Game Mechanics: AC/Level Mitigation & Backstabs

[Baxter]

Uthgaard, please read this thread. I promise you we are not making this stuff up. Everything in here PROVES 45%+ minimum backstabs, how you got 18% is a mystery to me and everyone else.

[Lanuven]

Originally Posted by Baxter [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Uthgaard, please read this thread. I promise you we are not making this stuff up. Everything in here PROVES 45%+ minimum backstabs, how you got 18% is a mystery to me and everyone else.

BUMP!

[kanras]

Originally Posted by Aadill [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So wait is all of this concerning people with 10 dmg daggers expecting much above the 120 dmg min at 60?

What would a level 60 person with a 15 dmg backstabber find?

Basically, anyone doing testing with a 10 dmg dagger will find what Baxter found. Anyone doing testing with a 15 dmg dagger will find what Kanras found and both seem correct because for the former magic and minimum are so close and for the latter a much more even spread is available simply due to the weapon. AC may still be a factor but the end-all-be-all weapon for rogues opens up a whole new can o' whoopass, as an epic should, as evidenced by a much larger magic number/max damage value.

Looks like someone with a crystalline spear/efreeti war spear needs to do some testing because the numbers make more sense as of right now.

This was posted by a ranger over a month ago. Overall, him and Treats get it. Why are all the high level rogues that have posted in this thread (other than Xenu) still just bumping this thread with no actual contribution?

[Wildas]

Atk never raised max hit in classic. Max for a 15 damage weapon was 553, needed a BS mod to go higher.

[Shiftin]

I spent about 3 hours parsing last night with crys spear, the highest damage practical weapon in game (13 damage). Half with the standard 60 rogue ATK w/ capped str (1181) and half with simulated ragebringer +ATK by getting VoG and shrunken gobby earring (1225).

There was less than half a point difference between the two trials in terms of miss %, so in terms of how often you hit for min when backstabbing, it's safe to say that pure +ATK effects do nothing.

Both trials parsed at 37% minimum backstabs. Yes, I am 60, have maxed weapon and backstab skills and had maxed STR during the entire time. So this is 15% higher min % than in the trials with ragebringer and 7-8% lower than using a 10 damage piercer.

I finished late and didn't get a chance to upload all my raw data, but I will try to get to it tonight.

I would be happy to test under the exact same circumstances with a 15 damage piercer if a GM wants to loan me one for a night so that I can do the work.

[Aadill]

So a 10 damage weapon parsed 46% minimum backstabs and a 13 damage weapon parsed 37% minimum backstabs.

Based on that alone wouldn't you expect to see a 27-30% minimum backstab amount with a 15 damage weapon? That... kinda matches what Kanras found and what I said a month and a half ago.

The distrubution DOES seem too linear.... I would expect a plateau effect of diminishing returns but we're seeing an almost linear calculation. I bet if a 10 damage weapon did 37%, a 13 33% and a 15 did 25-27% a lot less complaints would be heard, but there would have to be hard proof that it wasn't linear, i.e. parses of different weapons from live.

[kanras]

Shiftin,

Grim Aura + VOG = 25 Raw ATK, so you're still 15 short if you really want to simulate the Seething Fury effect.
You need to include what mobs this was tested against. There's going to be a pretty large difference between testing against juggs and karnor's trash, because of mob AC. I don't know what test you're talking about when you claim someone got 22% min BS with a ragebringer, but I somewhat doubt it was against the same mobs you were parsing against.

Other than that, your results aren't too surprising given the sample size.

[Shiftin]

Unfortunately, i just don't know where to get those. The real issue is that rogues across the board don't understand why your hit distribution within your range (min-max-magic) changes so drastically with weapon damage but things like your level, ATK, etc have very little impact. I would think it would be the opposite, that your weapon damage determines your range of possible damage, and all of those other factors determine where you hit within that range.

Kanras would you mind posting what tigole's miss % was with backstab from the parses you have?

Also, it only kinda looks linear, but it actually seems to accelerate a bunch. Going from 10-13 was about 2.6666 percentage points of minimum per damage, where going from 13-15 seems like about double that.

[kanras]

Do you understand what the backstab minimum is? Just from reading this thread, you guys seem to think of it like a damage bonus, where you should min backstab at the same rate that you min hit with your normal attacks. Instead, the backstab damage is calculated, and if it's less than the minimum, the damage is set to the minimum. So whenever you increase your weapon damage, STR, ATK, BS skill, all of those things are going to decrease your min. BS rate because they increase the average "normally calculated" BS damage. This is unless you're using a rusty dagger or something that can't even max hit above the min dmg @ 60.

[kanras]

That tigole parse didn't have misses on, unfortunately.