In an attempt to figure out a goal-oriented super tank build for Kunark, I've scratched my head a bit about this: So, it's kind of weird to me that Kunark seemingly didn't provide much of an upgrade (or even an upgrade at all in some or all cases?) to said Indicolite aside from some minor AC boosts, and is lacking in the great stats from warrior hate plate (besides the helm). This is of course, outside of the Cobalt BP and legs which are obviously awesome and superior (plus invis clicky ermagherd). I'd like to hear some takes on this. I see a lot of you wearing Cobalt, is it simply because you haven't upgraded to hate gear or is it better in your opinion? While I understand how incredibly important AC is to us it would appear to me that for the most part, because of a huge bonus in stats, that Cobalt isn't really worth donning during battle if one were to have the Indicolite already. Most or any of the cobalt stuff has awesome clickies like lesser shielding, strength buff, shrink, etc and are pretty bad ass to have in a backpack to cast and then take back off. I'm only referring to actually wearing said gear. I see some of you mighty top end warriors wearing some of the Cobalt (again, not referring to BP or legs). Maybe I'm missing something? Possibly it is because Sony assumed PoHate stuff should actually still be better and more difficult to acquire, i.e. 'raid gear' and so it's still better or were they just going for great clickies to have and swap back to better armor or other options? I realize that Cobalt is still great AC alone and if you don't have anything better at the moment then obviously you'd use that. I'm just saying in a hypothetical situation where you could just choose one or the other during combat. I'd love to see some discussion and opinions on this. Also ideas on other better options all together currently available like crafted or anything else. Just kinda trying to find out a best in slot right now. Thanks fellow warriors! http://wiki.project1999.com/Indicolite_Armor http://wiki.project1999.com/Cobalt_Armor
On Al'Kabor, AC was king. I'm unsure how they've coded it here, but the AC code from eqemu I believe is completely guesswork. Indicolite BP, gauntlets, Wrists and Arms are good. Legs are okay. Boots and Helm suck. Boots go Incarnadine or Cobalt Helm... Honestly, Skull Shaped Barbeute wins. If you are lucky enough to help on a Ragefire fight, the Legs are incredible for Stamina/Dex. Arms are also great for Dex and a junk buff. Wrist has some use in pulling/tagging. Nothing in Kunark will replace Indicolite Gauntlets though, that is guaranteed.
TLDR: it comes down to what you are doing. If you are in a trio and your warrior's dps is a big chunk of your groups total dps then str stacking will likely help you kill faster with out any detriment from losing AC/hp/stam. Dex is rather irrelevant in a trio situation as you should have plenty of ways of managing your agro. Agi is very insignificant compared to all other stats especially AC. If your clerics mana is the bottleneck then more stam/hp may help. If you are tanking raid mobs that hit for 300, 400, 500+ and you have 20-30 toons, the warriors dps becomes rather irrelevant and the success of the raid hinges on the warrior not dieing. In this case str is rather irrelevant, dex is of lesser importance if you have propper agro tools but is very useful on longer fights for holding agro, AC/hp and stamina are king, agi can boost your AC by a very small amount. This is where cobalt generally outshines indicolite. Furthermore. as your gear progresses and you get fully raid buffed you will stat cap str/dex/stam while wearing cobalt, making those stats on indicolite useless. If you are tanking hate/fear/sky trash mobs for a raid, procs are key for quickly establishing and holding agro. This is where dex is most important along with two proccing weapons so that your support and dps classes can get debuffs/dispells/dps in asap. These mobs generally hit weak so your survival likely isn't in jeopardy with a substantial raid force. Lastly if you are not the main tank but taking down a high level raid target AC is irrelevant and your dps is what you want to focus on so str stacking becomes most important along with non proccing weapons so that you aren't spinning the mob. Personally I carry around a bunch of gear to swap out depending on what I am doing.
That's why I rewrote it. The mitigation code here is probably more accurate than any other emu. I haven't had time to outline my research on the eqemu board yet.
Outside of dps and taunt, a warrior's procs are everything as far as agro goes, no? What "agro tools" are you referring to?
A 4 sec cast tiny nuke isn't going to do much for your agro when tanking raid mobs but it is a handy pulling tool for tagging over long distances.
Used correctly, it can certainly get you some initial aggro quickly and from a distance. Initial aggro is always helpful when taking raid mobs.
I've never thought of using bladestopper or midnight mallet for aggro that's interesting, since mallet has like 5 charges it seems like it would be worthless to carry around or use in groups to get initial aggro, but i get the idea. That bracer would be awesome for getting a little bump like you said on incoming, I had completely forgotten about that, now i have a new item on my wishlist... now to find out if it can be cast from inventory!
So would it be safe to say that AC is currently calculating correctly and is as important or almost exactly how it was on AK then?
For the record Torven, I wasn't discounting your hard work or questioning what you have done, I was just curious if that was how you felt about what the current situation was on TAKP as far as what I was asking.
The work is based on a very detailed 2014 Sony developer post explaining how AC is calculated, plus some great decompiling work done by Demonstar, and hundreds of hours of logs I produced over 4 months or so which I parsed with a custom log parsing tool that I wrote. To give you an idea of how many logs were parsed, you can view my AC/atk data spreadsheet here: Demonstar provided what should be precise values for the AC softcap. I saw bends in the mitigation curve right where the AC softcap was supposed to be for warriors. (430) We were also able to precisely reproduce the client AC/atk value formulae. (AK calculated AC from agil a bit differently that modern EQ however) Long story short, I came up with some very good estimates for offense and mitigation and in some cases probably the exact roll chances. I had a log from AK where I 3 boxed Talendor, killing it with only paladin and an enchanter pet for damage, so it took awhile. Since it was my log, and I had a screenshot, I knew what my AC and atk were. I compared that log with output from my combat simulator script and the results were this for my paladin's mitigation: AK Log: Talendor on 65 paladin Hits: 104 1] 140: 19 (18.2%) 2] 180: 4 (3.8%) 3] 200: 2 (1.9%) 4] 220: 6 (5.7%) 5] 240: 6 (5.7%) 6] 260: 5 (4.8%) 7] 280: 9 (8.6%) 8] 300: 4 (3.8%) 9] 320: 4 (3.8%) 10] 340: 6 (5.7%) 11] 360: 4 (3.8%) 12] 380: 5 (4.8%) 13] 400: 2 (1.9%) 14] 420: 5 (4.8%) 15] 440: 4 (3.8%) 16] 460: 2 (1.9%) 17] 480: 1 (0.9%) 18] 500: 4 (3.8%) 19] 520: 12 (11.5%) Simulation output: Mitigation value is what I estimate my paladin's was. Offense is what Talendor currently has on TAKP. I gave him +100 atk over typical level 60 NPCs. (which is a guess, but logs confirm at least some raid bosses roll higher D20s compared with other NPCs at the same level) D20 Probabilities using Offense 489, Mitigation 504, Rolls 1000000 1] 16.56% 2] 2.97% 3] 3.27% 4] 3.58% 5] 3.85% 6] 4.08% 7] 4.30% 8] 4.41% 9] 4.50% 10] 4.53% 11] 4.49% 12] 4.48% 13] 4.23% 14] 4.10% 15] 3.84% 16] 3.59% 17] 3.29% 18] 3.05% 19] 2.70% 20] 14.18%
I think it's safe to say... that our devs have a handle on this... and that we should probably not question it too much! Mind blown.
I'm sure I've said this before, Torven, but the work you've put into reverse-engineering some of the game's stickier under-the-hood mechanics - resists, hate, mitigation - is seriously impressive. Leaving aside its practical value to the project (which I realize is the point ), I now have convincing answers to so many "how does EQ actually work" questions I've wondered about for ages.
