Shield AC Discussion ... devolves into tanking argument

[Scowls]

who casts 1 spell? slow, sting, dot (add cripple is you have the spell gems). I have those spells up always, a cleric would need to specially load numerous stuns (long recast timers), and if they manage to get agro for a few seconds, a tick of the dot brings it back. shaman cast slow regardless of who is tanking, add another near instant sting nuke on inc, a dot after that, and a sting on refresh. most shaman cangank agro from the best of tanks if they want too, but you have to manage agro for the situation, including on deciding who should tank, the cleric or the shaman. I would presume if a cleric and shaman are douing, both end up soloing mobs at the same time from crappy pulls (shaman mob would die first though!)

[Veril]

[Scowls]

[Kianor]

[Unmei]

[Jaraman]

[Jaraman]

[Jaraman]

[Jooruus]

[Brohg]

[Veril]

[Fenier]

[Fenier]

[Jaraman]

[Veril]

[Neau]

[Unmei]

[Retron]

As an aside, with the aid of a guild warrior I spent time parsing Sting aggro. The end result, as expected, is that it's roughly 3K raw hate when you cast it, regardless of whether it crits or not.

Pretty darned handy and it's made the odd occasion when I've had to tank much easier than it was before (slow aggro seemed to be only a few of hundred hate points FWIW)

[Unmei]

[Jaraman]

Here's what I have written down in my little EQ notebook --

Hate counters

Nukes base damage * 0.8 = hate added
e.g. (1000 base dmg nuke) * 0.8 = 800 hate added
DD hate one-shot, unaffected by crits, focus

DOT hate = type of counter (poison, disease, etc) * dmg/tic

=====================

initial aggro is capped at 300 (?)
66+ pally stuns override the initial aggro cap

=====================

Enraging Blow =~ 700 hate (710)
Chaotic Strike4 =~ 575 hate
Incite =~ 1200 hate (1190)

melee per swing hate = damage + damage bonus
e.g. Rusty Short Sword = (4 dmg + 15 dmg bonus) = 19 hate per swing
{offhand weapon no dmg bonus}

Bash = 22 hate max

====================

proc stun = 400 hate .... (also 400 hate for proc slow, proc snare)
cast stun = 1200 hate
Serene Command = 1400 hate
Terror of Thule = 610 hate

ANGER 650

Anger 1 = 200
Anger 2 = 400
Anger 3 = 600
Anger 4 = 200 (?)

Bazu Bellow = 200 hate

[Neau]

[Retron]

[Ughbash]

[Kianor]

[Swobu_AB]

[Unmei]

[Kianor]

[Ughbash]

[Unmei]

[Kianor]

[Veril]

I'm pretty sure that counters still have hate, just not as much as before.

[Unmei]

[Kianor]

Enchanter DoTs have debuffs too, which always seems to annoy mobs more than the DoT damage alone...

But yeah, counter hate alone would be difficult to determine. Most spells with counters have something else going on, whether it's a DoT or a debuff. Otherwise, well... what would be the point?

All I can say is it "feels" to me that DoT agro is disproportionate to the damage dealt - i.e. more than an equivalent damage nuke. It would be very hard to test this though, due to it being over a time frame.

It also feels that DoT agro increases as the damage increases due to focus and/or critical ticks. Which is also unlike nuke agro.

[Veril]

[Unmei]

[Kianor]

[Unmei]

[Scalia]

[seamuus]

I don't know any clerics who have as much AC as I do.. they do this weird thing... They aug HP/Mana augs instead of AC augs. I tried to talk them out of it, but they acted like I was speaking greek.

As a side note, and back to the point of this post, I tested the shield ac theory.

I kept my Shielding and Avoidance above the cap and used a 125ac shield and a 25ac shield.

With the same AC on both runs i should have seen a big difference when using the 125ac shield. I did this for about 30 minutes per run (2 runs with each shield).

I know that 30 Minutes isn't really statistically enough data for a real test. My first run was a test before i did a longer run, but the data was flawed so I did another test run... Same result.

I tanked almost exactly the same with both shields... on the second attempt I was slightly better with the 25ac shield. at this point i was pissed and didn't do more.

I used mpg trash mobs for the test mostly because I could tank them unslowed and survive, and i used the same mob for all 4 parses.

[Brohg]

unslowed? why?