Chronal and Discordant Stones

[Lemeril]

Actually... if you look at it... the vast majority of loot from the DoD missions is in non-visible slots or secondary/range whereas cultural DoN armor is limited to to the visible armor slots.

Hmm, you must not have seen any of the chest loot from 70 hards, 69 hards, etc...

225 hp plate bp 69.1 hard

225 hp/mana/end with dodge 3 chest chain 70.1 hard


Need I go on?

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Yes there are a few. I didn't say all, just most, especially for casters.

[Lemeril]

Hmm, you haven't seen the chest loot from 69.4 hard (Drachnid spun silk robe channeling 5% mana and hp regen +5 200 hp/mana/end) legs from 70.2 hard (225 hp/mana/end and a click self buff) chest from Last Migration Hard (225 hp/mana/end and a focus), etc...

[Wyvernwill]

Hmm, you must not have seen any of the chest loot from 70 hards, 69 hards, etc...

225 hp plate bp 69.1 hard

225 hp/mana/end with dodge 3 chest chain 70.1 hard


Need I go on?

Hate to be blunt on this, but if you are a tank and your primary concern is hitpoints, you have something seriously wrong with what you are looking for in upgrades. Armor Class is the primary tank concern. As far as DoN Cultural has gone, I will not even come close to thinking about taking pieces of until I end up in Qvic or higher, except for a few pieces of Time gear and the 70.1 bracers.

And to be completely honest, I wouldn't be anywhere near able to do DoD hards and normals without the Cultural armor I put so much work into. Hps are nice, but in most cases, not worth the lost AC.

[Phantron]

The effect of AC is greatly overestimated due to the inherent impossibility of getting a reliable parse on anything that can kill you. That said the cultural armor has an abnormal high amount of AC you get for free, and the DoD plate items seem to have an abnormally low amount of AC. Aside from the missions that does come down to defeating some particularly difficult mobs (70.1, 68.3), the warrior's gear isn't as important as just having a group that knows what they're doing. Of course it's good to have both, but no amount of gear is going to save a casual warrior from a bolstered Illsalin Shaman that your group forgot to dispel (or maybe not even know about it), while the reverse is easily doable.

[Wyvernwill]

A group knowing what they are doing won't invite a subpar tank and think they can win. If you wanna know the difference between hitpoints vs AC, I have seen it in action plenty. At 12k 2700ac I am easier to heal on most dod bosses than a paladin with 14.5k 2100ac. His abundance of Hitpoints got cut to pieces because the mob was hitting him for 1200+ constantly. When we went back and I tanked, the cleric did nothing but chain CH me, well over half of my hits taken were for minimum damage (was about 700 damage).

You can believe what you will, however I have seen the gains and the AC outweighed the HPs by a huge amount. Your opinion is yours, mine is mine. As you aren't a tank in my guild, I will not bother you by trying to change your mind on things.

[Phantron]

1. No one gets hit for 50% min hits on DoD anything

2. 14.5K HP and 2100 AC requires serious dedication to screw up your character to even be obtainable. You'd have to actively go out and find leather AC gear that you can wear.

3. If you are a warrior, discs are insurmountable advantages in tanking. If you're not, then you're just seeing what you want to see.

[Lemeril]

What I posted was only a little information and to be honest I don't think the 70.x hard mission plate BP/greaves has been found. I do know that on chain we take a dock of 30 ac for Improved Dodge 3 (bp) and a doc of ac on the greaves for Geldiran Ice.

To be honest though if you are going to tell me that 60 AC > 160 or more HP base (not including benefits from ND3 and PE) I'm going to laugh.

And your comment about the tankage? Someone doesn't know how to tank. I've done 70.1 hard with the guardian on a 12k/2200 ac pally w/ max defensives.

Sorry but your theory doesn't hold up and needs work.

[Phantron]

The way the game itemization works, generally speaking an item with 175 HP is unquestionably better than an item with 150 HP in all ways. The 200s HP items in DoD are meant to be superior to the low 100s HP Grandmaster armor but because Grandmaster armor has abnormally high AC and DoD plate items have abnormally low AC, the difference isn't as great as it should be. In some pieces where Grandmaster armor is really out of whack in terms of appropriate AC, such as legs (higher than Vadd legs if I remember), it might even be better to stick with GM armor. But, this is an itemization quark, not a rule of thumb. Of course there's also an issue of acquisition, but since all DoD items are one group/no drop one can assume that if the plate items do drop, then there's not a significant *cost* to obtaining them beyond rolling a higher number than whoever else is a plate in your group.

[Moraganth]

Actually... if you look at it... the vast majority of loot from the DoD missions is in non-visible slots or secondary/range whereas cultural DoN armor is limited to to the visible armor slots.

In the chest loot, each armor archtype has almost 2 sets of visible slot armor (this is considering just the spell mission chests).

[Wyvernwill]

Tank the missions with 2700-2800ac and you will see a considerable difference. Everything I have read between TSW and PON indicates that 1ac is equal to 5-7hps per. So 60ac > 160hps is a given.

AC and Hps are not equal, and as far as your theory goes, at the worst it's a solid trade until 1ac is less value than 2.67hps.

The value of AC pertains mostly to tanks due to their defensive mitigation tables. AC is what the DI is factored against.

I was at roughly 12.5k, 2100ac about three months ago. Losing 400hps and gaining 600AC has been a more than noticable difference.

I have made changes and they have been solid enough for me to back. The tanks in my guild know I was skeptical and put a lot of time into studying the effects and then tested what I was told. I have seen the results of the change I made, and it was far more worth it.

As I said, I couldn't really care less wether anyone on these boards understands, or even takes the time to bother with testing for themselves. As far as it rests, you aren't guilded with me, I don't group with you. How you play, and what you think regarding EQ is neither my concern or care to correct or waste my time trying to convince otherwise.

[Fesser]

/sigh

Could this derailment please be taken to the Steel Warriors or someplace else? This is getting way too personal for a tradeskill site. We are nice to each other here.

Cheers!

[Lemeril]

I was not trying to take it off topic and I do apologize for seeming to have caused this to continue. I was trying to point out that the drops in DoD from chest loot are better than GM Cultural in an attempt to show valid cause as to why Chronal stones should be considered for one groupable content (albeit hard groupable on par with 70.x hard or 69.x hard missions).

"Long parses against xp level mobs such as RSS trash or the test-70 mob has shown 1 displayed AC to be less than 3 HP in terms of effectiveness."

http://thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13442

Now, I am not taking this off topic here. I am simply pointing Wyvernwill to a post and relevant text along with anyone else who things the DOD Drops are not as good as cultural due to the AC difference.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=45695
Hard Chit Breastplat has
71 AC
205 HP

GM Plate BP
99 AC
135 HP

At a less than 3 value per AC gained lets take 2.5 28 difference in AC = 70 Difference in HP which makes these 2 equal for a warrior.

Now assuming the BP for Plate in the 70.x and comparable missions hasn't been found, which I believe it hasn't, we get to add another 20 hp and an effect of some kind. I'm basing this assumption off the Caster robe and leggings, chain robe and leggings, and leather leggins I've already seen drop.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=45769

This is the 70.x Hard mission Chain BP Drop.

Now chain has different soft caps, etc... but I can still use the same differentiation to an extent

85 -71 = 14 * 2.5 = 35 HP difference

225 - 135 = 90 HP actually minus AC difference = 55 HP difference.

And I haven't given the bonus for Dodge 3 yet either.

This is where the issue lies. Now, I could be wrong in regards to a 70.x level Plate armor, but that isn't an issue to take up with these boards that is an issue to take up on the Eqlive forums.

The problem here though is that as of right now, without chronal stones in the game and the expectation they will be a raid event drop, there is really no point to even looking into them for Leather, Chain, and Silk classes. For that matter, unless you are in one of the Rare EP guilds that is raiding the lower end content of DoDH Discordant stones are pretty worthless to since every guild I know of raiding DoDH is anguish level and moving straight forward into DSK and Demi-plane raids where bazu and last blood stones drop.

I personally have already started replacing my GM culutural (btw the pally was a friend, I play a 70 ranger) with 70.x hard drops. I don't currently see Chronal or discordant as achievable in the near future and I'm not even sure about bazu or last blood and the armor I'm currently wearing in the way of GM cultural won't get me to the bazu or last blood stones anyways. So as of right now I'm slowly banking each piece of my GM cultural and I intend to bank all of it. I will keep it because I still hope to some day get bazu or last blood stones.

My problem here though is relative to what sony did in regards to drops. They made obtainable drops that are better than cultural in a group, which means if you are in an EP or better guild you can work to find help to farm these, and gave the cultural to the top raiders.

To me cultural should be a fair option for all levels of players. Chronal being those that are groupers primarily. A group in full cultural with augs should be able to get access to these, IMO. Discordant should be placed in a location that will be raided by Time/qvic guilds which gives people access to these of the right caliber.

The only ones I think have been placed correctly are the bazu/last blood augs, but that is just my 2 copper on the subject.

[Phantron]

Using the latest parses provided by Brael (and I have no idea how he determined 2300 was the turning point, though it's not important), each point of AC before 2300 is worth >10 HP and each point after it is worth <3 HP using 20K HP as baseline. You also have to scale the effect by (your HP/20K). This means before you hit the softcap-like AC level of 2300 a GM BP is far superior to the DoD BP, and once you go past it the reverse is true. We do not understand enough about the mechanics of the game to know if this 2300 number varies on the mob to mob basis or if it's fixed.

This also only applies to tanking classes (War/Pal/SK). Everyone else gets hosed pretty hard by the diminishing returns to the point where AC is almost meaningless.

[Lemeril]

You still missed 2 big things.

Softcaps are different for non-tank classes. Meaning the difference between DODH and GM cultural gear for all Chain, Leather, and Silk classes is negligable.

The Plate 70.x hard version have yet to be found, but if they follow suit the plate version for that will have 85 to 90 AC + an effect such as a parry mod, etc...