Please make PRR and AC more useful.

[DrawingGuy]

Under current game mechanics with the new "curve" system, it has created a diminishing return on the buildup of your tanks stats - AC and PRR. Unfortunately it's FAR too sharp a diminishing return. Giving up precious slots to fit in more AC may give a small return assuming you can get your AC into the monster's attack bonus, which is far from low in EE... luckily you only have to more than DOUBLE it to have effect survival AC (which is impossible... so that extra 50-100 AC you're gaining by turtling may earn you 10%). Going full turtle vs just using Mountain stance and a PRR item or two? 10% less damage. So here you find yourself giving up evasion and dodge where both cause you to take ZERO damage and face eat 450 damage while the clothy takes 500 if they get hit. Worth it, right?

With the fact that S&B is already a massive DPS sacrifice, the AC/PRR pass killed the turtle tank. 90% of your survival options come naked as anyone can get displacement clickies and either kiting at ranged or 25% shadow fade is much much much better than taking slightly less damage. We already face the issue of massive damage numbers in EE - unless you have a dedicated healer dumping mana on your head, you can't melee tank them anyways, and if you have that, you might as well have a tankish DPS do it. Who cares if he takes 50 more damage per hit if he's doing more than double the DPS?

For AC, increasing the multiplier shifts the AC into the range where it could be effective in EE. Unfortunately that won't stop it's diminishing return, so the gain of 150 to 200 is about half of that of 100 to 150, but it's still a sharper curve making that gain more worthwhile than it is now.

PRR is the bigger item on the table. There is currently no "glass cannon" vs "tank" - everyone gets gut punched for hundreds of damage, so not getting hit is the entire key. That makes dodge, incorps, concealment, etc a BILLION times more important than PRR. The first 50-70 PRR is of course important as that makes up 50-75% of the PRR survival bonus, but anyone can try to get that... but after that, giving up a single point of dodge, incorp, conceal is a massive survivability loss. The days may be gone of all or nothing AC tanking, but we still should have our tanks. Fully armored 200+ PRR turtles should be getting hit for a tiny fraction of what that robed Sorc is getting hit for - not 10% or 20% less... 80% less. The PRR formula really needs to lose its fractioner - a straight (1 – (0.99^PRR)). This would mean that the tank is soaking up 86% of the damage instead of 56%, but isn't that how it should be? Going tank would make a serious difference, and would justify hard hitting EEs. You really would have your glass cannons that take 500 damage getting 1-2 shotted where the tanks only get hit for 100... because, you know, they're tanks.

The PRR change along would bring the decisions between cloth to heavy armor to the forefront, and I know I'd go from 100% of my chars being light/cloth to a mix.

[redspecter23]

I agree there is definitely an imbalance. Robe wearers can get 40% mitigation from PRR quite easily while the best tankish heavy armor users might push it up to near 60%. Those same robe wearers run around with 25% dodge and the heavy armor wearers cap out at just over 10% with massive investment in gear and enhancements. To get that 10% you'll have to be in one or more defender trees, which signifies that you've already given up DPS to begin with. Monks in earth stance GAIN DPS and defense at the same time and give up very little in the way of enhancements to do so.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that robe wearers are far better off. Add in the "monk factor" with robes and it pulls so far ahead that heavy armor is a joke. If the dodge cap is to stay on heavy armor, a PRR cap should be implemented on robes. From what I can see, with earth stance in particular, the devs actually want to reward players with MORE PRR for going with robes. That boggles my mind. Bare minimum, earth stance should have a dodge cap similar to heavy armor if it's going to give out PRR.

[Munkenmo]

I wonder how well it'd work making the PRR formula work more like this.

Heavy Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.75
Medium Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.65
Light Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.55
Cloth = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.45

This change would also need to introduce the ability to hover over the PRR box in our character sheet to see exactly how much mitigation we're getting.

Edit. for those who don't understand the formula, Here's a comparison as to how it would work compared to the live results.

On live 100PRR = ~41% Damage reduction.
This formula would make 100prr :
47% Damage reduction in Heavy armor
41% Damage reduction in Medium armor
34% Damage reduction in Light armor
28% Damage reduction in Cloth.

[rest]

I wonder how well it'd work making the PRR formula work more like this.

Heavy Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.75
Medium Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.65
Light Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.55
Cloth = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.45

This change would also need to introduce the ability to hover over the PRR box in our character sheet to see exactly how much mitigation we're getting.

Edit. for those who don't understand the formula, Here's a comparison as to how it would work compared to the live results.

On live 100PRR = ~41% Damage reduction.
This formula would make 100prr :
47% Damage reduction in Heavy armor
41% Damage reduction in Medium armor
34% Damage reduction in Light armor
28% Damage reduction in Cloth.

Get out of here with that Mo. Math never solves anything.

[Teh_Troll]

We need a second defensive pass.

[oradafu]

We need a second defensive pass.

Why? It would only take an update or two for the Devs to erode any benefit given to Medium and Heavy Armor so that Monks also get it. We saw that play out during the first defensive pass already. And since the Devs won't erode or nerf Monk stuff, any defensive pass will just eventually lead to Monks getting the benefit for less cost while also being granted full Evasion, Dodge and AC.

[PsychoBlonde]

We need a second defensive pass.

Pretty much. Diminishing returns systems *always* favor defense in depth, which is what you get from playing a monk.

I should add, though, that there's no such thing as getting "in range" of a monster's attack bonus any more, because AC is a calculated system now.

AC and PRR aside, though, one SIMPLE change they could make that would produce an effect very similar to the one you want would be to decrease the BASE damage on eE mobs and increase their CRITICAL damage and also their FORT BYPASS. So, your tank can sit in melee with them and eat their basic damage because he's not going to be getting crits. Non-tanks with only 110% fortification are risking a massive crit whenever they get hit.

The evasion/not evasion thing is not as bad as you might think. You can stack the absorption up there, particularly on a turtle tank--and that's without using stuff like Energy Sheath. It's much harder to get your reflex save high enough to matter for eE even on an evasion toon, and Improved Evasion is much harder to get.

[maddmatt70]

We need a second defensive pass.

Yeah probably. One of the biggest surprises of this pass is after the pass they keep handing out sources of PRR, but not dodge cap for medium or heavy armor wearers. Makes 0 sense why they have done this in this manner. When the defensive pass first occurred it was difficult for light armor wearers and cloth wearers to get a satisfactory PRR. Fast forward to now and it is pretty easy to get a high PRR, but dodge and the dodge cap have received not the same treatment at all. The PRR advances have been through gear, the enhancement pass, and feats, and epic past lives but the dodge cap has not increased at all. It really undermined the first defensive pass with this subsequent activity by the devs. It is pretty obvious to me that the devs that worked on the defensive pass no longer work on DDO and the subsequent devs have undermined their efforts. Shame on you devs because we the player base and the players that play S&B characters have been the recipients of this uninformed approach.

[rimble]

Rather than even specifically saying 'make PRR and AC more useful', I'd rather just back up and say 'make Light/Medium/Heavy Armor and/or Shields more useful/viable/competitive'.

[Seikojin]

We need a second defensive pass.

I agree. All they have to do is add it to the feats.

Have the proficiency feats provide level up boosts to their specific tier of armor.

Clothing/cloth - no feat, no bonus.
Light - while wearing armor of the appropriate type: every X level provides +A to AC, +B to PRR, +C to DR. For example, Every 3 levels, add +1 AC, +1 PRR, +1/- DR. At level 30, the feat would provide +10 AC, +10 PRR, and +10/- DR.

Medium - while wearing armor of the appropriate type: every X level provides +A to AC, +B to PRR, +C to DR. For example, Every 3 levels, add +1.5 AC, +1.5 PRR, +1.5/- DR. At level 30, the feat would provide +15 AC, +15 PRR, and +15/- DR.

Heavy - while wearing armor of the appropriate type: every X level provides +A to AC, +B to PRR, +C to DR. For example, Every 3 levels, add +2 AC, +2 PRR, +2/- DR. At level 30, the feat would provide +20 AC, +20 PRR, and +20/- DR.

I think with this level of increment, my examples would only increase the effectiveness of armor by 30%. Meaning overall it would add a significant boost to the survivability of all armor types outside of cloth, without taking the benefits of dodge and incorp layers either.

They could go a step further. For those feats, being a Paladin or Fighter can increase those further. Like a Fighter or Pally get 2x the bonuses from their defensive feats. OR make the core enhancements in their defensive enhancement trees boost the effects from the feats.

[Feithlin]

I wonder how well it'd work making the PRR formula work more like this.

Heavy Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.75
Medium Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.65
Light Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.55
Cloth = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.45

This change would also need to introduce the ability to hover over the PRR box in our character sheet to see exactly how much mitigation we're getting.

Edit. for those who don't understand the formula, Here's a comparison as to how it would work compared to the live results.

On live 100PRR = ~41% Damage reduction.
This formula would make 100prr :
47% Damage reduction in Heavy armor
41% Damage reduction in Medium armor
34% Damage reduction in Light armor
28% Damage reduction in Cloth.

/signed
Nice proposition.

I think the introduction of margin of success on attack would make any AC significative (I proposed it several times; if you missed it, the idea is simple: for every X points on to-hit roll above the target AC, you get +1 to damage -- X could be anything between 2 and 5).

[redoubt]

I wonder how well it'd work making the PRR formula work more like this.

Heavy Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.75
Medium Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.65
Light Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.55
Cloth = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.45

This change would also need to introduce the ability to hover over the PRR box in our character sheet to see exactly how much mitigation we're getting.

Edit. for those who don't understand the formula, Here's a comparison as to how it would work compared to the live results.

On live 100PRR = ~41% Damage reduction.
This formula would make 100prr :
47% Damage reduction in Heavy armor
41% Damage reduction in Medium armor
34% Damage reduction in Light armor
28% Damage reduction in Cloth.

Light armor wearers will take a big hit under this system. I specifically chose light armor over robes to get the PRR bonus. I don't know the right numbers yet, but this change would likely have me trying to shift some prr toward more dodge again, which of course would require me to splash monk to boost my dodge cap...

[HatsuharuZ]

Light armor wearers will take a big hit under this system. I specifically chose light armor over robes to get the PRR bonus. I don't know the right numbers yet, but this change would likely have me trying to shift some prr toward more dodge again, which of course would require me to splash monk to boost my dodge cap...

And then you'd get less PRR while wearing robes...

[Munkenmo]

Light armor wearers will take a big hit under this system. I specifically chose light armor over robes to get the PRR bonus. I don't know the right numbers yet, but this change would likely have me trying to shift some prr toward more dodge again, which of course would require me to splash monk to boost my dodge cap...

So you'd Gain 3 dodge, and lose PRR, it's a better system than what we have currently.

[Scraap]

I wonder how well it'd work making the PRR formula work more like this.

Heavy Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.75
Medium Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.65
Light Armor = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.55
Cloth = (1 – (0.99^PRR)) × 0.45

This change would also need to introduce the ability to hover over the PRR box in our character sheet to see exactly how much mitigation we're getting.

Edit. for those who don't understand the formula, Here's a comparison as to how it would work compared to the live results.

On live 100PRR = ~41% Damage reduction.
This formula would make 100prr :
47% Damage reduction in Heavy armor
41% Damage reduction in Medium armor
34% Damage reduction in Light armor
28% Damage reduction in Cloth.

In general, it seems that a lot of people agree that heavier armor should provide more absorby-type protection. In this case, we have been discussing PRR.

What if instead of nerfing anything, you just put in a mod to the formula?

Currently the formula uses 0.65 to produce diminishing returns. Leave all the other sources of PRR alone and provide a boost to that number. i.e.

clothe = no boost and uses 0.65
light armor = 0.05 boost and uses 0.70
medium = 0.75
heavy = 0.80

You can add a small bonus for special metal types if desired.

Then add in some for shield users, i.e.:
+0.02 for a buckler
+0.04 for a light shield
+0.06 for a heavy shield
+0.08 for a tower shield.

I'm spit-balling here, so if the idea doesn't work that's cool, but lets keep it civil. Thanks.

These seem decent, though I'd put more a bit more weight on the shield delta, since that's the larger dps hit, and the best defense is still your enemy laying bleeding on the ground.

[redoubt]

These seem decent, though I'd put more a bit more weight on the shield delta, since that's the larger dps hit, and the best defense is still your enemy laying bleeding on the ground.

So like drop the armor iteration to 0.03 and raise the shield one to the same.

no armor = 0.65
light = 0.68
med = 0.71
heavy = 0.74

buckler +0.03 etc...

Highest max would be heavy at 0.74 and a tower at 0.12 for a total factor of 0.86.

I'd just be careful getting the number too close to 1.0. But, I'm honestly not sure how close, is too close yet.

[Scraap]

I'd just be careful getting the number too close to 1.0. But, I'm honestly not sure how close, is too close yet.

Were the only factor raw physical damage, I'd tend to agree. Two factors to keep in mind though: dodge shuts out all damage, PRR just mitigates the first number. And that also assumes no casters in the encounter. That 86% is still hovering right around where we were at during the period when we were dealing with grazing hits on elites, which really doesn't seem that unreasonable taking the other factors into account.