I've read up on the new rating system for combat and I think it looks really good. Of course everyone is whining about it, but hey, that's
humanity Internet for you.
It's basically the same concept as WoW's rating system, but it makes alot more sense to me.
You have integer ratings for block, parry, evade (also crit stats) that then translate into percentages based on mob level (contrary to WoW, which bases it on character level, which is just wrong.) This means that going down in mob levels will increase your effective chance of critting and blocking/parrying/evading.
Each stat has a hard cap at an effective 15%, but each stat also has a secondary attribute that isn't capped but increases very slowly and still in relation to mob level. For mitigation stats, this is called partials, and for crit stats it's called devastates. They appear to equate to roughly a third of the base stat, so with 10% Evade you'll have about 3.5% Partial Evade (for a total of 13.5% of either kind.)
Partials, as obvious by their name, are only partial mitigations for that stat (unlike the 100% mitigation from full blocks/parries/evades), which is usually around 30% mitigation or so. This is in addition to normal armour mitigation, so an armour mitigation of 50% and a partial parry for 30% will stack to a total mitigation of 80% (or 65%, depending on whether it's additive or multiplicative, not sure yet, but they do stack.) However, these partials also count toward combat responses, so Guardians will get their parry and block lines opened from partials, aswell as Burglars getting their evade skills triggered and so on.
Devastates are... well, super crits, resulting in damage twice the normal crit damage. They appear to scale the same way as partials do. That would mean Test of Will (LM skill, which has a 300% crit modifier) would do six times normal damage on a devastating hit. That's alot of damage.
Also, all armour values have been modified to use the same system. The core function has also been changed so that 25% of common armour values count towards elemental mitigations. A 1000 armour item will give you 250 Lightning mitigation, 250 Acid mitigation and so on. (So in a sense 1000 armour gives you 2250 (1000+250*5) armour, split between the different schools of damage.)
I think it's really tidy, anyway. I like it alot on paper.
PS.
Theory here: What I've read seems to suggest that a high level mob no longer means instrinsic advantages, so level is instead just, more properly, a measure of how powerful the mob/character is. A higher level mob will require higher ratings to get the same effect from armour and stats, but what actual level player is doesn't matter. In theory it should mean you can overcome level differences simply by wielding awesome gear. Not sure if that made sense...
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