BAB=Level, eventually a problem

[Bjond]

I'm laying out a Bear tank build and noticed a lack of PRR compared to other tank builds. Two reasons sprang out: shield feats don't work (PRR-15~20) and BAB is low (PRR-20+). The shield feat problem is pure bear.

However, BAB is also very important to melee for both DPS and Survival. And, it's about to get worse as the level cap increases. Right now it's a bit annoying playing a sub-30 BAB melee or tank. As the cap increases, though, I can see it becoming another scaling issue to sidelines builds that lack BAB=Level.

Scrolling isn't viable. Both Tensers and Divine Power scrolls only last 66s. Recasting a buff every minute shouldn't be part of normal play and scrolling while tanking doesn't fly even with concentration.

My preference would be to fix it in the physical ED core-1s; eg. BAB=(20+epic/2) to keep DC's Mantle and other things that offer true BAB=Level at a slight advantage.

However, it could also be fixed with itemization; eg. wands with ML=CL=20 and ML=CL=30 (2~3m duration) could be added to vendors for both Tenser's and Divine Power. I suspect most people would prefer the wand route, but I hate clickies that don't last at least 30m -- once per quests is a minor hassle, more is too irritating to consider. Still, wands would work and could be used by a tank.

If anything is done, I would not like to see it affects heroics. I think something to fix the issue does need to be done and better if done sooner than later.

BTW, 'dunno if I'll end up punting the bear idea or not. It's got some attractive aspects despite iffy mitigation. It's only a paper bear just yet -- easy to wad up and bin before it gets mauled in game.

[krimsonrane]

I'm laying out a Bear tank build and noticed a lack of PRR compared to other tank builds. Two reasons sprang out: shield feats don't work (PRR-15~20) and BAB is low (PRR-20+). The shield feat problem is pure bear.

However, BAB is also very important to melee for both DPS and Survival. And, it's about to get worse as the level cap increases. Right now it's a bit annoying playing a sub-30 BAB melee or tank. As the cap increases, though, I can see it becoming another scaling issue to sidelines builds that lack BAB=Level.

Scrolling isn't viable. Both Tensers and Divine Power scrolls only last 66s. Recasting a buff every minute shouldn't be part of normal play and scrolling while tanking doesn't fly even with concentration.

My preference would be to fix it in the physical ED core-1s; eg. BAB=(20+epic/2) to keep DC's Mantle and other things that offer true BAB=Level at a slight advantage.

However, it could also be fixed with itemization; eg. wands with ML=CL=20 and ML=CL=30 (2~3m duration) could be added to vendors for both Tenser's and Divine Power. I suspect most people would prefer the wand route, but I hate clickies that don't last at least 30m -- once per quests is a minor hassle, more is too irritating to consider. Still, wands would work and could be used by a tank.

If anything is done, I would not like to see it affects heroics. I think something to fix the issue does need to be done and better if done sooner than later.

BTW, 'dunno if I'll end up punting the bear idea or not. It's got some attractive aspects despite iffy mitigation. It's only a paper bear just yet -- easy to wad up and bin before it gets mauled in game.

I believe there is an enhancement that allows druids to wear metal. For Danks that would be full plate. Quite a bit of PRR there.

[Bjond]

I believe there is an enhancement that allows druids to wear metal. For Danks that would be full plate. Quite a bit of PRR there.

Heh, yes it does. Thanks for the tip. I was already using it, though.

The problem is that these days, tank builds spread themselves out to cherry pick AC and PRR and such from wherever they can get it. This impacts BAB, which in turn hurts PRR. A lot of builders will post their PRR in a screen shot. If you see something like 18/30 in the BAB box that means it's buffed with Tenser's or Divine Power and thus probably not actually played that way -- at least I've never seen an R10 tank stop and scroll every 66s and my tank sure doesn't do it either.

PRR increases by 2xBAB for heavy, 1.5x for medium, 1.0x for light, and 0.0x for cloth. If you have BAB=Level, you then have the most PRR you can get out of your armor. It also directly adds to accuracy and determines which attack rate table you use (with BAB=25 being the top attack rate table). So, it matters for tanks and melee mostly.

Why just melee and not ranged, too? Because ranged can reach the 86/m ROF cap with low BAB. It still matters for accuracy and PRR for ranged, but it doesn't hit all 3 factors the way it does for melee (and I'm more OK with less PRR on my ranged).

This is irritating when building a tank or melee these days. As the level cap increases more and more, I suspect it will become more than irritating and end up side-lining low BAB builds. There are all kinds of ways to deal with the issue -- I can think of 3 more ways that I didn't post, but I already tend toward TL;DR. Should prolly trim what/where I can.

BTW, if you already know all this, not trying to patronize -- there's bound to be 5 or 6 newbies out there somewhere wondering. Maybe they'll read this someday.

[blarhblarhblarh]

Scrolling isn't viable. Both Tensers and Divine Power scrolls only last 66s. Recasting a buff every minute shouldn't be part of normal play and scrolling while tanking doesn't fly even with concentration.
.

I agree 100%.

But the great 19 year old designer that should hear it. To him the more clickies per minute / 2 minutes the more fun DDO is. Or at least is what it seems since update 50. To my personal choice level I give preference to builds without these kinds of troubles but my bearbarian must rebuff every 2 minutes with 4 clickies and it is hell. Love the build. Love the playstyle. Don´t understand why some things like Divine Might can´t simple have a toggle of on/off and grab the SP when it ends. Why give players the extra trouble??? this means nothing for players who do macros but for all the rest of the player it is just boring and don´t add anything to DDO.

[LurkingVeteran]

...
However, BAB is also very important to melee for both DPS and Survival. And, it's about to get worse as the level cap increases.
...

My preference would be to fix it in the physical ED core-1s; eg. BAB=(20+epic/2) to keep DC's Mantle and other things that offer true BAB=Level at a slight advantage.

...

I don't get it. Epic progression for BAB is already supposed to be epic level/2 regardless of base class(es). Increasing the cap will keep the difference in absolute terms but make it less in relative terms.

PRR also has diminishing returns (even in %), so that 5 BAB less will matter less the more power creep there is.

5 BAB only really matters for two things: you get martial feats later when levelling, and attack speed for bow and throwing. The PRR and accuracy difference is quite minimal. Agree that clickables are terrible though. Tenser's shouldn't set it to 30 (if it still actually does that, I seem to recall that the game ignores BAB > 25)

[Bjond]

PRR also has diminishing returns (even in %), so that 5 BAB less will matter less the more power creep there is.

Yes and no. DR has diminishing returns because it's inversely proportional to PRR; ie. DR = 100/(100+PRR). But DR is not as directly useful a metric as Time-to-Kill.

TTK is DIRECTLY proportional to PRR because it's inversely proportional to DR; ie. TTK ~ HP/DR ~ HP x PRR. Focus on TTK, not DR. Every little point of PRR increments your TTK multiplier.

Example: 250 PRR = 71% DR. 350 = 78%. So, 7% doesn't sound big. Why bother? Because 250 PRR = 3.5xHP TTK and 350 PRR = 4.5xHP TTK. That's a 29% improvement in how long you can live.

Looking at DR is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Looking at TTK makes it much easier to weigh HP v PRR when building any character: just pick the bigger (percentage) increase.

5 BAB only really matters for two things: you get martial feats later when levelling, and attack speed for bow and throwing. The PRR and accuracy difference is quite minimal. Agree that clickables are terrible though. Tenser's shouldn't set it to 30 (if it still actually does that, I seem to recall that the game ignores BAB > 25)

That's a bit wrong. Throwing ROF caps at 86/m. Whirling + Haste + BAB=21 will cap it and even BAB=19 ends up 84~85/m. 10K stars gains nothing from BAB. MoM does, but not much (under 1% overall DPS increase for 21 v 30 BAB). Bow Manyshot is what likes BAB best. I don't know if Bow easily caps ROF like throwing -- never tested it.

Tenser & Divine Power both set BAB=Level. Technically, it should be 25 because the text (and D&D) both call out "BAB of a FIGHTER" not BAB=Level. DC actually calls out BAB=Level, but it should probably also be fighter-level to avoid an imbalance with Tenser & DP. Same with Shiradi & HW.

The game doesn't ignore BAB=25+. You still get accuracy and PRR x BAB increases past 25, but I think you were only referring to attack rates and that's true; (AFAIK) the attack rate tables are only different for 20, 21-24, and 25+. Attack rate in heroics doesn't matter to me -- if it dies in one hit, who cares if your 2nd is coming sooner or later?

Accuracy = dump stat is a heroic failing; just a little in heroics and you'll hit on 2. Reaching hit-on 2 needs the full zStack in Epics. Taking heroic thinking into epics is what makes people who like heroics hate epics. 'Course taking epic thinking into heroics is why epic lovers hate heroics -- your chars will be soooo overbuilt.

---

BTW, your point on BAB=Level v BAB=Fighter is a very good one. Fixing the D&D v DDO bug of using BAB=Level instead of BAB=Fighter would at the very minimum push the issue further out -- perhaps past a CL=40 cap -- but it should be done for every BAB Bonus ability: DC, Tensers, DP, HW, Shiradi, etc. etc. or it makes the balance issue worse (even fewer builds can get BAB=Level).

[LurkingVeteran]

Yes and no. DR has diminishing returns because it's inversely proportional to PRR; ie. DR = 100/(100+PRR). But DR is not as directly useful a metric as Time-to-Kill.

TTK is DIRECTLY proportional to PRR because it's inversely proportional to DR; ie. TTK ~ HP/DR ~ HP x PRR. Focus on TTK, not DR. Every little point of PRR increments your TTK multiplier.

Example: 250 PRR = 71% DR. 350 = 78%. So, 7% doesn't sound big. Why bother? Because 250 PRR = 3.5xHP TTK and 350 PRR = 4.5xHP TTK. That's a 29% improvement in how long you can live.

Looking at DR is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Looking at TTK makes it much easier to weigh HP v PRR when building any character: just pick the bigger (percentage) increase.



That's a bit wrong. Throwing ROF caps at 86/m. Whirling + Haste + BAB=21 will cap it and even BAB=19 ends up 84~85/m. 10K stars gains nothing from BAB. MoM does, but not much (under 1% overall DPS increase for 21 v 30 BAB). Bow Manyshot is what likes BAB best. I don't know if Bow easily caps ROF like throwing -- never tested it.

Tenser & Divine Power both set BAB=Level. Technically, it should be 25 because the text (and D&D) both call out "BAB of a FIGHTER" not BAB=Level. DC actually calls out BAB=Level, but it should probably also be fighter-level to avoid an imbalance with Tenser & DP. Same with Shiradi & HW.

The game doesn't ignore BAB=25+. You still get accuracy and PRR x BAB increases past 25, but I think you were only referring to attack rates and that's true; (AFAIK) the attack rate tables are only different for 20, 21-24, and 25+. Attack rate in heroics doesn't matter to me -- if it dies in one hit, who cares if your 2nd is coming sooner or later?

Accuracy = dump stat is a heroic failing; just a little in heroics and you'll hit on 2. Reaching hit-on 2 needs the full zStack in Epics. Taking heroic thinking into epics is what makes people who like heroics hate epics. 'Course taking epic thinking into heroics is why epic lovers hate heroics -- your chars will be soooo overbuilt.

---

BTW, your point on BAB=Level v BAB=Fighter is a very good one. Fixing the D&D v DDO bug of using BAB=Level instead of BAB=Fighter would at the very minimum push the issue further out -- perhaps past a CL=40 cap -- but it should be done for every BAB Bonus ability: DC, Tensers, DP, HW, Shiradi, etc. etc. or it makes the balance issue worse (even fewer builds can get BAB=Level).

You were talking about the BAB gap increasing with the level cap, but the BAB gap will be the same. Nothing in your post contradicts this? It's either whatever you had in heroics, or your character level if using Tenser's

Regarding tangent about diminishing returns on PRR: Without getting into a semantic discussion over what "returns" in "diminishing returns" means, please calculate your "TTK" (more like "effective hit points") for a 1000hp character with 300 PRR and do the same for 305 BAB. Is that really worth griping over?

Regarding tangent about Tenser's: I don't see how this changes anything w.r.t. your original claim since anybody can use it. It's just crazy annoying.

[Taraborn]

I don't get it. Epic progression for BAB is already supposed to be epic level/2 regardless of base class(es). Increasing the cap will keep the difference in absolute terms but make it less in relative terms.

PRR also has diminishing returns (even in %), so that 5 BAB less will matter less the more power creep there is.

5 BAB only really matters for two things: you get martial feats later when levelling, and attack speed for bow and throwing. The PRR and accuracy difference is quite minimal. Agree that clickables are terrible though. Tenser's shouldn't set it to 30 (if it still actually does that, I seem to recall that the game ignores BAB > 25)

The BAB progression for Legendary levels is changed to 0, you will get no BAB increase for levels over 30. This means when the level cap reaches 40 the BAB gap will increase from 5 to 15.

[boredGamer]

Heh, yes it does. Thanks for the tip. I was already using it, though.

The problem is that these days, tank builds spread themselves out to cherry pick AC and PRR and such from wherever they can get it. This impacts BAB, which in turn hurts PRR. A lot of builders will post their PRR in a screen shot. If you see something like 18/30 in the BAB box that means it's buffed with Tenser's or Divine Power and thus probably not actually played that way -- at least I've never seen an R10 tank stop and scroll every 66s and my tank sure doesn't do it either.

PRR increases by 2xBAB for heavy, 1.5x for medium, 1.0x for light, and 0.0x for cloth. If you have BAB=Level, you then have the most PRR you can get out of your armor. It also directly adds to accuracy and determines which attack rate table you use (with BAB=25 being the top attack rate table). So, it matters for tanks and melee mostly.

Why just melee and not ranged, too? Because ranged can reach the 86/m ROF cap with low BAB. It still matters for accuracy and PRR for ranged, but it doesn't hit all 3 factors the way it does for melee (and I'm more OK with less PRR on my ranged).

This is irritating when building a tank or melee these days. As the level cap increases more and more, I suspect it will become more than irritating and end up side-lining low BAB builds. There are all kinds of ways to deal with the issue -- I can think of 3 more ways that I didn't post, but I already tend toward TL;DR. Should prolly trim what/where I can.

BTW, if you already know all this, not trying to patronize -- there's bound to be 5 or 6 newbies out there somewhere wondering. Maybe they'll read this someday.

The only thing I’m not necessarily convinced on is why there shouldn’t be a trade off for various builds. You haven’t convinced me that having different options is bad , not that you’re wrong about it .

You’re arguing as far as I can tell you should be able to min/max splits without the inherent tradeoff of those splits or builds ?

[Kayze]

Regarding tangent about diminishing returns on PRR: Without getting into a semantic discussion over what "returns" in "diminishing returns" means, please calculate your "TTK" (more like "effective hit points") for a 1000hp character with 300 PRR and do the same for 305 BAB. Is that really worth griping over?

This sort of thing comes up over and over again and it is a logical fallacy. Every point of PRR after Update 23 adds 1% effective base hp. Period. This is the logic that the developers are using regardless of the percentage reduction shown on hover. Saying that PRR gives diminishing returns is like arguing that working more hours has diminishing returns on income. Increasing your hours worked from 1 to 2 is an increase of 100%, while increasing it from 4 to 5 is only 25%.

Taking the inverse of a linear function will always return a parabolic function. (unless it is a horizontal or vertical line)

[Chacka_DDO]

It is indeed not really good that even if you have a build that should normally have the best BAB (for example 20 fighter level) you don't get more BAB with epic and later legendary levels and a wizard can have "magically" more BAB, maybe every build should get one BAB with each epic and legendary level?
And another thing is that the whole idea of making PRR based on your character level is basically nonsense because the bonus for PRR is at the end a percentage bonus and for that reason all items no matter the ML could have the same PRR bonuses. This is not like Damage reduction.

[Weemadarthur]

This sort of thing comes up over and over again and it is a logical fallacy. Every point of PRR after Update 23 adds 1% effective base hp. Period. This is the logic that the developers are using regardless of the percentage reduction shown on hover. Saying that PRR gives diminishing returns is like arguing that working more hours has diminishing returns on income. Increasing your hours worked from 1 to 2 is an increase of 100%, while increasing it from 4 to 5 is only 25%.

Taking the inverse of a linear function will always return a parabolic function. (unless it is a horizontal or vertical line)

Either you don't understand how PRR works or you need to work on your analogy. To put this in perspective for you using the same example PRR would be more like the following:-

If you work 10 hours you get $500. That's great. If you then work an extra 10 hours though you only gain $250 for a total of $750. A 3rd 10 hour stint would only give $125 for a total of $875. Every 10 extra hours you worked would in fact pay you half the amount of the previous 10.

This is literally how PRR actually works. It's not the % total becoming smaller due to the amount you already have but rather that the benefit you receive is halved every 100 gained and this is what is meant by diminishing returns.

[Kayze]

Either you don't understand how PRR works or you need to work on your analogy. To put this in perspective for you using the same example PRR would be more like the following:-

If you work 10 hours you get $500. That's great. If you then work an extra 10 hours though you only gain $250 for a total of $750. A 3rd 10 hour stint would only give $125 for a total of $875. Every 10 extra hours you worked would in fact pay you half the amount of the previous 10.

This is literally how PRR actually works. It's not the % total becoming smaller due to the amount you already have but rather that the benefit you receive is halved every 100 gained and this is what is meant by diminishing returns.

You're wrong.

Every single point of PRR is 1% more effective HP. The damage reduction gets corresponding smaller because each additional point of damage reduction percent is worth more. For example, cutting the damage in half is 0% - 50%. Cutting in half an additional time is 50% to 75%, an increase of 25%. Is that second half worth less? No, because it is increasing your effective hp, your total time to kill (TTK) by the same amount.

Here is a thread from 2015 about the same exact issue because people refuse to get off the displayed damage reduction.

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...ishing-returns. See the "Pre-PRR damage to do 1000 damage" column.

[Chacka_DDO]

You're wrong.

Every single point of PRR is 1% more effective HP. The damage reduction gets corresponding smaller because each additional point of damage reduction percent is worth more. For example, cutting the damage in half is 0% - 50%. Cutting in half an additional time is 50% to 75%, an increase of 25%. Is that second half worth less? No, because it is increasing your effective hp, your total time to kill (TTK) by the same amount.

Here is a thread from 2015 about the same exact issue because people refuse to get off the displayed damage reduction.

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...ishing-returns. See the "Pre-PRR damage to do 1000 damage" column.

And here comes the third interpretation, which is hopefully correct :
PRR and MRR formula works in a way that each additional PRR point has the same effect when it comes to damage reduction. this means for example if you have. 1 PRR compared to 0 PRR the one PRR reduces your damage from 100% to 99% and thereafter your current 99% is the "new" 100% and you look out for another PRR and this the next 1 PRR point reduces this new (now current) 100% to the even newer 99% and this happens with each new PRR point.
This is by the way the charm in the formula and I hope I explained it in an understandable way.

In contrast to this, each dodge point is like you say and adds more value the more you already have, why?
The first 50% dodge reduces the damage by 50% but to reduce the damage by another 50% you only need another 25% dodge and for the next 50% reduction you only need another 12.5% dodge and so on and at the end, you only need 1% more dodge to reduce the damage by another 100% because you dodge already 99% of the time.

And by the way, the guy in your link explains exactly this but it is seemingly not that easy to understand depending on your math "kung fu" (my math is also quite rusty).