Game Mechanics: Mellee miss rate seems excessively high.

[Korst]

I've noticed a fairly large number of misses and low damage hits over the last few days in Blackburrow, even with the majority of my targets being green and light blue.

Anecdotal at best, and it's been too many years to remember how effective melee was on my monk during the low levels.

But I've had a hell of a time taking dark blues, something that feels odd to me since I mostly soloed my way to 50 ( due to timezone conflicts ) a decade ago without too much grief.

If I get a chance to play again tonight I'll parse a few thousand swings and see what it all averages out to.

[Dantes]

I thought the same thing when I started, but I managed. Then I rolled a necro - he seems to hit twice as often as my warrior and his skills aren't even maxed out. Although I can't say that it seems like the game is any harder than it was during live for my warrior. Excessive misses, yes, but can I say it wasn't that way in live? I don't remember.

[Yoite]

until you get lvl 20 you will notice your skills are label Awful and Feeble etc, once you get 100+ in a skill does it change to Master. At lvl 20 you will start to not suck with melee but even then its still bad, but once you get into your 40s you're hitting pretty often. I lvled a war up to 45 on this server.

i guess what im saying is all yall low lvls saying i miss a lot, its b/c you're low lvl and low lvls miss a lot. even if the mobs dont...ya i know its not very fair, but that's eq. the mobs pwn.

[eqdruid76]

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

until you get lvl 20 you will notice your skills are label Awful and Feeble etc, once you get 100+ in a skill does it change to Master. At lvl 20 you will start to not suck with melee but even then its still bad, but once you get into your 40s you're hitting pretty often. I lvled a war up to 45 on this server.

i guess what im saying is all yall low lvls saying i miss a lot, its b/c you're low lvl and low lvls miss a lot. even if the mobs dont...ya i know its not very fair, but that's eq. the mobs pwn.

I think the point is that they realize low levels miss a lot, but that they miss a lot more than they did as untwinked low levels in classic live.

I wonder if anyone bothered to save some combat logs from 99? Or maybe some screenies? (although screenies' data would be limited to a single combat or less). That might have some data to compare P99's numbers with.

It's hard to chalk it up to imagination when so many people are saying the same thing, and the ones discounting it either don't play a melee or played melee twinked.

[Morndenkainen]

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

until you get lvl 20 you will notice your skills are label Awful and Feeble etc, once you get 100+ in a skill does it change to Master. At lvl 20 you will start to not suck with melee but even then its still bad, but once you get into your 40s you're hitting pretty often. I lvled a war up to 45 on this server.

i guess what im saying is all yall low lvls saying i miss a lot, its b/c you're low lvl and low lvls miss a lot. even if the mobs dont...ya i know its not very fair, but that's eq. the mobs pwn.

Yes, but thats not how it was in live... In live the mobs defenses seemed to scale better to the actual level of the attacker, and your ability to hit them INCREASED as you leveled up. I know this because I pretty much solo'd a warrior all the way up into the mid 20's before I had a good enough weapon and gear to where people would let me tank for them. No one wanted to let a regularly geared warrior tank at first. It was annoying to say the least... The issue here, is that the skills do not scale correctly with the difficulty of the mobs. Yes, it may work fine at level 40+, however, it does not work fine for levels 1-40. I dont know how the server calculates hits/misses so I really dont have a perfect fix that is guaranteed to work for it just a suggestion. Im just pointing out that there IS a problem.

Look at it from this perspective.. Say the base miss rate actually is 35%... modified, by mob's skill in defense+ac vs the attackers offense+weaponskill/2 + Atk.

A level 5 gnoll should have a defense skill of 30, and lets say an ac of 100. If we take a level 5 warrior, with an offense of 30, and a weapon skill of 30, add em, and divide by 2, we get 30. Add in the ATK of 100 (or whatever due to gear), and you come up with an even value between the two. Which means that warrior should have a base miss rate of 35%, which it actually is..

Now, take that same level 5 gnoll, and attack it with a level 12 warrior with an offense of 65, and weapon skill of 65, for a TV of 65 Lets say the ATK is now 200. The warriors base skill, is 35 points higher than the defense of the gnoll, and the ATK is 100 points higher... Why does it still take just as long to kill the gnoll if the current system isnt broken? Even if you cut the values in half, you should still have atleast a 17% bonus to hit the gnoll due to level, which would make your base miss rate 18%, and since I cant say for sure what the ATK vs AC value does, (Perhaps it affects how often you get a "full damage" hit), you should not only be missing ALOT less, but doing more full damage hits...

This still means that even with max skills, fighting a mob your own level, your still going to miss 35% of the time, but it definatley would fix the problem of getting your ass handed to you by a lt.blue or green mob because you cant friggin hit it on a regular basis, and when you do, your only doing a couple points of damage.

[Morndenkainen]

Originally Posted by eqdruid76 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think the point is that they realize low levels miss a lot, but that they miss a lot more than they did as untwinked low levels in classic live.

I wonder if anyone bothered to save some combat logs from 99? Or maybe some screenies? (although screenies' data would be limited to a single combat or less). That might have some data to compare P99's numbers with.

It's hard to chalk it up to imagination when so many people are saying the same thing, and the ones discounting it either don't play a melee or played melee twinked.

You know... Thats a damn good thought on the matter... You've got all these high levs twinking out their lowbies to a point where they might not even notice the horrible miss rates, because they dont play up their alts the way people who are just starting out do.

[Dantes]

I miss often with dual wield 1H slashers - I don't think it's isolated to 2H slash. I really don't think it's related to all melee, more likely class specific. Like I said it seems like my damn Necromancer can hit twice as often as my warrior - and often to maximum damage, as if he needed yet another advantage. We're definitely gimped, but the question is whether or not that's how it was during live. All I can remember is, life sucked as a warrior. I always fought in groups.

[Morndenkainen]

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

I miss often with dual wield 1H slashers - I don't think it's isolated to 2H slash. I really don't think it's related to all melee, more likely class specific. Like I said it seems like my damn Necromancer can hit twice as often as my warrior - and often to maximum damage, as if he needed yet another advantage. We're definitely gimped, but the question is whether or not that's how it was during live. All I can remember is, life sucked as a warrior. I always fought in groups.

I dont suppose you could do me a huge favor could you? Fight something with your necro, and post a pic showing the hit/miss results like I did? As well as his stats? It would really help out, especially if it does turn out to be class specific...

[Yoite]

http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20000822

[YendorLootmonkey]

I played a melee in classic, untwinked. I play a melee here, same class, untwinked. I never spent any time on any other EQ emus. Morn, if that's your character in the screenshots you provided, based on the name, then you know I'm legit. :P Did you have this same issue with your rogue?

I distinctly remember never being able to solo a blue mob after about level 4-5 with getting my ass beat and ending up at less than 50% health. Both in classic and here. Yeah, I saw some untwinked warriors and monks solo some stuff, but they spent the next 5-10 minutes bind wounding and sitting their asses down until they healed back up.

I don't have statistics on miss rates and such. I do know that on my 1HS with a 7/24 dmg/delay ratio, my max hit is 14, which means I'm getting up to a 7-point damage bonus applied every 2.4 seconds if I hit. I want that damage bonus to be applied as often as possible, which is why they tell you to put your lowest delay 1HS in your main hand.

I have never used a 2HS, so I don't know how the damage bonus works. If I remember correctly, sometime around Kunark they did a 2H weapon damage adjustment, which means currently 2H weapon damage is probably gimped. Here's all I could find on it... maybe it only applies to post-level-50:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=253

But it seemed to indicate that 2H weapon damage wasn't really ever on par with 1H weapon damage. If there is any sort of damage bonus, it is being applied much less often than with a 1H weapon. Not to mention the aggro potential you're losing out on by not using a faster weapon.

So my theory still stands... unless you have some godly ratio on your 2HS weapon, you may want to distance yourself from the whole 2H weapon thing and work on your 1HS in preparation for when you get dual wield. I *think* you will get better results than what you're getting right now.

No I don't have old/new parses to compare. Just going off of what we know of game mechanics. And then again, I could be horribly wrong and the damage tables for 2H weapons are all out of whack. Since I don't have any experience with them, it would be transparent to me.