Based on what we now know about defense penetration, guard rates, and how block is now performing on Uthgard, here is what I suggest:

* Go back to the old Roclar formula for block, but keep the new guard rate; this will help real RvR block rate for support

* Reduce the defense penetration bonus for DW/CD/LA/2hand from 1/2 to 1/4; again, this will increase real RvR block rate against the primary DPS classes

* Remove the evade bonus from dex and qui; high evade rates are completely imbalanced on a server with no defense penetration formula

That's it. Very simple, and easy to implement.

The easiest fix for blockrate would be to modulate it by shield spec. Even if that can't be confirmed by live tests, it does make sense.

What do you mean by modulate? Evade and parry are also a big problem. You just don't hear about it as much because support classes generally can't evade or parry. Clerics blocking 4 attacks in a row is what gets the player-base howling, but that is not the only problem.

My only other suggestion would be to give classes that can equip shield a base 10% chance to block instead of 5%. That way you don't completely rob defense from classes like the bard.

We have to accept that developing a live-like defense penetration formula could take all year. It would be nice if we could find an intermediate solution.

You are right, I'm not aware of evade or parry problems. Thats new to me. We use official known formulas for evade and parry rates.

For me its block rate thats off. But let me tell you that in live tests it was shown that a Cleric with no shield specs had a 30% block rate. Thats quite a lot imo.

Was the Cleric buffed, and was that against a mob or a player?

For reference, here is my testing on evade rates based on weapon skill table:

http://uthgard.net/index.php?option=com ... 15&t=17494

A Warrior with 282 strength and one(1) in weapon spec reduced his target's evade rate by almost half.

The problem with defense on Uthgard is that you appear to have modeled the bonus from dex and qui, but not the "penalty" from an attacker's damage stat and weapon spec.

This makes the system completely lop-sided in favor of the defender. It makes DW/LA/CD classes even more over-valued because they are the only ones that can cut through these inflated defense rates.

As for evade, my experience on Uthgard is that any assassin with a D/Q charge will cap their evade at 50%. There is no way on Uthgard to reduce this evade rate except with DW/CD/LA. To illustrate my point:



10 total attacks, 9 evades.

This is an extreme, but not surprising example. I have had many fights with assassins where all of my attacks are evaded, 4-5 times in a row. Against a class like the assassin with DoT poisons and strong melee damage this is simply impossible to counter. It requires no skill from the assassin to benefit from this extremely high evade rate, and it is impossible to reduce it without a dual-wield class.

This is the reality of evade on Uthgard.

Blue wrote:For me its block rate thats off. But let me tell you that in live tests it was shown that a Cleric with no shield specs had a 30% block rate. Thats quite a lot imo.

Did you use a lvl 1 character or lvl 1 weapon with 1 weapon spec to attack the cleric ?

Yesterday evening a 4L infi evaded me 8 times in an inc, 6 consecutive.
And it's not rare. Some months ago a lvl 49 infi in df evaded me 7 times during the fight.

Nixian is just one of the assassins abusing this bug. A lot of ns/infi simply spam detaunt and evade you to death.

Blue wrote:For me its block rate thats off. But let me tell you that in live tests it was shown that a Cleric with no shield specs had a 30% block rate. Thats quite a lot imo.

No it wasn´t. Ana has made several tests on live and clerics have a 8-10% blockrate.
I´m pretty sure he send them to some staffmember.

Seriously Blue. You are good at programming and your effort the last week or so is much appreciated, but you obviously have little to no DAoC live experience. It would be nice if you would listen to people who have it every once in a while. If ana, atasi and I say something is bugged then there is a 99,9% chance it is bugged. And I´m certain we all agree on:

Clerics never had anywhere near 30% blockrate against another player under any usual circumstances.

Jarysa wrote:I´m pretty sure he send them to some staffmember.

Three of them.

Jarysa wrote:

Blue wrote:For me its block rate thats off. But let me tell you that in live tests it was shown that a Cleric with no shield specs had a 30% block rate. Thats quite a lot imo.

If ana, atasi and I say something is bugged then there is a 99,9% chance it is bugged.

I never said blockrate isnt bugged. The current formula just doesn't reflect live test results properly. Nonetheless its worth nothing to speak about it and tell this and that when we can't get to a formula which just fits for 95% of the cases. The sheer amount of input variables to blockrate makes it that problematic to find a fitting formula. Testing for block rates are like I said QUITE difficult. Try it and you will see yourself. And this has nothing to do with DAoC experience just simple number crunching and reversing.

As for the clerics block rate. I looked up the excel sheet and it was a 10% bonus weapon swung by a level 50 player which produced a 28% block rate. So this is ok in that case, given the fact that bonus should influence block chances. Unfortunately not in all test results the full environment is written down, as the exact weapon and so on. We did once a test whether (displayed) Weaponskill really can influence the block rate and found nothing if I remember right. What I think may be in here are some class or even race related factors which could be in effect and affect how blockrate developes.

Blue wrote:You are right, I'm not aware of evade or parry problems. Thats new to me. We use official known formulas for evade and parry rates.

For me its block rate thats off. But let me tell you that in live tests it was shown that a Cleric with no shield specs had a 30% block rate. Thats quite a lot imo.

Defense rates are not static. You do not simply have an XX% chance to evade/block/parry no matter who attacks you. The block rate of any toon will be vastly different depending on who is attacking, what their weapon spec is, what table they are on, what their weapon stats are etc


Its defense penetration that does not work on Uthgard, that's been demonstrated with tests, clearly. For some time it was said by staff on here that this idea of weapon stat/table/spec reducing defense rates was a myth...it clearly is not.

Force wrote:Its defense penetration that does not work on Uthgard, that's been demonstrated with tests, clearly. For some time it was said by staff on here that this idea of weapon stat/table/spec reducing defense rates was a myth...it clearly is not.

I can just repeat. Make live tests and show them. We made already trillions of time consuming live tests regarding the block rates and it really doesn't come to a logical point where one could say, okay that is it. Like you said, some things of the attacker may be of interest too. But claiming that this is the case is unfortunately worth nothing without concrete test results where we could derive a formula from.

Most of you just cannot imagine how much work it is behind just this simple block rate formula. It's not enough to have one test which shows, ok Clerics 8% in this detailed situation. Please understand that. The best thing would be when the community makes test accounts (trials) and does live tests so we can get as much test results as possible to extract a formula out of that. This is the only way to accelerate block rate developments. If we have indeed class related factors in block rate calculation then the block rate tests get a new dimension and will cause a lot more tests to be done.

If someone starts to test, please note EVERY detail of your test. Attacker/defender stats, class, weapon/shield detailed informations, bonuses, how much dex from items, how much dex from buffs, everything! Note down possible realm bonuses from RvR too. Even the condition of the weapon or shield may matter (think about degradation in the test)!

Given the fact that we struggle for years for this evil block rate formula its highly recommended that more community members start doing live tests. We could lay out a strategic test plan which then should be realized by volunteers.

Blue wrote:I can just repeat. Make live tests and show them. We made already trillions of time consuming live tests regarding the block rates and it really doesn't come to a logical point where one could say, okay that is it. Like you said, some things of the attacker may be of interest too. But claiming that this is the case is unfortunately worth nothing without concrete test results where we could derive a formula from.

Most of you just cannot imagine how much work it is behind just this simple block rate formula. It's not enough to have one test which shows, ok Clerics 8% in this detailed situation. Please understand. The best thing would be when the community makes test accounts (trials) and does live tests so we can get as much test results as possible to extract a formula out of that. If we have indeed class related factors in block rate calculation then the block rate tests get a new dimension and will cause a lot more tests to be done.

If someone starts to test, please note EVERY detail of your test. Attacker/defender stats, class, weapon/shield detailed informations, bonuses, everything! Note down possible realm bonuses from RvR too. Even the condition of the weapon or shield may matter!

The data already provided is enough to get the defense rates and how they are modified down by defense penetration WAY closer to live than it currently is. The tests covered a multitude of variables that should provide quite a bit of insight into live melee mechanics.

Blue wrote:
As for the clerics block rate. I looked up the excel sheet and it was a 10% bonus weapon swung by a level 50 player which produced a 28% block rate. So this is ok in that case, given the fact that bonus should influence block chances. Unfortunately not in all test results the full environment is written down, as the exact weapon and so on. We did once a test whether (displayed) Weaponskill really can influence the block rate and found nothing if I remember right. What I think may be in here are some class or even race related factors which could be in effect and affect how blockrate developes.

What was the weapon spec and weapon stat and class? That's what matters. Take a lvl 50 healer and have them attack the cleric, you'll see a reasonably high block rate. Take a 400+ str warrior with 50+22 hammer and youll see practically -0- block rate.

I don't know how it is possible to set the parameters of a test such that they could demonstrate weapon spec and stat not effecting defense rates. There have been multiple tests posted in the bug forum showing that spec/stat clearly effect defense rates.

Force wrote:The data already provided is enough to get the defense rates and how they are modified down by defense penetration WAY closer to live than it currently is. The tests covered a multitude of variables that should provide quite a bit of insight into live melee mechanics.

Says you. Why don't you provide a formula then with given live results which matches for all classes, levels, weapons, stats? I have yet to see proper live tests which are not made by the staff itself. In most tests important details are left out. The only in depth tests yet were made by the staff or I have missed them here. Write down the links to the live tests you mean. I will be more than happy to write them down to the existing stuff in the internal excel sheet.

Blue wrote:

Force wrote:The data already provided is enough to get the defense rates and how they are modified down by defense penetration WAY closer to live than it currently is. The tests covered a multitude of variables that should provide quite a bit of insight into live melee mechanics.

Says you. Why don't you provide a formula then with given live results which matches for all classes, levels, weapons, stats? I have yet to see proper live tests which are not made by the staff itself. In most tests important details are left out. The only in depth tests yet were made by the staff or I have missed them here. Write down the links to the live tests you mean. I will be more than happy to write them down to the existing stuff in the internal excel sheet.

take 2 tables and interpolate the difference per spec, then per stat. its not perfect, but if table 1 and table 2 are just as seperated as table 2 is to table 3 as far as WS per stat/spec, then using the relationship between 1 and 2 will work for determining 3. You can then test the formula against live and see how close you are.

You give me ownership rights to Uthgard and I will contract a paid dev to write livelike code tomorrow. Absent that I can't do much.