Grand Master vs AA Mastery

[Fulminate]

Is there a skill prerequisite for buying AA Tradeskill Mastery?

If not, does anyone else find it troubling that AA Mastery 3 and no actual skill will grant the posessor a greater chance of a successful combine than 252 skill and no AA, on the hardest combines?

AA Mastery 3, No Skill = 52.5% success on any/all combines

252 Skill, No AA = 51.25% success on triv 335 combines
252 Skill, No AA = 40.25% success on triv 351 combines (OoW augment JC)

[Nolrog]

Is there a skill prerequisite for buying AA Tradeskill Mastery?

If not, does anyone else find it troubling that AA Mastery 3 and no actual skill will grant the posessor a greater chance of a successful combine than 252 skill and no AA, on the hardest combines?

AA Mastery 3, No Skill = 52.5% success on any/all combines

252 Skill, No AA = 51.25% success on triv 335 combines
252 Skill, No AA = 40.25% success on triv 351 combines (OoW augment JC)

That's a very interesting thought. It would also help during skill ups if you bought the AAs before you started.

[Humlaor]

AA Mastery 3, No Skill = 52.5% success on any/all combines

252 Skill, No AA = 51.25% success on triv 335 combines
252 Skill, No AA = 40.25% success on triv 351 combines (OoW augment JC)

Is this how it works? I assumed that it would add 50% to your success rate, not subtract 50% from your fail rate, thus if you have a 5% success rate, mastery 3 would get you a 7.5% rate. If you're right about the way it works, that does suck, there would be no reason to skill up.

Boomlaor

[Ngreth Thergn]

It specifically directly ajusts your FAIL rate, not your success rate... so only indirectly ajusts your success rate So yes, it decreases your fail chance.

If it increased your success chance, you would get into > 100% chance of success situations which they did not want.

[Humlaor]

ok then, I definately agree with the original poster. There needs to be some skill requirement for these aas. Perhaps 100 for mastery 1, 175 for mastery 2 and 225 for mastery 3?

Boomlaor

[Boleslav]

How hard would it be to put in a split check? Sort of like, if your percent to succeed is less than some % (say 40%?), then increase your chance of success by 50%, otherwise decrase your chance to fail by 50%.

Getting 18 AA is much easier for a LOT of people than getting most skills to 242. It seems unfair that the AA has such a huge effect for someone with no skill at all.

It also seems silly that the most skilled craftsperson (max skill + 18AA) only has a 15% to 25% better chance to make the most difficult items than someone who is picking up the tools of the trade for the first time but dumped AA into it.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 65th Campaign
E'ci - Sacred Destiny

[Naedea]

Yeah this is BS.

[splunge]

Fulminate: Where in the blazes did you get those numbers from?

If you plugged stuff into the caluclator here on eqtraders, then the coding for it is probably faulty.

Theres no way in heck they (SOE) would write code to make someone with 0 skill have a 50% success rate on 355 triv items.

EDIT:

Yup, thats exatly where he got it from. the onliujne skill caclulator here. I just checked.

If youll notice IMMEDIATELY BELOW the calculator it says this:

Note: The calculations done here are based upon the formulas in the FAQ and may not be 100% accurate.

[Humlaor]

How hard would it be to put in a split check? Sort of like, if your percent to succeed is less than some % (say 40%?), then increase your chance of success by 50%, otherwise decrase your chance to fail by 50%.

Seems to me that it would be much easier to make it increase your success rate by 50%, and put a cap on it at 95% or whatever. Then you actually get increasing returns on the AA for having higher skill instead of decreasing returns, and there is parity. It would be interesting to have somone test this, and see how it actually works. The trouble is we need 2 lvl 59+ characters who haven't skilled Brewing (store bought MHBs would be a good thing to test on.) Have 1 character blow the 18 AA on brewing mastery 3, then have each character combine 1000 MHBs and see what the success rates are. Not an easy test to arrange, but maybe somone has a guildie or 2 who is about to start grimmel or something?

Boomlaor

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Theres no way in heck they (SOE) would write code to make someone with 0 skill have a 50% success rate on 355 triv items.

By the description of the AA, that's exactly what SOE's done. The calculator's formula, as far as I know, is based off a combination of the description of the AA and the AA's tested behavior at relatively high skill levels.

Assuming that the relatively simple and straightforward interpretation of "This ability reduces the chance of failing <skill> combinations by 10, 25, and 50 percent" and the associated found behavior of relatively high skill level experimentation (JCM3 reduces failure rate ~50%) is correct, then either
1) the functionality of the AA changes for low skill level characters (invalidating the AA's description, which is certainly possible given other AA description vs actual effect issues)
OR
2) the functionality of the AA is not directly effected by skill level, and has the same effect whether you're skill 0 or mod skill 252.

If 2) is true, then the AA would do exactly as hypothesized in the original post:
0 skill, no AA, high triv combine => 5% success chance
0 skill, M3 AA, high triv combine => 5% base success + (95% fail * 50%AAmod) = 5% base + 47.5% AA = 52.5% success chance

Since someone without the AA has a success probability as a function of their skill level and the trivial, there exist recipes where a zero-skill character with AA would have a better chance of success than a 252 skill character without AA, and a plethora where they are nearly equal in success chance.

[Humlaor]

This is an issue that really needs to be brought up at the fanfair I think. If only to confirm what the mastery AAs actually do. If they do work to give somone with 0 skill a 50% chance of succeeding at any combine, we need to raise hell with the devs untill they fix that.

Boomlaor

[Nolrog]

This is an issue that really needs to be brought up at the fanfair I think. If only to confirm what the mastery AAs actually do. If they do work to give somone with 0 skill a 50% chance of succeeding at any combine, we need to raise hell with the devs untill they fix that.

Why?

Why shouldn't someone at 0 skill get the same stated benefit as someone with 250 skill (that being a 50% reduction in failure)?

[Boleslav]

This is a case where the same relative effect has a massively different impact based on skill. Take a look at the difference in success rates instead of failure rates for a second. The difference between a 95% success rate and a 97.5% success rate is only 2.5%, while the difference at 0 skill can be close to 50%.

I agree that an AA skill should have the same effect for any who are capable of purchasing it. However, that doesn't mean the effect as implemented is the right one!

It's a visceral thing. If you ask a dev if they really want to give someone with 0 skill but 18AA the same chance (or in some cases a better chance) to succeed on a combine as someone with max skill and no AA do you suspect they would say yes? I really hope not.

Think if this were a melee AA. Would it be coded this way? Absolutely not.

Something needs to be done with this. Either tweak the wording of the AA so that it increases success rate instead of decreases failure rate, or tie the ability to purchase the AA to your skill level.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 66th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Boleslav]

I bet this would be able to be tested with just level 1 of the mastery instead of level 3. You might need to do a few more combines to get solid data, but it would undoubtedly be easier to convince someone to 'waste' 3 AA than 18.

Have the person make mino hero brews while being so drunk as to keep their stats low. This will let them make more combines without skilling up as fast.

Just an idea.

Boleslav

[Sharrien]

Why?

Why shouldn't someone at 0 skill get the same stated benefit as someone with 250 skill (that being a 50% reduction in failure)?

I'm assuming you're only asking this question so that we can supply you with a Grandmaster satchel of arguments to make sure this injustice does not stand. If any random aa grinder can in a couple days of xping get the same result as a highly skilled tradeskiller who took at least weeks farm the drops/plat to master his craft, then you won't have any tradeskillers any more. No one would spend the time or would be willing to go thru 10k clicks to actually skill up when they can instantly train in a skill instead. It goes against any kind of common sense or roleplaying. It insults the efforts of everyone who worked to GM a skill. It also by the way completely trashes every single minute the devs spent on painfully balancing cost, effort, drops, skill up formulas, etc in the skill up paths of all the tradeskills.