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4 months ago ::
Feb 10, 2013 - 6:37PM
#81
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Just a quick example of why I am treating Lokiare’s claims the way I am, and why I do not plan to go through his posts in any detail.
"artful dodger vs. parry, the math"
Show
Rogue’s best AC: 18.
Fighter’s best AC: 18.
Both are level 20 and are fighting Asmodeus.
Asmodeus’s chance of hitting either: 65%.
Asmodeus’s damage on a hit: 20 (2d12+7).
Rogue uses artful dodger: Asmodeus’s chance of hitting drops to 42.25% and his critical chance drops to .25%; damage per melee attack drops from 13.55 to 8.4775 when artful dodger is used; the roundly damage reduction of Artful Dodger equates to 5.0725 points of damage a round over time.
The fighter uses parry: a fighter’s parry soaks 27.5 points of damage (average) any time he is hit; when a fighter uses parry against an attack by Asmodeus it drops Asmodeus’s damage per melee attack to 0 or 3.5 on a critical; Asmodeus’s damage per attack (over time) becomes 0.175; the damage reduction from Parry equates to 13.375 a round over time.
Parry is much better (against melee attacks). That is always true.
For example, that same rogue and fighter vs. a Storm Giant’s melee attack:
Storm Giant’s chance of hitting either: 70%
Storm Giant’s damage on a hit: 28 (3d12 + 9)
Rogue uses artful dodger: Storm Giant’s chance of hitting drops to 49% and his critical chance drops to .25%; damage per attack drops from 20.45 to 13.7625; the damage reduction of Artful Dodger equates to 6.6875 a round over time.
The fighter uses parry: The fighter’s Parry soaks 27.5 points of damage (average) any time he is hit; that means that used against a Storm Giant it drops the damage to 0.5 points or 17.5 vs. a critical hit; so, a storm giants DPR goes from 20.45 to 1.2; the damage reduction from Parry equates to 19.25 a round over time.
Every one of his claims runs into similar problems. I do not have the patience to go through every one of his claims and debunk them the way I just did with parry in regards to its affectivity vs. melee attacks. So, yea, like I said, he is just wrong.
Now do the other end of the extreme with 10 opponents and the Rogue using skill tricks to further increase AC or grant disadvantage on more attacks.
You are also comparing apples to oranges here. Artful dodger removes all damage from an attack. Parry removes 1d6+1d4 to 6d6+1d12 from an attack. Your math is flawed. How many attacks were missed because of artful dodger? If we assume the combat took 5 rounds then 57.75% of all attacks made against the Rogue deal 0 damage. While 42.25% of attacks deal normal damage. Now Parry can get 7 to 48. Osmodeus's attacks can deal from 9 to 31. Now to get the real numbers you would have to map out the chance of rolling each number on Parry with each number on Osmodeus's damage. then averaging the results out. Something you didn't do. Averaging parry and subtracting Osmodeus's damage doesn't give you accurate numbers like DPR calculations. Again your assumptions are incorrect. Deal with it...
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4 months ago ::
Feb 10, 2013 - 6:46PM
#82
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Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2006
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Every one of his claims runs into similar problems. I do not have the patience to go through every one of his claims and debunk them the way I just did with parry in regards to its affectivity vs. melee attacks. So, yea, like I said, he is just wrong.
There are a few things that your purely mathematical, white-board analysis of the two abilities is overlooking. The biggest one is that artful dodger works against both melee and ranged attacks. That is a huge advantage for Artful Dodger over Parry. There's also the fact that making an attack miss outright is sometimes better than just applying damage reduction, such as if the attack has additional effects (like shocking grasp or attacks with poison). That's an advantage that doesn't apply against every enemy or every attack, but it's still significant. Does that make AD better than Parry overall? I wouldn't say so, but I would feel pretty safe calling it a tie. Parry is better against melee attackers, but AD is more versatile.
When comparing classes overall, you also need to be careful of not falling into the trap of comparing abilities on a 1v1 basis. It's the overall picture that matters. Even if you could argue that parry is better than artful dodger, rogues do still have other defensive abilities to account for, such as uncanny dodge and evasion, that help them survive. Does that mean rogues are better at surviving than fighters? Of course not. Fighters have other advantages, such as having more hit points.
From my experience playtesting so far, the two classes have been about equally powerful in combat overall. They have different strengths and weaknesses, but they both are to be feared on the battlefield. So given that, why is it fair that rogues are just as good in combat overall as fighers but also leave fighters in the dust in the other two pillars of play? If anything, giving fighters and barbarians one or two bonus skills is an extremely modest suggestion, and doesn't go nearly far enough in making them viable in the exploration and social pillars. Plain old skills don't even begin to compare to skill tricks and spells, after all.
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4 months ago ::
Feb 10, 2013 - 7:03PM
#83
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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Again your assumptions are incorrect. Deal with it...
You can keep telling yourself (and everyone else) that if you like, but what you are saying is still not true. I mean, even your last post belies a fundamental misunderstanding as far as what the math of those two abilities means, and how that math works! Using the average damage of parry works perfectly well when it comes to calculating the damage reduced per round over time. And my calculations factored in exactly how much damage artful dodger would reduce per round over time. Yes. It would either reduce damage completely or not reduce it at all. That doesn’t change a thing in terms of the over time calculations. It is also somewhat irrelevant seeing as, on average, parry will turn a hit into a miss. When it doesn’t it will still significantly reduce the damage dealt, usually to virtually meaningless values. But whatever Lokiare. You don’t want to believe me? That is ok by me. I hope that other people see your claims for the convoluted and twisted things they are. I don’t have the patience to provide any more in depth math proving what anyone with any common sense should be able to estimate for themselves. Some other points of value were brought up in this thread. Those have been addressed (by me or someone else) already. Some things do need to be fiddled with. WotC already knows that. We will see how things look in the next packet. I will comment/provide more math then.
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4 months ago ::
Feb 10, 2013 - 7:13PM
#84
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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There are a few things that your purely mathematical, white-board analysis of the two abilities is overlooking. The biggest one is that artful dodger works against both melee and ranged attacks. That is a huge advantage for Artful Dodger over Parry. There's also the fact that making an attack miss outright is sometimes better than just applying damage reduction, such as if the attack has additional effects (like shocking grasp or attacks with poison). That's an advantage that doesn't apply against every enemy or every attack, but it's still significant. Does that make AD better than Parry overall? I wouldn't say so, but I would feel pretty safe calling it a tie. Parry is better against melee attackers, but AD is more versatile.
1) Yes, it does only apply to melee attacks. That is true. It is MUCH better vs. melee attacks, and it is worthless vs. ranged attacks. I have been saying that when using a shield it should apply vs. ranged attacks for some time. We will see what things look like in the next packet. 2) Artful dodger makes attacks miss outright some of the time and does nothing the rest of the time. Parry reduces damage. But, the quantity of damage that parry reduces makes it turn virtually every hit into a miss. Meanwhile, when it fails to turn a hit into a miss, unlike artful dodger it is still very beneficial. My calculations take all of that into account and show how much damage each soaks up per round over time. In melee it is not a tie; parry is drastically superior given the NPC damage values in this game. As for the rest, we either agree or disagree, and I don’t feel the need to provide any extra commentary on those agreements or disagreements at this time. We will have to see how things look like after the changes in the next packet are perused.
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4 months ago ::
Feb 10, 2013 - 7:22PM
#85
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Date Joined:
Jun 28, 2006
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1) I have been saying that when using a shield it should apply vs. ranged attacks for some time.
I agree with that. Right now, the tiny +1 AC bonus that shields provide is just not worth it, IMO.
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4 months ago ::
Feb 11, 2013 - 8:32PM
#86
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I've seen Dave come on here and claim something, throw some basic incorrect math at it, then try to claim they don't have time to do a better proof. That's fine, but if you aren't willing to show the math or the facts, then please don't come on here to tell me I'm wrong. You wouldn't for a minute believe me if I said I don't have time to do the math, but believe me Cyber-Dave is wrong, would you? I didn't think so. I'm just applying your own standards to yourself. Show the full math or don't make the claim. The full math would go through each of the play test adventures and see how many attackers used ranged and how many used melee attacks. Then you would have to go through the bestiary and do the same. Then you would have to compare the actual attacks of monsters at each level to parry and to Artful Dodger to see the results. I understand that you probably don't want to do all of that work. I don't either, but it needs to be done to see if they are closely balanced or if one is much better than the other...
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4 months ago ::
Feb 11, 2013 - 8:40PM
#87
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Date Joined:
Apr 10, 2009
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I've seen Dave come on here and claim something, throw some basic incorrect math at it, then try to claim they don't have time to do a better proof. That's fine, but if you aren't willing to show the math or the facts, then please don't come on here to tell me I'm wrong. You wouldn't for a minute believe me if I said I don't have time to do the math, but believe me Cyber-Dave is wrong, would you? I didn't think so. I'm just applying your own standards to yourself. Show the full math or don't make the claim. The full math would go through each of the play test adventures and see how many attackers used ranged and how many used melee attacks. Then you would have to go through the bestiary and do the same. Then you would have to compare the actual attacks of monsters at each level to parry and to Artful Dodger to see the results. I understand that you probably don't want to do all of that work. I don't either, but it needs to be done to see if they are closely balanced or if one is much better than the other...
On that particular disagreement between the two of you - I just don't know why it matters.
They are different and they appeal to different player preferences and when one is better than the other is conditional. And if either of you claims that one or the other is always better - you would be wrong.
So they both have a place in the game and if the 5e game spawns the equivlaent of the CharOp forums I'm happy to leave that debate up to them.
Carl
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4 months ago ::
Feb 11, 2013 - 9:04PM
#88
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I've seen Dave come on here and claim something, throw some basic incorrect math at it, then try to claim they don't have time to do a better proof. That's fine, but if you aren't willing to show the math or the facts, then please don't come on here to tell me I'm wrong. You wouldn't for a minute believe me if I said I don't have time to do the math, but believe me Cyber-Dave is wrong, would you? I didn't think so. I'm just applying your own standards to yourself. Show the full math or don't make the claim. The full math would go through each of the play test adventures and see how many attackers used ranged and how many used melee attacks. Then you would have to go through the bestiary and do the same. Then you would have to compare the actual attacks of monsters at each level to parry and to Artful Dodger to see the results. I understand that you probably don't want to do all of that work. I don't either, but it needs to be done to see if they are closely balanced or if one is much better than the other...
On that particular disagreement between the two of you - I just don't know why it matters.
They are different and they appeal to different player preferences and when one is better than the other is conditional. And if either of you claims that one or the other is always better - you would be wrong.
So they both have a place in the game and if the 5e game spawns the equivlaent of the CharOp forums I'm happy to leave that debate up to them.
Carl
I think the argument started when Cyber-Dave and others tried to claim that the Fighter and Rogue are not about equal in combat. Then we went through a feature by feature comparison. So we can get back to the main idea of the post, the Rogue and the Fighter are about equal, the Barbarian is slightly better than the Fighter in combat. Outside of combat the Rogue beats them all and the Fighter is dead last. So again why doesn't the Fighter and Barbarian at least get a skill or two to choose from to make up for that?
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3 months ago ::
Feb 11, 2013 - 11:05PM
#89
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Date Joined:
Apr 10, 2009
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The fighter and the rogue are comparable (depending on weapon choice - the rogue ranges from similar to a bit weaker). The monk is slightly more powerful. The barbarian is a lot more powerful. I"m roughly happy with fighter, monk and rogue relative to each other (although the Monk maneuver hurrricane strike is OP, especially when compared to fighter maneuvers).
But of course all issues of relative balance among the martial characters is now moot until we see what the new rules look like.
Carl
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3 months ago ::
Feb 12, 2013 - 2:07AM
#90
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Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2012
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Yup we do have to wait for the new rules. However without the feedback showing that the Fighter was underperforming then we may not have got the new rules? Feedback is what the play testing is for.
Detailed feedback is more difficult than sweeping generalisations. Which means that it is easy to make mistakes. When these mistakes are pointed out it is often seen as a personal attack, every discussion has an intellectual and an emotional component.
Anyway there was a minor mistake in the latest comparrisons, the max AC for a Rogue is 19 not 18 which will change the stats. However the point of this discussion is that the Fighter is lacking in at least 1 skill. I also think that some of the skill tricks are more appropriate as Fighter "things" e.g. Great Fortitude and Iron Will feel much more appropriate for Fighters rather than Rogues?
Anyway on to the next set of rules and the next set of analysis!
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