Post:Defense Exp Updates Clarification - 3/18/2011 - 14:34:36

Defense Exp Updates Clarification · on 3/18/2011 2:34:36 PM	176
Heyo! There still seems to be some confusion on the defense updates, so let me make a few quick comments that will hopefully clear a few things up. (1) This is a temporary fix for a long-term problem, and as such it is not perfect. The current system really does not support a proper fix; I am rewriting the entire system, but that takes time. This is just a stop-gap. (2) The basic experience calculations for combat have not changed at all with this fix. They are all still calculated exactly like they were before. Once this is done, my patch kicks in, but only after the old exp is calculated and stored. If any defense skill that was being utilized (ie stanced for) received reduced or no experience because another defense intercepted it, one of two things will happen. It will receive the greater of either (a) its base experience as calculated or (b) a percentage of the best defense experience granted modified by the stance setting. (3) Yes, it is possible that you will still not learn a defense skill well or at all with this tweak. This can happen because... a) your defenses are not being adequately challenged. This tweak is not intended to let people gain experience if their overall defense is not being challenged b) your stance setting for the skill is so low and the challenge is sufficiently low that the percent modifier is dropping it down to a very low number, potentially zero with rounding. For example, if you are stancing 1% (or honestly, anything less than 10%), you are probably not going to get much if any experience from this tweak unless that defense is actually kicking in and being adequately challenged. The bottom line is that your overall defensive position must still be challenged for this tweak to help you. Experience for defenses is still based on overall challenge, and the rate of gain reflects the challenge. I want to emphasize the "overall" concept here -- if you have 900 evasion, 600 parry, and 300 shield and are fighting critters in the 350 rank range (say, orc raiders), you are not going to learn shield so long the evasion and parry are stanced in a way that places them too far above the challenge range. If you can drop your effective evasion and parry to around 350ish, you should learn all three. As long as any part of your defense (after stance settings) places your overall defensive position too far above the offensive skill of the enemy, you will see experience drop off, especially the experience from these temporary updates. In short -- these updates were not intended to be a way to get experience from battles that have no chance to kill you, but as a way to let you fight in challenging battles and learn all three defenses without having to do a lot of stancing down when you cannot afford to reduce your skills.
This message was originally posted in Combat - Weapons and Armor (11) \ Game Master and Official Announcements (1), by DR-DARTENIAN on the play.net forums.