I heard that the hunters pet should not only do damage to an enemy, it should also reduce the enemies defense, so that the hunter can land more hits on the enemy.
First, is this correct? Can anyone proof this?

Now I did a test on Uthgard to see if this is true here.
I took my Huntress Laya, my guildmate took his SB Scarab and we did two ~20min long duels with /chatlog on. Another guildmate helped with healing and buffs.
So the stats with buffs were on the
Attacker - Huntress Laya
155Str
355Dex
251Qui
39+16Spear
1254Weaponskill
1650Weapondmg

The attacked Char - Shadowblade
307Str
332Dex
230Qui
1200Weaponskill
550AF
He didn't attack, he was passive. In the 2nd test, the Hunters Pet hit him from behind, so it could not get evaded from there.

So these are the results:


In the first run the Hunter did 299 unstyled attacks from the front.
The Hunter was evaded 155 times, thats 52% of all attacks.
The Hunter missed 14 times, thats 5% of all attacks.
There were 0 fumbles.
So there were 130 hits.

If the evade check comes after miss and fumble in the formula, that makes an evaderate of 155/(155+130)=54%

Then I did the same test with an attacking Hunterpet from behind. And as you can see, the SB even evaded 1% more often, which of course is a measuring inaccuracy.
Please tell me if you see any mistake in the calculation or smth.

If there are no mistakes, this means that the Hunters pet has no influence on an enemy Assassin's defense.

hunter pet did not count as a second attacker on live, sorry, this was tested by Wulff in 2003, and then again by Wyrdd in late 2005, in both tests, the hunter pet did not reduce an opponent's defense rates.


I posted the small (100ish hit) preliminary test that wyrdd did back in 2005 in your other thread.

Did Wulff/Wyrd test to see if two or more players attacking would reduce evade rate?

Seyha wrote:Did Wulff/Wyrd test to see if two or more players attacking would reduce evade rate?

I believe wyrdd did test this and found that a 2nd attacker in the 'front arc' reduced evade rate, and that's why he actually thought the hunter pet did reduce evade at first before specifically testing it.

I can't say for sure though, but he eludes to this in the same thread I pulled the test from.

Too bad. I was hoping he had real numbers for that

I think, in my oh so biased opinion, that if the Hunter pet did not reduce evade rate then this was either a bug or an unintentional (and gross) over-sight on Mythic's part.

The whole bloody point of the Hunter Pet is that it acts as a second attacker for the Hunter. If you remove defense reduction from the Hunter pet then what your left with is a pathetic, easily CC'd damage-add with legs.

Hopefully the staff can see that on Uthgard the Hunter pet deserves to be treated as a second attacker.

I am quite sure it counts as a 2nd attacker on shields though?

I remember it being the reason why scouts hated hunters..

nixian wrote:I am quite sure it counts as a 2nd attacker on shields though?

I remember it being the reason why scouts hated hunters..

I would doubt it, testing should be done to confirm everything, but it looks like the hunter pet just counts as a damage add basically for the hunter. A damage add that can set off procs, be evaded, kite, miss etc....

Seyha wrote:Too bad. I was hoping he had real numbers for that

I think, in my oh so biased opinion, that if the Hunter pet did not reduce evade rate then this was either a bug or an unintentional (and gross) over-sight on Mythic's part.

The whole bloody point of the Hunter Pet is that it acts as a second attacker for the Hunter. If you remove defense reduction from the Hunter pet then what your left with is a pathetic, easily CC'd damage-add with legs.

Hopefully the staff can see that on Uthgard the Hunter pet deserves to be treated as a second attacker.

This was one of the many complaints hunters had throughout daoc. Eventually the hunter pet was given all sorts of goodies to make up for this.

nixian wrote:I am quite sure it counts as a 2nd attacker on shields though?

I remember it being the reason why scouts hated hunters..

That is correct. Which is why this information is so confusing.

Here is Wyrdd's test:

Wyrdd wrote:From just a preliminary test (i.e. small data set, just looking for large trends), here are the results:

Only looking at the Hunter's attack rate since we do not have a basis of comparison for the pet.

No Pet: # (%-chance of attacks reaching that function) [%-of total]
Attacks: 107 attacks
Hits: 68 hits (63.6%)
Evades: 18 (16.8%) [16.8%]
Parries: 8 (9.0%) [7.5%]
Misses: 13 (16%) [12.1%]

With Pet:
Attacks: 156
Hits: 100 (64.1%)
Evades: 23 (14.7%) [14.7%]
Parries: 9 (6.8%) [5.8%]
Misses 24 (19.4%) [15.4%]

Edit: Testing subject was a RR8L1 Valewalker with ~130 Dex and Qui. No stat buffs used. 20+18? Parry and Evade 4.

This test does not prove much, even by "preliminary" standards. It does prove that the Hunter pet will not reduce defense by half, but beyond that...

Look at the parry rate. It takes a large penalty (24.4%) with the Hunter pet attacking. Of course the margin of error for this test is the size of the moon, but even the evade rate is reduced by 12.5% with the Pet attacking.

So the only trend we see with this test is that the Hunter pet will reduce enemy defense rate by x%

Another possibility is that the Hunter pet reduces defense rate by a small but constant percentage regardless of the target's total % chance to defend.

In other words, if the Hunter pet reduce's enemy defense by a flat 2-3%, then an enemy with a 20% chance to evade would have this chance reduced to 18-17%.

And an enemy with a 10% chance to evade would have this chance reduced to 8-7%.

I'd like to point out one other thing: The VW's chance to evade in this test is much lower than it should be. With Evade 4 and 130 dex/qui the VW's evade rate should be >20%, but in the test it is <15%.

It proves what we already know: that there is stat-based and WS-based defense reduction in DAoC, and Uthgard is missing this critical component in melee.

all that test tell us is that a hunter pet does not act like a second attacker for the purpose of halving parry and evade rates when attacking from the front arc.


At least that's what it seems to show. To say anything definitive someone will either need to go find Wyrd and Qisa's full test, or do their own.

Force wrote:all that test tell us is that a hunter pet does not act like a second attacker for the purpose of halving parry and evade rates when attacking from the front arc.

How do we know that a second attacker reduces evade/parry by half? That's why I asked if Wyrdd tested it. We need a base-line comparison.

I will try to test multiple-attackers this weekend. But if I'm going to test 2v1 I will need to test 3v1, which will be a pain to do

Can you duel multiple opponents on Live/Pendragon? Please tell me you can.

Seyha wrote:

Force wrote:all that test tell us is that a hunter pet does not act like a second attacker for the purpose of halving parry and evade rates when attacking from the front arc.

How do we know that a second attacker reduces evade/parry by half? That's why I asked if Wyrdd tested it. We need a base-line comparison.

AFAIK that's how melee mechanics worked on live, and there have been tests which show this I believe. Mythic at first thought that the dog halved rates and asked for Wulff's testing, there was a thread on the internal boards about it...

Here is a quote from Wulff regarding the situation;

" Like most things that get ignored logs WERE submitted, there was a thread on the internal boards. Made myself available for more exhaustive testing (original data set 500 attacks with and without dog), asked what criteria they wanted and.....you guessed it Sqaut came of it. The logs were there for LONG TIME. Please note the date stamp.

Also please read the last entry carefully Wyrd. What does that tell you about whether or not the dog was in the front arc.?

Long stroy short:
dog in front arc 500 attacks: evade rate was 35%
No dog at all 500 attacks , evade rate was 35%"


There are chat logs of this testing somewhere, he posts a small portion of them in the thread I linked to in the other thread here.


Oh, and the VW was evading like crap because the hunter attacking had 50+17 sword etc

ya I know uthgard defenses broken etc

Shouldn't evade be capped at 50% btw?
In my tests results its more than 50%.
Dou you think its measuring inaccuracy or did I calculate it wrong?

Seyha wrote:I will try to test multiple-attackers this weekend. But if I'm going to test 2v1 I will need to test 3v1, which will be a pain to do
Can you duel multiple opponents on Live/Pendragon? Please tell me you can.

Btw I wanted to test Laya+Pet+5Mobs as attackers, too. But on Uthgard the duel gets canceled as soon as one of the duel-participants are fighting with smth else.

If Mythic asked the TL to submit logs to prove that the pet did not halve evade rate then this proves it was a bug.

Otherwise Mythic would have told the TL flat-out "the pet does not count as a second attacker" by design.

moving this to support until we know for sure how live works