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I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community on how resists functioned in Vanguard. I played a necro up to 55 and don't really remember getting very many resists at all, but I know you could.

Does anyone remember how resists worked, even just anecdotally? Partial or total?

Thoughts?

I do have some logs of partial resists on raid mobs. I can hunt them down and show you. I haven't found a full resist yet, do they just show 'miss' for casters?

I am not sure Jakkal. I know that you could "miss" a dispell so probably?

There is a lot tied to resists that I haven't added stats for yet. If you check the resist tooltip you will see total and partial resist stats as well as spell and melee mit stats. I have seen the code that calculates these values, but I haven't created equations or setup the dependencies yet.

My psi got very few resists as well. I always pumped up accuracy in the hopes that it would prevent resists, however I cannot attest that accuracy actually had anything to do with resists. It supposedly makes it more likely that your spell will "hit." But I'm not sure what the difference between a spell "missing" and a spell being resisted is.

My one concrete experience with a lot of resists was when SOE first introduced rez sickness. I didn't really understand how it worked, so I went back into combat with my level 15 caster. On about the third subsequent death I realized that I had failed to land a single spell on the mob. After sitting out the rez sickness, my spells went back to hitting 99% of the time. From that I conclude that one or more of the stats (probably INT, maybe WIS) affect resists (because one of the effects of rez sickness was a significant reduction in stats). Relative level between caster and target definitely affects resists. So does the relevant spell skill level (abjuration, conjuration, evocation, or alteration). My guess is that it is the skill level rather than level that actually goes into the calculation, but that is hidden by the fact that most characters are maxxed (or near maxxed) in the skills relevant to their offensive abilities. Also, as I mentioned above, I always thought that accuracy probably affected resists, but I have no actual evidence that is the case.

In general, assuming (1) you were not impaired, (2) your casting skills were maxxed, and (3) the mob was near or below your level, outright resists were pretty rare. However, partial resists (usually only relevant to damage spells) were pretty common. It was these partial resists that I always assumed were helped by accuracy.

I think it was more the skill levels. I would set it up like this, max skill = 95% base chance to hit an equal level target (actually the tooltips say that is exactly what it is). I would add/subtract 5% per level difference AND add/subtract 5% per dot away from 3 dots (IE 6 dot NPCs reduce your chance to hit by 15% just from their dots, a 1 dot would would add a 10% chance to hit). On top of that you would then need to deal with the NPCs resist values (just like PC resists). So if you wanted to make a NPC really hard to hit, you would crank up their level/dots/resists.

So first do the skill check to see if the spell lands or misses, then do the NPC resist check to see if there is a total/partial resist, then if there is a hit, use the NPC resist values to calc the mitigation. That seems pretty simple to me and should work for NPC and PC calculations.

I think accuracy should effect the skill check. Basically, you need accuracy (or skill bonus, which is hard/impossible to find) to be able to hit those high level raid targets more often. I don't think that I would have accuracy effect the resists at all. When grouping accuracy could be a bit helpful (you typically level on higher level mobs), but accuracy is mostly helpful for raiding where the mobs are much higher and 6 dots. A level 59, 6 dot raid mob would reduce your chance to hit by 35% if you don't have any accuracy (or skill beyond your level max). That gives you a total of 40% that you need to make up in buffs and gear (each with a cap of 25%). I think the buff cap was pretty easy to get (psions gave 12%), but gear accuracy wasn't easy to find (I'm ignoring post APW here, though accuracy augs weren't that easy to collect).

So I think I need to add a stat for each resist as follows:
total resist chance
partial resist chance
resist spell mitigation (what they called absorption?), it's just doubled on a partial resist
resist melee mitigation

The combat code would just call GetAttributeCurrentMultiplier() for the resist value it needs.

I think whether it was resist that was included from the standard stats (int/wis and con [i think you got 1% for every 10] not sure).

Anyways, even with dodge and parry. They had a small chance to completely resist/dodge/parry an attack, and in the case that it fails, it had a backup chance of partially resisting/dodging/parrying an attack (also a small chance)

I'm pretty sure resistability varied by class as well. My main was a Psi, and it was very, very rare for any of my spells to be outright resisted, especially my non-damage ones. That includes raids where I was casting on boss mobs well above my level. On the other hand, my sorc (lvl 50) used to get resisted with some frequency. I vaguely recall some discussion on the boards fairly early in Vanguard that the devs had upped resists for sorcerers to tone them down somewhat. I do not recall that my druid or necro (40-somethings) got resisted very often either, so maybe it was just sorcs.

Sounds like we should just balance the sorc instead of making them miss a lot.

Agreed Ratief.
Great discussion all. This really helps me visualize how this system will be implemented.