Dragonslave

I (finally) got Dragonslave (Scrapper: Claws/Dark) to 50 about a month ago. It was actually his second trip! I have a lot of toons on Freedom, and I am rarely in a hurry to level.

I am sure it can be worked in...

[ QUOTE ]
I could mention that I think the best part of your idea is that it allows the devs to determine exactly how susceptible to to-hit they want a set to be. While I like the idea of anti-accuracy, I don't think the devs would give such a mechanic out too liberally. It seems like it would be better for defense sets to have a little anti-accuracy. It reminds me of uncontested avoidance from EQII. But that only gives me one post.

[/ QUOTE ]
My only real concern is Arcanaville is leaving open the option for bad balancing. Her Elude example hints at this. Say the devs want to balance a set around 60% damage mitigation. Currently, 30% Defense, or 60% Resistance will achieve this. Under her equation, 60% Anti-Accuracy will also do the trick, as will some mix of Defense and Anti-Accuracy. The problem with a mix of Defense and Anti-Accuracy is that it will have lower average performance on average than a pure Resistance or Anti-Accuracy set, given the prevalence of To Hit buffs in this game. The only saving grace is that it will still be better performance than a pure Defense based set. Given this, it will be more difficult to balance.

The only way I could see a Defense set having anything close to an uncontested avoidance is by making defense work like Phase Shift. Oh the joy I feel when my timing is off on an Assassin's Strike against a Carnie Illusionist...

I wish I could say this was so radically different from my last posts regarding fixing defense that I could argue about it. Short of your nomenclature, and what powers you might list as defense vs anti-accuracy, it's not that different.

Good job!

[ QUOTE ]
Where's Arcanaville when you need these calculations?

Accuracy and To-Hit are commonly confused terms ... so common, that even the game's "help text" is confused about it.

I can't answer that "-0.70x" accuracy bonus; I'd need more detail as to what your character is like.

But I can tell you that yellow inspirations have been giving to-hit bonuses for a long time now, and the "+ACC" in the description is a confusion. From what I remember, all the buffs in the game are to-hit-buffs (like yellow insps and tactics); and the only way to improve your accuracy bonus is via enhancements (and IO set bonuses).

If you need more detail, I'm sure someone will point you to Arcanaville's guide to defense. You'll find it in the Player Guides.

The cool part about this latest patch is that we'll be able to test-and-validate all the calculations made in guides like the ones that Arcanaville provided.

[/ QUOTE ]

It looks like accuracy bonuses are being displayed as 1.0 - sum[size accuracy]. I have two 9% ACC bonuses and a 7% bonus on my stalker. The 9% is displayed as -0.82x, which is 1.0 - (0.09 +0.09). The 7% bonus is displayed as -0.93x. The Total Accuracy is displayed as 1.25x, which is correct. I think it is just a bug in the display of the accuracy subsets.

Hmm... That Sr. Software Engineer position looks enticing!

(unix)["have"] = (1)["have"] = 'a' = 0x61
0x61 + "fun" - 0x60 = "fun" + (0x61 - 0x60) = "fun" + 1 = "un"

&unix["\021%six\012\0"] = &(1)["\021%six\012\0"] = "%six\012\0" = %six\n

Note that &(1)["abcde"] is equivalent to
char *c = "abcde";
c++; // c == "bcde" at this point...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Along those lines, my all time favorite is still:

main() { printf(&unix["\021%six\012\0"],(unix)["have"]+"fun"-0x60);}

I doubt if these days one programmer in ten thousand can actually explain what this does.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Bombs out with an incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'printf'". What's hard about that?

[/ QUOTE ]

It didn't do that back in 1987, when K&R was the law of the land. You'd need to turn off ansi compliance, and compile on a unix system, if you want to actually compile this thing instead of attempting to figure out what it does.

[/ QUOTE ]
Or #define unix 1

It simply prints unix to the screen. Basically, (unix)["have"]+"fun"-0x60 = "un". &unix["\021%six\012\0"] is "%six\n", which is the first argument of the printf statement.

A discussion like this about Defense really should not take place in a vacuum. If defense was the only part of the total damage mitigation a player had, I would agree that if the attacker had maxed ToHit and defender had maxed defense, the a 50% hit ratio makes sense. Defense is not the only component to total damage mitigation. Thus, Defense really needs to be compared with Resistance. The following chart shows that relation, using the same critera in the original post:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Base ToHit ToHit Buff Defense Net ToHit Resistance Total Damage Mitigation
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.5
0.5 0.45 0.0 0.95 0.0 0.05
0.5 0.0 0.45 0.05 0.0 0.95
0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.9 0.95
0.5 0.45 0.45 0.0 0.0 0.5
0.5 0.45 0.0 0.95 0.9 0.91

Base ToHit Accuracy Defense Net ToHit Resistance Total Damage Mitigation
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.5
0.5 0.95 0.0 0.95 0.0 0.05
0.5 0.0 0.45 0.05 0.0 0.95
0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.9 0.95
0.5 0.95 0.45 0.1 0.0 0.9
0.5 0.95 0.0 0.95 0.9 0.91
</pre><hr />

The higher the total damage mitigation, the less damage the defending character takes.

I added a comparison using accuracy, for completeness.

In a perfectly balanced system, Defense should have the same expectation for performance that Resistance has, regardless of accuracy and/or ToHit buffs. This, currently, is not true.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, In PvP, defense should have a reasonable cap, so that an attacker with well slotted accuracy and/or ToHit buffs can hit, say 25-30% of the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, the problem with this thinking is there is WAY more +To Hit buffs then there are +Defense buffs, especially if there is a cap in place.

So basically, Defense with a cap becomes no defense at all when players are buffed to the hilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't want to go into mechanics, per _Castle_'s request, but it does not have to be this way.

[ QUOTE ]
1) You have the default To Hit value (ie no buffs), your target has no Defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

[/ QUOTE ]
As the attacker, I'd expect to hit 50% of the time. As the defender, I'd expect to be missed 50% of the time.

[ QUOTE ]
2) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has no defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?


[/ QUOTE ]
As the attacker, I'd expect to hit most of the time (95%). As the defender, I'd expect the attacker to nearly never miss (5% of the time.)

[ QUOTE ]
3) You have the default To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

[/ QUOTE ]
As the attacker, I should rarely expect to hit (hitting 5% of the time). As the defender, I'd never want to be missed a lot (being missed 95% of the time).

[ QUOTE ]
4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

[/ QUOTE ]
As the attacker, I'd expect to miss a lot (hitting 5% of the time). As the defender, I'd expect the attacker would never hit (missing 95% of the time). However, In PvP, defense should have a reasonable cap, so that an attacker with well slotted accuracy and/or ToHit buffs can hit, say 25-30% of the time.

My big concern with this to hit formula: (Base To Hit + To Hit Buffs - (To Hit Debuffs * Combat Mod) – Defense) capped at 5% or 95% * Accuracy (capped at 5% or 95%, again) is that To Hit Buffs can completely obliterate defense based build, while resistance based builds can more easily shrug off the buff. I would propose the To Hit Formula be: (Base To Hit + To Hit Buffs - (To Hit Debuffs * Combat Mod)) * (1 – Defense) * Accuracy (capped at 5% or 95%) . The net result of the change is that defense now scales evenly with resistance (i.e. 1% def = 1% resist) and the negative impact of to Hit Buffs on defense based sets is dramatically reduced. It also has the side benefit of making it much easier to balance defense vs resist.

Note: Accuracy is actually 1 + net accuracy...