I was thinking that STR is what decided the attack rating of NPCs now, but it seems from my testing that STR only factors how hard the NPC will hit for on average.
I may be wrong, but I believe that attack should be the factor in how often an NPC will land hits against a player depending on how much AC they have. My testing shows that players with really high AC will be missed ALOT by any NPC with any stats. Right now it seems that the only factor in how often an NPC will land a hit is NPC level vs AC of player. This is fine for most lower level encounters, but in level 70+ encounters, you will see level 70 NPCs landing maybe 20% of all hits depending on player AC.
If adding an attack field will allow one to change how often NPCs land hits, that is EXACTLY what I have been looking for since the Combat:UseIntervalAC rule addition. It will mean that I can slightly lower max hit of NPCs in the end-game and reduce their hit speed. Having NPCs that are hardly able to land hits on players really makes for messy encounter balance. They have to be set to hit considerably faster than the old system and harder as well. Which means if you get a lucky flurry from a mob, it could mean instant death, since the encounters are tuned to the NPCs missing so often.
A working attack value system is something I consider on the top of my list for feature requests. As long as attack is indeed what decides how often an NPC will land hits. That will mean 1 more thing to tune when encounter balancing, but it will also mean for much more flexibility in encounter design. Being able to make end-game NPCs with consistent damage will mean making tiers of end-game encounters will be much easier to define.
If it isn't attack that calculates how often an NPC lands hits vs AC, then hopefully someone knows what is. I just got done retuning all of my custom zones to the new combat changes, but I wouldn't mind adjusting them 1 more time to add in attack. I think if I can adjust how often mob hits land, I should just be able to reduce hit rate and the 2 can balance each other out. And overall, NPC dps will be more consistent.
Thanks again, LordKahel! You have been coming up with some nice code additions which I am sure we all hope make it into future builds
