AC softcap and low level hardcap discussion

[Goregasmic]

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

Yes, I agree he is talking about worn AC. That is the better metric to go by, as the displayed AC in the UI is basically useless, other than letting you know if your AC went up or down.

Mob level does have an impact on parses.

Going back to the D20 function:



The lower the mob's wrath, the lower their damage is against you.

As an extreme example, let's take an orc pawn attacking a level 60. A level 60 Warrior is going to have at least 300 mitigation, and an Orc Pawn's wrath is probably going to be well below 100.

If 50 Wrath and 100 Mitigation weights the D20's average rolls to ~6.5, a Wrath value of 50 and a mitigation value of 300 would weight the average dice roll even lower. This is why orc pawns basically always hit high level characters for 1 if they aren't sitting.

My bad, that was a big shortcut. I was a little too much in my ranger's scenario. Ranger EC bis on a somewhat balanced build will be around 200 AC, which appears to be the squelch point on a 45 mob. With self buffs you can probably stay around that clamp point all the way to 60 on mobs around 45-51. Rangers get little wiggle room for optimization if you're not fine with going full glass canon before raid gear. Raid gear opens up more options but you don't really get hit at that point like snaggles said so extra AC becomes a moot point unless for some reason you want to tank high end group stuff.

TL;DR get ~200ac if you plan on getting hit then YOLO.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

My bad, that was a big shortcut. I was a little too much in my ranger's scenario. Ranger EC bis on a somewhat balanced build will be around 200 AC, which appears to be the squelch point on a 45 mob. With self buffs you can probably stay around that clamp point all the way to 60 on mobs around 45-51. Rangers get little wiggle room for optimization if you're not fine with going full glass canon before raid gear. Raid gear opens up more options but you don't really get hit at that point like snaggles said so extra AC becomes a moot point unless for some reason you want to tank high end group stuff.

TL;DR get ~200ac if you plan on getting hit then YOLO.

I agree with 200 worn AC for Rangers.

It's easy enough to get with EC gear in Velious.

If the EQEMU softcap numbers are correct, 200 worn AC is the softcap for Rangers. With a 17% return for Rangers, 400 worn AC would amount to only 234 worn AC after the softcap is applied.

I have a hunch those EQEMU numbers are correct, as you figured out the 200 number yourself, and many Rangers feel like AC doesn't do much.

[bcbrown]

That last pair of parses certainly shows that shield AC has an effect when overcapped at level 5. I would urge you to start posting predictions in this thread before each future experiment. That way you can compare the actual results with your hypothesis.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

That last pair of parses certainly shows that shield AC has an effect when overcapped at level 5.

Thank you!

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

I would urge you to start posting predictions in this thread before each future experiment. That way you can compare the actual results with your hypothesis.

I did explain what I was expecting already earlier. I've asked you before in other threads to read the thread before making claims like these.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...6&postcount=58

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

The 45 AC does not invalidate Haynar's formula, as a softcap exists as well. The shield test shows the softcap. With a softcap, you can never actually hit the hardcap.

This is because once you hit the softcap of 45, the last 10 AC between 45 and 55 gets softcapped. The hardcap prevents you from having more than 55 worn AC, so 178 worn AC gets clamped to 55.

With a softcap at 45 and a hardcap at 55, the best AC you could get is 47 if the softcap return is 20%.

A shield increases softcap, so you get closer to 55.

This post too:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...2&postcount=61

The last set of parses was post 68:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...8&postcount=68

[TytosOfEight]

I've heard it said a few times that spell AC is like shield AC in that it ignores the softcap. Have you tested that at all?

[Goregasmic]

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

I've heard it said a few times that spell AC is like shield AC in that it ignores the softcap. Have you tested that at all?

I think in the ranger thread we saw that it helps reaching squelch point but it won't let you go beyond like a shield would. It was like 1 parse though, more testing would need to be done.

[kjs86z2]

im really impressed that people take this as serious as they do

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

im really impressed that people take this as serious as they do

This is our generation’s cracking the enigma machine. But instead of shielding us from Nazi attacks it shields our rangers from skeleton hits.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

This is our generation’s cracking the enigma machine. But instead of shielding us from Nazi attacks it shields our rangers from skeleton hits.

Army Rangers fought Nazis. Nazis have skulls on their uniforms. Skeletons have skulls. Coincidence? I think not.

[bcbrown]

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

I did explain what I was expecting already earlier. I've asked you before in other threads to read the thread before making claims like these.

I guess I should be more clear. I'm talking about making a single specific prediction ahead of each experiment. For example, you just did an experiment with overcapped AC with and without a shield. What's the hypothesis that experiment was answering?

One hypothesis would be "There's gonna be a difference somewhere when you use a shield". Another could be "The average damage per hit will be lower with a shield". Or "adding 12 shield AC will be equivalent to adding 2 AC to an otherwise capped toon".

This has several benefits. For one, it gives any results that match your expectations greater credibility. Kind of like "calling your shot". It also forces you to think through exactly what question you're trying to answer, and making sure whatever experiment you run will help answer that question. Spending a moment on experiment design can help avoid wasting time on experiments that give inconclusive results. It can also help by forcing you to spend time thinking about what you're trying to measure and what metrics do you want to calculate. For example, I was looking at the ratio of min-hit to max-hit, while you seem to be more interested in total damage or damage per hit.

So what I'm suggesting is a practice that I think leads to good mental self discipline and better designed experiments that lead to easier analysis and more defensible conclusions. It's at the heart of the cycle of the scientific method:
* First you do exploratory experiments. You cannot draw any conclusions from these, but you can generate interesting questions and hypotheses
* Next you generate a testable hypothesis. This is a specific prediction that can be either confirmed or rejected, something measureable
* Next you design an experiment to test the hypothesis. Part of this (in our case) will be determining how many samples to parse for each side, and what metric to calculate.

After all that then you can run the experiment and report the results. Now, I'm not saying you have to go through all that process. But I do think taking steps towards that ideal will be helpful and productive. Just a simple "call your shot" before running an experiment. For example: "I'm going to measure average damage per hit with 178 AC, with and without a 12 AC shield. I'll take 1000+ hits per side. I expect the damage per hit to be lower with the 12 AC shield. This is because x, y z."

Another example: the evidence suggests that at level 5 there's a 45ac softcap, and a shield provides a couple AC above that. what's the softcap at level 6? One hypothesis is that the formula is 4*level+25 which would suggest a 49 ac softcap. So there's a couple experiments that you could run to test that hypothesis. And if shield AC provides some bonus with some multiplier value like 0.2 you can run some experiments to try to determine what that multiplier value is.

But to sum up:

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

I did explain what I was expecting already earlier. I've asked you before in other threads to read the thread before making claims like these.

That wasn't a claim, that was a suggestion. I've read the damn thread, that's why I've been participating in it. If you're going to get defensive and make unwarranted personal attacks I'm going to take that as my cue to bow out of this thread and leave you to it, absent an apology.