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So, my trader noticed that several people were in the Bazaar arena earlier today (or last night). I got to thinking about the enchanter.

PC side, my enchanter kicked butt in PvP, but the people I was playing with didn't have terribly high magic resist. On this server, it seems like everyone's magic resist is significantly higher. As an enchanter's spells are 100% magic based, this means I basically can't land spells. So I got to thinking about the dynamics and was wondering if anyone knew...

Does anyone know the mechanics of magic resist? Let's use PvP as an example. Is it basically a /rand 1 100 and if the number is above the player's MR, the spell lands?

So if someone's MR is at least 100 + the amount I can lower by tash, the only spells I can land are the few that have a (-nnnn) value associated with them (like rapture) ? If I lower their MR to 99, then 1% of my spells will land?

Anyone know?

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Sinnder, Enchanter of Destiny
Joshore, Druid of Destiny

The routines for calculating resists are pretty much a black box to me - can't comment on that. Qualitatively though, I've found it verrrrry difficult to land anything in PvP against someone with over 200 magic resist. No root, no mez, no slow... even nukes are almost always flat-out resisted. The chanter's main tools in PvP are the lure mezzes (rapture and ancient: eternal rapture), which do land on players over level 60, dispel, mana sieve, damage shields (fire elemental + feedback), runes, insta-clickies to keep the aforementioned buffs up, and melee. A weapon with a proc - preferably a resist-adjusted one like this - is also great.

Enchanters are pretty decent at one-on-one PvP. Group PvP not so much, since people can just break your mezzes on their teammates.

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Pithy Deathwish, manic mechanic of <Temerity>

Refuse, rubbish, filth, slime, muck and other alt-putrescence:
[ Drat | Dart | Zounds | Slouch | Pouch ]

I suppose if you really wanted to find a curve for resist probability as a function of magic resist, you could take some data - cast some magic-based spell a lot of times (50ish?) on your druid with 80 magic resist, divide the number of resists by the total number of casts to find P(80), the probability of a resist at 80 MR. Then do the same thing at 90 MR, 100 MR, 110 MR, ... , until you start getting pure resists. I'd imagine it's probably simple and linear, but who knows!

Of course, level difference is probably a factor too, so you should also repeat these tests after your druid dings 66, 67, 68, 69 and 70

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Pithy Deathwish, manic mechanic of <Temerity>

Refuse, rubbish, filth, slime, muck and other alt-putrescence:
[ Drat | Dart | Zounds | Slouch | Pouch ]

Ugh, this is a bugbear.

I've spent years trying to wrap my head around it. I've scoured the net as much as any I think on this topic. There is jack for hard info out there.

There seems to be a variety of checks and mechanics at work and a variety of resist curves and linear lines. A parse on *ONE* effect is likely only useful for it or at best useful for some other similar checks. It'd take years and years to compile any hard info.


With the above said, here are my best guesses and insights...


Some checks are all or nothing, that is you either resist fully or are nailed fully (some stuns, DoTs, some flings, snares, etc.).

Others effects vary in how much you made the check by. Dragon fear if you fail by a lot, you'll run like snot, if by a little, nothing will happen barring a buff being overwritten if your buff bar is full. Most nukes and AoEs will fall into this as do lifetaps for how much damage is dealt.

I'm not sure where duration based spells such as root falls, and if ony one check is made at the start to see how long the root will last or if break checks happen like for charming.

Other things are debuff mechanics. Cancel magic (1) seems to attack with -50 to the check. Cancel magic (4) feels like -100 to the check and Cancel magic (9) feels like it's attacking with -300 to the resist check. (There is some info out there on this, but not a lot.) (400 MR is enough to kill Chromodracs without being debuffed too often.)


As for the checks, here are my hard and fast rules...

If the check is 0 and the mob is level 65, 170 to 330 is usually enough...
If the check is -50 and the mob is level 65, 250 to 400 is usually enough...
If the check is -100 and the mob is level 65, 335 to 450 is usually enough...
If the check is -150 and the mob is level 65, 400 to 500 is usually enough...
If the check is -200 and the mob is level 65, 500 helps a lot, but it's usually not enough...
If the check is -300 and the mob is level 65, 500 helps some, but you'll need a healer/debuffer.
If the check is -500 and the mob is level 65, 500 is probably totally useless... (I'll try to test it out on Bert as soon as I finish gearing DR to 500 self buffed.)

Usually enough = full resist/minimal damage/minimal effect 85 to 90% of the time. 200 might be enough for dragon fear, but not enough for a nuke/AoE. It varies by the effect.

(Keep in mind they are a work in progress and what might be overkill for one effect will likely be insufficient for another. You might fully resist one effect with -150 to the check with resists at 400 100% of the time and only 85% of the tme at 500 with a different effect.)


In addition to the above...

In talks with Cromis, he feels that each level difference between the attacker and the defender modifies things from between 5 to 30 points per level...

My personal experience from fighting mobs with the same effect, is that was clear that 10 levels made a HUGE difference in how often and hard I was nailed for when my resists were at the same value.


As for the actual value of resist gear/buffs...


For most raids I feel they're totally useless, but for some raids, they can be make or break it or even completely trivalize some content.

(I personally think a warrior/shaman 2 box with 400+ in the needed resists could wake the sleeper... (Please don't though))

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Really not a fair comparison with your enchanter from PC to any character on AK. Most toons are AK are so crazy geared compared to this era on PC it is a silly argument. The game itself: drop rates/mob availability was never designed for a server with an Al' Kaborian type population.


Almost any character who has played on AK for a year or more would have been uber-geared on PC in this era.

EQPC:
category 1: 80-85% of players were wearing bazaar gear and perhaps a few OK no-drop items from crawls, or a pick-up event every now and then.

category 2: 5-10% were in a raid guild capable of killing mobs that consistently drop 100 hp/mana items.

category 3: 1-5 percent(depending on server) were in a elite guild that consistently killed end-game mobs per expansion(this would be plane of time on AK for our era).

On AK 90-95 percent of players fall into category 2.

If your enchanter was uber on PC then noone from category 2 was pvping with you. Several times I can recall walking into the arena with 5-6 category 1 players with my category 3 ranger and either killed them all, or killed most and the others fled. PvP was never balanced around resists, because in the original incarnation of the game the developers never cared about PvP or didn't expect an entire server of characters with all resists > 200 without buffs.

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Its most likely something fairly simple as a formula, things that definitely do affect resists:

your level vs mob level
the mobs coded resists value (+ any resists gained from items it is carrying)
the resist check of the spell you cast
a randomly generated number

it's all guesswork but it is probably some equation using the 4 above number values plus any other thing i may have forgotten.

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Or an SK/cleric


I don't think war/sham would work because one or more of the dragons is unslowable (and all are pretty tough to slow).

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