User:Bcbrown

Combat mechanics

This will where I record all my research into combat mechanics. I'm going to generally be looking at histograms, or the distribution of number of hits for each of the 20 different hit values. DPS or averate hit values may ultimately be all that we care about, but looking at the full distribution can provide a lot more detail. I'll be starting just about from scratch, working to confirm almost everything about combat no matter how obvious it may seem. I'll be drawing heavily from https://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40543, which has an immense amount of work on combat mechanics. Several times I've thought I've discovered something new just to find Torven has already documented how it works.

Defense

This research was initially posted in a thread on Ranger AC which seems to show that the common wisdom that AC "doesn't work on rangers" is incorrect or incomplete. I started weighing in around the 10th page with some parses and eventually decided they deserved to be recorded somewhere on the wiki for easier reference.

The first set of parses are against Shiel Glimmerspindle, a level 40 rogue in North Karana.

54 Cleric vs Shiel Glimmerspindle All worn AC numbers will include ~64 spell AC from Armor of Protection (15 AC), Shield of Words (31) , and Heroism (18-19).

[IMG: cleric_vs_shiel_106_ac]

• Total hits: 560
• Hit%:
• Average hit: 50.8
• Average hit excluding min/max value: 50.9
• Min hit %: 17.3%
• Max hit %: 17.5%
• Min+max proportion: 34.8%

[IMG: cleric_vs_shiel_132_ac]

• Total hits: 1150
• Hit%: 58.4%
• Average hit: 48.5
• Average hit excluding min/max value: 50.6
• Min hit %: 19.3%
• Max hit %: 12.7%
• Min+max proportion: 32.0%

[IMG: cleric_vs_shiel_163_ac]

• Total hits: 218
• Hit%:
• Average hit: 45.9
• Average hit excluding min/max value: 52
• Min hit %: 25.2
• Max hit %: 6.9%
• Min+max proportion: 32.1%

[IMG: cleric_vs_shiel_195_ac]

• Total hits: 1983
• Hit%: 55.6%
• Average hit: 42.4
• Average hit excluding min/max values: 49.53
• Min hit proportion: 26.78%
• Max hit proportion: 3.28%
• Min+max proportion: 30.06%

Discussion

The most obvious result is that there's peaks at the minimum and/or maximum hit values. The combined proportion of min/max hits is fairly stable at around 30%, as is the average hit discounting the min/max hits at about 50. The biggest outlier on that measure is at 163 worn AC at 52, but that trial was also the shortest at only 218 hits, so it seems reasonable to chalk that up to random noise in a relatively small sample. From this experiment it seems reasonable to conclude that the impact of more AC is to replace max-value hits with min-value hits, and that for this mob with this character there's little to no benefit to more AC after about 225 AC. I shall be calling this threshold value the "Squelch Point". The trial with the lowest total AC of 169 has similar frequencies for min and max hits, which I shall be calling the "Mid Point". So there's a range of roughly 50-55 AC between the midpoint and the squelch point, and if it's similar from the midpoint to the lower squelch point that would mean there's a range of roughly 100-110 AC where adding additional worn AC will provide a benefit.

The next experiment I ran was a series of trials on a 60 druid. This gave an opportunity to answer several questions. Cleric is a plate class while Druid is a leather class. Is there a difference in impact of worn AC between those two? Is there a cap on druid that's not there on cleric? And is there any impact of 6 levels between the two characters, given that both had the same maxed-out Defense skill of 200?

146 + 61

• Total hits: 366
• Hit%:
• Average hit: 45.75
• Average hit excluding min/max values: 49.15
• Min hit proportion: 20.49%
• Max hit proportion: 8.47%
• Min+max proportion: 28.96%

99 + 61

• Total hits: 365
• Hit%:
• Average hit: 51.78
• Average hit excluding min/max values: 50.48
• Min hit proportion: 16.16%
• Max hit proportion: 20.27%
• Min+max proportion: 36.44%

The results on a 60 druid look very similar to the 54 cleric. It looks like the player level has no impact on damage (other than presumably with Defense skill caps), and leather classes have no AC cap at up to at least 200 AC.

The next experiment was on a 49 ranger with 137 worn ac and 35 spell AC, or 173 total. This was only 139 hit in total, because on the ranger I was actually killing Shiel, and I only wanted to confirm if the patterns already found would be similar on the ranger. Sure enough, it looked similar, with a peak at the minimum hit.