Value of Combat Stability (Tavist, 9/9/03)

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Value of Combat Stability (Tavist, 9/9/03)

Postby Valya Wanderfoot » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:51 pm

tavist
Noble Squire
Posts: 103
(9/9/03 9:02 am)
| Edit | Del All Value of Combat Stability

I remember reading a while back about CS being a "broken" skill. Or not really truly broken, but the effect of it was so negligable as to make it not worth the investment.

I'm looking to see if anyone has some clarification on the relative value of combat stability. I know the standard advise is to take CS1 then focus on CA and PE, but Im now at the point of trying to decide on whether to continue the investment into CS or look into some DPS abilities.

Come to think of it, I remember reading these comments on CS a few months into PoP and the discussion may have been related to the hard hits of PoP mobs and a reduced ability to mitigate them. I've done the usual searches and can't find anything....

Tav

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Torm of QuelliousEQ
Wandering Knight
Posts: 473
(9/9/03 9:05 am)
| Edit | Del
ezSupporter
Re: Value of Combat Stability
Combat stability and Innate Defense is very much worth it. It's not as noticable as CA and LR but it does work very well.

Romidar had a good post about it with some nice spreadsheet from his logs. I'm sure he will dig it up Smile


Sir Torm Starbringer
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Romidar
Knight of the Truthbringer
and PoN Admin
Posts: 2344
(9/10/03 7:13 am)
| Edit | Del
ezSupporter
Re: Value of Combat Stability

The comments about PoP were that the mitigation abilities went UP in value because mitigation became more valuable. Mitigation is harder to see - even parsing - than avoidance. You can get a simple easy number to measure the value of avoidance (how often was I missed?), but for mitigation you have to look at the size of the average hit, the frequency you are hit for maximum, etc. to get an idea of its value.

I did post some graphs from my logs to show how CS affects mitigation. These were against 55th level Enslaved Iksar Miners in Chardok.

Before Combat Stability



After Combat Stability 3



The main things to notice is the increase the likelihood of a minimum hit and a decrease in the likelihood of a maximum hit. Now, prior to PoP this effect didn't mean a lot - a very small reduction to incoming DPS. This is because the minimum hit and maximum hit of mobs is not very far apart at all - taking minimum instead of maximum could mean only a 50% reduction in damage on only 4% of hits, for example.

In PoP, though, mitigating a max hit to min hit could mean cutting the damage by a factor of 10, or close to it. The proportion of hits that are mitigated probably does not change, but the effect you get out of mitigating on those hits is much larger. In other words, you get MORE of an effect due to the high maximum hits (and low minimum hits) of PoP mobs, not less of an effect.

I should probably put this in the tomes of knowledge at some point.

EDIT: I meant to also address your question about whether to focus on mitigation or DPS skills. This depends on what you do most. If you are called on to tank frequently, then get the mitigation skills. You WILL tank better with CS3 & ID5 than if you didn't have them. The DPS skills will cause you to tank SLIGHTLY worse because you are increasing the frequency of ripostes. DPS is a nice to have, but we are first and foremost a tanking class - I would focus on that strength. (If you never tank, though, they aren't going to do you any good.)

Edited by: Romidar at: 9/10/03 7:16 am

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tavist
Noble Squire
Posts: 107
(9/10/03 9:28 am)
| Edit | Del Re: Value of Combat Stability

Thanks Romidar for the information and thanks for digging up the graph.

Based on what I see here, it appears as if there is a measureable effect from CS0 to CS3, which is exactly the question I wanted answered. If I get energetic I'll play with the numbers you've got here and put an actual number on the mitigation. In retrospect, maybe the discussions I recall regarding the effectiveness of CS dealt with mobs that hit for up to 250s and was discussion occuring before PoP stype xp mobs were common.

As far as my role goes, probably 95% of my time is spent tanking. The only time I don't is during guild raids, and though my guild raids every day most of it happens before I can log on Sad . I've avoided finishing off CS just because of this question. Guess I'll be dropping points back into it.

Tavist


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Haddir
Noble Squire
Posts: 61
(9/13/03 10:40 am)
| Edit | Del Re: Value of Combat Stability

Yes great post! I am in the same spot as Tavist, wasnt sure if CS and innate defense was worth it. Was thinking about doing some offensive AAs like Knights advantage, but seeing these parses and the comments here, it changed my mind. And since Im tanking in most of my exp groups, this will work great!

Duke Haddir Telcontar
Lord Protector
Tribunal Server

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KirasTrueheart
Noble Squire
Posts: 88
(9/15/03 9:25 am)
| Edit | Del Combat Stability and LDoN

Mobs in LDoN have a fair spread for damage too. Like 80 for a min hit and 350 for a max hit? Mitigation helps a ton there.
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Valya Wanderfoot
 
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