Game Mechanics: Proc Rates

[Eabon]

With the May 29th patch, the rate at which weapons proc was decreased significantly. Personally, I don't remember such a low proc rate when I was playing my warrior during Kunark in 2000. As a warrior, I've gone from having mild difficulty keeping aggro, to needing to request that someone roots all of the mobs we fight in exp groups. Having an average of 1 proc every 1 or 2 fights in an exp group makes it near-impossible to have any reasonable functionality as a tank. As a 57 Warrior with two ringed ykesha maces, I think it might be a little silly struggling to keep aggro against a 50 rogue.

There wasn't really much in the patch notes about it, I'm not even sure it was mentioned. Was it the last line: 'Code support for formula 120.'?

Anyway, why was this change put into effect, and what evidence is there that the new proc rate is the classic proc rate?

[tj218]

Rogue aggro is bugged atm, they made backstab an uber aggro, and nerfed evade.

They are fixing it next patch. (see the bug forum)

[kanras]

I addressed this earlier in the patch thread:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...&postcount=144

If you want to reply, please do so in this thread rather than the patch thread.

[Eabon]

Thank you for the reply Kanras.

What was the emulator code that proc rates were obeying prior to this patch?
And, the two threads referenced are dated to 2004 and 2005 respectively. Can we be confident that there was no alteration to the proc rate codes between 2000 and 2004-2005 in classic EQ?

[Eabon]

I've spoken with multiple people tonight who tell me that at some point during either Velious or Luclin (Luclin seems most probable) there was a stealth nerf which resulted in a significant proc rate decrease. I have searched through all the patch note updates from 1 week before Velious was released to a month after Planes of Power was released, using a text search for 'Proc', and haven't been able to find anything relevant.

Multiple people tell me, however, that this nerf resulted in them quitting their tank and re-rolling as a caster class.

If this is in fact the case, it would be inaccurate, and futuristic, to have p99 proc rates match proc rates as they were in 2004 or 2005, at a time when Gates of Discord, Omens of War, or Depths of Darkhollow was the latest expansion.

I'm now going to try and find reliable evidence of a proc rate nerf during Velious, Luclin, or even PoP, which wasn't announced in a patch update. I'll post back here later with what I find. But at any rate, playing a warrior properly and competently on p99 at current is next to impossible.

[Torven]

My Velious era logs with max dexterity are roughly 2 ppm for main hand and 1 ppm for offhand as well. The proc rate at 0 dex I cannot say.

Warrior aggro is fucked right now mostly because melee damage hate is broken.

[adam9242]

This from the febuary 21, 2001 patch notes....

*NPC AI - Hate*

We've made a number of changes to NPC AI, specifically to the section
dealing with target-selection, or what's commonly referred to as
"Hate". It is not so much that NPCs react differently to hate now than
before, but that we've changed the way that hate is awarded.

--- We reduced the amount of hate that can be caused by a proc. Due to
the high proc rates at upper levels, the amount of hate generated from
procs, and the spells that were selected for those procs, made keeping
the attention of the creature much too easy a task for the tank.
Simply, it nearly eliminated the challenge of keeping a foes attention
at levels above 50.

Not much hard info there, but its possible that the hate generated by procs on p99 is less than on live at the kunark era

[Eabon]

I wasn't able to find anything on the internet that could be used as solid evidence of a stealth proc rate decrease. I'm still pretty positive it happened, however; I've talked to about 10 people who attest to it. The quote from the patch update that adam9242 referenced in the post above this hints at it also. "Due to the high proc rates at upper levels...." Would anyone describe proc rates at present on p99 as 'high'? It suggests that this quote was made prior to another patch that decreased proc rates.

Anyway. The way things are now makes Warrior'ing to any sort of a decent efficiency impossible. And I'm not sure that this is the way it ever was on Live. At least I don't remember it ever being this bad when I played my warrior in Kunark.

At the moment, I think there's reasonable evidence that both weapon process rates and the way that melee damage generates hate need considerable twinking before they match up to the way it was on EQLive during Kunark.

[Dantes]

I'd say put the proc rate directly in the middle of where it is now and where it was. It used to be too high, now it's way too low. Somewhere in the middle, as far as I can recall, would feel more like procs used to be on live. It doesn't seem like there's conclusive evidence for either side, so why not a compromise?

[kanras]

I believe there is conclusive evidence for the current implementation.

- Hundreds of hours of POP+ parses putting proc rates at 2.0 PPM (primary) and 1.0 PPM (offhand) with max DEX, as well as establishing how the rate scales with DEX.
- A couple hours of pre-luclin logs confirming the above-mentioned rates.