Defense Skills; OR, everything you ever wanted to know about Evade but were too lazy to search for

[Doer]

Questions and misconceptions about the defensive skills and effects thereof come up frequently on EF. I decided to do some research and combine some good sources of information as a resource. If anyone with higher or lower Evader pro standing would like to do some tests of their own to share here so i can add the data points to my plot it would be nice, but even as-is the plot is useful. Edit: Thanks to Steffel i think there's enough data, even if not very rigorously controlled, to call this well enough. I added an additional plot with his data included by scaling and it fits a curve pretty well.


The Skills

To evade is to avoid something, for example, an attack from a mob. Not surprisingly Evade is the principal defense skill. This skill increases as you use it; so, as you are attacked by mobs that do melee damage. For firearms the relevant skill is called Dodge -- you will gain that skill as you are attacked by other players with pistols, rifles or explosives, or by drones, warriors, and troopers. Ranged attacks that are not from firearms (e.g. arrows from TskTsks, electrical bolts from bristlehogs or Tezlapods) all fall under the Evade skill.

VU ~9.0: This VU changed the division between the two defensive types. Dodge now applies to ranged damage. It appears that any mob with an attack range over a certain value must be dodged, while mobs with shorter range must be evaded. While this generally means that ranged attacks are dodged and melee attacks are evaded, mobs with a long reach (e.g. falxangius) fall into the Dodge category, even though their attack is melee. Conversely, a launched attack like the acid from the snablesnots has a short enough range to fall under Evade.

Avoidance is a hidden or unlocked skill that applies to both dodging and evading. It is unlocked by reaching a professional standing of 25 in the Dodger or Evader profession.

Quickness is unlocked at level 55 Evader.

Intuition is most likely unlocked at level 80 Evader.

The Professional Standings (what really counts)

These two primary skills have corresponding professional standings (Evader and Dodger), and those professional standings are the real measure of your avatar's defensive ability. The pro. standings don't just depend on evade and dodge, however: they are a composite of several skills. Therefore, it is important to consider more than just Evade and Dodge when improving your defensive abilities. For example, jdegre's thread established the following skill contributions to the Evader professional standing:

- Evade: 25% (Dodge constitutes 31% of Dodger)
- Agility (*20): 8%
- Athletics: 14% (contribution to Dodger is just 12%)
- Combat Reflexes: 11% (contribution to Dodger is just 10%)
- Courage: 7%
- Alertness: 5%
- Serendipity: 5%
- Avoidance: 6%

The other 19 percent comes from the unlocked skills associated with defense like Quickness and hunting skills like Combat Sense. Knowing these percentages can be very helpful when trying to calculate the least expensive way to chip up to a certain level. As an example, starting from 0 skills it would take 10k levels (10,000 x 25% = 2500) of Evade alone to unlock Avoidance (level 25 Evader), but it is typically unlocked at around 3900 Evade when skilling up naturally because of the contribution of the other skills gained in the process.


How they work

Professional standings in EU range from 0 to 100, they determine when unlocked (hidden) skills are obtained, and they are the numbers EU uses to determine your success at the profession. To use an example most players are familiar with, the hit ability (HA) of a weapon (from 0 to 10) is how likely you are to hit a mob with that weapon. It is also equal to the professional standing in the (Hit) for that weapon type, divided by 10 (0 to 100 for pro. standings, remember?). To continue with the hit ability example, an avatar with 0 HA doesn't miss every single shot and with 10 HA it won't hit every time. The actual percentage ranges from about 80% to 92%. It is reasonable to assume that evading will be similar: even a level 0 Evader will successfully evade some attacks, and a level 100 Evader will still take some hits. Just how much difference a high professional standing in Evader makes is a bit hard to measure, but i did some tests to get an idea.


The Effect of Evader Level

Here is a plot of my results. There are two actual data points on the plot, one for an avatar with Evader level 0.8 and one with Evader level 27.75, along with a linear extrapolation to 0.0 and 100.0 level Evader. The experiment was conducted by wearing the same armor (pixie, which protects about as much as the minimum damage of the mob so as to decay the same every hit) and being attacked by the same mob (Tantillion mature) for a period of 10-20 minutes, followed by a careful determination of the exact armor decay per minute using the sweat/fruit method. This was repeated at least five times for both avatars.

Figure 1a: armor decay[ped]/minute taken from tantillion mature on avatars with 0.8 and 27.75 Evader professional standing with a linear extrapolation to level 100; note that progression must not be linear because the extrapolated effect is negative

The results came as a surprise to me: with a Tantillion mature, the first 27-3/4 levels of Evader out of the 100 available give a 39% increase in evaded attacks. It is immediately apparent from the extrapolation that there must be a nonlinear increase in ability so as not to cross the origin -- in other words, the linear fit is not a good one. The good news seems to be that the first levels of Evader give the most significant improvement. Note that different mobs and mob maturities might be affected differently by one's Evader standing (that was not tested nor confirmed by my experiments).

Using an approximate match by eye between my data and a scaled version of Steffel's data (see later post), i created a composite normalized plot and fit a nonlinear curve to it -- a logarithmic curve. This rather nice fit demonstrates the point made above and shows that, much like skill gains themselves, there is a continuing diminishing return as the level gets higher.

Figure 1b: approximately combined data from Steffel, normalized to relative hits/minute from a hypothetical low-level mob on avatars between 0.8 and 27.75 Evader professional standing with a logarithmic extrapolation to level 100

The relationship of a mob's hit ability to an avatar's level of Evader continues to appear logarithmic. Here is a plot of all the test data to date (2008/3/25):

Figure 1c: combined plot of known mob hit ability versus Evader level data

Misconceptions

One common misconception about defensive skills is that they decrease the amount of damage a mob does when it does hit, an understandable confusion when considering the many traits and abilities that can accomplish this in other RPGs. It just doesn't make sense in the context of the EU system, but to make sure i measured the damage taken from a mob (again Evader level = 27.75):

Figure 2: Normalized damage from a tantillion mature in chronological order; mean = 0.75

As can be seen, the damage ranges between the mob's maximum and 50% of its maximum, just like an avatar with a maxed ability on a gun. If higher evading ability decreases the frequency of high damage hits, the average (mean) of this data should be lower than the midpoint between the maximum and the minimum damage. No such effect is seen: Evader level does not affect the amount of damage taken in a hit, only how often a mob successfully hits.


The Uber Unlocks

Quickness and Intuition are considered to be Evader unlocks, but there is a lack of information about what level is required to obtain them. Dreicc recently reported that Quickness comes at level 55. It is reasoned that Intuition unlocks at level 80 because that is the highest level any skill is known to unlock (Kill Strike is an example), and there is reason to believe that is the case. Considering the changes to the skill system over the past year, it is highly unlikely anyone new will be unlocking these now, anyway.

If you find yourself still confused or with questions after reading this, please post so that i can refine it. Thank you.

[Anathol1977]

Thank you for your research! A very good one!

[steffel]

good post +rep.

let me add a graph from my little evader experiment.

it showes the decay 3 avatars at lvl5,7 and 19 evader had on the same group of mobs for the same time of tanking (decay in %, while lvl5 is 100%).

[rhogenbe]

Nice job.

I can confirm combat sense having influence on evader pro standing.
On reach lvl 29 evader the sole skill gain at that moment in time was combat sense. I was kind of surprised at that moment.

Cheers
Richard
(ingame Siam)

[Doer]

Thanks Steffel; I remember seeing your thread before. I scaled your data to be the best fit (by eye) with my data to a curve, and then fit that curve (logarithmic) mathematically.

I have added the diagram to the original post. It helps illustrate what i had concluded (and makes me wonder if there's any point trying to skill evade at this point considering the curve is just about flat at 28 and the gains in evade-related skills pathetic due to the slowdown -- someone at ~5 pro standing is already halfway to the benefit of level 28 ).

It wouldn't surprise me if the curve actually approaches 50% of the initial value rather than the lower number suggested by the plot. There's significant margin for error here and that's a much rounder number.



Siam: yeah, i saw your post in the other thread: you're the only witness so far.

[LostInEntropia]

I am lazy but still can +rep this fine work

[steffel]

Originally Posted by Doer

...makes me wonder if there's any point trying to skill evade at this point considering the curve is just about flat at 28 and the gains in evade-related skills pathetic due to the slowdown -- someone at ~5 pro standing is already halfway to the benefit of level 28 ).

well, both our tests were with kinda low level mobs, tantillion and rippersnapper. so there is hope that high evade pro stands still show some effect on tanking medium and high end mobs...also, high evader can have an effect in melee pvp, like lvl1 swordsman hits a lvl1 evader as good as a lvl20swordsman hits a lvl20 evader or so...

i tried illustrating this once again, while the green line is the point where you "maxed" the evading of that mob class, which is quite early on low mobs and hard on über mobs.

maybe some übers gonna test tanking falx versus low skilled folks

[Doer]

Originally Posted by steffel

well, both our tests were with kinda low level mobs, tantillion and rippersnapper. so there is hope that high evade pro stands still show some effect on tanking medium and high end mobs...also, high evader can have an effect in melee pvp, like lvl1 swordsman hits a lvl1 evader as good as a lvl20swordsman hits a lvl20 evader or so...

i tried illustrating this once again, while the green line is the point where you "maxed" the evading of that mob class, which is quite early on low mobs and hard on über mobs.

maybe some übers gonna test tanking falx versus low skilled folks

Yes, that's the biggest hole left to investigate, i think. I was careful to test on the same maturity of the same mob in case mob agility &tc does affect the inflection point, but didn't actually do comparative tests across maturity. Nice cartoons, btw.

To be honest i really doubt MA made it all that complex. I mean, if it works the way you surmise it would mean the skill system would make sense.

[Jocke_Julmust]

Originally Posted by Doer

I have added the diagram to the original post. It helps illustrate what i had concluded (and makes me wonder if there's any point trying to skill evade at this point considering the curve is just about flat at 28 and the gains in evade-related skills pathetic due to the slowdown -- someone at ~5 pro standing is already halfway to the benefit of level 28 ).

It wouldn't surprise me if the curve actually approaches 50% of the initial value rather than the lower number suggested by the plot. There's significant margin for error here and that's a much rounder number.

but if you move to a bigger mob I think it will be bigger difference. I think you have more use of a higher evade level against bigger mobs.

[Doer]

Originally Posted by Jocke_Julmust

but if you move to a bigger mob I think it will be bigger difference. I think you have more use of a higher evade level against bigger mobs.

Yes, possibly, but that's not proven to my knowledge and i am just reporting results and not hearsay. It is what Steffel and i were just talking about, though. If someone with 35+ Evader standing is willing to do a test on a big mob we can check this with some nicely spaced data points.