When to repair Armour?

[chretien]

First of all that grab bag is from 26th of April 2002, most of the information you find in that old grab bags are outdated. Second, it doesn't explain anything really it just says that quality and condition is important wich is true. That formula AF*con*qua, if it is that simple, you're just guessing that 'con' in the formula = 'con' on your armour. That can't be true if you read the later grab bags.

It's not really a guess, Sanya explains exactly what Con means in the formula. While old grab bags are often outdated, nothing in later answers seems to contradict this basic game mechanic.

Most likely 'con' in the formula is a variable that relies on multiple factors, but it doesn't vary that much (if at all) unless it reaches a new stage. Here's another hint towards this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sanya Thomas
Condition also plays a role - when you get messages saying such and such could use repairs, you're losing effectiveness.
This message you get everytime your con has dropped by 10%, so perhaps the variable in the formula hasn't changed until it's 0.9 instead of 1.0 - most of formulas the game use behave like this, places where it would be mathematically correct (according to what we learned at school) to round up, the game machine rounds down instead. All the numbers between 90-99% con is most likely treated as the same number, possibly 1.0 (as 100%), while 80-89% is treated like 0.9 (as 90%), 71-79% like 0.8 or 0.7, and 70% like 0.1 or 0.

'Qua' in the formula is something entirely different, and probably has a more important role in it aswell. While there's no difference between 96 and 97% con armour piece, there's a big difference between 96 and 97% qua for a lvl50. When you meet an enemy in combat and your stats meet his stats to determine what's gonna happen, all the stats have been multiplied and divided with different numbers and variables before they are put up against eachother, and then the highest number wins. If the numbers are equal to eachother more factors come into play. 'Con' and 'Qua' are not treated equally in these formulas.

That's a lot of guessing which directly contradicts the answers posted by Sanya in the grab bag and quoted by you. You say that 'there's no difference between 96% and 97% con when Sanya says that the base AF is multiplied by both the con and the quality. Also the formula she gives indicates pretty clearly that quality and con are treated equally. AF*condition*quality doesn't weight con or quality differently according to my maths. Sanya says it's an exponential drop which implies that it is a curve rather than a series of defined steps. She says 'you won't notice much difference anywhere in the 90s' which is not the same thing as your guess that there's no difference anywhere in the 90s. What she says backs up my earlier post rather than contradicts it. 94% of 102AF is not a great deal different to 100% of 102AF, for lower values of AF, the difference will be even tinier. All of which seems to confirm the answer in the older grab bag and my post earlier in this thread.

 

[chretien]

It's a simple test to show so here you go. I let the gloves on my scout drop to 95% con then repaired them. 5% con repaired = 5 effective AF returned. My scout is level 36 so the af72 gloves should be at optimal level for him.

Here are screenies of the delve:
Before the repair.


And after.

 

[Kaun_IA]

i repair armor when it hits 99%
weapons when they hit 99%
items that have + skill on it.. when they hit 90% (think u will loose + skill when they go down 70%)
items that have only stats and resists... never

 

[SoulFly]

Chretien is right about everything he says about armour, condition and durability. Though, your armour usually is high enough quality to cap you out, even when they wear out and their effective AF changes, this is why you might not notice a drop in your AF when they wear down, unless the condition of all your pieces are down alot.

In short:

Weapons:

The condition of a weapon directly affects its DPS, a 99% condition 16.5 dps weapon has an effective DPS of 16.3. and just to clear something out, the quality of a weapon only affects the DPS of it.

Armour:

As Chretien stated, when you repair your armour, you lose an equal amount of durability, +1%. Therefore 96% condition is one of the most efficient points to repair your armour at, as you will be losing 5% durability. Why is 5% such a great number? Because an MP item has 130% durability and can thus be repaired 26 times before it reaches 0% durability. The quality of an armour piece affects how much AF it gives you. The loss of af from 99% quality pieces can also be countered by using a base af buff.

The condition of the armour has an effect on two things.

1) It affects the armour factor of the armour piece, but as said before, you can use a base AF buff to not mind about this, BUT:

2) The condition of your armour also has an effect on how much damage you take. An example of how it works:

Let's say that your chest piece is at 85% condition and it gets hit by a weapon which is at 100% cond. In addition to it's damage, the weapon deals 15% more damage to that piece and this same formula affects all the pieces that get hit.

In short: The condition of a weapon vs the condition of your armour affect eachother. If the both of them are on equal percentages, there are no positive\negative effects in play.

I hope this post answered your questions about AF and what affects what

 

[SoulFly]

My memory was playing tricks on me and couldn't edit it further! BLAH !

The quality of a weapon affects the damage it can deal to an armour piece.

if a 100% qual weapon strikes a 99% qual armour piece, the weapon gets an additional 1% damage bonus.

 

[SoulFly]

if a 100% qual weapon strikes a 99% qual armour piece, the weapon gets an additional 1% damage bonus.

And the other way around, so there are negative effects.

I'm not so sure about the damage talk I posted. I would say it's just X% more damage on the piece, regardless of weapon condition. Quality does apply.

(armour at 85%, gets hit by whatever, 15% more damage to that piece)

Knackered now :<

 

[pjuppe]

i read somewhere that the best time to repair was at 90-91% and the author seemed to make a soild point so that's what i've been doing. maybe i should start repairing at 96% now

 

[Muylaetrix]

I always repair armour at 96% and weapons and staves at 97%. Con affects focus so it is definitely worth treating your staff the same as you'd treat the sword on your melee character.

i am not conviced con is affecting focus tbh.

maybe your spec has an influence on it, but with 50+20 ice, i notice NO noticable difference in the number of cast i get out when spam casting pbaoe till power runs out.

At worst the diff would be 24 vs 25 casts. which can be atributed to slight timing diff`s and powerless casts due to jacinas.

 

[Muylaetrix]

Also, with AF, on my cleric, i notice no reall difference in damage i take with gear at 70%, as long as i have a base AF buff that apparantly gives no raise in AF, but seems to make up for the degraded armour.

 

[Leel]

I didn't think focus affected spells based on power percentage, aka theurg pets and warlock spells. And like muylaetrix, I'm not convinced either.

 

[chretien]

i am not conviced con is affecting focus tbh.

maybe your spec has an influence on it, but with 50+20 ice, i notice NO noticable difference in the number of cast i get out when spam casting pbaoe till power runs out.

At worst the diff would be 24 vs 25 casts. which can be atributed to slight timing diff`s and powerless casts due to jacinas.

Grab bag explaining the focus bonuses.

Q: (Insert Focus Staff Question here)

A. Here is the updated explanation behind focus staff use. Bear in mind that it's a complicated piece of code drawing from many different formulas, and I may add something to this next week:


When you are not using any focus staff at all, a spell will cost you 120% of its delved cost to cast, provided it is a spell that uses focus. i.e. Healing classes do not use focus for their spells.

A focus staff will only benefit you if it has focus bonus in the same line as that spell, as modified below. (i.e. A staff with 50 levels in Mana will help Mana spells but not Void spells)


If you are using a focus staff, a spell will cost you between 80-120% of its delved power cost to cast, depending upon several factors.

If the condition of the staff is not 100%, you will not get the full focus bonus, and it will cost more power to cast spells.
If your modified spec level* is below the level of the spell, you will not get the full focus bonus, and it will cost more power to cast the spell.
If the focus level on the staff is below the level of the spell, you will not get the full focus bonus, and it will cost more power to cast the spell.

Note that all three of the above conditions factor into power cost. Thus, To get the the full 80% cost on your spells, you would use a 100% condition staff with a focus bonus greater than the level of the spell you want to cast, and cast a spell that is lower in level than your modified spec level. As each of these factors (condition, spec level, and focus level) gets further away from the optimal condition, the power cost slides from 80% to 120%.

 

[Dr_Evil]

It's not really a guess, Sanya explains exactly what Con means in the formula. While old grab bags are often outdated, nothing in later answers seems to contradict this basic game mechanic.


That's a lot of guessing which directly contradicts the answers posted by Sanya in the grab bag and quoted by you. You say that 'there's no difference between 96% and 97% con when Sanya says that the base AF is multiplied by both the con and the quality. Also the formula she gives indicates pretty clearly that quality and con are treated equally. AF*condition*quality doesn't weight con or quality differently according to my maths. Sanya says it's an exponential drop which implies that it is a curve rather than a series of defined steps. She says 'you won't notice much difference anywhere in the 90s' which is not the same thing as your guess that there's no difference anywhere in the 90s. What she says backs up my earlier post rather than contradicts it. 94% of 102AF is not a great deal different to 100% of 102AF, for lower values of AF, the difference will be even tinier. All of which seems to confirm the answer in the older grab bag and my post earlier in this thread.

OK, you didn't understand what I mean. Sanya never tells you the exact formula, she only gives the basics, and don't tell you how they work.

Take that "formula" for example:

AF*Con*Qua

This is a simplified version of the formula with hidden values in it, does not mean you just put in the numbers directly from your character sheets.

You assumed:

AF = 700
Con = 0.85
Qua = 0.85

700*0.85*085 = 505.75

And here is what is more likely: (I'm not telling you it's like this, but it's something similar to this - although this is simplified, there are most likely more modifiers like a 'Con' modifier and a 'Qua' modifier.)

AF = 700
Con = 0.8/2
Qua = (8.5/10)*2

700 * 0.45 * 1.7 = 535.5

There is more to it than this, it will also be mulitplied with Bonus on the piece and with another multiplier that will make it a number that can be compared to the enemy's Damage number. If say your Defence number for Evade (Dex,Qui,Evade*Modifiers) ends at 9325 and your enemy's modified Weaponskill number ends at 10124, the blow won't be evaded, and then it sends it to the next Defence, Parry (Dex*Modifier*Parry). The Defence number for Parry ended at 10212, so the chance of Parrying were close to 100% but still went through as there's always a chance. Now it's the Damage number that is gonna get compared to the Armour number. This will be something like WeapDmg*Spd*Qua*Con with a lot of modifiers aswell ofc. Say it ends at 6134 and is compared to the Armour number at 5355 to make it easy. It is determined it will hit, and then another formula comes in to make out the damage. And then a formula that makes a Style modifier and adding the Style damage. More examples:

((Growth Rate * Weapon Spec) * Effective Speed) / Unstyled Damage Cap = Style Bonus Multiplyer

There's always a formula that determines the variables.
Effective Speed = SPD * (1-((Quick-60)/500))*(1-(Haste/100))

Parry = (5 + (Parry/2) + MoParry + Buff) * (Dex * Multiplier)

Sure Sanya told you a formula, but she's not allowed to tell you the modifyers and multipliers in the variables. It's just like the old Dex vs Qui for Evade. When it says the Dex and Qui both affects your chance to evade, people assume that they do it equally, but the truth is that the Dex multiplier is probably different than the Qui multiplier in a way that makes Dex more important. And that's why testing showed that Dex had a bigger impact on Evade, and they called Mythic liers, but Mythic said "Oh no, we didn't lie, we just didn't give you the whole truth".

 

[chretien]

OK, you didn't understand what I mean. Sanya never tells you the exact formula, she only gives the basics, and don't tell you how they work.
<snip>
Sure Sanya told you a formula, but she's not allowed to tell you the modifyers and multipliers in the variables. It's just like the old Dex vs Qui for Evade. When it says the Dex and Qui both affects your chance to evade, people assume that they do it equally, but the truth is that the Dex multiplier is probably different than the Qui multiplier in a way that makes Dex more important. And that's why testing showed that Dex had a bigger impact on Evade, and they called Mythic liers, but Mythic said "Oh no, we didn't lie, we just didn't give you the whole truth".

Obviously there's more to the overall AF than simply AF*con*quality. Sanya says as much in the grab bag - it's also modified by factors such as character level, bonuses, and a host of hidden stuff that only a Mythic developer could see. However that's not the point. You suggested that there was no difference in effective AF between 91 and 99% con. I said that there was and showed evidence to back it up. I never once said that AF is only modified by con and quality.

 

[evzy]

hmmmm no wonder there is lag when all these formula's need working out as to how hard I am pwning at any given moment.....

 

[Reno]

i am not conviced con is affecting focus tbh.

maybe your spec has an influence on it, but with 50+20 ice, i notice NO noticable difference in the number of cast i get out when spam casting pbaoe till power runs out.

At worst the diff would be 24 vs 25 casts. which can be atributed to slight timing diff`s and powerless casts due to jacinas.

If the con of your staffs affects your effective spell level before it gets cut of to the cap then you'd see no mana usage difference until 70%.
Example:
70 ice, say 71% con means 49.7 spec left, which is 50. Cap for determining what kind of mana usage you get is 50, so no increased mana usage until 70% when it stops working all together.
But if that 70 ice gets cut off to 50 first and then gets the con modifier applied, you should see some definate differences at 90-95% con.

Danita

 

[Jarahl]

I saw some calcs loooooong time ago, about like Karl said, the optimal time to repair armor is at 97%. Dunno how much dmg weapons loose with 3%, so dunno about that

 

[Svartmetall]

I repair armour at 95%, weapons at 97-98%.

 

[anioal]

i repair armor at 92-93%.
what annoys me most is the insane fast decay rate for cloth and leather armor

 

[Boni]

I saw some calcs loooooong time ago, about like Karl said, the optimal time to repair armor is at 97%. Dunno how much dmg weapons loose with 3%, so dunno about that

Optimal with respect to what? Clearly thats neither optimal with respect to DPS, dur loss, or cash.

Another 'this is the percent, cause my mate down the pubs calculator said so'. Soz to be so harsh, but hey...

 

[Lamp]

Take a RR12 ML10 Pally with ML8 buff-bot. Artifacts. Top ML shield. Template / resists / stats etc fully maxed. Fully buffed. CL5. The works.

Strip him of his armour (head, arms, legs, gloves, boots, chest).

He'd prob still pwn even without armour.

 

[kirennia]

I repair my armor at 90% on my heretic. Sadly we loose con very fast as not only do we have to take more hits before we die, but we're in cloth

The advantage is that our AF doesn't start to go down because of item durability until it gets to around 90% It's because of our self spec AF

 

[Ame]

I repair when I cba. Saw that my SB gear was on 78-83% and never noticed any difference

You still die insanely fast?

 

[Cruhar]

no need to repair cloth unless it got +skill on it, as con only affect the arbsorb of you armor (mean 70% con plate will have 0% arbsorb just like cloth), i belive seeing that 91% was the perfect stop as under 90% you lose con twice as fast

Um... the armourfactor also drops, so there is a fine reason to repair cloth

 

[Siftwind]

Just wondering when people find it best to repair there item in relation to:
Cost
Effectiveness (get hit for more etc )
Making it last longer

This site explains the mechanics of item decay quite well. Thought I'd post as it's relevant to the topic.

Regards,
Sift.