VGOEmulator.net

Good deal. Going to try to squeeze it for some of those other topics.

Just copying from patches--this is not necessarily exhaustive or final--looking for "zero cooldown" stuff. I take it by "refresh timer" they mean an ability's own cooldown, tied to other abilities that are related to it. Important for each class to have a couple abilities that do not trigger the global. Shaman stances did not share a refresh; stance refreshes were different for all classes. None (or few) of the in-game tooltips say anything about shared refreshes or global cooldown, which is why making this kind of a list seems important.

Psi: Concentrations no longer incur global recovery when activated. Concentrations now have a 2 second shared refresh timer.

Warrior – Single target commands and group commands no longer share a common refresh timer. You can perform a single target command followed immediately by a group command with no delay. All group commands continue to share a common refresh timer. All single target commands continue to share a common refresh timer. Commands no longer incur global refresh. Coercion no longer incurs global recovery. Cleave no longer incurs global recovery.

Cleric – Divine Chains now has a cast time of 1.5 seconds and has no refresh timer. Cleric – Removed the refresh time from Hallow. Removed the refresh timer from Hand of Censure Removed the refresh time from Rout. Removed the refresh timer from Maul of the Gods. Cleric - you must now wait 15 seconds after changing into Aspect of the Destroyer or Deathbringer’s Mein before changing into another form. Favor of Vothdar, Favor of Vaelion - Reduced refresh time on these to 5 minutes and they no longer incur global recovery. Gift of Ardor no longer incurs global recovery.

Disciple – Lao’Jin Flare is no longer affected by global recovery.
Monk – Secret of Celerity no longer incurs global recovery when used. (Same for all Secrets I would guess)
Rogue – Drub no longer incurs global recovery. Removed the refresh timer from Impale. Ruin no longer incurs global recovery. Ravage no longer incurs global recovery. Clout does not incur global recovery. Death Whirl no longer has a refresh timer.
Dread Knight - Backlash no longer incurs global recovery
Shaman – Ritual of Sacrifice no longer incurs global recovery.

Looking for "built in" crit bonuses. An "increased chance" I think is 15% as was listed somewhere for DK Malice (and probably Harrow); "much more" could be up to 50%. Tooltips rarely mention this and I only found a few, but its a start. These first two abilities only work on a mob under 20% health, so that might be a reasonable "kind" of ability to add a bonus to. Obviously, if the ability has a 50% bonus, once you add your dex and buffs, then they crit the majority of the time, which seemed to be the case.

Bard Fox Overtakes Hare...will crit much more often.
Dread Knight – Slay crits 50% of the time. Dread Knight – Increased the critical chance of Word of Doom.
Paladin – Vanquish is now more likely to critical.
Disciple – Cyclone Kick now has an increased chance to score a critical hit.
Cleric – Turn Undead is now nearly impossible to resist and is more likely to critical hit.
Shaman - Increased the critical hit bonus on Tearing Claw.

There were also indications that both hit points and auto-attack damage vary by class, but no numbers about it.

So for DK, I'd look at a list of something like No Global Cooldown = Backlash, Ominous Fate, Shadow Step. 50% Crit bonus on Slay. Small (15% or so) crit bonus on Malice, Harrow, Word of Doom. Then similarly for other classes, which might have to rely on what people remember about them.

Here's another "cat out of the bag" from Cylus:

Crits are 1.5x Epic are 2x that And Legendary are another 2x for a total of 6x normal damage.

This was in response to someone finding their first Legendary hit at level 7; he doesn't fully explain the rarity of them, but says:

wis affects base crit (chance). Epic and legendary use only unmodified crit values

So, since crit damage is simply an additional component of 50% regular damage (plus any of the few crit damage modifiers), an Epic component would be 200%, and a Legendary component would be 500%.

Everyone is probably aware that stat-based chances are capped at 18 points per level = 17% chance bonus. So if a tank has an inherent 14% block, at level 50 with 900 strength, I obtain 31% block. I haven't found any per-class inherent crit chances, but would guess they resemble the block/parry stuff so you'd have something like Ranger 16% Melee/6% Spell, Shaman 4% Melee/8% spell.

There may not be much more of value in these, just linking the patches on Graffe which may have more, and in many cases are just easier to read than on Curse:

https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... runch-time
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... atch-Notes
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ry-15-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ry-22-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ch-07-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... -(tonight)
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... er-3-26-07
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ay-3-28-07
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... il-11-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... il-18-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... il-25-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... -5-11-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... -5-22-2007
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ed-Morning
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... tch-Notes)
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... date-Notes
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... U4-Preview
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... ges-listed
https://www.graffe.com/forums/showthrea ... -03-11-GU4

I found an APW guide from a dev called Avarem that might have some useful bits. Not so much for any need of APW right now, but it may give an idea like a kind of umbrella that a non-raiding release should be under. Or in other words we can be at lesser stats to succeed at stuff like Swamp and RI. At the end are some other guides that might be useful for crafting.

http://guidescroll.com/2011/11/vanguard ... use-guide/

Mobs in APW will be using a new special attack type called Strikethrough. Using Strikethrough a mob will adjust its maximum damage range based on the mitigation of the opponent while maintaining its minimum damage range to ensure a challenging encounter. The primary goal of this attack is to prevent light cloth or medium armor classes from getting a one or two shot death while still providing sufficient damage to tanks engaged and maintaining agro. The result is that higher mitigation classes will see a much higher damage range on attacks than other classes. BEWARE! Not all attacks by mobs or bosses use strikethrough and some attacks are still capable of one-shot kills.

That sounds like it works differently than a character's strikethrough, and implies that you don't need to put it on any mobs for the time being.

A tank with 8k hit points buffed and 50% mitigation will simply not survive and healers without the bonus afforded from +500 healing will have difficulty keeping people alive. The typical AE boss-mob will have an AE doing approximately 1k-5k damage. They will auto-attack (using strikethrough) for 1-9k with an attack speed of approximately 2-3 seconds. This means that if you are under-geared, the tank will only have about 2.5 seconds to pull agro from you before you take 6k damage and exceed the hit points of many common gear builds. Therefore, it is imperative that you have at least 4500 un-buffed hit points. After buffs this will put you at approximately 6-7k hp…just enough to survive 5 seconds of agro or one big AE. My personal recommendation is at least 7k+ hp buffed in case you get agro as an AE goes off. It is important to note that any class in the game, with the right combination of gear and buffs, can exceed 10k hit points so it’s simply a matter of reorganizing your gear and changing some priorities. DPS gear is essential, but being alive to use it is much more important. At a minimum, you will want your tanks to have at least 10k HP when fully buffed and 12k is not impossible.

In general you will want to achieve and maintain the mitigation cap (65% mitigation) at all times. Using strikethrough, you will see even trash mobs auto-attack for between 2-12k damage and specials hitting for as much as 19k.

In theory, you will have a psi or a bird sham on your raid and energy regen should not pose any major issue for the majority of fights. A few fights you come to will involve energy drains / spell cost increases / etc. On these fights a typical strategy is to keep healers out of AE range and energy regen may prove useful, albeit only in large chunks (+6 energy regen = 6 / 6 seconds which isn’t much). For bards, in order to play the strongest songs, you will need approximately 50-60 energy regen in addition to psi / sham buffs or +90 energy regen without buffs. My general theory is that if you run below 40-50% energy on a consistent basis outside of APW, you won’t be able to maintain your energy pool inside APW.

Pay particular attention to legendary hits as 20k+ damage can quickly boost your hate well beyond the tanks.

There are three kinds of haste in Vanguard: melee haste, spell haste and refresh haste. The effects of melee haste are arguable but ultimately those slots on armor would be better filled with DPS or HP. Regardless, make sure you get the haste buff as every little bit does help. In regards to spell haste, the effects will be noticeable depending on your particular class; I recommend discussing this on the various affiliate class sites to determine the exact impact it may have on your class. Caps on both haste and spell haste are currently 20% haste from gear, 30% haste from spells / songs for a cap of 50%. Refresh haste reduces the cool down timers on abilities with longer refresh timers.

Not sure if the caps and stacking rules were at their final form here. Refresh haste worked on all abilities and is a big difference in melee damage.

The impact resists can have on an individual are often significant. In testing, by raising the groups fire resist by 399 pts, we offset almost 2k damage from a 10k nuke and about 400 damage from a 3.5k AE. Most AE’s will occur every 15-30 seconds giving healers more than sufficient time to heal a properly equipped raid (hence the reason you need 5-7k hp buffed).

So I started working on the routines to determine if you get hit by an attack. Right now I am just using a base accuracy value determined by the attackers skill in the relevant school. If maxed, it equals 0.94 or 94%. Then I calculate a first mod based on the attack type and the general accuracy rating compared to the specialized accuracy rating (melee, ranged, spell). Thirdly, there is a second mod based on mob level difference. So final accuracy rating is base + mod1 + mod2.

But I need to figure out how to integrate evasion in as a stat and where AC factors in to these equations. If you run across anything like that, let me know.

As far as I know offhand, AC in Vanguard has nothing to do with hit chances, it only gives mitigation, based from the Defense skill.

Along with the level, there should probably be a "dot difficulty".

So--typically--I have maxed my weapon skill for my level and let's say I got a piece of crafted gear at the auction house that gives me +10 Two Handed Slash. So I get a one-level bonus and, if that happens to be 1%, I get to 95. Would need a mod3 for bonuses perhaps.

I would often solo say a three dot mob two levels higher, so my chance drops down to 83.

Say it's a light melee mob who comes up with 20% dodge and 14% parry. You could then nest his skills at the bottom of the roll such as:

1-20 dodge, 21-35 parry, 36-83 hit, 84-100 miss.


Character evasion was removed, so it is no longer a real stat, there are only dodge/block/parry. That part was definitely in the patches. I'm fairly confident that AC only has to do with damage.

Thanks Amnath.
I found some basic equations on GameDev.net so right now I am giving characters an inherent 10% to evade that gets modified by the level difference and their evasion ratings. Chance to hit then becomes equal to Accuracy*(100-Evasion).

The next question will be whether I nest dodge/block/parry into the first roll or do a separate roll if the hit is successful. I'll hopefully get to do some testing on this tonight.

Faux,

Just a shot in the dark but I know alot of game systems also like to do a roll to hit first, then if it hits determine whether or not you block/parry/reposte if the hit lands - then finally mitigation comes into play after. I'm not sure who I was talking to at the time, but I believe the reasoning for this was because some classes are built to be great evade tanks/melee fighters. While other classes are meant to be damage takers - where they may block and only partially block or parry. E.G. a Paladin may not have as high of an evade rating and the to hit roll's may not be in his or her favor - but when the block / parry roll comes into play he or she has an advantage due to a much higher set of statistics that are geared towards this style of play. Meanwhile, a Monk or Disciple may have been far better at dodging/evading and not blocking at all - or having a very small chance to do so.

It may actually have been a Turbine dev that mentioned this to me. I just thought it might be relevant.

That's true. No class has all three of dodge/block/parry.

Dodge is more or less equivalent to evasion because I don't believe it triggers reactions. Not positive about that.

If they are the same thing, I would note that classes with no dodge are clerics and tanks. And the simply adjust the level depending on anyone's dodge.
The patch notes specifically say that parry & block should be available on a mob's miss.

Amnath: "Dodge is more or less equivalent to evasion because I don't believe it triggers reactions."

Monks got a reaction for a successful dodge (Stinging Backfist). I'm not sure if any other classes did.

Ok, yeah. Couldn't remember.

In that case, maybe the attack has to pass a dodge/parry/block check before the to hit roll.