. I assume that this is why noone has noticed yet. I myself wouldn't have challenged the assumption until I saw a warrior with innate mitigation in action. Mitigation for the warrior works exactly how I though mitigation should work. This led me to question.
Also, when I reparse my log files in HoH before and after the damage mitigation aa's, the results are close to identical. This is not a suitable test to be certain, but I did not know I would have to test damage mitigation in the first place. I didn't know it was going to be broken.
This is completely true, except for when they added innate damage mitigation to warriors. The point was to demonstrate that damage mitigation affects warriors when they sit down and take full damage. Before the patch, without damage mitigation, a mob hit them for 100%. Now, after the patch and with innate damage mitigation, they only receive 97%. This is how I assumed damage mitigation would work, and indeed that is true for warriors. I find it unlikely that they have two different meanings for damage mitigation. I find it more likely that it is broken.
The powers that be have never nailed down exactly what damage mitigation is, so how is anyone supposed to test it? What I want is for someone from SOE to say, "It works like this..." or "It is broken, and here are your 27 aas back".
Sitting down is only the simplest case I tested. I've parsed every way I can think of. My difficulty is finding an enchanter with all the lightning reflexes aas and none of the damage mitigation aas to test against. Usually, once a chanter is going up one tree, the other follows immediately. At least that is the case on my server.
That makes testing the case very difficult. I assume that this is why noone has noticed yet. I myself wouldn't have challenged the assumption until I saw a warrior with innate mitigation in action. Mitigation for the warrior works exactly how I though mitigation should work. This led me to question.
Also, when I reparse my log files in HoH before and after the damage mitigation aa's, the results are close to identical. This is not a suitable test to be certain, but I did not know I would have to test damage mitigation in the first place. I didn't know it was going to be broken.
Wow, this is kind of a cool thread, in that it reminds me that information I take totally for granted usually isn't that widespread. Those AA abilities certainly aren't broken, and it's just a misconception that they would modify the hit numbers, rather than the chance at a lower hit.
Here's how mitigation in Everquest works:
Every mob works off the same damage formula, which has 2 different values. A base value, and a damage array. Every time the mob hits you, it does the base value plus 1 to 20 times the value of the damage array. In other words, let's say some orc npc has a base damage of 50, and a damage array of 5. It can hit for 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125, 130, 135, 140, 145, 150. The only time he'll ever hit for a number other than those is when there's a specific ability to modify and reduce the damage- shielding (% off damage base), defensive/stonestance (reduction of damage array), warrior innate mitigation (added in recent patch). Regardless, none of those abilities are random, so you'll still see 20 discrete numbers from anyone with them if you parse it out.
So, now that you understand that, mitigation works very simply- it's a comparison of mob ATK versus AC abilities of the player. Based on a randomizer and the comparison, the mob hits you for one of the 20 values. Mitigation/avoidance AA abilities seem to raise effective softcaps on AC, but testing on that is incomplete as far as I know. Their actual impact at the high end is extremely substantial, and you'll start to approach 30%+ minhits from raid mobs at high AC.
If you really want to parse your mitigation, you need to 1) do very, very, very long parses on mobs with high enough ATK to see substantial differences in the amount of AC you have and 2) make sure all test cases are consistent.
Edited, Thu Jan 1 15:47:18 2004 by Calimyr
Here's how mitigation in Everquest works:
Every mob works off the same damage formula, which has 2 different values. A base value, and a damage array. Every time the mob hits you, it does the base value plus 1 to 20 times the value of the damage array. In other words, let's say some orc npc has a base damage of 50, and a damage array of 5. It can hit for 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125, 130, 135, 140, 145, 150. The only time he'll ever hit for a number other than those is when there's a specific ability to modify and reduce the damage- shielding (% off damage base), defensive/stonestance (reduction of damage array), warrior innate mitigation (added in recent patch). Regardless, none of those abilities are random, so you'll still see 20 discrete numbers from anyone with them if you parse it out.
So, now that you understand that, mitigation works very simply- it's a comparison of mob ATK versus AC abilities of the player. Based on a randomizer and the comparison, the mob hits you for one of the 20 values. Mitigation/avoidance AA abilities seem to raise effective softcaps on AC, but testing on that is incomplete as far as I know. Their actual impact at the high end is extremely substantial, and you'll start to approach 30%+ minhits from raid mobs at high AC.
If you really want to parse your mitigation, you need to 1) do very, very, very long parses on mobs with high enough ATK to see substantial differences in the amount of AC you have and 2) make sure all test cases are consistent.
Edited, Thu Jan 1 15:47:18 2004 by Calimyr
48 posts
Calimar, thank you for the awesome post. I have a couple questions. Do you know of a site or thread where this has been discussed? My next question has to do with DM raising the soft cap for ac.
As an enchanter with AC around 700, would I even see a difference in hits? When I got lightning reflexes 5, the damage I took went down quite significantly. I am seeing no long term differences in the damage I take after the mitigation aas.
Also, thanks to anyone that read my post or commented.
As an enchanter with AC around 700, would I even see a difference in hits? When I got lightning reflexes 5, the damage I took went down quite significantly. I am seeing no long term differences in the damage I take after the mitigation aas.
Also, thanks to anyone that read my post or commented.
Steel warrior has a host of informational posts on parsing and the effects of AC. Might take a while to dig it up, and afraid I don't have them offhand, but there's a lot of good details there if you are curious.
Sub 1k AC's might be harder to test, because it might be difficult to find very good test subjects. Level 50ish mobs are probably a good base to start, like say, frogs in sebilis- test with 400, 500, 600, and 700 ac. That still might be a bit low to really see effects, but I'm not sure if you could realistically test a lot of higher level velious, luclin or PoP content easily as a caster at around that amount of ac.
Some numbers I do have off the top of my head- pre luclin, on most content characters stopped seeing gains after about 1200 AC or so. In luclin, with CS 3 and CA 3, it was closer to 1320. In PoP, I believe the number was something like 1900 in Sol Ro Tower, and no real effective cap on most higher atk mobs in higher planes. So if people are right, and Stability line raises effective AC soft caps, it's likely that you just aren't to the point in AC where your cap would be raised yet, and won't see a difference except in that gaining AC will continue to show gains for you.
Sub 1k AC's might be harder to test, because it might be difficult to find very good test subjects. Level 50ish mobs are probably a good base to start, like say, frogs in sebilis- test with 400, 500, 600, and 700 ac. That still might be a bit low to really see effects, but I'm not sure if you could realistically test a lot of higher level velious, luclin or PoP content easily as a caster at around that amount of ac.
Some numbers I do have off the top of my head- pre luclin, on most content characters stopped seeing gains after about 1200 AC or so. In luclin, with CS 3 and CA 3, it was closer to 1320. In PoP, I believe the number was something like 1900 in Sol Ro Tower, and no real effective cap on most higher atk mobs in higher planes. So if people are right, and Stability line raises effective AC soft caps, it's likely that you just aren't to the point in AC where your cap would be raised yet, and won't see a difference except in that gaining AC will continue to show gains for you.
Calimyr the Wise.
Calimyr the Patient.
Search the Steel Warrior's board for many deep and detailed discussions (and experiments) regarding damage mitigation.
Something that a lot of people seem to misunderstand about parsing is that it is simply a statistical examination of a range of data.
If your data is just a small set, or skewed because of the way that you have collected it, any conclusions that you draw from the analysis will be of little value.
In the above described "experiment", the only way to have arrived at some meaningful conclusion, would have been to log a large set of damage data taken before applying the AA's, ie Enchanter engages the same mob say 50 times and logs damage taken for each encounter. Then apply a set number of the AA's, say one third. Then engage the same mob 50 times and log the damage taken. Apply the next third of the AA's, engage the same mob 50 times again and log, repeat for the last third of the AA's, and then parse the four sets of data and compare the difference in mitigation for the four sets of data.
During this time you would need to make sure you did not level or change equipment set up in any way otherwise you corrupt your data set.
This probably sounds like nonsense to lots of people, but the point is that the incremtal changes to things like mitigation, avoidance, attack etc, are in tiny tiny steps and one or two empirical observations cannot tell you anything of value.
If you think about it, the improvements in these attributes must be in very small steps, otherwise they would be game breaking.
A typical "good" improvement in mitigation would be in the order of a 2% increase. Simply not observable empiricaly, but over a period of a "sessions" worth of encounters, adds up to a great deal less damage taken. In the mid 50's for example it would be in the thousands.
Edit... 50 encounters would be the minimum number for a meaningful data set in my opinion. There are so many random variables in the game engine, any less in number is likely to be quite inaccurate.
Edited, Thu Jan 1 22:36:40 2004 by Iluien
Calimyr the Patient.
Search the Steel Warrior's board for many deep and detailed discussions (and experiments) regarding damage mitigation.
Something that a lot of people seem to misunderstand about parsing is that it is simply a statistical examination of a range of data.
If your data is just a small set, or skewed because of the way that you have collected it, any conclusions that you draw from the analysis will be of little value.
In the above described "experiment", the only way to have arrived at some meaningful conclusion, would have been to log a large set of damage data taken before applying the AA's, ie Enchanter engages the same mob say 50 times and logs damage taken for each encounter. Then apply a set number of the AA's, say one third. Then engage the same mob 50 times and log the damage taken. Apply the next third of the AA's, engage the same mob 50 times again and log, repeat for the last third of the AA's, and then parse the four sets of data and compare the difference in mitigation for the four sets of data.
During this time you would need to make sure you did not level or change equipment set up in any way otherwise you corrupt your data set.
This probably sounds like nonsense to lots of people, but the point is that the incremtal changes to things like mitigation, avoidance, attack etc, are in tiny tiny steps and one or two empirical observations cannot tell you anything of value.
If you think about it, the improvements in these attributes must be in very small steps, otherwise they would be game breaking.
A typical "good" improvement in mitigation would be in the order of a 2% increase. Simply not observable empiricaly, but over a period of a "sessions" worth of encounters, adds up to a great deal less damage taken. In the mid 50's for example it would be in the thousands.
Edit... 50 encounters would be the minimum number for a meaningful data set in my opinion. There are so many random variables in the game engine, any less in number is likely to be quite inaccurate.
Edited, Thu Jan 1 22:36:40 2004 by Iluien
48 posts
Thanks for all the help. I've read a bunch on steel warriors, and it sort of makes sense now.
Sinaerre
65 Chanter
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Sinaerre
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