Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Read on for the questions!

With the Caledonia event, I finally got the chance to play a Hero. I've been putting my points into Determination (level 7) and Avoidance of Magic (level 7) so I can be a better tank, reduce CC and stay alive longer. (I like passive skills as there are enough skill buttons to keep track of anyway.) However, I'm unsure exactly how these skills work. AoM doesn't show on stats, and CC times still feel ungodly long. How high is my actual magic resistance with AoM 9 (with max item resists), and how much CC reduction with Det 9 can I expect. Basically, are these skills worth the cost? Cheers :)

The Avoidance of Magic realm ability increases your character's Secondary resists. Those show on your character’s attribute page here:

 

Secondary resists work as a “backup” to your Primary resists (the “+25%” value on the top row in the above example). Secondary resist values are only used in damage calculations (never crowd control durations).

Your Primary resists can be directly increased by your equipped item stats (to a cap of 26% at level 50) and by other class’ resist buffs (to a cap of 24%) for a total of 50% primary magic resist (not counting any racial resistance bonuses which can go over this cap). Secondary resists can be increased with the Avoidance of Magic realm ability, the Bedazzling Aura realm ability, various item charges, and some specific class abilities (like heavy tanks' Memories of War).

When applying damage the primary magic resist tier is used first to reduce the damage and then whatever is in the second tier is used to reduce the remaining damage. This means a 50% primary resist with 20% secondary resist would reduce a spell that deals 200 damage down to 100 (50% reduction from primary) and then down to 80 damage (20% reduction from secondary). Those values will not always line up exactly if there are other factors like magic damage variance at play but that understanding will get you very close to the end result!

Heavy tanks also get a passive ability Stoicism that grants +25% crowd control reduction and can stack with the Determination realm ability. At Determination VII (38%) + Stoicism (25%) that’s a total crowd control reduction of 63% or 80% total with Determination IX (55%).

For some additional context on how crowd control durations are determined, please take a look at the March 2019 grab bag answer.

For some hard numbers:
A 60s starting duration mesmerization becomes a 75s starting duration with +25% duration gear on the caster.
75s gets reduced by 50% if the target has +50% to their Primary magic resistances.
The now 37.5s mezz is further reduced by the combined Stoicism/Determination value (let’s use the 63% figure from above with Det VII)
The end result is a ~14 second mez on the tank.
With Determination IX, the mez duration becomes only 7.5 seconds.

You’ll have to make your own decision on whether or not the Avoidance of Magic and Determination realm abilities are worth the cost, but hopefully that helps shine some light on what they can be useful for!

There seems to be a contradiction between two different Grab Bags in regards to Mythical Physical Defense that I am hoping to get some clarification on. In the 06/17/2017 Grab Bag, it states Mythical Physical Defense "does not exceed resist caps" , where as in the 12/04/2020 Grab Bag it states Mythical Physical Defense "grants the resists and resist cap." My inclination is to go with the later Grab Bag, but I'd like to be sure before putting effort into a template.

Yes, the 2020 Grab Bag answer is correct. Mythical Physical Defense grants the bonuses to physical (Slash, Crush, Thrust) resists and increases their resist cap by the same amount.

Can you explain the difference between ABS buffs and base armor ABS in the damage calculation? From what was said in previous grab bags, ABS in armor reduces damage twice. Once by increasing effective AF by the formula ((character level + 1)*(armor absorption% + 1)*10) and a second by being a flat melee damage reduction. ABS buffs seem to only offer the flat melee reduction.

ABS buffs do not doubly count towards your class’ armor type in the calculation for effective AF since we want the class’ armor type to not get completely overshadowed by a large ABS buff. Cloth casters for instance would be as sturdy vs melee as Plate wearers if ABS buffs directly added to the base armor’s absorption%. So yes, ABS buffs do behave a bit differently than a class’ base armor absorption% and provide a flat melee reduction outside of the effective AF calculation.

Does the 15minute realm timer start when you earn rps, or does someone else earning rps off of you start it over as well? for example ill get a kill and earn rps, then 5 minutes later ill die to a grp and log. it seems as if i cant switch realms until 15 minutes after my death, not last time i actually earned rps.

The intention behind the realm switch timer is to prevent swapping realms earlier than 15 minutes after participating in RvR. We do this by tracking whether or not your character (or group) earned realm points. Once your character (or group) has earned realm points, the realm timer gets reset to 15 minutes. If you run around and do not get additional RPs for >15 minutes and log out, you should be able to freely swap realms.

RvR deaths do not trigger the realm timer.

We will look into adding a command or countdown to better illustrate when your character can swap to a new realm.

To what extent does a weapon's Quality affect miss rates, damage, anything at all?? For example, some of the ToA Alacritous weapons have 94% Quality.

Weapon quality does not affect to-hit or miss rates at all.

It does affect melee damage similarly to how condition does where the lower the value, the less average damage dealt. A 94% quality weapon has the same damage potential each melee swing as a 100% quality one of the same DPS and swing speed, but each swing will have a higher chance of being modified down by the lower quality and so the average damage will be reduced.

If you would like to test the actual average damage reduction, the difference between a 100% and 94% quality of 2 otherwise identical weapons would be the same as 2 identical weapons of 100% and 94% condition. This is a fairly negligible damage reduction overall, but with quality the reduction obviously can’t be repaired like it can with condition.

Thanks everyone!

Enjoy the weekend :)