For the love of god, please, rework DEXTERITY. (Updated)

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RodHull wrote:

You are right of course that when it says XX% damage reduction that this is based on a somewhat unrealistic set of numbers which are unlikely to occur while actually playing.

The exact same thing can be said of evasion though. Yeah so damage reduction will rarely function as well as it suggests, but neither will evasion. Just as damage reduction is reduced or ignored so is evasion. Most higher level creatures have very high accuracy ratings, this directly modifies (in a negative way) your evasion rating.

Thats why im comparing the character sheet number. Cause by and large they give good grounds for comparison. Im not suggesting they directly translate in game, but they are both (DR and Evasion) based on a similar standard equation. So if its true that DR is going to be lower in real terms, its also true that evasion will itself be lower.

I thought I'd pop in here and comment.
While it's true that the chance to evade, and the physical damage reduction, shown in the character screen, are estimates, the chance to evade will, in general, be a pretty good estimate assuming you're fighting monsters of your level. We know how much accuracy we expect such monsters to have - there aren't that many which differ wildly.
Damage is much, much harder to estimate accurately, and as such the estimate of damage reduction is more likely to be off. There are several reasons for this, and the major ones which come to mind are:
1) Monsters don't always deal the same damage.
While monsters have a set accuracy rating, they have a range of damage, such as 200 - 400. Where a particular hit falls in that range will have a big effect on damage reduction for that hit. This is a factor that's not there for accuracy, which is the same between hits.
2) Monster damage ranges vary much more than accuracy.
Monsters aren't balanced based on damage dealt, they're based on DPS. Once we have the DPS that monster needs, we can work out the damage it should do per hit based on how quickly it attacks, which can vary wildly between different monsters for all kinds of reasons- from what looks good with the art to how we decide to separate different monster types. As such, for monsters of a given level, their damage ranges per hit will likely be significantly more varied than their accuracy.
3) Critical Strikes.
Critical Strikes happen, and have a huge effect on damage for that hit, and absolutely no effect on accuracy. Yet another factor that makes estimation of damage reduction much less accurate than of chance to evade.
4) More in-game factors affect damage than accuracy
Monster accuracy is increased by the accuracy mod, and the accuracy aura.
Monster damage is increased by damage mods, critical strike mods, two different damage auras, skill use by some monsters (skills do different damage to the default attack), rarities (magic/rare/unique monsters inherently have increased damage, but not accuracy), and party size (damage scales with party size, accuracy doesn't).
There are simply far more things which can increase damage above the expected "normal" values, compared to those that increase accuracy.

So while both "chance to evade" and "estimated physical damage reduction" are both estimates based on an expected average for monsters of your level, the estimation of chance to evade is reasonably accurate, where the estimation of damage reduction is likely to be wildly off for some hits. When we changed to the current damage reduction mechanics, we stopped estimating physical damage reduction on the character screen because we didn't feel it was accurate enough to bother doing - it's back now not because it's more accurate, but because people apparently prefer even a very inaccurate estimation to none at all (and because we put in some work to make an estimate of average damage for monster level). We never considered taking out the chance to evade estimation, as it never had this problem.

In short, it's not correct that because they're both estimations, they're equivalent in how accurate those estimations are.

I'm following this thread with interest, and I'm certainly not saying that evasion is perfectly fine as-is, but I thought that clearing that up might help the discussion move forward.

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faerwin wrote:

Unless it was changed back again, it shouldn't be the case.

You are correct -I'd forgotten that changed.

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faerwin wrote:

Edit: Also mark, you forgot that armour isn't doing anything against attacks that deal elemental damage while evasion do.

I didn't forget it, it just wasn't relevant to my central point, which was the less accurate nature of estimated physical damage reduciton compared to estimated chance to evade.

The average monster damage estimation is accurate for a standard hit from a default attack of a monster of that level. I don't know if it accounts for critical strikes, I'm certain it doesn't account for any of the things I mentioned in 4) in my post.

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RabidRabbit wrote:

Related question: how exactly are blue and yellow mobs enhanced (not counting the special mods they might have)? Do they always have more hp? deal more damage? hit with higher accuracy?

Magic, rare and unique monsters have the following, increasing more with each rarity:
Increased Life
Increased Experience
Increased Drop Rarity & Quantity
Increased Damage
Increased Flask Charges Granted
Reduced chance to flee

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Sev wrote:

The second factor nobody has addressed is Endurance. STR builds gain the easiest access to Endurance charges and skills in the game. This makes sense and normally I wouldn't make a big deal about it, but it's the mechanics of Endurance that I find troubling enough that I need to bring them up specifically.

Endurance Charges as reflected on the character screen do not add a bonus to armor, rather, it adds 5% to your Damage Reduction regardless of whether you have 10% Damage Reduction or 70%. I may be mistaken, but this carries the implication that Endurance's DR% increase is calculated entirely separately from Armor's formula, and in fact is simply an additive +5% bonus to contribute to reaching the 75% DR% cap.

This is intentional. It's an important part of the design of the charge system that the base effects of all the charges are useful to all the classes. This is also why frenzy grants cast speed as well as attack speed. If endurance charges provided an increase to armour, they would be of much less use to non-str classes, which isn't how the charges are supposed to work.

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Sev wrote:

This is a very big issue. This means that Endurance Charges, unlike Armor, do NOT scale linearly, and are NOT weak against strong attacks. IF this is the case then the entire point of STR classes being weak against strong attacks is COMPLETELY out the window. You can have 0 armor and 8 endurance charges and you'll be mitigating 40% of all incoming physical damage, be they melee or projectiles or for 100 or 1000 damage.

The point was never for "str classes" to be weak against large hits, it was for armour, specifically, to be weaker against large hits - which it is.