Combat system

Contents 1 Damage types 2 Mitigations 2.1 Where can I view my Mitigations? 2.2 Mitigation caps 3 Resists 4 Avoidance 4.1 Contested and Uncontested Avoidance 4.2 Why Uncontested Avoidance is better 5 Max Health / Max Power 5.1 Primary Attributes 6 Autoattacks 6.1 Haste and DPS modifiers 6.2 Effects of Haste and DPS 7 Procs 7.1 Proc rates 7.2 Proc chances 7.3 Interpreting proc rates 8 Diminishing Returns 9 Area effects 9.1 against mesmerized enemies 9.2 from pets 10 Criticals 11 Hate 11.1 Hate list 11.2 Hate gain 11.3 Caps 12 Experience 13 Level differences 13.1 ... for quest updates 13.2 ... for combat experience 13.3 ... for quest experience 14 Notes

Damage types

In Everquest 2, there are ten types of damage:

Crushing, Piercing, Slashing, Poison, Disease, Heat, Cold, Divine, Magic and Mental.

• Crushing/Piercing/Slashing is also called Physical.
• Poison/Disease is also called Noxious.
• Heat/Cold is also called Elemental.
• Divine/Magic/Mental is also called Arcane.

Noxious, Elemental and Arcane are sometimes collectively referred to as non-physical damage, or, confusingly, as magical damage.

Different types of damage are caused by different types of attacks:

• A dagger, for instance, causes Piercing damage, but if the dagger is poisoned, it may also cause Poison damage.
• A sword causes Slashing damage, but the sword may have a proc that sometimes causes Divine damage when it hits.
• A wizard has a lot of spells that cause Heat or Cold damage, and so on.

Mitigations

For each type of damage, there is a corresponding protection: vs. cold, vs. heat, vs. magic, and so on. The protection is a number in the hundreds or thousands, and can be viewed on the first tab of your Persona window.

This number acts as a mitigation, that is, it aborbs a portion of the damage from each attack that lands on you. The percentage can be seen by holding your mouse over the corresponding number in the Persona window.

If, for instance, a mob of your own level hits you with a club, and have 47% vs. crushing, you will abosrb ("mitigate") 47% of the clubs crushing damage, and get hit by the other 53%.

However, the mitigation % you see in the Persona window is only valid against mobs of your own level. If the mob is higher level than you, you will mitigate less, and if the mob is below you, you will mitigate more.

Where can I view my Mitigations?

Physical Mitigation is displayed in the upper right corner of your persona window as an average of your Crushing, Slashing, and Piercing Mitigations. If you hold your mouse over it, you see it broken up into the three different percentages.

The other seven Mitigations (Poison, Disease, Heat, Cold, Divine, Magic and Mental) are displayed separately in the bottom part of your Persona window. You can hover your mouse over these too to display percentages.

Mitigation caps

The maximum possible Mitigation for each type of damage is (your level)*150, which corresponds to absorbing 75% of the damage from an attack.[1]

The conversion from a numerical value to a Mitigation percentage is done on a Diminishing Returns curve.[1]

Resists

Every time you are subjected to a non-physical attack, you also get a chance to resist it. If you succeed, you suffer no damage at all. Resists are for spell attacks like Avoidance is for physical attacks.

It is believed, but not proven, that the chance to resist a non-physical attack is based on the same number as mitigation. Therefore, the seven non-physical mitigations are also called resists.

It is certain, though, that the chance to resist an attack is modified by the level difference between you and your enemy.

Avoidance

When an enemy physically attacks you (melee or ranged), you have a chance do Dodge the attack, Parry it[2], Block it (if you have a shield equipped), or Deflect it (if you're a Bruiser/Monk).

If you succeed with any of these, the attack is Avoided entirely, and you suffer no damage.

Your ability to Avoid melee attacks depends on:

• Your Agility
• Your Defense skill
• Your Parry skill
• Your Deflection skill, if you're a Bruiser/Monk
• The quality of your shield, if you have one
• The type of armour you wear
• Any AA's that modify your chance to Block, Parry or Deflect

Your ability to Avoid attacks is summed up in the Avoidance number, which is displayed on the first tab of the Persona window. This number is translated into a percentage on a diminishing returns curve[1], which can be viewed by holding your mouse over the number.

However, your actual chance to avoid an attack also depends on

• The level and offensive skills of your enemy

Contested and Uncontested Avoidance

All Avoidance is modified by the opponent's level. This means that the Monk Comat Art Tsunami, which promises a 100% chance to avoid the next attack, actually has a small chance of failing against a higher level enemy.[7]

Most Avoidance is also Contested, meaning that the chance to Avoid is modified by your defensive skills and your opponent's offensive skills. (A "contest" is made between your respective skills.) This means that, for instance, the Tsunami Combat Art will have a higher chance of failing against a Named, Heroic or Epic mob.

Contested Avoidance includes:

• Avoidance gained from Agility (unconfirmed)
• Avoidance gained from the Monk Combat Art Tsunami[7]

Uncontested Avoidance includes:

• Avoidance gained from Blocking (regardless of where the blocking chance comes from) (unconfirmed)
• Avoidance gained from +Parry Adornments[10]
• Avoidance gained from extra ripostes granted by the Brawler Strength line, the Warrior Stamina line, and the Rogue Wisdom line (unconfirmed)

Why Uncontested Avoidance is better

When fighting higher level enemies, Uncontested avoidance will be modified by the enemy's higher level, while Contested avoidance will be modified by both the higher level and the higher skills of the enemy. Epics generally have huge skill bonuses, enabling them to ignore most Contested Avoidance.

This is one of the reasons Brawlers have trouble tanking high-end raids; brawlers have much less Uncontested Avoidance than plate tanks, so in practice, plate tanks will be better at Avoiding blows from Epics than Brawlers are!

Max Health / Max Power

Max Health depends on a character's level, Spells/Combat arts/AAs that increase Max Health, and the Stamina attribute.

Max Power depends on level, Spells/Combat arts/AAs that increase Max Power, and the characters' Primary Attributes.

Primary Attributes

The Primary Attributes of the different classes are[1]:

• for Guardians – Strength
• for Berserkers – Strength
• for Paladins - Strength and Wisdom
• for Shadowknights - Strength and Intelligence
• for Bruisers – Strength
• for Monks – Strength

• for Troubadours - Agility and Intelligence
• for Dirges - Agility and Intelligence
• for Swashbucklers - Agility and Strength
• for Brigands - Agility and Strength
• for Assassins - Agility and Strength
• for Rangers - Agility and Strength

• for all priests: Wisdom

• for all mages: Intelligence

Autoattacks

Auto-attacks are physical attacks (melee or ranged) that are made automatically when you're in Auto-attack mode and standing close to your target.

The Auto-attack range is shorter than for most Combat Arts, so if you're casting Combat Arts you may not notice you are standing too far away to Auto-attack.

If you're in Auto-attack mode, Auto-attacks occur automatically in between Spells and Combat Arts, even if you're queuing them so they are cast without interruption (chaining them). However, an Auto-attack always has to wait until the current Spell/Combat Art is finished.

Some people make a special chat window for their Auto-attacks, or assign a different colour to Auto-attack messages. That way it's easier to see if you're missing out on Auto-attacks.

The Delay listed on your weapon determines how long time must pass between each Auto-attack, but this time is modified by Haste (see below). Use the command /weaponstat to see your actual Delay.

These days, all melee classes can do a substantial amount of Auto-attack damage, and paying attention to Auto-attacks can significantly increase your DPS.

Haste and DPS modifiers

The DPS modifier increases your damage per Auto-attack (roughly speaking, how hard you swing/throw/stab/shoot).

The Haste modifier increases your Auto-attack speed (roughly speaking, how fast you swing/throw/stab/shoot).

Haste and DPS only affect Auto-attacks. They do not affect the casting time or damage of Combat Arts or Spells. Increasing casting times is achieved through Spell Haste.

Both Haste and DPS are numbers between 0 and 200, and are visible in your Persona window. Both numbers translate into a percentage between 0% and 125% on a diminishing returns curve[1], which is visible when you hold your mouse over them.

0% DPS means you will make the Auto-attack damage that is listed on your weapon. 17% DPS means you will do 1.17 times that damage, and so on.

0% Haste means you will swing your weapon with the Delay listed on it in Auto-attack mode. 17% Haste means you will swing your weapon 1.17 times as often during a minute, and so on.

Let's say you have a weapon with a 1.5 second delay. At normal Haste (0%), this means you will make an Auto-attack every 1.5 seconds. With 100% Haste, you will make twice as many Auto-attacks in the same time, which means your weapon delay is halved: 1.5s/2 = 0.75s. A Haste of 25% will give an Auto-attack delay of 1.5s/1.25 = 1.2s, and so on.

Effects of Haste and DPS

In theory, increasing DPS and Haste by the same percentage will increase your damage by the same amount.

Increased Haste has the added benefit of making procs go off more often. 39% Haste will theoretically make your procs trigger 1.39 times as often, for instance.

However, increased Haste may also cause your Combat Arts/Spells to interfere more with your Auto-attacks. Auto-attacks can only be made in between Combat Arts/Spells. As you increase your Haste, your Auto-attacks will be spaced closer and closer, and will spend more time waiting for a Spell or Combat Art to finish. This gives a penalty to your Auto-attack damage, which will, in general, become worse with increased Haste.

Say, for example, that your Auto-attack Delay is 1.1 seconds after Haste is applied, and you're chaining Combat Arts. Most Combat Arts last 1s (0.5s casting time + 0.5s recovery time), so an Auto-attack can only take place between every second Combat Art, effectively increasing your Autoattack Delay to 2 seconds! For melee classes, this can have a significant effect on total damage output.

(Note: Replace 1s with the actual times required for your Spells/Combat Arts, after Spell Haste is applied. Use the /weaponstat command to see your actual Delay.)

There are two ways to deal with these problems:

1. Time your Combat Arts so they always occur occur between two Auto-attacks. With some training, it's even possible to see your Auto-attacks occur on-screen, and time your Combat Arts to this. Having a dedicated chat window for your combat info, and/or making Auto-attacks messages a different colour, will also help.
2. Tweak your Auto-attack Delay by using weapons with different Delays. If you don't want the trouble of timing your Combat Arts, try to use a weapon with a delay of a whole number of seconds after Haste is applied.

According to EQ2 dev Chris Kozak, there is no lower limit for weapon delay[3,4]:

The only cap on weapon speed is having your max haste at 100%. So a 1.2 weapon doesn't hit any mythical minimum delay barriers as some might believe.

Procs

Procs are effects that have a chance to be triggered by an event. When they go off, the effect is "processed", hence the name "proc". Typical procs include

• armour imbuements that have a chance to heal you when you are being hit
• weapons with built in "extra" damage, like a club that has a chance to deal additional heat damage with each blow
• poisons, which have a chance of dealing poison damage to your foe when you hit them with a melee or ranged attack
• buffs that give extra damage each time you attack
• AA's that have a chance to grant stun immunity on a group ally each time you cast a beneficial spell on them

Procs that are triggered by a physical attack, will trigger both on Autoattacks and on Combat Arts, and both on Ranged and Melee attacks. The wording in spell descriptions is often wrong or confusing, though.

Procs should only trigger on the first attack of a Double Attack[9].

When using one weapon in each hand, only the one in your primary hand will trigger procs. However, your primary weapon will trigger procs embedded on both weapons. The proc on your weapon will not be wasted because you place it in your offhand.

Proc rates

Procs are designed to trigger the same number of times per minute, regardless of how fast your weapon, Combat Art or Spell is. The proc rate (number of procs per minute) is only affected by

• Haste for Auto-attacks
• Spell Haste for Spells and Combat Arts

A haste of, for example, 18, will make you attack 21% faster than normal, which means your procs will go off 1.21 times as often, and so on.

Spamming Combat Arts without interruption could theoretically double your proc rate, since procs are triggered by both Combat Arts and Autoattacks. But that assumes that no Auto-attacks are lost because Combat Arts "get in the way" of them.

Most or all Area Effects trigger procs on all targets they hit, which can increase the number of procs you make even more.

Proc chances

The chance for each individual Spell, Combat Art or Autoattack to trigger a proc is calculated using only two factors: the base proc rate, and the Delay of the attack.

For instance, let's say you are Autoattacking using a weapon with a 3-second delay. That means you have the potential to attack 60/3 = 20 times per minute. A proc that triggers on the average 2 times per minute, will then have a chance of 2/20 = 0.10 = 10% to trigger on each Autoattack.

If you apply 25% Haste, the chance to trigger on each Autoattack will still be 10%, but you will make 25% more Autoattacks in a minute, so your proc rate (number of procs per minute) will go up. A proc that triggers an average of 2 times per minute, will now trigger an average of 2.5 times per minute.

Interpreting proc rates

The way EQ2 treats procs has been changed a number of times, and spell/item descriptions have not always been updated correctly. Use this guide to figure out what the actual proc rate for your spell/item is.

Proc rates are sometimes given in this form:

"This effect has a 4.5% chance to trigger each time you attack".

However, this description assumes you are using an attack with the "standard" delay of 3 seconds. If you have any other delay, the proc chance is modified to keep the average number of procs per minute constant.

For auto-attacks, the delay is the one that is listed on your weapon.

For Spells and Combat Arts, the delay is the casting time plus the recovery time.

For instance, if the proc chance for a physical attack is given as 4.5%, a weapon with a 3 second Delay will have a 4.5% chance to trigger on each hit. A weapon with a 6 second Delay will have 9% chance to trigger on each hit, since you only swing it half as many times during a minute. A Combat Art with a 1 second Delay (0.5s casting + 0.5s recovery) will have roughly 1.5% chance to trigger on each hit, and so on.

Proc rates may also be given in this form:

"This effect will trigger an average of 1.5 times per minute".

This description assumes that your Haste and Spell Haste is 0%. With Haste (for Autoattacks) and Spell Haste (for Spells/Combat Arts), your average number of procs per minute will increase proportionally. Double the attack speed, will give double the number of procs per minute.

Sometimes, no specifics are given about the proc rate, like this:

"Each time you attack, there is a chance [...]"

In these cases, the proc rate is usually the "standard" 1.8 times per minute (which is equivalent to a 9% chance to proc on each swing of a 3 second delay weapon).

Diminishing Returns

Since Game Update #29 (the release of Echoes of Faydwer), many stats have diminishing returns, that is, adding one more point to the stat has less and less effect the higher you get.

This includes:

• All Mitigations (the increase in damage absorption diminishes)
• Avoidance (the increase in chance to avoid physical attacks diminishes)
• Haste (the increase in Autoattack speed diminishes)
• DPS (the increase in damage per Autoattack diminishes)

The diminishing returns curve is relative to your current level. If you're, say, level 50, your mitigation cap is much lower, and the diminishing returns kick in much earlier, than if you're level 70.

Area effects

against mesmerized enemies

Mesmerized enemies are now immune to area effects. Using an area effect attack will only wake up the enemy you're targeting, not its friends.

from pets

Of the Summoner pets, the Tank and Mage pets do area effect attacks. The Scout pet only does single-target damage.

Criticals

Every attack has a chance to do critical damage. This is supposed to model the situation when you get something "just right", for instance, when your arrow hits an enemy right in the eye, and causes more damage than a simple chest wound would.

In the same way, healing effects have a chance to cause critical healing.

Both critical damage and critical healing events are called criticals or crits. The process of doing critical damage/healing is called critting.

All Autoattacks, Spells and Combat Arts that do healing or damage, seem to have a chance to crit.

Leanan on the Venekor server has done experiments with criticals[6], and has arrived at the following formulas:

• Autoattacks and spells do (Max damage + 1) to (Max damage * 1.3) when critting. This also goes for healing spells.
• Combat arts do 1.3 times their normal damage when critting.

Spells/Combat Arts that cause a predetermined number of damage/healing effects, like DoTs and HoTs, only have a chance to crit on the first effect. This also goes for spells like the Warlock's Rift: It causes one point of damage directly, then levitates the mob and causes around 4000 points of crushing damage. Only the first, single point of damage has a chance to crit, making critical damage meaningless as far as that spell is concerned.

Damage and healing effects caused by procs have a chance to crit each time the proc triggers.

Hate

Since GU #40, you can view the hate modifier (how much your hate gain is increase/reduced due to buffs, hate transfers, etc) in your Persona window. This makes the Hate system in EQ less opaque and may actually make it possible to document it.

Hate list

It seems that (unconfirmed):

• Each mob maintains a hate list
• The hate list contains all players the mob "remembers", and a numerical value that represents how much hate it "feels" towards each of them.
• The mob will try to attack the person first on the hate list, but it won't automatically switch targets as soon as someone else gets higher hate - it seems like the hate has to pass a "threshold" before the mob switches targets.
• If the mob is unable to attack the person of their choice - for instance, if the person is standing at range and the mob is rooted - it will try the next highest person on their hate list, until it finds someone it can attack.
• When a person dies, it is completely removed from the hate list (the mob "forgets" them).

Hate gain

It is generally believed that:

• 1 point of damage causes you to gain 1 point of hate with the mob.
• 1 point of healing causes less than 1 point of hate.

Caps

According to Chris Kozak, developer at SoE, there is a 50% cap on Hate transfers, siphons, gains and reductions[5]:

You can stack hate transfers/siphons but they will cap out at 50%. The same applies to hate gain/reduction which also cap at 50%. Spells cast by the same class obviously won't stack but otherwise they will.

Exactly what this means is not clear. Does the cap apply to the giver, to the receiver, or to both? If the receiver caps out, but not the giver, will the giver still get full hate reduction? If three people transfer 20% hate each to someone, whose hate transfer will be reduced to keep the total under 50%?

Experience

Chris Kozak on Achievement Experience[8]:

You will actually get slightly less if the quest is red con to you. When an event is above your true level then it uses your level instead of the events level to calculate the xp amount. It's not a huge amount if you are just slightly below the level and probably won't even be noticed. On stuff like collections or explorations where people run their low levels through the higher level events then it will be a significant impact.

In other words, don't hand in collection quests or explore areas far above your level. It also means that a quest will give you the most experience points if you're precisely the level it's listed as or higher.

Level differences

... for quest updates

To get quest updates for mob kills, your level needs to be at least 3/4 of the level of the highest player in the group, rounded up. But the level difference never needs to be less than 6 levels, and can never be more than 15 levels. The level of the mob does not matter.

... for combat experience

To get experience for mob kills, the average level of your group can be no more than nine levels above the mob's level. (unconfirmed)

... for quest experience

Even grey quests give experience, although a small amount.

Notes

[1] Since Game Update #29 on 14 November 2006 (the Echoes of Faydwer release)
[2] Ripostes are treated as a special case of Parries. Normally, 20% of all successful parries will be Ripostes. This percentage may be increased using AA's.
[3] Chris Kozak's post was lost in the EQ2 forum transition, but is mentioned in a discussion here (the quote is taken from the same post that LorandakV links to). The mention is also cached here.
[4] This was written before the Haste cap was raised to 125% in Game Update #29.
[5] Official EQ2 forums on 23 July 2007. Also cached here.
[6] Official EQ2 forums on 22 March 2007. Also cached here.
[7] Two users describe Tsunami failing here on 25 June 2007. Also cached here.
[8] Official SoE Forums on 31 July 2007. Also cached here.
[9] Official SoE Forums on 5 June 2007. Also cached here.
[10] A user describes an experiment with the +Parry adornment on the official SoE forums on 2 August 2007. Also cached here.