New Mob Mitigation Values for One Tamriel!

Gilliamtherogue

*Edited with additional feedback/double checking thanks to others input. Make sure to check the implications tab as a large revelation has occurred since this was originally tested.
Topic Briefing
In the patch notes for Updates 12; One Tamriel there was a small part of the patch notes that scared me a little. It reads as follows;

"Damage mitigation has been normalized.
Monsters in the overland and in public dungeons now take the same amount of damage from your attacks. World bosses and their adds have been made more resilient."

In layman's terms it simply means they have reworked mob mitigation values from what they were. Many players are unaware of these values, as penetration and mitigation operate very differently for PvE than it does in PvP, and it is a rather convoluted equation. In short, prior to this patch each 500 Resistance (Physical or Spell) would equate to a 1% damage reduction for the respective resistance (Physical Resistance lowering Physical, Disease, and Poison damage while Spell Resistance lowers Magic, Fire, Ice, and Shock damage) on non player entities. It should also be noted that mobs have individual resistances for EACH damage source in the game, and every enemy type ( a bear will have a different weakness than a Daedra and so on) has 1 weakness type which they have 0 resistance to, and 1 type of damage source they are resistant to, and will have extra mitigation.The reason their mitigation values are 500 to 1% is because mob levels are internally calculated as Level 50 entities, while player entities are calculated as v16 (or c160), meaning a player resistance requires 660 to 1%. This feature has been untouched, so PvE mobs still are more susceptible to Mitigation Reduction/Pen than players are.

I immediately went to work trying to find these new values. Here are some of my findings so far, and would appreciate double checking and additional sources.

Test Procedure and Explanations
To explain the procedure, and to minimize outside variables I will explain the perimeters of which I tested with;
- You must start on a character with the current CP cap on PTS. However, do not spend any BLUE (Mage) Champion point nodes while gathering data. These nodes add additional variables to the equation and often skew results.

- You must also have NO sources of penetrative value to your character via passives or gear for base testing. If you use Sharpened weapons (ill advised for sake of simplicity and less work) or other sources of penetration you MUST add their penetrative value after you calculate a mob's mitigation. (I.e; if a mob has 5000 resist while wearing sharpened, they actually have 10260, 5000 base, 5160 sharpened, 100 character focus)

- Your must ensure you gain no damage increases while attacking. This means you cannot cast any buffs or debuffs on the enemy as well. Simple light attacks with a Maelstrom weapon should suffice, as they do not have enchants that trigger additional affects while light attacking.

- Ensure any permanent or temporary buffs you gather with (food buffs, Mundus stones, etc) remain constant throughout testing. Also make sure you do NOT have Minor Slayer active, as it will skew results. Further avoid wearing item sets that trigger additional affects.

After these are established and followed, the test goes as follows.

Find a critter in any zone, and hit it with the desired damage source. Try to use critical values so you work with larger numbers, to avoid rounding decimals. This will be your baseline of "True Damage". Remember that each mob has unique mitigation, so try and find a baseline for; Physical, Disease, Poison, Shock, Fire, Ice, and Magic damage. There are also other types of damage sources, but they are so rare and/or confusing that I will not reference them.

In the same gear setup, find an overland creature (any mob is fine, all mobs now have the same resistance within their respective areas) and gather the same attacks on a creature. Record their values. There are different mob mitigation values based on the "Tier" in which they are found. I have tiered the following list for simplicity's sake

Overland Entities: Any mob (aside from critters and world bosses) found in open world encounters, such as questing zones. This also applies to 'Group Delves' or 'Public Dungeons'.

Dungeon Entities: Any mob found inside an instanced dungeon (other than 'Group Delves') that has a player cap. This includes 4 man dungeons, 12 man trials, and World Bosses.

Excluded Entities: Likely erroneous/unintended areas. These mobs use the old pre Update 12 system where each mob type has completely unique resistances based on the creature type. So far I have only found Maelstrom Arena to be included in this.

Results
Below are the values I have recorded for mobs in each Tier. Due to rounding errors internally, many of these may be +/- 100.

Overland Entities

Physical- 9100

Disease- 9100

Poison- 9100

Magic- 9100

Fire- 9100

Ice- 9100

Shock- 9100

Resistant Mob Types- 9125

Weak Mob Types- 0

Dungeon Entities

Physical- 18200

Disease- 18200

Poison- 18200

Magic- 18200

Fire- 18200

Ice- 18200

Shock- 18200

Resistant Mob Types- 18500

Weak Mob Types- 0

Implications
-In terms of Overland PvE, there have been minor adjustments. Most players will not notice an increase or decrease in damage, as Overland Entities have always had lesser mitigation values than the rest of the game. It should be noted however, that damage will be much more streamlined, and there will no longer be as many inconsistencies when dealing damage to different creature types. This is a blessing and a curse, as while many mobs will now take more damage, others will also take less. Overall a much more streamlined change, allowing for more player access and easier theorycrafting.

-In terms of Dungeon/Trial PvE, it has recently come to my attention thanks to @ArtOfShred and some additional self testing that this streamlining of mitigation in instanced areas has already been snuck into Live servers (My guess was when all the trials were scaled to c160, since I had done all testing prior to that) and explains why many trash mobs are so tedious to kill. Trash mobs share the same mitigation value as bosses, meaning if you aren't running Sharpened weapons with loads of debuffs you're missing an astronomical amount of damage done. Why this change was put in place of PvE with no indication to the player base has left me baffled, and has made PvE even further gated and separated between player bases. The whole redirection of PvE from skilled combat that rewarded High Risk game play (glass cannons) to outright exclusion from participation has put a bad taste in my mouth and as such, mine and many other's participation in PvE events has severely decreased. From a balance standpoint in terms of the top .1% I can see being disappointed to see us clear bosses in literally 1/3rd the time you estimated (Rakkhat was suggest to be cleared in ~15m when first released, while he has been cleared in under 5m for many top tier groups), but unfortunately your PvE community is not robust enough to design around that. You're pretty much making content for under 10 guilds at this point (HM being for ~5 guilds) which is not sustainable, or enjoyable even on our part. Competition has died out, it's impossible to reasonably train new players since the skill difference is so large with so few in game tools, and the senseless RNG grind with saturated garbage trait/loot combinations has all but destroyed reason and enjoyment to actively participate in PvE.

TL;DR- Most players will not notice any difference since a large part of the population is already gated off from participating in Veteran content. The current gap of completion and PvE participation was explained by this change being snuck into live servers in Update 11 inside instanced areas (trials, dungeons, etc), so I'm not sure why ZoS decided to take the same direction with overland PvE as well. ZoS has always been about numbers, and seeing how few players actually clear Veteran Trials as opposed to before should be a clear indication that something is wrong in terms of longevity/robustness of the overall PvE community.

Iyas

Thank you

Vaoh

Perfect. Bookmarked

SublimeSparo

So 5 light armour + Sharpened weapon = overland enemy completely penetrated?
And trolls are no longer weak to fire damage for example?

SublimeSparo

Major Breach is 5k, light armour passive is 4k, Sharpened is 5k, Alkosh is 3k, Minor Breach is 2k, crusher enchant 1.6k, so dungeon mobs can be zeroed too?
Have they made any changes to Bosses as well?

Sharee

Just for fun: stealing dungeon boss resistances with the 2H ultimate (vet wayrest sewers)

susmitds

You can use the 2H Ultimate to get the exact resistance values.

SublimeSparo

Sharee wrote: »

Just for fun: stealing dungeon boss resistances with the 2H ultimate (vet wayrest sewers)

Good idea for learning mob/ boss resistances. Get them to excute hit 2h ulti and compare resistances on character screen before an after

runagate

I don't know the resistance values of the bosses now but somebody messed up pretty bad.

Some bosses in delves drop like wet noodles to a chainsaw.

The ratcatcher overworld boss in Eastmarch took a good 3 or 4 minutes to drop solo. Not that the template stam sorc I made was ever in any particular danger from this boss, but it took a good long time to whittle down its health.

The disparity is way, way too extreme. I don't know where a good balance lies but the mobs aren't balanced among themselves. At all. The difference between some bosses is now day and night.

RoyJade

runagate wrote: »

I don't know the resistance values of the bosses now but somebody messed up pretty bad.

Some bosses in delves drop like wet noodles to a chainsaw.

The ratcatcher overworld boss in Eastmarch took a good 3 or 4 minutes to drop solo. Not that the template stam sorc I made was ever in any particular danger from this boss, but it took a good long time to whittle down its health.

The disparity is way, way too extreme. I don't know where a good balance lies but the mobs aren't balanced among themselves. At all. The difference between some bosses is now day and night.

A world boss is no longer intended to be killed by one or two player but by four, so it's normal that they have far more resistance.


By the way, thanks for the info OP, that's really good think to know

Gilliamtherogue

runagate wrote: »

I don't know the resistance values of the bosses now but somebody messed up pretty bad.

Some bosses in delves drop like wet noodles to a chainsaw.

The ratcatcher overworld boss in Eastmarch took a good 3 or 4 minutes to drop solo. Not that the template stam sorc I made was ever in any particular danger from this boss, but it took a good long time to whittle down its health.

The disparity is way, way too extreme. I don't know where a good balance lies but the mobs aren't balanced among themselves. At all. The difference between some bosses is now day and night.

That is because they fall under two different Tiers as I have listed. All entities inside Delves are considered 'Overland Entities', while World Bosses are considered 'Dungeon Entities'.

I find these to be perfectly balanced, as Public Dungeons/Delves are 1-2 man friendly, while World Bosses are meant for a sturdy 4+ group (doesn't mean they can't be soloed though!).

Gilliamtherogue

susmitds wrote: »

You can use the 2H Ultimate to get the exact resistance values.

The issue with that is you will get other % amplifications based on your class and CP allocation, so if you do use that, make sure you watch out for stuff like that!

Gilliamtherogue

SublimeSparo wrote: »

So 5 light armour + Sharpened weapon = overland enemy completely penetrated?
And trolls are no longer weak to fire damage for example?

That is correct, with 5 pieces of Light Armor (4884) and a gold quality 2h Sharp Weapon (5160) and base Focus (100) will put you over the Overland resist cap.

As for the weakness, I've found a lot of conflicting results. All bosses are weak to a specific element, but many overland entities are not susceptible to their creature base weakness. For example, trolls in the rift aren't weak to fire on Live or PTS, but in Sanctum Ophidia all trolls are weak to fire. On the inverse, many zombie and blood fiend mobs are weak to fire no matter where they are found. It would be nice to receive a formal post by ZoS that allowed either players or Devs to officially publish information such as enemy weaknesses and in game resist values, to allow for some MUCH needed transparency in the game.

Dagoth_Rac

Those dungeon resistances look the same as live. Even the 3 little Banekin as soon as you walk into normal Banished Cells have like 35% mitigation on live. I think it is one of the reasons trash pulls are such grinds in this game. They typically have higher effective resistances than bosses because you are not single-targeting them with loads of debuffs like you do to bosses.

Gilliamtherogue

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Those dungeon resistances look the same as live. Even the 3 little Banekin as soon as you walk into normal Banished Cells have like 35% mitigation on live. I think it is one of the reasons trash pulls are such grinds in this game. They typically have higher effective resistances than bosses because you are not single-targeting them with loads of debuffs like you do to bosses.

Banekins have a 35% damage reduction to Spell Resistance based attacks, but have ~20% Physical Resistance. This will now be streamlined to it takes less damage from ALL damage sources. This means Stamina and Magicka will lose out on their current gap of DPS, where everyone is pulling much less DPS than before.

runagate

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

runagate wrote: »

I don't know the resistance values of the bosses now but somebody messed up pretty bad.

Some bosses in delves drop like wet noodles to a chainsaw.

The ratcatcher overworld boss in Eastmarch took a good 3 or 4 minutes to drop solo. Not that the template stam sorc I made was ever in any particular danger from this boss, but it took a good long time to whittle down its health.

The disparity is way, way too extreme. I don't know where a good balance lies but the mobs aren't balanced among themselves. At all. The difference between some bosses is now day and night.

That is because they fall under two different Tiers as I have listed. All entities inside Delves are considered 'Overland Entities', while World Bosses are considered 'Dungeon Entities'.

I find these to be perfectly balanced, as Public Dungeons/Delves are 1-2 man friendly, while World Bosses are meant for a sturdy 4+ group (doesn't mean they can't be soloed though!).

I realize that but one would think that they'd be at least within 100x the amount of time to kill them. Certainly my preference would be that the easier ones be made at least somewhat tougher.

But more to the point is that along with the survivability increase of the top tier bosses there certainly isn't like that level of danger. It just takes longer. Paying even a slight bit of attention is sufficient to remain entirely safe from getting killed. The feel of the fights is akin to whittling down a slightly annoyed sloth made of granite.

Dymence

This seems more like an oversight from ZOS' side?

The patch note specifically states overworld mobs, public dungeons and world bosses. There is no mention of group dungeons and trials.

Dagoth_Rac

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Those dungeon resistances look the same as live. Even the 3 little Banekin as soon as you walk into normal Banished Cells have like 35% mitigation on live. I think it is one of the reasons trash pulls are such grinds in this game. They typically have higher effective resistances than bosses because you are not single-targeting them with loads of debuffs like you do to bosses.

Banekins have a 35% damage reduction to Spell Resistance based attacks, but have ~20% Physical Resistance. This will now be streamlined to it takes less damage from ALL damage sources. This means Stamina and Magicka will lose out on their current gap of DPS, where everyone is pulling much less DPS than before.

The Banekins on live (in normal Banished Cells) have about 36% mitigation of Biting Jabs, which is a stamina skill and should use physical resistance:

Tooltip = 1442
Actual Damage = 1143

(1442 - 1143) / 1442 = 20.7% mitigation

20.7% * 500 = 10350 armor

Add back in 2580 armor debuff from Night Mothers Gaze + 5160 physical penetration from dual sharpened daggers + 100 base physical penetration:

10350 + 2580 + 5160 + 100 = 18190

18190 / 500 = 36.38% mitigation

Gilliamtherogue

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Those dungeon resistances look the same as live. Even the 3 little Banekin as soon as you walk into normal Banished Cells have like 35% mitigation on live. I think it is one of the reasons trash pulls are such grinds in this game. They typically have higher effective resistances than bosses because you are not single-targeting them with loads of debuffs like you do to bosses.

Banekins have a 35% damage reduction to Spell Resistance based attacks, but have ~20% Physical Resistance. This will now be streamlined to it takes less damage from ALL damage sources. This means Stamina and Magicka will lose out on their current gap of DPS, where everyone is pulling much less DPS than before.

The Banekins on live (in normal Banished Cells) have about 36% mitigation of Biting Jabs, which is a stamina skill and should use physical resistance:

Tooltip = 1442
Actual Damage = 1143

(1442 - 1143) / 1442 = 20.7% mitigation

20.7% * 500 = 10350 armor

Add back in 2580 armor debuff from Night Mothers Gaze + 5160 physical penetration from dual sharpened daggers + 100 base physical penetration:

10350 + 2580 + 5160 + 100 = 18190

18190 / 500 = 36.38% mitigation

Not dismissing your statement, but hit a critter with Biting Jabs, rule 1 of theorycrafting is to never trust tooltips. I also am using veteran Maelstrom as my reference point, not Banished. I'll double check this on live but when I went through the first 2 stages of vMA the only thing with high resistances was Maximums at ~15000 Spell Res. On top of this, each instance on Live has different Resistance values. Each and every mob type in the game has specific mitigation values, and on PTS that is being streamlined. While Banekins may be tanky in one place, they are not in others on Live.

Armitas

Looking forward to seeing trial mitigation

mertusta

Bookmarked. Thanks for your explanations.

Asmael

[...] Trash mobs have now been brought to the same level of tankiness, and have actually gained upwards of 6000+ Resistances, meaning they are effectively going to take longer than 12% more time to kill. This is an absolutely HORRENDOUS game design, as trash mobs in Veteran Dungeons already have upwards of 5 million health in 10+ density areas, where AoE caps give them even more mitigation, which cannot be bypassed.

Is this an hidden #RemoveAoECaps thread?

Good read, keeping note of it.

ArtOfShred

Man this change is like somewhat nice on one hand because its easy to optimize your armor penetration value, but on the other hand it removes flavor and makes the game more bland.

There was some charm at the very least to certain mobs having high resistances to certain elements, or say, the shield using NPC's being logically rather tanky. Now its just all the same bland armor value.

Also I think the 4-man world boss change is a silly one. These bosses are just like a normal mob with extra armor and tons of HP for the most part. Most high CP players won't have an issue soloing them, it will just be time consuming. On the other hand low CP players will run out of resources and struggle. I'd be a bigger fan of the bosses having dungeon miniboss level HP (like 600-800k) and having deadlier or more unique mechanics added. Or just buffing their HP a little bit so they don't just get vaporized in 2 seconds.

Gilliamtherogue

Armitas wrote: »

Looking forward to seeing trial mitigation

Trial mitigation is apart of the Dungeon Entities tier, I stated that 12 man trials are grouped with this.

ArtOfShred

@Gilliamtherogue
I'm guessing Vet Trial bosses have a ton more spell resistance than Normal Ones on for some reason on Live currently? (Never dps'ed on Magicka) I did some tests to check current Live values:

Light Attack (Physical Damage)
Critter: 1759
Normal Dungeon Mob, Normal SO mob, Normal SO first boss: 1122
~36.22% damage reduction * 500 Armor = Roughly 18,100 Physical Resistance

Piercing Javelin (Magic Damage)
Critter: 1419
Normal Dungeon Mob, Normal SO mob, Normal SO first boss: 1104
~22.2% damage reduction * 500 Armor = Roughly 11,100 Spell Resistance

I've done the first few pulls of Banished Cells, Fungal Grotto, and Crypt of Hearts and those values seem to stay consistent for all those dungeons right now on Live.
This is throwing me off because as I thought normal dungeon mobs had less armor, and I was under the impression spell resistance was the same as well.

SienneYviete

So overchargers are getting tankier, ffs zos they already have some of the most cancerous abilities of any mob in the game, I really don't want to spend more time on these so called trash pulls.

Gilliamtherogue

ArtOfShred wrote: »

@Gilliamtherogue
I'm guessing Vet Trial bosses have a ton more spell resistance than Normal Ones on for some reason on Live currently? (Never dps'ed on Magicka) I did some tests to check current Live values:

Light Attack (Physical Damage)
Critter: 1759
Normal Dungeon Mob, Normal SO mob, Normal SO first boss: 1122
~36.22% damage reduction * 500 Armor = Roughly 18,100 Physical Resistance

Piercing Javelin (Magic Damage)
Critter: 1419
Normal Dungeon Mob, Normal SO mob, Normal SO first boss: 1104
~22.2% damage reduction * 500 Armor = Roughly 11,100 Spell Resistance

I've done the first few pulls of Banished Cells, Fungal Grotto, and Crypt of Hearts and those values seem to stay consistent for all those dungeons right now on Live.
This is throwing me off because as I thought normal dungeon mobs had less armor, and I was under the impression spell resistance was the same as well.

You forgot to add the base 100 pen value that a level cap character has. Rakkhat has 18200 Physical resistance on any difficulty. Normal dungeons have the same mitigation values as their Veteran counterparts, the only change that I mentioned is that trash on PTS all has the same 18200 resistance that a boss mob would have. Spell Resistance values are different, and each elemental source has its own value (i,e; Planar Inhibitor has 22000 Fire resistance while in her Flame mode and 0 Ice resist, while she flips on blue, and has a flat 18600 Magic Resist)

The biggest change to this is everything in the game will share the same resistance values in their respective tiers, while currently each and every mob type has wholly unique mitigation values based on what creature they are. For example, if you go into a dungeon and hit an Imp and then hit a Daedroth, you'll deal different amounts of damage to each on Live. That won't happen anymore once PTS goes live, with the exception of Maelstrom Arena.

Autolycus

Thanks for the insight Gilliam. I'm pleased with your findings and the work you put into it; pat yourself on the back.

I'm really disappointed at the implications for trash in trials. I'd hoped they were planning to take this the other direction.

ArtOfShred

@Gilliamtherogue

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

You forgot to add the base 100 pen value that a level cap character has.

Doh, felt like I missed something obvious! Thanks for the correction.

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

The biggest change to this is everything in the game will share the same resistance values in their respective tiers, while currently each and every mob type has wholly unique mitigation values based on what creature they are. For example, if you go into a dungeon and hit an Imp and then hit a Daedroth, you'll deal different amounts of damage to each on Live. That won't happen anymore once PTS goes live, with the exception of Maelstrom Arena.

That's the thing I was expecting to find, but that wasn't my experience. Every mob I hit in a dungeon took the exact same amount of damage. The banekin at the start of Banished Cells for example, had the same mitigation as the skeletons in there, even the shield ones, and the same mitigation as goblins in FG, the trash in Cradle of Shadows, etc. Did the same exact damage to Normal Possessed Mantikora as well. Now granted, I didn't try every dungeon or clear through very far, but I slugged a good 10 of so different types of NPC's, and several bosses and dealt the same exact damage with light attack & piercing javelin every time.

I also just hopped into normal Wayrest and chucked fire staff and ice staff autos + piercing javelins at Crocodiles, Skeevers, some of the first few human trash mobs, and both of the first two bosses and each attack did the exact same damage.

Seems to me like mob armor in dungeons is already normalized at 18200, and spell resistance around 11200. I think they snuck in normalization under the board already on us. There might be a little bit more elemental variety if I dig deeper, but I didn't see a change in damage values at all running through everything I just listed.

Gilliamtherogue

ArtOfShred wrote: »

@Gilliamtherogue

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

You forgot to add the base 100 pen value that a level cap character has.

Doh, felt like I missed something obvious! Thanks for the correction.

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

The biggest change to this is everything in the game will share the same resistance values in their respective tiers, while currently each and every mob type has wholly unique mitigation values based on what creature they are. For example, if you go into a dungeon and hit an Imp and then hit a Daedroth, you'll deal different amounts of damage to each on Live. That won't happen anymore once PTS goes live, with the exception of Maelstrom Arena.

That's the thing I was expecting to find, but that wasn't my experience. Every mob I hit in a dungeon took the exact same amount of damage. The banekin at the start of Banished Cells for example, had the same mitigation as the skeletons in there, even the shield ones, and the same mitigation as goblins in FG, the trash in Cradle of Shadows, etc. Did the same exact damage to Normal Possessed Mantikora as well. Now granted, I didn't try every dungeon or clear through very far, but I slugged a good 10 of so different types of NPC's, and several bosses and dealt the same exact damage with light attack & piercing javelin every time.

I also just hopped into normal Wayrest and chucked fire staff and ice staff autos + piercing javelins at Crocodiles, Skeevers, some of the first few human trash mobs, and both of the first two bosses and each attack did the exact same damage.

Seems to me like mob armor in dungeons is already normalized at 18200, and spell resistance around 11200. I think they snuck in normalization under the board already on us. There might be a little bit more elemental variety if I dig deeper, but I didn't see a change in damage values at all running through everything I just listed.

If it was snuck it, it was very recently. That could explain why many trash mobs already are so grueling to kill. However your 11200 Spell Resistance is extremely far off, you likely had Light Armor's 4884 Passive + a Sharpened weapon, as many mobs have more Spell Resist than they do Physical, unless they are weak to an element (which they'd have 0 of anyways).

Since I had already documented individual mitigation of mobs a few patches ago I didn't go back to double check since it was never mentioned on Live notes. I had recently been using vMA as a reference point, which retains the unique mitigation rule that older patches and even current PTS follows. Thanks for double checking on live, I guess this won't have much of an impact outside of Overland PvE, which is already a joke as is and will likely be easier aside from World Bosses. I'll update the main post with your info!

Doctordarkspawn

Ohhhh boooooy.

Yay trash mobs geting tankier. Muh favrt.

Excuse me while I go have a conniption.