Mitigation: Dodge versus PRR

[Bjond]

Started to reply in another thread, but this particular topic is a pretty big segue from OP's query. So, new thread to avoid derailing him.

[Dodge is] a broken mechanic because unlike other forms of defense it doesn't scale by skull

Neither PRR nor MRR scale by skull. Barbarian %DR doesn't scale by skull. Absorb% doesn't scale by skull. Saves and Resists don't scale by skull. Are these all broken, too?

IIRC, the only mitigation elements that scale by skull are conceal, incorporeal, and self-heal -- and I consider ALL of those to be quite ill-conceived (aka broken) because they pretty much only make reaper harder for melee. CC & Kiting work even when you have no mitigation at all.

---

Now to the point of making this a new post. Should you increase Dodge or should you increase PRR? It's all about total mitigation. At cap -- especially with a few reaper points and some EPLs -- melee will have around 200 PRR or 66.6% physical mitigation. Should you add 1% Dodge or 10 PRR?

Adding 10 PRR takes your mitigation to 67.7%, for an overall gain of 3.2%. Raising your Dodge from 27 to 28 is a 3.6% overall gain. So, Dodge wins. If your PRR is low, you can definitely gain more from increasing it than upping your Dodge, but in general, the higher your PRR and the lower your Dodge, the more you gain from Dodge instead of PRR.

At cap, it's so easy to hit the diminishing returns on PRR compared to Dodge, that it doesn't really make sense to wear Medium or Heavy armor if you want to maximize PHYSICAL mitigation. So, wear Light, max your MDB & Dodge. All done? Uh, nope.

What to do about incoming MAGIC? You're capped at 100 MRR with Light. Will Med/Hvy let you live? Nope. Some builds can struggle to reach 100 MRR in medium, but the practical limit of MRR for melee DPS is around 130~170 depending on PLs. That's not enough more than 100 MRR to matter -- not when two dot ticks might be enough to kill you. No matter what weight your armor, as a DPS you'll want something more for magic.

That's where gear sets like Salt come in. It's pretty easy to get %Absorb in Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, and Negative at the same time. You can cover the rest with T4 in EA if you're paranoid or you know you'll be taking a large variety of magic damage (eg. you'll be tanking things). Those extra aborbs from gear and tree ARE enough for both Light & Cloth DPS to live.

Without absorbs, the only way to mitigate magic is with a Large or Tower Shield. Wearing one includes a hidden 2x MRR effect for any magic damage with a reflex save. Combine that with a high reflex (which still works to cut incoming by 50% even without evasion) and the classic tank barely blinks at incoming magic.

Unfortunately for DPS, Shields are not viable. Sword+Board is stuck with Vanguard, which pretty much requires it's capstone to compete with other DPS. So, S&B (which Medium & Heavy needs to really shine) is almost never played. IMHO, one tiny update to the VG tree would instantly put S&B back on the map: a 1 AP T3 enhance that permits SWF to work with Small, Large, & Tower Shields. DPS would end up similar to Swash. Balanced, highly useful, neither too weak nor too strong.

Best of all, that one tiny change would not only balance the choice between medium & light by giving builders a serious "hmmm .. more physical or magical" choice, it would put Medium AND S+B builds back on the menu with very little effort and not one single nerf to any existing build or play style.

[Tanky]

Should you increase Dodge or should you increase PRR? It's all about total mitigation.

PRR is mitigation. Dodge is avoidance.

Rule number 1 of any difficulty: Don't get one shot. Because you can't get healed when you go from full HP to soulstone. Not getting hit is more important than reducing damage when you're playing in the highest difficulty: R10 raids. Dodge > PRR for light armor DPS because you can't get enough HP and PRR to avoid getting one-shot. In R10 quests, you can get enough PRR and HP to avoid getting one-shot. At that point, maximizing your chance to not get hit at all makes the most sense because you can't get enough PRR and HP to take two hits and live.

[Firebreed]

Excellent thread.

[banwaitingtohappen]

I always worry the solution they come up with will be to nerf movement speed by skull so casters/ranged can't kite. Melee's......fixed!
Sounds like an SSG solution.

[jskinner937]

Dodge and PRR are not either or. I understand you have some limitations if you go max Dodge on PRR, but this is not the broken correlation you need to make.

The issue with Dodge is part of the AC system. Dodge was given to pajamas and light armor to compensate for the lack of AC. These two are essentially the better correlation as far as damage mitigation. The to-hit portion of the game was broken and never fixed so now everyone (except tanks) rely on dodge, rather than AC to avoid a physical attack altogether.

If they would make AC in general work and scale properly, dodge could be rolled up into a single to-avoid system, this would help a lot. But how do you do that?

Make 20 AC equivalent to 1% dodge? But then how do you cap this for different armor types? Clearly medium and heavy armor should defend better than robes. But robes are more nimble and can avoid attacks better.

But if the actual dodge number is the only number capped depending on armor type…but AC equivalent is not capped, this could work as a replacement for the AC system.

So in other words…

Pajama build with 30% dodge and 200 AC
Current System has 30% chance to avoid physical (AC being worthless)
Proposed System has 40% chance to avoid with bonus dodge for AC

Light build with 25% dodge and 250 AC
Current System has 25% chance to avoid (again AC being worthless)
Proposed System has 37% chance to avoid

Medium Build with 15% dodge and 300 AC
Current System has 15% chance to avoid (AC still useless)
Proposed System has 30% chance to avoid

Heavy Build with 10% dodge and 450 AC
Current System has 50% chance to avoid then another 10% roll (I am totally snowballing the AC roll, but it is totally all or nothing currently)
Proposed System has 32% chance to avoid.

The only issues I see are the heavy builds would suffer and would need part of the system modified. Or you could adjust the PRR mechanic to better compensate for overall damage. Also arcances outside of one’s in EK stance should not have access to much AC as compared to melees. This would help overall with melees being in combat. Monks could actually get a substantial bump with a system like this, as their AC and natural dodge both will be high.

Now you make AC meaningful again and can more easily balance a game/difficulty around it.

[jskinner937]

I always worry the solution they come up with will be to nerf movement speed by skull so casters/ranged can't kite. Melee's......fixed!
Sounds like an SSG solution.

Personally, I would rather see the opposite…increase monster run speed by a % per skull. Nobody likes running slower, but it might accomplish the same goal.

[Axcarth]

First of all, excellent discussion thread. Thank you.

Adding 10 PRR takes your mitigation to 67.7%, for an overall gain of 3.2%. Raising your Dodge from 27 to 28 is a 3.6% overall gain. So, Dodge wins. If your PRR is low, you can definitely gain more from increasing it than upping your Dodge, but in general, the higher your PRR and the lower your Dodge, the more you gain from Dodge instead of PRR.

At cap, it's so easy to hit the diminishing returns on PRR compared to Dodge, that it doesn't really make sense to wear Medium or Heavy armor if you want to maximize PHYSICAL mitigation. So, wear Light, max your MDB & Dodge. All done? Uh, nope...

Yap, agree, BUT its important to notice that investing on dodge necessarily implies to invest on MDB and dodge cap as you said, meanwhile investing on PRR is just to add numbers to it without further gear/slots concerns. This (MDB and dodge cap) is not something that easy to achieve and can drive you build or gear or trees (whichever) into a mad puzzle. PRR is the easiest (maybe not optimal) way to become tougher and mitigate physical incoming dmg.

What to do about incoming MAGIC? You're capped at 100 MRR with Light. Will Med/Hvy let you live? Nope. Some builds can struggle to reach 100 MRR in medium, but the practical limit of MRR for melee DPS is around 130~170 depending on PLs. That's not enough more than 100 MRR to matter -- not when two dot ticks might be enough to kill you. No matter what weight your armor, as a DPS you'll want something more for magic.

That's where gear sets like Salt come in. It's pretty easy to get %Absorb in Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, and Negative at the same time. You can cover the rest with T4 in EA if you're paranoid or you know you'll be taking a large variety of magic damage (eg. you'll be tanking things). Those extra aborbs from gear and tree ARE enough for both Light & Cloth DPS to live.

I dont know. I mean, in numbers those (Salt's) ele absorption items are indeed an excellent option for magical dmg mitigation but, IMHO, they do not worth the slot/set in comparison to other gear at lvl... not just for the absorption, at least. I must recognize, though, I'm not a fan of Saltmarsh items.

Unfortunately for DPS, Shields are not viable. Sword+Board is stuck with Vanguard, which pretty much requires it's capstone to compete with other DPS. So, S&B (which Medium & Heavy needs to really shine) is almost never played. IMHO, one tiny update to the VG tree would instantly put S&B back on the map: a 1 AP T3 enhance that permits SWF to work with Small, Large, & Tower Shields. DPS would end up similar to Swash. Balanced, highly useful, neither too weak nor too strong.

Best of all, that one tiny change would not only balance the choice between medium & light by giving builders a serious "hmmm .. more physical or magical" choice, it would put Medium AND S+B builds back on the menu with very little effort and not one single nerf to any existing build or play style.

I'd love to see this implemented on live. +1 for you!
I'm indeed an A&B dwarven (sometimes pally, someothers ftr) that try my best with current shield trees. This melee style should really have a pass in near updates. Especially since today melee dps lack of defenses on high dif end game.

[slarden]

Neither PRR nor MRR scale by skull. Barbarian %DR doesn't scale by skull. Absorb% doesn't scale by skull. Saves and Resists don't scale by skull. Are these all broken, too?

There are three primary types of damage mitigation: %miss chances, fixed damage reduction and damage reduction %. Fixed damage reduction abilities don't really belong in the discussion and it effectively scale anyhow as damage gets higher per skull so fixed damage reduction becomes less effective by skull.

Reduction % which includes PRR, MRR, Barbarian DR %, Absorb % work properly and consistently from Elite to R10 because the damage increases, but the % of damage reduced is the same.

Primary % miss chances includes Armor Class, Concealment (blur, displacement), Ghostly, Saves and Dodge. Armor class gets less effective by skull since enemy to-hit increases. Saves get less effective since enemy DC increases by skull. Concealment and Ghostly % chances are reduced by skull. Dodge is not adjusted at all. One of these things is not like the other.

I think the devs needs to address melee survivability in general before making any changes to dodge, but dodge itself is a broken mechanic and over-weighted on high skulls as a result.

As an example, as you move up in skulls in Legendary Vision of Destruction, Armor class becomes useless but dodge continues to work the same.

[GramercyRiff]

Yeah the game is a mess but it's certainly not because dodge is useful.

[Tanky]

Dodge doesn't get reduced in reaper for one simple reason: RIP clothies. Remove that, and you remove their viability to be more than a soulstone in someone's bag. Campaign to have Dodge reduced in reaper, and the entire monk community will be all over you. It's their primary defense.

You can't get meaningful AC as a DPS to make a difference in reapers. Focusing on AC as a tank also isn't viable against most raid bosses.

[Bjond]

% miss chances includes Armor Class, Concealment (blur, displacement), Ghostly, Saves and Dodge

You're arguing that because hits get bigger, dodge gets better because more of a single hit might be ignored. Uh, nope. Statistically, there is no effective difference between mitigation via miss chance and the same mitigation as a flat always-on reduction.

The practical is different. Dodge gets WORSE (as in riskier of death worse) as hits get bigger, not better. Why? Because you can never tell what's going to miss. You might ignore that big wallop, the next 3 wallops, or take the next 5x in the teeth.

Dodge builds are always high-risk in high damage play because of that. It's also harder to build and play one because it requires a deeper HP pool to handle the inherent unpredictability.

If you're too dodgy, it can drive a healer crazy because they can never quite tell if you're about to die or if you're OK for another 4 hits.

You can't get meaningful AC as a DPS to make a difference in reapers. Focusing on AC as a tank also isn't viable against most raid bosses.

Kinda agree. I had an AC Tank similar to the Steel Maiden build. AC is oddly both very useful and completely worthless. I found it more useful in higher reaper versus trash than in raids, though. Some raids it was great, barely take a hit. Some it did nothing at all.

The lack of universal utility for it is what made me punt the build and style and look for something else. And, well, it was horrifically not fun to play something that can't DPS at all.

IMHO, tanks make so many build sacrifices to DPS that having all the tank gear-sets give zero DPS stats is far too much of a double-hit to the style than it deserves. In most MMOs, for instance, a tank might do 70~80% of what a DPS can do. Here, it's more like 10%.

investing on dodge necessarily implies to invest on MDB and dodge cap

Ah, yes. I didn't intend on posting a full dodge tutorial. Increasing dodge takes planning. PRR only worries about stacking-type. Dodge has 3 seperate caps: character (dodge cap), armor (MDB), and hard-cap (95%) in addition to stacking-type issues.

So, yeah, if you want to maximize your total mitigation, it helps a lot to plan it from the start with the builder. That way you can do your gear and build scrounging safely offline before you get stuck in a dead-end online.

not a fan of Saltmarsh items

Caster? My casters hate Saltmarsh. It's got a whole lot of nothing for them.

try my best with current shield trees

Shield-lovers have it really rough in DDO. You've pretty much only got 2 routes: pure Paladin or pure Fighter. Sadly, if they do a full pass and not just a tiny tweak, it's likely to stay not "bad", but worse -- isolated to a focused universal-tree build.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the S&B style from an aesthetic standpoint, but I can't deny that S&B should be the "go to" staple for melee. Kinda like what INQ has become for ranged. Not top, but very solid leveling and ultra-easy build and play.

To give DDO more of a classic high-fantasy D&D feel, S&B should be ubiquitous. Available to all. VERY easy to build (hard to go wrong, low AP cost, easy to splash, etc). The non-shield styles really should be the rare "expert only" ones.

[slarden]

You're arguing that because hits get bigger, dodge gets better because more of a single hit might be ignored. Uh, nope. Statistically, there is no effective difference between mitigation via miss chance and the same mitigation as a flat always-on reduction.

The practical is different. Dodge gets WORSE (as in riskier of death worse) as hits get bigger, not better. Why? Because you can never tell what's going to miss. You might ignore that big wallop, the next 3 wallops, or take the next 5x in the teeth.

This is not equivalent because you can't compare % miss stats with % Absorb stats. The goals of each are very different. Every Absorb works consistently and scale from elite to R10. This is not the case with % miss chance - Dodge is a unicorn which has the same % miss chance on elite and R10. Every other % miss chance gets worse with skull.

I am not calling for a nerf to dodge, just pointing out why it's used and abused in higher reaper. It's the best form of defense on R10 because it doesn't scale by skull unlike every other form of defense.

In general I think the devs need to fix melee survivability in R10s which mostly revolves around quest design and monster damage.

[LightBear]

This is not equivalent because you can't compare % miss stats with % Absorb stats. The goals of each are very different. Every Absorb works consistently and scale from elite to R10. This is not the case with % miss chance - Dodge is a unicorn which has the same % miss chance on elite and R10. Every other % miss chance gets worse with skull.

I am not calling for a nerf to dodge, just pointing out why it's used and abused in higher reaper. It's the best form of defense on R10 because it doesn't scale by skull unlike every other form of defense.

In general I think the devs need to fix melee survivability in R10s which mostly revolves around quest design and monster damage.

Dodge isn't a threshold like ac is either. It is on par with speed/slow and other effects that increase miss chance like blindness (50%).
The only next tier is full stop effects like Hold.

I do agree that prr/mrr are on par with absorption and to a way lesser degree damage reduction.

Even still, dodge isn't helping you jack against dots or most other spells.
You need super saves, not fail on a roll of 1 and just a spell absorption item for that.

Oh, they sell those in the store, so I doubt it will be nerved ever.

[Bjond]

This is not equivalent because you can't compare % miss stats with % Absorb stats. The goals of each are very different.

I think you're going to need to reflect and amend that. The goal is patently identical: less damage. You're trying to argue that because the word "dodge" is used that the result is different. It's not. It's just less damage, the flavor doesn't matter.

Well, OK, flavor matters, but that's a personal taste issue unique to each player. It shouldn't be enforced via the rules.

Every Absorb works consistently and scale from elite to R10. This is not the case with % miss

Let's try some math. With X% Absorb, D total damage becomes D(100-X)/100. With X% miss, D total damage becomes D(100-X)/100. It's exactly the same result in the limit. The effect for both is the same in R10 as Elite.

The only difference is that dodge essentially acts like an amplifier on variance. The total evens out in the limit, but for small sets, dodge is much more unpredictable. Sometimes it's amazing, other times you get pasted and there's no telling which will happen until it does.

Players don't pick dodge because it's overpowered or better in R10 (% for % it's the same). They pick it because it's the only thing left to pick. Base PRR at-cap is high enough that an extra PRR+12/25 from Med/Hvy for maybe 1% less damage can't compete with Dodge+10/20 from Light for 10~20% less damage.

Every other % miss chance gets worse with skull.

So, uh, dodge is broken for no other reason than it's not been nerfed in reaper? That's like telling your parents "Bobby plays in the street with the cars! So, why can't I!?" Well, Bobby has more dodge.

Lemme help you out and argue the "dodge is bad" side of things (kinda .. it's not just dodge).

The problem starts with how PRR & Dodge are added to your character. PRR's %Reduction is 100/(100+PRR). The more you add, the less result you get for each point. Dodge is linear; 1 Dodge is 1% reduction. It's harder and more complicated to add dodge, too. It has multiple caps. PRR has no caps.

The problem cumulates with Dodge & PRR & AC competing to do the exact same thing: reduce physical damage. This makes it hard to build and MUCH harder to balance. Do they balance for a max'd character built by a vet that exploits every last advantage or for a newbie that naively assumes "hey, it's D&D, I'll up my AC"?

Picking on Dodge as the "broken one" is myopic. The entire mitigation system is beyond byzantine. PRR was a step in the right direction, but I'd have gone MUCH further. AC is decently balanced in base D&D and it's got a known "D&D Flavor". So, I'd have used AC to derive a %mitigation value that is used for all physical; ie. no more PRR, no more Dodge, and even no more AC as a hit/miss mechanic. Instead it's all %reduction driven by some F(AC). D&D flavor, MMO balance.

As much as I like that particular scenario, actually changing DDO for it would be a large and ambitious adventure that could easily swamp and sink the boat before it stops rocking.

[LightBear]

Let's try some math. With X% Absorb, D total damage becomes D(100-X)/100. With X% miss, D total damage becomes D(100-X)/100. It's exactly the same result in the limit. The effect for both is the same in R10 as Elite.

The only difference is that dodge essentially acts like an amplifier on variance. The total evens out in the limit, but for small sets, dodge is much more unpredictable. Sometimes it's amazing, other times you get pasted and there's no telling which will happen until it does.

The formula you're using isn't right. For dodge the damage stays the same but you can avoid it for the full 100% an x amount of times. For PRR the curve goes in the exact opposite direction as you are never able to avoid the damage and reduce it for x percentage.
And as you said, for most characters that have to rely on dodge, once they are hit... they are toast.
It's like Loki vs The Hulk. The Hulk has godlike PRR/MRR and Loki a 100% dodge.
The Hulk needs a 20 and Loki to roll a 1, it might take some time but eventually....



Nope, doesn't take that long after all.

[slarden]

You're trying to argue that because the word "dodge" is used that the result is different. It's not. It's just less damage, the flavor doesn't matter.

Just to clarify, I am not arguing anything. AC miss chance becomes less effective by skull due to enemy to-hit increasing by skull (example AC goes from being very effective on elite to useless in high skulls in L vision of destruction). Spell miss chance (save) becomes less effective by skull due to enemy DC increasing by skull. Displacement and ghostly are directly reduced by skull. Dodge % miss chance isn't adjusted at all by skull. It's the only % miss chance that doesn't get worse by skull. I assume you accept this as a fact and not opinion/argument.

The community has embraced this and is building for dodge specifically for high reaper and certain reaper raids. Dodge being used and abused the way it is (including by me) is the reason why I say it's a broken mechanic. That is entirely my opinion and I stated the reasons why previously. I certainly respect your right to have a different opinion.

I am not really interested in a long point-counterpoint argument because ultimately people are going to believe what they want to believe anyhow. 20 pages of arguments isn't going to change a thing.

[McLoopie]

Out of interest what level of AC becomes useless against the bats and devils in say Reaper 8 LVOD? A lot of times "words of wisdom" are relayed and get taken as fact when they are in fact wrong, or become wrong over time. e.g. "Turn Undead is useless at endgame".
I have no idea by the way, just asking. If the threshold is around what can be reached by players other than the tank, then the "AC is useless in higher reaper LVOD" needs rewording.

Or do all mobs in LVOD get some sort of hidden buff to ignore AC, like they do for concealment bypass?