95 AC, 80% conceal - viable melee toon?

[borges]

My experience with melee toons on HG is somewhat limited. I'm looking for a pass-fail recommendation regarding a STR-based Dwarven Warchanter. The build I have in mind tops out (pre-BURs) at the stats listed above: 95 AC, 80% conceal.

Now I noticed that Mish's staffmaster also sports 95 AC, but that build gets 90% conceal and full Premonition. Bards, not so much.

So what say you, HG melee gurus? Does the lower conceal and soak doom this build to the dustbin? Will I be forced to build yet another dexer bard?

Cheers, Perin

[uncanny]

Remember that with Blind fight being applied to a lot of mobs lately (or so I've heard); 80% conceal then becomes only as effective as about 40% (when applying the detailed analysis on SC5 given in the bio forums).

But other than that, sorry if that's no help; I've yet to play more melee centric builds on HG

[atomicsomething]

uncanny said:

Remember that with Blind fight being applied to a lot of mobs lately (or so I've heard); 80% conceal then becomes only as effective as about 40% (when applying the detailed analysis on SC5 given in the bio forums).
But other than that, sorry if that's no help; I've yet to play more melee centric builds on HG

80% conceal gives an effective concealment of 64% against enemies with blind fight.

for the build, your concealment is dispelleable (having to wear breach/mord immunity or have it ready).
Also no big immunity shield and armor. This is pretty much annoying as you gonna get hit often and need good physical/elemental/exotic to soak it. About elemental damage, warchanters dont get full Energy Buffer, your version of the spell will be at best nerfed (with Bard CC) or useless (with DD control class).
Warchanters also dont get crit immunity and that a huge low, with that AC there will be many crits.

My experience with a 60 bard (caster one) is that this build is able to hold his own when one (may be two) mobs start hitting it (and then, now with crits, i have to cast Healing Circle defensively to stay on my foots if there is more than one), but it will never replace a tank.

[uncanny]

The bio thread here is the barometer I usually use for comparing effectiveness - last time I tested using the same spec with very similar results; this was after 1.68 from nwn was applied. Quoted is the output based on epic dodge+sc5

189 attacks
96 concealment messages (we would expect around 90
6 hits (we would expect around 5)

First test with blind fight, dummy with epic dodge
204 attacks
48 concealment messages (or roughly half of the last result)
5 hits should have been 10(epic dodge is somehow doing its work here although I saw no evidence of it)

To be fair, perhaps this needs to be tested for above 50%, I agree that it is a bit of a stretch to apply it to higher concealment - anyone out there with 80% conceal willing to do some playtesting?

[FunkySwerve]

Your link is dead, but atomic is correct. Blind fight gives another chance to beat the % concealment. It winds up being x/100 * x/100, where x is the % conceal. For 90 percent, for example, the first try misses 90% of the time and hits 10%. Lets use 100 swings as a benchmark.
chance 1 chance 2
90 misses----> 90/100*90 misses = 81 misses, 9 hits
10 hits

Total = 19 hits 81 misses
Effective Conceal = 81%

You can work it out for all the other percentiles, but it's always the percentile squared.

100% = 100%
90% = 81%
80% = .8, .8x.8 = .64 = 64%
70% = 49%
60% = 36%
50% = .5, .5x.5 = .25 = 25%
40% = 16%
30% = 9%
20% = .2, .2x.2 = .04 = 4%
10% = 1%

Funky

[borges]

Less egg-headed conceal calculations (which, admittedly are quite useful), more input from experienced melee individuals!

It sounds like this build isn't worth making, since even with conceal of 80%, you get hit 36% of the time in Hells and other blind fight rich areas. Without crit immunity or high immunity to physical damage (stupid robes), I can't see that being a good long-term survival strategy.

[uncanny]

Ah sorry, looks like my url linkage is a bit cranky
This is the link as it should be: here.

Aye, funky's numbers seem to make sense, sorry for the noise

[unnone]

You might go with dual dwarven waraxes to get some shield ac from them. It still only puts you at 102ish ac, but every little bit helps. Crit immunity is the biggie here. My DD can survive at 94 ac in higher hell levels under stonestance until the debuffing wears down his elemental immunities, but I wouldn't do so out of stonestance. Without crit immunity, it's like playing Russian Roulette with a varying number of bullets. Sooner or later, you'll run up to three mobs and they'll bust out 4 crits in a one round and drop you. I've done that more than once while playing around down there.

[borges]

unnone said:

You might go with dual dwarven waraxes to get some shield ac from them. It still only puts you at 102ish ac, but every little bit helps. Crit immunity is the biggie here.

I've realized that you can also add 10 RDD levels for nice boosts to STR and AC, at the cost of bard song effectiveness. There is still the crit issue of course.

Sadly, you can't dual the waraxes and receive the super-duper Warchanter EV. Seems that the heavy flail version of the Warchanter is not very good at all. And as someone wisely pointed out in another thread, the dexer version of the Warchanter pales in comparison to standard cheese bard (or Funky's WM bard) in just about every relevant category. *frowns*

[unnone]

You're right. I'd forgotten that you can't dual wield, only 'large wpn' or single weapon.