AC Hard Cap

[Extunarian]

Dantes posed this question in another thread. It got buried so I'm trying again here.

Info:
The cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap; it was a hard cap that had been there from day 1. After a certain point, which differed for each class, the benefit of more AC didn't just diminish - it dropped to nothing.

The change I referred to, just before PoP, changed that from a hard cap to a soft cap. You get a percentage of the amount over that soft cap. Shields increase both your total and your soft cap, making them more effective than any other item with equal AC. Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it.

Separate from this, there are diminishing returns if your AC is much greater than the NPC's attack. This is due to the nature of the formulas that produce the probability distributions that have been well documented on this board.

Does that help?

- Kavhok, SOE

So given this info, beyond a certain point AC is basically useless. Does anybody know what those hard caps actually are?

[Hasbinbad]

loly wru

[Dr4z3r]

Based on "The cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap," I'd wager it's difficult if not impossible to reach with Kunark gear.

[deakolt]

check these threads out:

http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showthread.php?t=336&page=2
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-8388.html

the general consensus seems to be that the hard cap (in from day 1) was changed to a soft cap sometime during luclin, and that this number didn't change.

one guy says 1300AC one guy says 1400AC. Will continue the research-

edit: I assume the 1300/1400 AC numbers are for warriors. haven't found anything about other classes/archetypes

[Extunarian]

Awesome links, deakolt. I wonder if the devs here were aware that the soft cap shouldn't even be implemented at any point in this server's progression...

[greatdane]

I seem to remeber something about 1400.

[Uaellaen]

1400 is what i remember too

[Dantes]

My concern was that if the AC hard cap were lower, at some point one would want to stop gearing for AC and gear for some other stat. But at 1400 it would be difficult to reach that cap with Kunark gear.