AC vs Level for tanking

[Splorf22]

So as all my forum stalkers know (you know who you are) I recently made an iksar warrior twink. I bought him some PL and now at 25 he's putzing around whacking things with a Staff of Battle and a full suit of Sebilite Scale armor (you have no idea how hard it was to get the stupid coat). Fun times.

I've never really paid attention to how tanking works as an enchanter, but now that I'm actually getting hit it seems a little weird. Let me take an example from a fight. Here is me getting hit by a carrion ghoul (22-24 or so).

[Sun Dec 04 09:53:43 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 17 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:43 2011] A carrion ghoul bashes YOU for 8 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:47 2011] A carrion ghoul tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:50 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 19 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:51 2011] A carrion ghoul kicks YOU for 4 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:53 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 6 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:53 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 4 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:53 2011] a carrion ghoul was hit by non-melee for 9 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:54 2011] You tell your party, 'hooray facepull'
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:56 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:59 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:53:59 2011] A carrion ghoul tries to kick YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:02 2011] A carrion ghoul tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:02 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 15 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:02 2011] a carrion ghoul was hit by non-melee for 9 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:05 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 8 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:07 2011] A carrion ghoul kicks YOU for 10 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:08 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 19 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:08 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 10 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:10 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:13 2011] A carrion ghoul tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:13 2011] A carrion ghoul tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:15 2011] A carrion ghoul kicks YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:16 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:19 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:19 2011] A carrion ghoul hits YOU for 2 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:54:19 2011] You have slain a carrion ghoul!

I was duoing with a 25 druid and had about 1150 HP and 680AC. In this case my gear worked pretty well - not a single max hit. Of course it didn't always go quite that well, but in general I would say when fighting blues I would get at most 20% max hits. On the other hand, here is me vs a yellow werebat (L28 I believe).

[Sun Dec 04 09:57:10 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 56 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:10 2011] A werebat kicks YOU for 10 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:13 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 28 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:13 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 14 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:16 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 56 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:18 2011] A werebat tries to kick YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:19 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:22 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 23 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:22 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:25 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:25 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:27 2011] A werebat kicks YOU for 12 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:28 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but YOU parry!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:28 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 14 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:31 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 56 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:31 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:33 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 56 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:35 2011] A werebat tries to bash YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:36 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 36 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:39 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 53 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:42 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:42 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 56 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:43 2011] A werebat bashes YOU for 5 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:45 2011] A werebat tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:48 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 12 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:50 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 4 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:51 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 14 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:51 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 12 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:51 2011] A werebat kicks YOU for 11 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:54 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 20 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:54 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 31 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:56 2011] A werebat hits YOU for 28 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:57:59 2011] A werebat kicks YOU for 12 points of damage.
[Sun Dec 04 09:58:16 2011] You have slain a werebat!

So i'm just eyeballing it but that looks like an average hit of 9 (with 0/13 max hits) for the carrion ghoul vs an average hit of 40 (with 5/15 max hits) for the werebat. Which is just insane considering there is probably a 5-6 level difference between these mobs. Is this really how it worked in classic? I'm starting to see why no one wears the Cobalt armor and stacks HP instead.

[john_savage1982]

I've noticed this as well. It seems level has a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of AC...or level is the only real determinant of a mob's damage on a player. It'd be worth testing with various AC levels.

[Drem]

is it applicable to all mobs in similar spreads? or is the werebat just a fuckin G? there were plenty of mobs that were harder than you'd think original EQ. that's where the term "under-con" came from. i remember plenty of shit that even if it conned blue would totally fuck me up as a shadowknight. you had to just learn it all after lots of trying and dying

just my speculation but some mobs would land most of their double attacks and do max damage nonstop because they had incredibly high ATK.....

also 22 and 28 is a pretty big difference. you could kill decaying skeletons at lvl 1 but a baby black bear would fuckin own you and it's only 5 lvls higher. i don't really think this is an anomally

[usedtobejubaloftorv]

level has always been the dominant stat in EQ

[Buellen]

Hey everyone

A lot of mobs in original EQ where non standard. their was a post made by one of the devs back in the day when they went back and "normalized" orig eq to match the mob of expansions that followed.


In particular i remember the patch notes talking about how a lot of mobs in orig everquest tended to have less hit points, stats , and or have abilities they were not supposed to have. A Lot of mobs in original everquest where very "individualized". After this patch they normalized all mobs in original EQ so that if you was fighting a WAR type mob it fought and acted like a WAR etc etc.

This could explian the variance you have seen as the ghoul may have been just plain war mob type and the Werebat could be one of the many types of special stats etc etc mobs.

No one i have asked has been able to tell me whether or not P1999 is set before this normalization happened or after.


Hope this helps

[Mcbard]

level has always been the dominant stat in EQ

This this this.

[Zapatos]

It's especially noticeable in the level 40 range. For example, my iksar sk alt was level 40 with 940ac and kobolds in solb wrecked it. I'd end fights around 20% if I tried to solo. Now that same alt is 49 and no stats have changed, yet that character seems to chew through the exact same mobs, ending fights usually at 70-80%, or occasionally higher. So yea. Levels>all else

[Splorf22]

So I finally got GamParse to work (you have to change the min fights from 10,000 to to much lower. It's hilarious how their trash mobs have way more than 10k hp - inflation!) and I was able to get some better data (sadly they don't have decimal places so there is some inaccuracy here).

26 Iksar Warrior vs. 6 werebats (~28): 11 dps in, 9 dps out.
26 Iksar Warrior vs. 6 carrion ghouls (~23): 6 dps in, 11 dps out.

So the interesting thing to me is that player damage is somewhat dependent on level (he did some 20% more damage against the lower level ghouls, and the difference might be smaller if his combat skills were maxed) but that NPC damage is *hugely* dependent on level (taking almost twice as much). I think that's one of the things that confused me.

So I think the lesson from this thread is that while you can accept lower level rogues and monks, you need a high level tank. Actually I'd say Enchanters are the same way - you get far fewer resists with just a couple of levels. Which means that playing defense in EQ is a lot harder than playing offense.

[Etorryn]

As an Iksar Warrior as well, I think the server may have a hard caped on AC per level.

You are capped with your raw lvl AC + item AC and buffs.

(which i got from another thread in game mechanics) If you have a higher AC it may not come into affect. I'm just guessing from what i read in this http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48312&highlight=armor+class

(the chart i posted was miss leadeding it just showed raw ac cap per level)

[Splorf22]

Hmmm. I'm guessing my guy has maybe 150 item AC, which would put him over the cap until L50. It's actually kind of funny if it works that day, because I was checking out the Velious gear out of curiosity yesterday and I'm pretty certain the quest armor alone would put a warrior over the hard cap, let alone neck/ring/etc slots or actual dragon drops or whatnot.

However I'm pretty sure that's not the way its implemented here. Zapatos and I described different scenarios: in my case the mob's level changed, and in his case the PC's level changed. The effect was identical. In your case only the PC's level changing should have such a large effect.

[Nirgon]

It seems like level has more to do with how you get hit than anything. Lvl 25 mob would smoke me at lvl 24, at lvl 30 he can comparatively barely scratch me (I'm a caster in oracle robe + woven). I don't even have shielding up at lvl 30 anymore to deal w/ him lol.

[usedtobejubaloftorv]

The real way to test this is to make two characters with the exact same gear, but of different levels, to test against specific individual mobs. That way you fix a lot of unknown variables (e.g. level, class, gear of mob) - they may still be unknown but they are definitely the same from test to test if you are using the same individual mob to conduct the test.

I would also do control tests based on green mobs and even-con mobs to each to see what the lower threshold and equal level situations look like.

[messiah_b]

Pretty sure werebats were always a bit of an undercon especially compared to carrion ghouls.

The proper way to measure something like this would be to get in the level range of a single mob that spawns like 25-27. At 26 fight one that's DB, white, and yellow and measure the parsed hits.

I think there is something to it, but level always has been the most noticeable factor.

[Vondra]

Another question is how exactly the "defense" skill plays into it.

You can see as your defense skill goes up that your AC value on your character sheet goes up. Exactly how it works beyond that, I'm not sure. Maybe that's all it does.

As far as level being a huge factor, this is easy to see. If a level 60 caster takes off all of their equipment and runs up a big train in crushbone, they're still barely going to get hit. If a level 12 heavily twinked tank (That is going to have far more AC than the naked 60 caster, on the character sheet anyway) does the same, they'll get hammered.

[Nirgon]

I know in classic that a reasonably geared 50 warrior should lose to a sand giant 1v1. Here, I see them dominating one but obvi can't confirm.

[Vondra]

I know in classic that a reasonably geared 50 warrior should lose to a sand giant 1v1. Here, I see them dominating one but obvi can't confirm.

I haven't seen an exactly level 50 warrior on this server attempt one so can't say on that regard, but I do remember many lev 50 warriors in classic on live attempting to kill them and failing.

[Splorf22]

I don't think anyone is surprised that a L10 mob can't hit a L60 character. What is surprising (to me at least) is that a mob 5 levels higher does almost twice the damage. Based on what I saw I would guess that a naked L60 warrior is a better tank than a L50 warrior in full planar.

[Galelor]

I don't think anyone is surprised that a L10 mob can't hit a L60 character. What is surprising (to me at least) is that a mob 5 levels higher does almost twice the damage. Based on what I saw I would guess that a naked L60 warrior is a better tank than a L50 warrior in full planar.

Levels (followed by spells then discs) have been and will always be king of EQ. This is one of the reasons, over the years, the suggestion (esp for non-tank classes) is: 'Don't worry about gear until you max your level.'

Last part of your statement is doubtful because not only would the naked warrior be significantly under the AC soft cap but they would have significantly less agi (which actually does make an avoidance difference to a certain point.) Also, I seem to remember shield AC being much more valuable than other AC... This would make a difference if shield tanking... Then again, pc tank skills level, mob level, and mob attack would make a big difference here.
I would enjoy seeing your parses if you do the research!

This is all from a very foggy memory and the days when I use to keep this AC Aug thread current:
http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2899
You may have some luck in finding old world knowledge in this thread and related links. I don't think the factors surrounding AC/Mitigation VS. NPC melee damage have changed that much over the years, but forum hopping may be able to shed some light on this for you.

[Werlop]

Also, I seem to remember shield AC being much more valuable than other AC... This would make a difference if shield tanking... Then again, pc tank skills level, mob level, and mob attack would make a big difference here.

Around the PoP era, shield Ac was changed so that the AC from a shield was added directly to your hard mitigation AC rather than going through the conversion from shown AC to mitigation AC, and (I think) allowed you to go over the hard cap. It definitely was not reduced by the softcap. This is all in the patch notes somewhere.
In Classic, it should function no differently that the AC on your gloves, feet, etc.

[Etorryn]

Velious had a soft cap 50+ while Kunark had a hard cap. After you max out item AC for that level than add your natural AC + spells + agi and bonuses from gear you hard cap again depending on level. This is what i read in an earlier thread with a quote from the developers log by Kavhok, EQ Designer.

A level 28 should have a higher ATK than a level 23. The AC if capped would not start lowering the frequencies of maxes until the AC was closer or higher than the ATK rating of the mob. If each level raised your hard cap you should start to see less max hits. Thats is why i believe in the hard cap until Velious.

It was mentioned it was hard caped to help prevent twinking and trying to slow down the leveling rate as it was a concern.