AR, Conviction aura, Ignor target's def...

Hi.
1. Having

Conviction aura -> should I still push AR as much as I can?
2. Having f.e. Grief -> should I still push AR as much as I can?

Finally Tesladin with

Conviction aura (hero) and Grief should maximize his AR or can focus on sth else?

On my hybrid Tesladin with Grief, I'm running an Angelic amulet and ring for the AR. He can kill Ubers fairly easily using

Zeal if I trade out the LoH for Dracs. The extra AR seems to help. (I have HB and FoH maxed for variety in clearing

Chaos Sanctuary)

As far as I remember, as for Dex, enough to max block (75%) with

Holy Shield is considered enough for most Pally builds. Then, add a few charms adding AR,

Raven Frost etc. is pretty standard.

So basically : some AR, yes. Tons of AR will most likely be less useful. Check with Maxroll.

1. No. For the vast majority of enemies, bosses included, this will drop enemies defense to negligible levels where just standard attack rating levels will more than suffice and not be as relevant as other damage related factors you could improve instead. With

Conviction, the biggest to hit chance factor is level difference between character and monster. An exception to the above stated rule is

Baal bc he casts

Frozen Armor. I think the

Conviction minuses from his + percent from

Frozen Armor meaning that depending on the numbers, the aura will still leave

Baal with a chunky bit of armor. However I could be mistaken on this.

2. This question is more dependent on the enemies you are intending to fight. Grief will make

Conviction -defense useless in normal type monsters but only the -25 target defense will impact its to hit chance to bosses, champions or uniques as ignore target defense doesn’t apply to them. With Grief alone, ar is more important. But I’m with necharch in just going with dex needed for max block. You can shore up to hit chance with fine charms which will also increase your damage. If your planing on zealing Ubers, ar would be more important, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but a lot of the to hit chance against them is frozen based on them having such high levels which is half the weight of the ar formula which is here:

%200 * {(Aar/Aar+EDef) * (Alvl/Alvl+Dlvl)}

Aar: attacker attack rating
EDef: enemy defense
Alvl: attacker lvl
Dlvl:

Defender lvl

I think Grief, on normal monsters essentially makes the equation %200 *{alvl/alvl+dlvl}

On bosses:

%200 * {(Aar/Aar+.75EDef) * (Alvl/Alvl+Dlvl)}

My math is weak. So wait for Schnorkis final retort before taking this to heart :p

Actually, could he or someone else clarify convictions impact against +defense? I’m starting to question whether it’s a multiplication or subtraction thing. How does

Conviction work against skills like

Shout or

Defiance? Also, how high is baals

Frozen Armor%? How does this change in tz and with

Über Baal?

Rik wrote: 7 months ago

[..]
My math is weak. So wait for Schnorkis final retort before taking this to heart :p
[..]

Gotta be honest, just glanced at your post, kinda went "seems Rik has this covered, no need to post", then I spotted my name in the corner of my eye...

Soooo thanks to that, ended up reading fully after all and since you asked for it:
Yes, your math is weak
(Also...inc wall of text and numbers! )

More specifically, you're missing some ()'s in there as your formula would ultimately simply work out to 200% * (edef+1) * (dlvl+1) or "minimum hit chance = 400%" (lvl 1, 0 def, only going up from there) which isn't quite accurate.


Actual formula:
% hit = Max(5%,Min(95%, 100% * 2 * (clvl / (clvl+tlvl)) * (AR / (AR+Def))))
clvl being your lvl and tlvl the target's lvl

To put that into more useful context, you're essentially looking at a hit chance somewhere from 5% to 95%, based on a comparison of both, your AR to your target's defense as well as your lvl to your target's lvl (multiplied against one another).

The AR comparison (theoretically) ranges from 0 to 1 (as you can't drop target def below 0).
The lvl comparison from about 0.009 to 0.99 (based on lvls actually in the game).

Using a realistic matchup of "your lvl 90 char vs. ubers (110)", the lvl factor works out to 0.45. Since you're capped at 95% hit chance at best and you get a x2 multiplier base, you ideally want the AR bit to work out to 95 / (200*0.45) = 1.055. Exceeeept...as noted above, the AR part only ranges from 0 to 1 so no matter what, your max hit chance as a lvl 90 will be 90% (200% * 0.45 * 1).

Essentially, the AR piece will never "make up for lack of lvls", due to the upside limit.
At the same time, the AR piece will screw you to the downside as lack of AR will quickly get you closer and closer to that dreaded 0, taking your hit chance to that bottom 5%.

Now, taking actual AR/def into consideration, let's use uber meph as he has the highest base armor of the ubers at 3360 (trusting maxroll with that one ^^).
That'd give you a range of 5% hit chance at 0 AR up to around 73% at 15k AR.
Trying to push up to the lvl-limited 90% is effectively pointless as the multiplier really starts to bite you in the ass. Even hitting 80% for example will require close to 27k AR.

If you look at that through the "Grief lense", you're taking out 25% of the involved defense which makes things far easier. You still start at 5% but will hit 73% at close to 11k AR, rather than 15. (80% drops down to ~20k).

An Infinity

Conviction would take out 83% of that defense, allowing you to hit the same 73% hit not at 11k AR but at less than 2.5k AR already so the impact of that is rather massive. Similarly, you can break 80% at less than 4750 AR. It all suddenly becomes "easily doable".

If you take that even further and consider a pally

Conviction, you'd typically aim for that to be lvl 25 (to max out the -res) at which point you take out a massive 92% target defense. With that, you'll break 73% hit at less than 1250 AR, 80% at less than 2250 and you'd even break 85% at not even 4750 AR.

Even in that case though, trying to get to the 90% you're capped on from the lvl side is rather futile as you'd still need 24k to even get to 89%.

Now, looking at real examples, a barb with nothing but a Grief PB, the dex to wield it, a (p. cuz why not)

Raven and lvl 20 sword mastery (aye, not counting +skills atm) sits at 2671 AR base. That's a fairly bad hit chance of around 46.3%. With some average gear and looking at

Frenzy, you're pushing that to around 6266 or 64% hit. Adding in mediocre dmg/ar charms pushes you to around 8.8k AR or around 70% hit chance.

On the pally side, Grief + dex to wield it +

Raven + lvl 20 fana (as the worse alternative to

Conviction in terms of hit chance) puts you at around 2196 AR or a 41.9% hit chance. Avg gear bumps that to 3.6k AR or ~53% hit and mediocre charms then move you up to ~5.4k AR and ~61.5% hit. With a lvl 1

Zeal (and some pts off torch and the like), that's actually closer to 6.8k and 65.7% hit. ~10.5k and ~72.5% hit if you max out

Zeal (does anyone do that though?! ^^).

Now, the really mean thing is..all of the numbers above are actually worse in reality because against bosses, that -25% defense on Grief only works at half efficiency (same for SUs). I only remembered that after doing the math though so not redoing all of that now... (

Conviction still works in full if I recall correctly)

Either way, the moral of the story is that if you actually intend to smack ubers with your weapon, you want either a really solid amount of AR or you want some sort of

Conviction aura at which point a medium (or rather low if pally conv) amount will do just fine.

As far as

Über Baal is concerned, as far as I remember (which may admittedly be off by now),

Conviction is indeed simply "added" to his

Chilling Armor, meaning it effectively still takes out 92% of his base defense, not his buffed defense. As a result, he'd still sit at something like >12k defense and your hit rate is just gonna suck no matter what. Grief however I believe applied to the full amount on hit (albeit still at half efficiency) so it'd ultimately drop him to something like 10.8k which....is still a pain.

TL;DR:
- If you have

Conviction, you generally shouldn't need to worry about AR beyond the amount you realistically end up at with normal gear anyways. Even more so if that's a "real"

Conviction and not just Infinity. Exceptions apply for targets with %def buffing (e.g.

Über Baal) but those aren't exactly common so f it.
- -%def on Grief and the like helps..but not as much as one might hope or realistically need. You still wanna push AR to deal with those mobs ITD doesn't work on, especially if they outlvl you.
- If your lvl is too low as compared to your target, no amount of AR is gonna save you from missing more often than not.


Personally, if I have any form of

Conviction with me, I don't bother pushing AR beyond what I inherently get off the gear I'd use anyways. On a pally without

Conviction, I also couldn't care less about AR but that's because I would never make a pure zealot (much like I'd never make a smiter without 1 pt in

Zeal).

Zeal + Grief annihilates any normal mob while bosses still get

Smite to the face. On a

Frenzy barb or the like, I'd make sure to push AR as high as possible without sacrificing major performance elsewhere.

Side note:
Don't trust the % hit on your char screen (or..most other things on your char screen for that matter). Things like -def generally aren't really taken into account for that.

Schnorki wrote: 7 months ago

Rik wrote: 7 months ago

[..]
My math is weak. So wait for Schnorkis final retort before taking this to heart :p
[..]

Gotta be honest, just glanced at your post, kinda went "seems Rik has this covered, no need to post", then I spotted my name in the corner of my eye..

Hahah oh dammit.. I knew I shouldn’t have risked summoning the Schnorki…

I will have to comb through this post when the adhd meds kick in