Update 23 Second Look

[Douglas21]

If Exalted Cleave and Avenging Cleave are intended to save feats for Paladins in general, there's still more that needs to be done with them.

For Legendary Dreadnought Paladins: Exalted Cleave needs to satisfy the prereq of Momentum Swing. Both enhancements also need to have a chance of resetting Momentum Swing's cooldown, just as the feats do (don't know if this part works already).

For Paladins with Great Cleave and a non-KotC tier 5 enhancement: either a) Avenging Cleave needs to be tier 4, or b) Exalted Cleave needs to satisfy the prereq for Great Cleave. The first option would imo be the much better solution, and likely also much easier to implement, considering how the enhancement reset and/or feat prereq mechanisms would have to be altered to allow for a feat depending on an enhancement. As is, a Paladin who wants both cleaves and also Sacred Defender tier 5 (or anything tier 5 other than KotC) saves no feats at all with this, and I imagine that description matches quite a lot of Paladins.

[BigErkyKid]

If we are looking at PRR, dissecting the raw numbers and calling them "diminishing returns" is misleading.
In terms of functionality, we look at survivability as "time until dead" or, more accurately, time until I have to interrupt my DPS and use resources to heal.
...
If you look at its effect on time until heal, PRR gives linear returns.
...
At 100 PRR I can fight for 20 seconds before I need a heal.
...
At 200 PRR I can fight for 30 seconds before I need a heal.
...
The pattern follows a linear progression; assuming constant damage each 100 PRR increases my time until heal by 10 seconds.
...
Sev~

Sorry Sev, but you are wrong on this one.

See my final post on this : EDITED

As for whether "PJ" builds can leverage too much PRR, it was a concern when we increased the PRR formula and also removed the PRR limit on no armor and light armor builds. I also wonder if that's more of an issue with Earth stance than the current system on Lamannia. When I get in next week we will look at the numbers.
Sev~

Again, I think you are overlooking stuff. It is not strictly monks. On the contrary, the issue arises specially and more annoyingly in builds that use light armor.

Take for instance the swashbuckler splash with fighter and rogue (12 bard, 6 fighter, 2 rogue). With shield mastery feats (which add offense and defense), legendary shield mastery and a PRR item (say the guardian's ring) I can reach passed 100 PRR. In blitz, that was putting me around 140PRR (vs 170PRR of the paladins I have seen).

Since PRR has dimishing returns, the extra PRR of the paladin gives you less bang for your buck. But furthermore, the bard will have a lot of dodge and evasion, making him almost as effective at mitigating the hits that land but overall having a huge advantage at mitigating damage. He won't get hit as often, which is the BEST damage mitigation.

[Douglas21]

Sorry Sev, but you are wrong on this one.

To see why, observe that 100 PRR buys me 20 seconds whereas 200 PRR buys me 30. If the function was linear, 200PRR would buy me 40 seconds, not 30.

In other words, doubling the PRR does not double the time without healing! This is because it has diminishing returns.

So that is why the early levels of PRR are more valuable than the later ones. I may invest into building an uber tank with 200PRR, but that won't make me twice as effective at damage mitigation as someone with simply 100PRR.

The linear relationship is for PRR and extra time without healing. With a linear relationship by your interpretation, 0 PRR would mean the character falls over and dies instantly because, I don't know, a stiff breeze came by.

Again, I think you are overlooking stuff. It is not strictly monks. On the contrary, the issue arises specially and more annoyingly in builds that use light armor.

Take for instance the swashbuckler splash with fighter and rogue (12 bard, 6 fighter, 2 rogue). With shield mastery feats (which add offense and defense), legendary shield mastery and a PRR item (say the guardian's ring) I can reach passed 100 PRR. In blitz, that was putting me around 140PRR (vs 170PRR of the paladins I have seen).

Since PRR has dimishing returns, the extra PRR of the paladin gives you less bang for your buck. But furthermore, the bard will have a lot of dodge and evasion, making him almost as effective at mitigating the hits that land but overall having a huge advantage at mitigating damage. He won't get hit as often, which is the BEST damage mitigation.

Yes, PRR has diminishing returns, but I think you and all the other people complaining about it here are grossly exaggerating how quickly the returns diminish.

Let's say you have a build with 30% dodge and 100 PRR. How much PRR is needed to have equal average damage mitigation with no dodge? Well, the 70% non-dodged attacks are doing 50% damage, for total damage taken of 35%, or 65% damage mitigation. PRR hits 65% mitigation at 185. Ignoring stance because your fighter has it too, a Sacred Defender Paladin can get 20 PRR from core abilities, 25 from Harbored By Light, 10 from a heavier shield, 10 more from Improved Shield Mastery for a heavier shield, 20 from heavier armor, and around 15 from the difference in BAB-based PRR for heavier armor and more BAB. That adds up to 100 more PRR, and hey look that's more than needed to match. That's also assuming the Paladin has 0 dodge, when he should really be able to at least reach 5% easily. I'll spare you the calculations, but with 5% dodge only 171 PRR is needed to reach 65% mitigation.

[BigErkyKid]

The linear relationship is for PRR and extra time without healing. With a linear relationship by your interpretation, 0 PRR would mean the character falls over and dies instantly because, I don't know, a stiff breeze came by.


Yes, PRR has diminishing returns, but I think you and all the other people complaining about it here are grossly exaggerating how quickly the returns diminish.

Let's say you have a build with 30% dodge and 100 PRR. How much PRR is needed to have equal average damage mitigation with no dodge? Well, the 70% non-dodged attacks are doing 50% damage, for total damage taken of 35%, or 65% damage mitigation. PRR hits 65% mitigation at 185. Ignoring stance because your fighter has it too, a Sacred Defender Paladin can get 20 PRR from core abilities, 25 from Harbored By Light, 10 from a heavier shield, 10 more from Improved Shield Mastery for a heavier shield, 20 from heavier armor, and around 15 from the difference in BAB-based PRR for heavier armor and more BAB. That adds up to 100 more PRR, and hey look that's more than needed to match. That's also assuming the Paladin has 0 dodge, when he should really be able to at least reach 5% easily. I'll spare you the calculations, but with 5% dodge only 171 PRR is needed to reach 65% mitigation.

First of all, PRR has diminishing returns for all it matters. The rest is jibber jabber. --- EDITED: My presentation was bad, writing another post on it.


Second, you made an incredibly faulty comparison using a paladin S&B to compare to swashbuckler. It is apples and oranges.The relevant comparison is between to top DPS builds: a SWF or THF paladin vs a swashbuckler in blitz.

The swashbuckler gets around 140 PRR (I have seen those numbers, it is not theorycrafting) with blitz, legendary shield mastery, a PRR item, a buckler and shield mastery feats. The paladin without shield gets around 170 PRR. Those are again real numbers based on my experience and videos of Eth.

Let's assume 30% dodge for the swash and 5% for the paladin. How much damage do they take in 10 seconds by a mob hitting for 100 per second?

Paladin: 100*0.95*0.37 times 10 seconds = 350 points

Swashbuckler: 100*.7*0.41 times 10 seconds = 287 points

The paladin takes 22% more damage than the swashbuckler!

Heavy armor folks take more damage than their light /cloth armor competitors, by a large margin. This has NOT changed.


And we are only looking at physical damage. The swash gets EVASION with high reflex and in addition some MRR. He blows the paladin out of the quest in overall damage mitigation by an obscene margin. And that's not even discussing the fact that the swash has self casted displacement. Any person without displacement clickies is better off by playing a swashbuckler than a paladin with absolute certainty.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

To clarify that chart, the -25% numbers are only relative to the previous line, not total. It shouldn't be summing up to a new total mitigation.

...50% damage taken compared to...
...33% damage taken compared to...
...25% damage taken compared to...

But going from 200->300 is reducing damage a lot more than 8%

key words you used: *compared to*
key words you did not use: *bottom line*

will 300 prr be more effective compared to 200 prr? yes. by 25%? could say that.
bottom line? you will only take 8% less damage. i dont give a **** about comparisons, i give a **** about the bottom line. because thats what is actually going to affect in game decisions and play.

It's OK if you don't want to view it like this. But as a player who has 200 PRR, I want to know how much less damage I'll get by equipping items or pushing an ability button that gives +100 PRR. The damage number I see goes from 200 to 150. I don't really care about the original hit, I care what this item/ability is going to do for me.

You might not care about it, or call it misleading, but this is exactly how I view it as a player (both in DDO and other games that have had similar formulas). There's always disagreement about what's a better way to view things, but I'm not intentionally misleading anyone, and I'm explaining exactly what I'm saying. I respect you when you explain where your numbers come from!

Of course there's diminishing returns. My earlier post today in this thread shows exactly that, and we're not trying to hide that.

you are ignoring how much more actual damage is reduced by increasing your prr from 200 to 300. 300 does not reduce total damage taken by 25% compared to 200. how much enemies hit you for is not a relative thing. seeing your defenses in a relative manner seems like a bad habit.

If we are looking at PRR, dissecting the raw numbers and calling them "diminishing returns" is misleading.

Now, the issue I have with the language being thrown around in this thread that describes PRR as diminishing returns is that it examines the raw mitigation numbers, but it doesn't take into account that fact that as PRR increases there is less incoming damage to mitigate. This exagerrates the effect of each PRR point, which leads to a linear progression of survival time.

It's survival time we examine when looking at this mitigation.

As for whether "PJ" builds can leverage too much PRR, it was a concern when we increased the PRR formula and also removed the PRR limit on no armor and light armor builds. I also wonder if that's more of an issue with Earth stance than the current system on Lamannia. When I get in next week we will look at the numbers.

Sev~

varg just admitted that "of course theres diminishing returns." you guys need to get on the same page about who is misleading whom about what.

if you have removed the prr limit on lighter armor classes, i think that is a mistake. at least at the present time when the fact that medium and heavy armors are uncapped doesnt allow them to get a meaningful amount more than the light armor cap. and after all i thought the point of this update was to balance heavy armor physical defense against monk physical defense? why hamstring your own effort? is it your intent that monks continue to be able to achieve equal to or greater physical defenses than heavy armor builds? 100 prr is 40% damage reduction regardless of the maximum achievable prr. that seems like a generous spot for someone wearing no armor.

earth stance is not the problem all by itself. however if you want to *balance* it, i think it would be a good idea to move its extra 19-20 multiplier to fire stance. so that fire stance will actually be useful for something and earth will not be the clear cut best stance.

Sorry Sev, but you are wrong on this one.

To see why, observe that 100 PRR buys me 20 seconds whereas 200 PRR buys me 30. If the function was linear, 200PRR would buy me 40 seconds, not 30.

In other words, doubling the PRR does not double the time without healing! This is because it has diminishing returns.

i think you are comparing a % based perspective to an unrelated integer based perspective. doubling prr may not double time until dead or time until needing to heal, but imagining it on a graph in my head i think it would be linear.

if you were to do the same graph but change integers to the appropriate %s, then i think the line would change and reflect those diminishing returns. you should do some graphs to see if what im saying is right (and yes i mean graphs, so simple folk like me can go "aaaaaahhh" and understand easily). i am not tech or math savvy enough, or interested enough, to do it.

[Throwdown]

thank you for explaining this so someone like me who doesn't understand DDO math very well actually can understand how this works. im also glad to see some of you guys jumping into threads to correct us when forumites explain things incorrectly.

No one explained anything incorrectly. Sev simply elucidated how he looks at PRR in the context of play. It doesn't mean he's right, or anyone else is wrong. It's just the logic for his decision making. As he said, now we look at the numbers in practice.

You shouldn't be so hostile to everyone who isn't a dev. It's extremely polarizing, and also extremely obvious.

[BigErkyKid]

i think you are comparing a % based perspective to an unrelated integer based perspective. doubling prr may not double time until dead or time until needing to heal, but imagining it on a graph in my head i think it would be linear.

if you were to do the same graph but change integers to the appropriate %s, then i think the line would change and reflect those diminishing returns. you should do some graphs to see if what im saying is right (and yes i mean graphs, so simple fold like me can go "aaaaaahhh" and understand easily). i am not tech or math savvy enough, or interested enough, to do it.

No, no. Don't be confused by presentations and what not.

To know if it has diminishing returns or not (it does!) you need to ask the following simple question:

If I double PRR, do I take half as much damage? The answer is no, you take more than half the damage.

That is why builds that can grab easy PRR are not much behind builds that can get into their ~150. Factoring in that heavy armor prevents dodge, their are actually behind in damage mitigation. If you are interested in the details go through my previous post.

Please do not get scared by the maths of the issue, because they are VERY simple. It is pure counting beans.

At the end of the day, when deciding to take an enhancement or bring a shield or what not, people will always look at how many extra damage reduction they will get out of it. The answer, unfortunately, is that the higher their PRR is, the less they will benefit from extra PRR.


I think the paladin is a perfect example. I will now illustrate it with somehow realistic numbers.

Look at the following decisions. Suppose you are a paladin (perhaps splashed monk for evasion and stands) and you have 4 options.

1) No heavy armor, just stances and items for around 70PRR
2) No points in defender trees, at around 120PRR (assume 120).
3) No shield and defender, at around ~170-180PRR (assume 170).
4) Shield, ~200-230 PRR (assume 230).

Suppose I took option 1 to start with and I am considering options 2 and 3. What I care about is how much I gain in damage reduction to compare to other possibilities for my enhancement points (opportunity cost). So let's compute it.

1) 42% damage reduction
2) 55% damage reduction
3) 63% damage reduction
4) 69% damage reduction

Moving up in the options is granting me every time 50 extra PRR, but it is clear that this not maps in the same amount of extra damage reduction every time. The gains are:

From 1 to 2: 13% extra damage reduction.
From 2 to 3: 8% extra damage reduction.
From 3 to 4: 6% extra damage reduction.


EDITED = WRONG

[BigErkyKid]

No one explained anything incorrectly. Sev simply elucidated how he looks at PRR in the context of play. It doesn't mean he's right, or anyone else is wrong. It's just the logic for his decision making. As he said, now we look at the numbers in practice.

You shouldn't be so hostile to everyone who isn't a dev. It's extremely polarizing, and also extremely obvious.

We did not get it incorrectly. He looks at it in a particular way and he has all the legitimacy to do that. But PRR has diminishing returns (regardless of what anyone says, it is a mathematical fact) and this is something that creates problems in the context of getting balance between PJ and armor. This what we are discussing.

[Qhualor]

No one explained anything incorrectly. Sev simply elucidated how he looks at PRR in the context of play. It doesn't mean he's right, or anyone else is wrong. It's just the logic for his decision making. As he said, now we look at the numbers in practice.

You shouldn't be so hostile to everyone who isn't a dev. It's extremely polarizing, and also extremely obvious.

feeling guilty? HAHAHA!

[Battlehawke]

This is actually the same logic. If you are chugging potions, and you have a finite number of potions, then time until you must heal is extremely important and probably the most useful way to looking at PRR. The longer you can go without a heal, and further those potions will take you and the less DPS you will lose by chugging.

The actual numbers can vary, but the math is the same. You could change the hit points to 1600 and the healing threshold to 600, or 1800 and 1000, or any numbers really and the technique of measuring time until a heal still works.

Sev~

...well said

[Throwdown]

We did not get it incorrectly.

Why did you just copy and paste my first sentence? Because you love it so much?

He looks at it in a particular way and he has all the legitimacy to do that. But PRR has diminishing returns (regardless of what anyone says, it is a mathematical fact) and this is something that creates problems in the context of getting balance between PJ and armor. This what we are discussing.

Yes I know. I was the one in this thread that said I think more PRR should become MORE useful, to mitigate problems with light/no armor and PRR being very useful at low scores/values.

You either completely misread the thing you quoted that I wrote, or you're drunk.

[Throwdown]

feeling guilty? HAHAHA!

About what? The devs are still dancing around an issue that they are misrepresenting, which is that PRR has diminishing returns. That doesn't make Sev wrong in looking at PRR from a "time to heal" context. But it doesn't mean PRR does not give diminishing returns which it does.

You're still just sort of trolling though.

[BigErkyKid]

Why did you just copy and paste my first sentence? Because you love it so much?



Yes I know. I was the one in this thread that said I think more PRR should become MORE useful, to mitigate problems with light/no armor and PRR being very useful at low scores/values.

You either completely misread the thing you quoted that I wrote, or you're drunk.

No, I just quoted you because I agreed with you and to further expand on it. But hey I guess it is never too early for some good old aggressive forumite. Do you come in a kinder version?

[Qhualor]

About what? The devs are still dancing around an issue that they are misrepresenting, which is that PRR has diminishing returns. That doesn't make Sev wrong in looking at PRR from a "time to heal" context. But it doesn't mean PRR does not give diminishing returns which it does.

You're still just sort of trolling though.

I said something positive to Sev and thanked him for explaining something so that I could understand it. people explain things incorrectly all the time on the forums. not everyone is 100% correct all the time. its just funny you quote me and tell me to not be so hostile to people. im not hostile to anyone unless they are hostile to me first hence the response to you.

you are trolling me for no good reason.

[Krelar]

Now Sev is saying that this corresponds to non decreasing gains in survivability, but this is wrong as I explained earlier, using his example:

100 PRR grants you 20 seconds of combat, but 200 PRR does not grant you double this time, rather, it grants you an additional 10 seconds. If I want to double my combat time, that is, reach 40 seconds, I need 300PRR. This is to double my combat time I need to triple my PRR.

Why should going from 100 to 200 double your combat time?

I think you are missing the base case here. What is your combat time with 0 PRR?

In Sev's example, if we go with his assertion that PRR is supposed to be linear, he is assuming that the base combat time is about 10 seconds.

Increasing to 100 PRR doubles this value to 20 seconds.

Increasing to 200 PRR triples this value to 30 seconds.

This is a linear progression. You gan 10 seconds for every 100 PRR.


What you seem to want is an exponential progression where the value gets multiplied by two for every 100 PRR.



Note I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the current implementation but your example is flawed.

Personally I think that the new formula maybe making it even easier for unarmored builds to get a high enough damage reduction to not care about armor.

[BigErkyKid]

Why should going from 100 to 200 double your combat time?

I think you are missing the base case here. What is your combat time with 0 PRR?

In Sev's example, if we go with his assertion that PRR is supposed to be linear, he is assuming that the base combat time is about 10 seconds.

Increasing to 100 PRR doubles this value to 20 seconds.

Increasing to 200 PRR triples this value to 30 seconds.

This is a linear progression. You gan 10 seconds for every 100 PRR.


What you seem to want is an exponential progression where the value gets multiplied by two for every 100 PRR.



Note I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the current implementation but your example is flawed.

Personally I think that the new formula maybe making it even easier for unarmored builds to get a high enough damage reduction to not care about armor.

Absolutely right, the example is bad in an embarassing way. My apologies there! Working on a better presentation.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

No, no. Don't be confused by presentations and what not.

To know if it has diminishing returns or not (it does!) you need to ask the following simple question:

If I double PRR, do I take half as much damage? The answer is no, you take more than half the damage.

That is why builds that can grab easy PRR are not much behind builds that can get into their ~150. Factoring in that heavy armor prevents dodge, their are actually behind in damage mitigation. If you are interested in the details go through my previous post.

Please do not get scared by the maths of the issue, because they are VERY simple. It is pure counting beans.

At the end of the day, when deciding to take an enhancement or bring a shield or what not, people will always look at how many extra damage reduction they will get out of it. The answer, unfortunately, is that the higher their PRR is, the less they will benefit from extra PRR.


I think the paladin is a perfect example. I will now illustrate it with somehow realistic numbers.

Look at the following decisions. Suppose you are a paladin (perhaps splashed monk for evasion and stands) and you have 4 options.

1) No heavy armor, just stances and items for around 70PRR
2) No points in defender trees, at around 120PRR (assume 120).
3) No shield and defender, at around ~170-180PRR (assume 170).
4) Shield, ~200-230 PRR (assume 230).

Suppose I took option 1 to start with and I am considering options 2 and 3. What I care about is how much I gain in damage reduction to compare to other possibilities for my enhancement points (opportunity cost). So let's compute it.

1) 42% damage reduction
2) 55% damage reduction
3) 63% damage reduction
4) 69% damage reduction

Moving up in the options is granting me every time 50 extra PRR, but it is clear that this not maps in the same amount of extra damage reduction every time. The gains are:

From 1 to 2: 13% extra damage reduction.
From 2 to 3: 8% extra damage reduction.
From 3 to 4: 6% extra damage reduction.

Now Sev is saying that this corresponds to non decreasing gains in survivability, but this is wrong as I explained earlier, using his example:

100 PRR grants you 20 seconds of combat, but 200 PRR does not grant you double this time, rather, it grants you an additional 10 seconds. If I want to double my combat time, that is, reach 40 seconds, I need 300PRR. This is to double my combat time I need to triple my PRR.

im not confused about the issue, i was frankly suggesting you do a chart for your sake to help illustrate that in sevs examples prr does have a linear progression.

i know prr has diminishing returns in terms of total damage mitigated, duuuuhhh...

on the other hand how you can call +100 prr = +10 seconds of combat time non linear is beyond me, and makes me doubt any numbers you post if you cant grasp a pretty simple concept.


http://www.chartgo.com/get.do?id=2bce2ce218

i hope this link demonstrates (and works, im tech deficient) that despite whether or not the numbers work out this way in reality, the example has a linear progression. the only thing you can dispute here is that it wont work this way in practice, which will require play testing to determine. i hope at least that you were saying the progression wont work in practice because of x, y, z. if so you did not communicate that effectively. if thats not what you were saying..../smh.

also what krelar said. i find it shocking you cant tell the difference between a linear and exponential progression.

1 2 3 4 5. linear.
1 2 4 8 16. exponential.

[Zerkul]

Why Sentinel, Fatesinger, Primal Avatar gets more Melee Power than Drednought, Fury and Divine Crusader?

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Why Sentinel, Fatesinger, Primal Avatar gets more Melee Power than Drednought, Fury and Divine Crusader?

they are under performing destinies.

[Zerkul]

they are under performing destinies.

Sounds to me a cheap solution like it was for SWF double strength bonus that got just removed.