Okay, I put together a monk theorycrafting spreadsheet and uploaded it to google docs.

Before using the sheet please understand that the skills on the left side that you need to fill in are not necessarily what D3 reports. Take armor for example. D3 adds armor to the reported armor on your character sheet for every strength unit you gain. So, if you type in 200 strength and whatever armor it tells you on your character sheet you'll be adding an additional 200 armor that you don't have. This is the same for most of the stats there. The idea later is to be able to plug in the gear from your stats to automatically figure all this out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak0hueccAWkpdFAtTFlSM29MUHktOS1JTzBCLVZFc0E

You won't be able to edit my sheet but you can either download it or save it as another google.doc and modify. I am looking for input.

Some things to take away from this:

-On the second and third tabs of the sheet you'll find sheets plotting the gains for both armor and resists respectively. If you look at the plot you'll notice diminishing returns. Stacking all resist without the consideration of other skills is silly. We're looking for a balance.

-Requests are welcome.

-Your base hitpoints (the ones you see when you hover over the red globe) are a far cry from your actual life or effective hp. You simply cannot judge somebody by their HP because when you consider damage mitigation and avoidance their true life could be several times what is reported.

-I will add block later.

This post was edited by fft_progressive on Jun 5 2012 02:48pm

I updated the sheet to include the ability to type in your gear attributes on the 'Gear' page and it will auto-fill the items on the calculator page. However, I am still working on adding everything from resists down.

This post was edited by fft_progressive on Jun 5 2012 03:36pm

Gear should be complete with regard to the value provided defensive skills including LoH and attack speed. I will be working on DPS skills next such that we can then start 'rating' gear based on its stats in relation to your current pool.

I would like to note, btw, that I have found that diminishing returns are not so obvious if not negligible. Take the following example into consideration:

If I have no resistances and want gear to give me 1% damage reduction from resistances I need about 3 resistance points. On the other hand lets say we start with 1216 resists or 80% damage reduction and I still want to find gear to get me an extra 1% D.R. To do that we need an extra 80.5 resistance! So, it seems pretty obvious here that we have diminishing returns. On the other hand, however, if we look at your EHP on the theorycrafting sheet the story changes significantly.

In the case of our 0%->1% D.R. (3 resistance points) each point of resistance added 435 EHP.

In the case of our 80%->81% D.R. (80.5 resistance points) each point of resistance added 424 EHP.

Why this is the case becomes obvious when you think about what we're doing. If you have 0% resists every bit of damage a mob deals to you is felt. If you gain 3 resistance (1% damage reduction) you only cut out 1% of the damage being done. On the other extreme if you have 90% D.R. due to resists to begin with and you gain just another 1% like before that 1% is actually 10% of the remaining (100-90) so it is 10 times as effective at increasing your EHP.

Seems like +Life% isn't calculating in?

Also, is the 'Melee?' option supposed to be Resolve? If so, it's a 25% reduction not 30%.

This post was edited by orangetomato on Jun 6 2012 01:43pm

Ah yes, I will fix +Life% now. Thanks!

Also, melee classes apparently have a 30% reduction right off the bat in the damage that they take. However, I will look into adding resolve as well.

Edit: +Life% is now added.

This post was edited by fft_progressive on Jun 6 2012 01:55pm

Should be (276+(B9*35))*(1+(B12/100)) I think.

Also, what exactly can I do with this? The information is nice I guess, but how does it help me look at gearing decisions and rank defensive stats?

I accidentally added a second place to tally up +life. It adds it all up from the gear page already so I deleted the second one to avoid confusion.

As far as looking at gear it can tell you exactly how effective a piece of gear will be at increasing your survivability by testing it before buying it. Later it will recommend upgrades for you but I am still looking for a few more people to assist in the GUI development. As I add more skills and a more effective 'hypothetical hostile damage' it will help you test your builds with your gear in each act without having to buy the gear, change your build, and get to the act.

It also helps to actually have the numbers in front of you because it helps avoid trends in our discussions that are untrue such as we just proved, using this spreadsheet, that the diminishing returns are negligible.

edit: to be clear, in assessing possible gear options, you plug in all your gear and record the EHP or your estimated survival time. Then plug in one new item in replace of the old and see how your survivability changes. I suggest looking at one piece of gear at a time.

This post was edited by fft_progressive on Jun 6 2012 02:12pm

Anyone have any ideas as to how we should rate items for upgardes? I am thinking we can pick, almost arbitrarily, a goal EHP and DPS. Then take the ratio of the two and use the ratio like this:

Say we pick the goal EHP for our toon overall to be 600k EHP and our DPS to be 30k as if this were some ultimate build/geared monk. The ratio would be 20:1. So, we rate the gear with points. Every 20 EHP the item adds gets it a point and every 1 DPS it adds gives it a point.

I'm open for suggestions.