Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

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dgreenbe
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Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#1 » Post by dgreenbe » 14 Oct 2017 11:14

With SSC/Hydross release, there has been much talk about resistance. As in many cases, myth and rumor can easily predominate. We should dispel these myths and arrive at a strong grasp of how resistance works. I have a lot of experience with vanilla and TBC resistance sets, but not in Wrath or on Primal, so I'm hoping for some good feedback, perspective, etc. or ideally, correctly-informed knowledge and explanations from people.

A few main questions should be answered:
  1. Does Primal have Wrath resistance mechanics, pre-Wrath mechanics (unlikely), or neither?
  2. What are the resistance caps?
  3. How much damage resistance do varying amounts of resistance provide against different level NPCs?

Basic Resistance Mechanics

First, there have been various discussions about resistance "caps." Many people have said various things about caps that I cannot help but suspect are incorrect. In vanilla and TBC, there were various soft caps that could be arrived at to achieve a certain level of resistance. Many people say that 365 is "the cap," but while this was the hard cap at 75%, it was also the highest of multiple (soft) caps.

In Wrath, however, resistance was changed. These soft caps were removed, and the the resistance system provided resistance in increments of 10%--every amount of resistance would result in resisting non-binary spell damage by, on average, the same % of binary spells that would be resisted. However, resisted damage wouldn't be by a certain %--it would provide chances of resistance, with those chances distributed across the four closest sections of 10% resistance (eg. 30%/40%/50%/60%). So, in this sense, while there would not be caps, a tank looking to avoid ever resisting below 30% damage would have to achieve a certain level of resistance (where the average resistance is 20% higher than that resistance--in this case, 50% average resistance to eliminate the 20% box):

Image


Here is a chart for some average resistance levels. You can skip the equations and just know that the important number is the resistance required for the average resistance of 50%.

Image


Specifically, the equation for average resistance is:
Damage reduction percentage = 100% * R / ( K + R )
R is effective resistance rating, K is a constant.

To eliminate the chances that a resistance % will be above a certain level:
P(x) = 50% - 250%*|x - AR|
P(x) is the probability of an x% resistance and must be 0 or above. AR is the average resistance from the first equation, or R/(K+R).


Resistance vs. 73 Elite Bosses

Second, the question is: what is the constant for a level 70 character against a level 73 elite? For a level 83 elite, it was believed to be 510 (although some contested this and thought it could be a bit lower). This constant was also the % required for an average of 50% resistance. Does this mean that the additional 3 levels from a level 80 character to a level 83 elite will result in the same constant for a level 70 character against a level 73 elite? This may seem to be the case, as Wrath resistance discussions found that resistance went down 2% for every level* below the caster. But afaik this constant was estimated after a lot of testing with level 80 characters. Some calculations in the EJ thread pointed out in posts below show that the constant for 73 elite bosses is 460 (the resistance required for an average resistance of 50%, and no resists lower than 40%).

One the one hand, if resistance mechanics are Wrath-like this isn't necessarily the most important question (the important thing being balancing HP/avoidance/threat with resistance). On the other hand, figuring out a cap to totally avoid the very low likelihood of a string of say 10% reductions may also be deemed important--while the numbers may not be exact, safely passing that cap if there is a good tradeoff for resistance from other stats may make this valuable.


Resistance vs. 71 Elites

Third, many resistance tanks right now will be tanking Hydross spawns, which should be Level 71 elites. These will have their own constant. If resistance is based on level difference, the constant K will be between 350 and 460 (likely between 375 and 436). The EJ thread featured various models for the constant, but I'm not sure if people settled on any one of them. One person suggesting multiple models seemed to think around 375-400 would do the trick. To give a gist of what different resistances would look like: For tanks with double FrR/NR resist sets and assuming K=435, getting 30% average resistance and supposedly hitting the "cap" to knock out 10% resists requires 187 resistance. The 20% average resistance, knocking out chance of zero resistance, would be 109 resistance. These numbers are pretty speculative but should at least give you an estimate of how much resistance to expect regarding Hydross adds.

The question of whether this is like Wrath or not wasn't addressed. I didn't see any guides regarding resistance yet here, although perhaps people in "vanilla" content who did Rag would know. But it's a possibility. For example, some peoples' perspective is that boss resistance is totally off and bosses are resisting far too much spell damage. I have noticed a lot of resistance on bosses; if that is incorrect, and if resistance issues against bosses could also apply against players, it could be different here.


*If resistance per level is a 2% difference, and a racial passive ability is 2% chance to avoid any damage from a certain school, does this 2% racial affect the calculation, or is it separate? I'm assuming the latter (admittedly a total guess, since the constant is based on 50% resistance and the racial is based on 100% resistance).
Last edited by dgreenbe on 15 Oct 2017 09:53, edited 2 times in total.

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Anesthesia
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#2 » Post by Anesthesia » 14 Oct 2017 12:13

Wrath formula should be active, we had custom one made by Gnurg (to mimic Vanilla resistance formula) by the end of Vanilla phase, but I am not sure if that is still available to use.
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.Watson1988
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#3 » Post by .Watson1988 » 14 Oct 2017 14:18

Thanks for bringing this (again) to general attention. We already had problems with this issue during the vanilla phase on Huhuran and the Twin Emperors (and somewhat on Ragnaros).

Magic resistances are definitely not following the TBC formula (I have statistically tested this on Leotheras) and are probably following the mechanics you explained above (I have not tested for those).

The wotlk resistance mechanics imply that reaching the once TBC (or Vanilla) resistance hard cap of 75% average damage reduction is much more difficult (or even impossible) with the gear available. Currently, with 365 fire resistance including buffs and gear, we should have an average chance of around 75% to fully resist a chaos blast of Leotheras' demon form. However, currently the actual resist chance is lower. This means that the tanks during this combat phase accumulate more stacks of the debuff than they should and eventually die during the phase if only one tank for the demon phase is used.

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dgreenbe
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#4 » Post by dgreenbe » 14 Oct 2017 17:04

Thank you for your perspective. This doesn't necessarily indicate that the resistance constant for bosses at level 70 is the same as at level 80, but it certainly means that 50% average resistance is much closer to ~510 than ~225 resistance. If the constant is 510 for level 70 (perhaps it's not), then 365 resistance, instead of providing 75% resistance of binary spells (leo stacks), is providing 41.7% resistance.

Also, the Leo example is a very good point. Resistance is likely built around Level 80 gameplay. While 3 FrR pieces and a ring at 80 would provide 354 FrR, at current TBC content 3 FrR pieces and an FrR ring, for example, would provide only ~105 resistance. For Lock tanks, I doubt the issue is helped by Nether Protection changes (although Demo tree changes are nice, seemingly totaling to 60% damage mitigation).

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.Watson1988
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#5 » Post by .Watson1988 » 14 Oct 2017 17:53

I can supply you with 3 data points for Leotheras, tested on a level 70 warlock, no talents active during those tests

1st) 100 total fire resistance: 17 of 100 chaos blasts resisted
2nd) 299 total fire resistance: 53 of 100 chaos blasts resisted
3rd) 420 total fire resistance: 65 of 100 chaos blasts resisted

Concerning Nether protection: I don't know yet if NP can also activate on resisted chaos blasts after the fix which would increase its uptime. If it only procs on non-resisted chaos blasts then the uptime will be low and there is quite a chance that it will not be active once the tanking warlock already has 7 to 9 stacks and NP would be crucial to survive the next incoming blast (that would not be resisted).

All in all with the current state of magic resistances the outcome of this fight is very dependent on luck. The only way to counter unlucky sequences of getting hit by chaos blast is having a back up tank that is able to sponge up the remaining blasts of the phase.

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dgreenbe
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#6 » Post by dgreenbe » 15 Oct 2017 06:16

Sample size is on the low side tbh, but that sort of testing at different resistance levels should help a lot. It's also enough to know, as you say, that having one tank is not reliable. As it's related to resistance tanking, would you mind explaining what this Nether Protection fix is?

In contrast to both the average resistance indicated by your data and by an assumption 70 content is the same as 80 content, Alysium came up with this:
The constant for level 70 should be 460 which would produce a a tank with 50% average mitigation that only takes damage that has a minimum resistance of 40% and a maximum resistance of 60%. At 365 resist, tanks will have an average mitigation of 44.2% and are going to have 30% resists about 20% of the time.

Image

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.Watson1988
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#7 » Post by .Watson1988 » 15 Oct 2017 12:27

Sample size was good enough to reject the hypothesis that resistances follow the TBC formula at FR=299 at a 10%-confidence level and at FR=420 at a 5%-confidence level. Good enough for a quick test I would say. But could be of course a very, very unlucky streak. Or the game's random number generator does not really produce numbers that are sufficiently random.

Currently, Leotheras' Chaos blasts do not proc warlocks' Nether Protection. However, the bug tracker states an imminent fix for this issue.

And concerning the true resistance formula: I don't really care to speculate about this because devs should be able to look it up in the code.

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dgreenbe
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#8 » Post by dgreenbe » 16 Oct 2017 09:54

I'm mainly hoping for a staff response to address our questions on this.

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Nyeriah

Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#9 » Post by Nyeriah » 16 Oct 2017 12:29

We have never worked on implementing the TBC formula, I don't think we have planned on doing so. Otherwise, Anesthesia's post is a coherent response to this.

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dgreenbe
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#10 » Post by dgreenbe » 23 Oct 2017 12:29

It's coherent, but lacking in details a bit, as there's very little info about this online. I suppose people could test a lot, but IMO it would be better for those people to test other things if they have that much time since this isn't retail.

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Anesthesia
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#11 » Post by Anesthesia » 23 Oct 2017 12:51

WoWWikki, WoWPedia and similar pages provide enough information on how resistance works, but you will have to read trough and find which explanation is valid for each expansion, most of those pages allow you to browse History of edits, not only that you can see who (and when) added a note, you can also read version of that page at any of the "update" dates.

> In addition, I have opened a bug report; https://truewow.org/bugs/view.php?id=6726
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Re: Primal Player Resistance Mechanics Discussion #TheResistance

#12 » Post by natnat123 » 23 Oct 2017 13:08

Anesthesia wrote:
23 Oct 2017 12:51
WoWWikki, WoWPedia and similar pages provide enough information on how resistance works, but you will have to read trough and find which explanation is valid for each expansion, most of those pages allow you to browse History of edits, not only that you can see who (and when) added a note, you can also read version of that page at any of the "update" dates.

> In addition, I have opened a bug report; https://truewow.org/bugs/view.php?id=6726
+1 ^

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