AP vs DP, and gear requirements.

[iller]

First off, this isn't a topic to condone high gear Floors or exclude anyone, it's mainly a request for a clear Vision forward on it and full transparency of the issue at hand.  For someone like me in particular, who easily goes 30+ failstack on every enhancement attempt above +10 ... the issue of gearscore is already contentious enough  (and is part of why I've always had falling-outs with heavily RNG based games Vs. known-quantity Crafting-heavy games).   If any of this information is out of Date, plz feel free to correct it

 

Now for some generalizations (from main forum findings it would take me a long time to find to link as Citations):

• DP doesn't matter, unless yours is under 190 ... in which case you just get insta "Deleted" by anyone with 140 or more AP.
• DP over 200 for "evasion" purposes doesn't matter either to really high Gearscore players since most of them are stacking and enchanting gear with +Accuracy scaling per echant.
• Level doesn't have a drastic impact on ACC vs. Evasion (DP) unless you're separated by more than 4 levels from the opponent.
• AP scales and contributes way more damage than "Carnage" Suffixes (+damage to humans)
• No developer has outright stated how Carnage suffix interacts against DP.
• HIGH levels of DP in general scales very poorly at its main job of reducing face-value AP damage yet high levels of AP continues to scale quite excessively on certain ranged classes (and possibly ninja, and Awakened-ranger too)
• [[*controversial / speculatory]] This in effect means that even in smaller fights, players who focus on DP are considered cannon-fodder against 'High' AP focused players.  Therefore additional players who are also cannon fodder generally have to be allotted to that squad for outnumbering purposes just for it to uphold pressure w/ grapples against that Ranged/AOE high AP team.
• Most survival for any DP focused build comes more from mobility, Shields, I-Frame length, and uptime of SuperArmor as opposed to raw DP/resists.  Especially when they're bound and being hit by Conditional Critical DMG.
• Most "Resistance" accessories/stats; as in: not resistance to DMG but resistance to status effects (knocks/stiffness) are still considered ineffective due to the Multi-proc'ing mechanics of Ultimate skills which apply their crowdcontrol effect more than once per second and thus reroll on that chance to stun or in cases of slows have been observed stacking from chain-lightning due to poor coding.  Combined with resistance generally capping at 60% in PvP, this means most CC will get through everything but Shield-guarded player and IFrame spammers.
• A lot of this goes out the window regardless once Awakened Weapons go live in which case everyone including former "Tank" classes (esp Warriors) pretty much 1-combos everyone else if they're grappled/bound
• A minmaxxed Horse that breaks the netcode easily can make for a much better "distraction multiplier" than a slow Melee class with a shield and high DP. Especially if its rider can activate super-armor while mounted.

Standard disclaimers apply like Pearl Abyss possibly changing large systems at the drop of a hat or borrowing entire mechanics and content from other media.  The point being that these are considerations that *should* take precedent over a "combined" gear score. Alternatively, just having more Raw HP + SuperArmor(ignores CC's) might even be a more effective path to fielding various cannon Fodder squads aka: something resembling a FrontLine when or if some kind of gear Floor was placed on the COTP chapter

 

Lastly:  IMO, proven attendance is still more important than any gear score. Thus a google Docs signup sheet (that maybe denotes Ranged vs. Melee class & AP) telling you how many people for sure attend(ed) each event, tells you more about the strength of your force than the averaged minimum ("floor") gear score.  

 

TL;DR:  A.P. > IFrames > Latency > Class/Awakens  > Accuracy  >>>>>>  D.P. > Resistance > "player Skill"

[Valy]

wow....nice post. Very informative and great for current leveling struggles.

[Hamlet]

There was a missed point with some of this. I will not challenge that DP does not scale as well as AP, however it was proven that evasion is tied to enhancement levels on gear, so higher enhancement levels works in reducing the amount of damage you take, as well as reducing the amount of hits you take.

 

As far as DP not mattering, anyone with a lot of experience in PvP can tell you that it's 100% noticable when fighting an opponent with sub 200dp vs one with 240+ (this essentially being the difference between full +15 vs full DUO). Taking it to the next tier and adding full Tri which is very expensive, an additional 32dp is nothing to scoff at, ask anyone tried to fight me before.

 

The last note I wan to touch on is enhancing, we've all seen the extreme cases of getting high fails stacks on a particular enchant. That is an extreme case and would lead me to challenge a claim of getting 30+ stacks on all enchants past +10. It's a numbers game with fixed math behind it, it all evens out in the long run

 

Edit: spelling

[iller]

 however it was proven that evasion is tied to enhancement levels on gear, 

 

That's a good point to bring up...    It might not help them much against those couple of really top end geared players but it could improve their survival in zerg situations where not everyone they're facing has high Accuracy.  Thanks for adding that.

That's been pretty much my main beef with the game since release is that it looks on the surface like the coded "scaling" of most all Item systems seems to vastly favor Offense and DPS improving stats over Defensive and support Stats.  If we can get more examples of them bucking that trend going forward, then a DP build might actually start to become a significant contribution.

 

But meanwhile it probably also should be mentioned: The market's begun to stabilize a lot more so AP items are becoming a lot more available and gradually "cheaper" compared to the overall inflation rate.