Backstab, Ranged and Monk Kick attacks have insane damage in new AC system

[trevius]

From testing on my own server and speaking with people from other servers including Zebuxoruk and PEQ, I have found that special melee attacks are doing MUCH higher damage than they should be. This includes attacks like backstab, monk special kicks, bow ranged damage, and probably more that I have not had reports on yet. All of these attacks are landing for about double what they should be.

For example; my level 60 rogue with a 19 damage dagger is able to backstab for up to 1000 damage (non crit). And backstabs seem to land very often and are often double hits. While backstabs are landing that high, that same rogue is only landing normal hits in the mid 100s. I haven't tested monk kicks, but I imagine they are similar. The reports I have had from rangers was on a high end ranger on my server who said from parsing their DPS, they were getting around 350 DPS with their melee attacks. If that same ranger switched to using ranged attacks with a bow of lesser quality than their melee weapons, they were logging 600+ DPS with just using /autofire and no discs or haste.

I think lowering the damage on these attacks by 1/3 would be a very safe change, but IMO they could be lowered by as far as 1/2 to be about right. Of course, if there is something that is causing them to not factor in AC, probably just adding them in to all other attacks so they do factor AC would resolve the problems.

[So_1337]

To be honest, I'd like to know how attack ratings are factoring into things before any sort of change is made, or else I think it may require changing the system again afterwards to compensate for +attack. Two similarly geared (stat-wise) rangers with a 600 attack difference between them are currently doing near identical damage with ranged attacks, which I don't believe should be correct. (Not to hijack your thread, but I'd been thinking of posting in regards to that, but wanted to let the current work on finishing Planes of Power AAs finish up first =P)

The whole system is incredibly complex, and it's hard to get any real information or formulas anywhere. I think the developers have done a great job with the most recent changes to get normal hits about to where they should be, and they've fixed a few issues like Assassin's Strike being spammable.

Just my two copper on the subject. I'd love to hear back from the developers on what we can provide to best help them. I'm a Google fiend, and can sure try to track down some information if I know what I'm after.

[trevius]

I think that STR, Attack and skill levels are working just fine. I suspect the issue is that ranged attacks (and other special attacks I mentioned already) are not factoring AC into the equation at all now. I will have to do more testing to verify if that is completely true or not. If it is, then it might be possible for a level 1 ranger to do the same DPS to a level 70 mob with any amount of stats that a level 70 ranger would do with the same bow. I haven't tested to see if damage caps are effecting these special attacks yet or not.

It may be that skill levels are being taken into account to decide how often you land hits for and max damage you can hit for, but it definitely seems like AC is not being factored in for these special attacks. I will do more testing later tonight probably and report back here with my findings.

To test, I plan to create a test spawn that cannot move or summon and adjust it's AC, AGI and DEX from low to high and see how that affects how much damage it takes from ranged attacks. Then, I will use that same NPC but try it with a level 1 character with all skills set to 1 and no gear other than bow. Then, again with a level 70 geared character with all skills set to max using the same bow and arrows that the level 1 character was using.

[KLS]

Atk does nothing but negate a defender's AC, attack damage is based on skill, strength etc. A backstab hitting for 10x a normal attack seems about right to me since it's supposed to be attack damage * backstab skill / 25, so at about 250 BS skill it's a 10x modifier, this is a formula I've gotten from many sources so I'm assuming it's somewhat accurate, perhaps we could tweak the chance to get double BS though.

The special attacks are calculating correctly with AC HOWEVER the damage of these skills are largely guessed formulas that may be horribly off (I'm looking at you archery!). Something I'd like to do is add more rules to combat to let server ops tweak it to their liking but it's a large undertaking. ><

[trevius]

Well, here are some real stats I got from testing tonight. I took the notes quickly, so they are fairly sloppy (sorry). I would go back through and edit and clean them up to be prettier and more organized at work tomorrow, but the 5 minute edit rule prevents that :P

Here is the paste directly from my notes:

All of this testing was done on a naked character using only a bow, so at level 70 with 254 str, attack was at 913 and at level 1 attack was 221. The bow used for testing is ID# 2743 Talisen, Bow of the Trailblazer. It has 25dmg, 50dly, 3AC, 3str, 3dex, 3sta, 10hp, 3svm, 10svp range 150. The arrow I was using is ID#8327 and is 6 damage 150 range.


Tested on a level 70 NPC with 1AC, and 75agi/dex from behind the NPC:

Level 1 ranger with no skills set:
Can barely land any hits

Level 1 with max skills:
Still barely landing any hits (less than 5%)

level 70 with max skills and 254 str:
Landing about 60% of hits mostly for max or close to max damage (124)

Level 70 with very low skills (around 1) and 254 str:
Missing almost all hits. The ones that do land are int he 20s-30s.

Level 1 with max skills and 254 str:
Still barely landing any hits but landing for more damage (max 84)

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 2000AC, and 75agi/dex from behind the NPC:

Level 1 with max skills and 254 str:
landing maybe 30% hits but landing for max 84 but with more of a range in damage.

level 70 with max skills and 254 str:
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges from 1 to 124

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 2000AC, and 500agi/dex from behind the NPC:

level 70 with max skills and 254 str:
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges from 1 to 124

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 1000AC, and 500agi/dex from behind the NPC:

level 70 with max skills and 254 str:
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 124 but higher on average than the 2000AC NPC.

level 70 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi (raised from about 75):
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 124. Same as before raising AGI.

level 70 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi and 258 dex (raised from 83):
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 186.

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 1AC, and 500agi/dex from in front of the NPC:

level 70 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi and 258 dex:
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 186 but landing mostly max or close to it.

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 1AC, and 500agi/dex from behind the NPC:

level 70 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi and 258 dex
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 186 but landing mostly max or close to it.

Tested on a level 70 NPC with 1AC, and 1agi/dex from behind the NPC:

level 70 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi and 258 dex
Landing about 60% of hits and the damage ranges up to 186 but landing mostly max or close to it.

level 1 with max skills and 254 str and 255 agi and 258 dex
Landing about 20% of hits and the damage ranges up to 155 but landing mostly max or close to it.

After training archery mastery AA, max hit went up from 186 to 279 and hit landing rates seemed to go up from about 60% to about 80%. Using trueshot then raised max damage to 571 and almost every hit landed and for close to max. No other AAs seemed to effect ranger damage.

I then equiped some decent, but not insane gear and used the same bow. STR, DEX and AGI were maxed at 355 with AAs and attack was 1635. Testing on the same level 70 NPC with 1AC and 1agi/dex, I was now hitting for 325 max.

I then changed bows to one that did 40 damage and max hit raised up to 483.

Then, I changed to an arrow that is 15dmg 150 range ID#8311 and max hit went up to 577.

Finally, I tried an arrow with 1dmg 150 range ID#8005 and max hit went down to 430.

So, it seems like the best way for server admins to help reduce this in the mean time is to only sell the normal 1dmg arrow on your main vendor instead of giving access to nicer ones, even for really high prices. Because once a ranger gets endless quiver AA, arrow cost doesn't matter.

I will be copying and then changing the stats on the arrows I currently sell to 1dmg. This will considerably lower the ranged DPS until a real fix gets into place. Of course if someone finds a way to get a better arrow in the normal PEQ database, they will still have access that way, but at least it won't be as easy as I have it now by just buying them in Nexus.