Blight Delta 177-discussion

[Guaran]

Edit: Guaran - sorry misread your post... so you are saying that when in combat, you see the message "You dodged the attack"? If it's just a "miss" then that is different. If it says "Dodged" then you successfully evaded the attack. I'm not doubting you - just checking that you are actually dodging, and the mobs are not just missing. I was confused previously about the different, until I noticed my Spirit Disciple was dodging, not just being missed.

No, my dragon has never "Dodged". Don't think it has parried either, although this would make sense being able to "bat away" an incoming blow. The mobs Missing me, yes I see that all the time.

But what I have noticed was that after playing for awhile with maxed out evasion training points, and them moving it back to get damage up again, that mobs were hitting alot more and I was loosing health alot faster. Evasion really did make a difference. Taking 200 evasion away will be felt for sure. I'm not sure the point of the change if "Dodge" is also being added. Sounds like a wash.

If they wanted to make a benefical as well as a "logical" change, it would be to add a parry chance. Obviously it would only apply to melee.

Maybe "dodge" is being used since it can work with with spells as well (or am I thinking of Block). If so, then chance to miss spell hits might actually improve thanks to dodge, whereas the melee chance to evade is a net wash. And the overall effect is a little better spell evasion.

[Vengeance]

I really find it disappointing that dragons, with as much damage as they already do, would complain over COT because they don't have it and instead are using their "wimpy" spiked scales.

Where was the biped love this patch? Because I see biped nerfs and dragon love and dragons have been getting tons of love.

As far as fire opal golems. Really?? The one field you went to was already occupied and you didn't feel like making the trip to Dracul...or Fire Island... and so you wanted to split the massively nerfed spawn that used to be 4x the size it was??? Really? I knew players that used to solo the entire field when it was 4x the spawn with a fast respawn and this is the field you want to split with 2 other dragons instead of going to one of the OTHER fire opal golem spawns? Wow.

On another note: I was out on my dragon killing T3 undead in trandalar and after noticing a few misses, I started to wonder that if I had 600 evasion as an ancient...would T3 undead still miss me occasionally or would I wind up getting beat on by every lowly mob in game because of the decrease in evasion.

Hey Creme . After doing a bit of quick math my guess would be yes. 600 evasion means that our draggies will now be fighting with effectively level 75 old school dragon evasion(8 points). I bet we get hit alot more. I am at a loss as to this change.

Sifting through my rather large collection of fantasy books and pulling out some old paper AD&D modules which had dragons the resounding characteristic other than the breath weapon was scales so hard they could turn away the most powerfully enchanted blades.

I think a static bonus of plus 1 armor per level would be a better trade for dragons instead of the dodge skill. Dragons don't dodge they get wacked on the snoot by the magic weapon and stare down at the now bent magic weapon and the puny knight in shiny armor wetting himself.

[AamerKhan]

I somehow have to view the response to COT changes as a amtter of perspective. As a lvl 100 ranger/druid, I certainly use it... but certainly not all the time. I do not expect them to be that close to me to benefit much from it anyway.

For some classes, I can see it as a boon for sure, but if they really need something they cannot cast on themselves to be a viable class, then I would say either that class is totally messed up, ( which I don't believe ) or the class may be slightly underpowered with certain mobs ( which I believe is true for dragons ) OR... folks depend way too much on the easy button.

Is it more fun to one shot everything, or is it more fun to have a bit of challenge... That's a perception thing that each player must decide. But to say this will drastically alter anything is overstating the situation.

And before you discount this post as unimportant because I'm a ranger, realize that when playing a druid COT is a very important thing to me, but I still don't see this change affecting me at all. I try very hard to kill mobs before they ever get that close.

[Oakleif]

In my testing and playing with my dragons, I never noticed an evade message. I pointed this out to the devs, thinking it was a display bug, but they confirmed that dragons weren't evading, and the change in this patch is a fix for that. Dragons also never had dodge before.

Now, I do see some misconceptions here of the way the the mathematics works. I don't have data for exact percentages yet, so let me make a couple assumptions:
1. Suppose that 800 evasion would have let dragons evade 12% of the attacks directed against them. This is probably high, but it will keep my analysis simpler by avoiding ugly decimal percentages.
2. Then 600 evasion should let dragons evade three-quarters of that 12%, or 9% of the time. Note that 9% (or whatever the actual percentage is) is better than 0% that we were getting due to the bug.
3. We are also getting 600 dodge now. Using my bogus percentages, that amounts to a 9% dodge rate.

Ok, so on to the math. The way these things work, the mob rolls to hit. If it does not miss that roll, then dodge is checked. If it is not dodged, then evasion is checked. If it was also not evaded, we actually take damage.

Now, lets compare the two systems using my bogus percentages for the illustration's sake:

Under the old system, with the bug fixed, we would take damage 88% of the time that the mob hit us, because 12% of the hits would be evaded and none would have been dodged. Again, recall that with the bug, we were never actually evading or dodging any attacks.

Under the new system, we would take damage 82.8% of the time that the mob hit us, because 9% of the hits are dodged, and 9% of the remaining 91% of hits are evaded (which is about 8.2%). 9% plus 8.2% is 17.2% of all hits that aren't doing damage.

Note that this is actually a better situation for dragons than just correcting the bug and leaving our skills alone. You get two chances to avoid damage when the mob successfully rolled a hit.

As for semantics, I don't understand how some of you are claiming that a dragon can evade, but not dodge. Aren't both a way of saying that the target is moving out of the way of an attack that should have connected? I completely agree that a blocking and parrying are different; blocking is putting something like a shield in the way of the attack so it gets hit instead of something squishy that tends to bleed, while parrying is putting a weapon in the way of the attack so it gets hit.

[Creme]

In my testing and playing with my dragons, I never noticed an evade message. I pointed this out to the devs, thinking it was a display bug, but they confirmed that dragons weren't evading, and the change in this patch is a fix for that. Dragons also never had dodge before.

I don't think I've ever seen an evade message on my dragon or on any of my bipeds. I've spoken with other people, and they too have never seen the word "evaded" used in combat feedback.

I have seen attack/spell hits and misses both as dragon and biped. I have noticed that when I pump points into evasion, I see a LOT more misses on me.

I would suggest that this isn't broken and that there just is no "evade" feedback message.

-------
*waves to Vengeance*

[Creme]

Eww I hope not.

Per my test on Blight in Delgarath:

21 second duration for cloak to fade. Attacked by 2 corrupted guards.

Cloak faded with 1870 damage taken; it's possible that the next hit didn't provide feedback until after the cloak faded message, which was an additional 300+ damage.

Cloak damage given to attackers was 1002.

[LOVWYRM]

Oakleif, before I wrote my first post about evasion/blocking I looked up the dictionary to get all the meanings of this 2 words. The description was similar.
Its not in German language: To evade is something instinctiv, blocking is a trained, concious ability. So I say evasion is more like dragon, cause I can`t imagine how to block (with my tail? My paws?)

About 1 year ago Flame and me decided to test if we can optimize our hybride dragons. It took us 2 month in which we made new/additional scales, played with xtals and tps. The result was more than satisfying, there was indeed something we could do to be more effective. Evasion and dex were things we gave more love to (beside other).
But I can image that Silverblaze is right. Giving us the additional points for armor, instead of evasion plus a block (which I still dislike)- well good deal I think^^

As I said in my first post- I do not understand the intention behind some changes. CoT all love it- and if some drags complained the difference between CoT and spiked scales- well, envy never was an argument.
Too many uber peds? Well not on order, where we do not have enough high ranking players to fight the bosses regulary. But I agree to Vasilios though: Put in more big mobs to keep the challange instead nerfing things all are happy with. A boss mob who dropps parts of shoulder buddies (and if it was only for decoration of scales/armor) or a banner (like the queen) would be enough reward

[Oakleif]

Creme,

I also thought it was a display bug, where we just weren't seeing the evade message. I submitted that as a bug, so that I could do more effective testing. When the devs tried to track down why we weren't getting the evade message, they found that we weren't evading at all.

Lovwyrm,

They are NOT giving us evasion plus block. They are giving us evasion plus dodge.

An attack can hit or miss (attack goes wide) based on the attacker's skill.
If the attacker would have hit, then the defender can evade (move the body part out of the way?), dodge (move their whole body out of the way?), block (by interposing a shield), or parry (by interposing a weapon) to avoid taking damage from the "successful" hit.
If the attacker hits and the defender didn't do any of those techniques to totally avoid damage, then some of the damage can be mitigated by resistances due to armor, spells, natural ability, etc.

Dragons are getting the dodge and evade techniques, but not block or parry. And the combination at 6 points per level is more effective than just one of the techniques at 8 points per level, as illustrated in my previous post.

[AmonGwareth]

Evading an attack is the same as dodging. They aren't separate. So dragons were NOT evading (dodging) at all because they didn't have dodge (which turns it on).

Any misses you saw were simply a true miss based on the attacker's to-hit calculations. Dodging (evading) is checked AFTER the to-hit.

[Phillip]

And before you discount this post as unimportant because I'm a ranger, realize that when playing a druid COT is a very important thing to me, but I still don't see this change affecting me at all. I try very hard to kill mobs before they ever get that close.

If you can kill mobs before they get to you then you're not in druid mode, hence CoT wouldn't be important whatsoever. Hence you wouldn't be affected by this change.

Oh and all rangers are disqualify from using the easy button cliche'.

Words back from the test server by my friends: forget CoT unless you like to spam a whole lot. And I mean a who0le lot.

[AmonGwareth]

Per my test on Blight in Delgarath:

21 second duration for cloak to fade. Attacked by 2 corrupted guards.

Cloak faded with 1870 damage taken; it's possible that the next hit didn't provide feedback until after the cloak faded message, which was an additional 300+ damage.

Cloak damage given to attackers was 1002.

For the record, you do realize that some of the monsters within Dralnok's Doom do ethereal and/or non-physical (not slash, crush and pierce) damage, right? So if you have little to no ethereal armor you will be taking far greater damage than you might otherwise. It might be wise to tailor your equipment to the types of monsters you are fighting in a particular area.

[Raeshlavik]

Evading an attack is the same as dodging. They aren't separate. So dragons were NOT evading (dodging) at all because they didn't have dodge (which turns it on).

Any misses you saw were simply a true miss based on the attacker's to-hit calculations. Dodging (evading) is checked AFTER the to-hit.

I'm guessing this means any Dragon with training points in evasion should look at reallocating those points until this change goes live. For a few I've talked to, it's not an insignificant number of points that can be applied elsewhere based on the incorrect assumption that misses were evades and that they increased with points in evasion.

This also generally explains the change: We are loosing a few points of evasion (which we never got to use) to turn on dodge, which we never had.

The net result should be the same percentage of avoided damage - if evasion actually worked.

What's funny (for me) is that I just recently discovered that there is only one type of scale that I should actually wear if I want to survive a fight, and that's armor teched with other things - because my hit check seemed to be roughly 100% and damage mitigation was paramount. (see my 'size of a house' comment above)

For 55 levels I struggled in power scales and kept wondering why I would get driven like a tent peg constantly. At 55 I switched to armor scales and my death point load has decreased significantly - even when fighting stuff 10+ levels above me...

(don't ask me why it took 55 levels to figure this out - I was just assuming life as a caster hatchy was hard and never really stopped to analyze the problem until I hit adult and was having the same issues...)

Now it looks like other types of scales might actually be viable, if we can actually avoid getting beat on in the first place.

*rubs paws evilly and ponders evasion techs on his power scales for an AOE set - then runs off to get cloned into Blight to test the theory...*

[Velea]

Don't jump too fast over to Blight quite yet, Raeshlavik... the change to evasion/dodge isn't actually in this patch yet. It will be in the next one, but what you see right now is the same as it is on Order/Chaos.

[Raeshlavik]

Don't jump too fast over to Blight quite yet, Raeshlavik... the change to evasion/dodge isn't actually in this patch yet. It will be in the next one, but what you see right now is the same as it is on Order/Chaos.

Ahh, thanks for the heads up.

I should probably copy myself to Blight anyways - I've always wanted to see the Cheese Palace... That and the couple folks I know who've been there have this really cool t-shirt that says "What happens in Blight, stays in Blight"... So I'm curious.

[velveeta]

heehee nice of you to say, rae, but there are many many more ingenious and lovely plots than mine in blight!
by all means, come! if you are a ped builder, you can earn some pocket change and blight street cred by working on the industrial complex!

seriously, tho, blight rules and everyone should have at least an alt there - you can help make the game we all love so much better if you spent just a few hours a month playing and testing.....

[Amerelium]

I don't see the problem with adding coin value to hoardables. Most hatchies today are given more treasure than they can carry long before they reach adult age (who can resist them, bouncing up and down in anticipation..?).

[Hasai]

Toot shouted, voice shrill, "In the name of the Pizza Lord! Charge!" (Jim Butcher's Dresden Files)

That sounds funny, until one realizes to one's horror that the 'charge' was several hundred fast-flying pixies, each of them armed with a box-cutter. Ouch.

[Chasing]

Evading an attack is the same as dodging. They aren't separate. So dragons were NOT evading (dodging) at all because they didn't have dodge (which turns it on).

Any misses you saw were simply a true miss based on the attacker's to-hit calculations. Dodging (evading) is checked AFTER the to-hit.

Correct me if i'm wrong here, but isnt evasion used in the chance to hit calculations as well as the dodge check.

[AmonGwareth]

Correct me if i'm wrong here, but isnt evasion used in the chance to hit calculations as well as the dodge check.

It is part of the to-hit calculation, yes, but your wards and your dexterity play a larger part.

With dodge, evasion is the prime value used.

[Litarath]

My thoughts are this on this Topic...

I have a dragon developed exclusively to be evasive, being that she's considered a smoke dragon.

However, taking out the extra 200 points in evasion would really hurt!


Now, perhaps this is asking too much... but why not let the dragons keep the current evasion AND get the dodge.

To point out differences, not start a biped vs dragon thing

Yes... dragons are large and easy to hit, granted, but some are also quite graceful and dexterous, thus would be nicely evasive.

Bipeds, yes, they are small and can bounce all over the place, dancing around their enemies, but they have classes that allow them to get more or less evasion... i.e. 6, 7, 8, 9, and even 10 evasion points into a class.

The evasion for dragons is nice as is, but the Dodge would certainly be helpful, because even a massive dragon can dodge once in a while