I Was told Armor Class is broken on this server

[Zaphyer]

by several high level players And to not even bother stacking it. im a Warrior. if this is true, im about to vendor my Cobalt gauntlets and sell my Targishin's bone mask, Sebilite scale neckguard, and swap my Indicolite helm for a SSB or Hammerhead helm.

[Lazortag]

AC was fixed well over a year ago so that it would be more effective. I don't know if it's 100% classic (how could it be?), but I've heard from people in LR armor that the AC does make a noticeable difference.

[Sylexis]

I certainly haven't parsed out any soft and hard caps on this server but I can tell you that AC does effect your mitigation in this game, it is by no means worthless. If you want just a ballpark suggestion, so long as we are in Kunark and you aren't the main tank for TMO, anything over 1k AC should be fine (though 1200 is ideal), and you can wander off from there and work on STR and STA.

[Broot]

I leveled with my cleric friend extensively on my Shadowknight and I stacked AC pretty heavily. He said that my mitigation was worlds better than some other tanks that he was healing for when I was offline.
AC does help quite a bit - I think people tend not to notice because AC doesn't cause a flat reduction to damage like modern RPGs have leaned towards. So a super tanky tank can still get quadded for max damage. However, if you pay close attention, you will mitigate more through enemy misses / partial damages.

[Galaa]

try making a lv 1 character wearing full bronze (or even better) armor and hit lv 5 mobs. Then take off all ur armor and hit the same mob again.

Then u tell me whether AC makes a difference or not :D

[Nordenwatch]

i was told it was broken specifically for monks, with the wt cap and whatnot. keeping to 14.9 is fucking hard man

[maximum]

[From a Monk's perspective] Armor Class in the user interface (Inventory) is supposed to be wonky/inaccurate. But, I think AC is "working" fine on the back-end.

[Supaskillz]

Only using casual observation it seems that is is really effective until you get higher level then it seems to make no difference. This could be due to a relatively low soft cap(maybe around 900), but that is just a guess.

[Grozmok]

Works fine for me. Shit, I can tell the difference when I remove my shield and switch to 2H on my SK. I almost always sword/board when grouping now because it's just that good.

[Slave]

Fairly sure there is a thread that discusses hard caps for AC on this server. It goes by class, and iirc it was rather low.

I find level to be a more solid indicator of damage mitigation here. For instance, a level 50 Anything will take FAR less damage with 700 AC than a level 30 Anything with 700 AC, after allowing for secondary defensive skills.

[Rooj]

I have not heard that AC does not work, but I did hear that the AC you gain from AGI is only cosmetic and is not actually applied.

[Grozmok]

I find level to be a more solid indicator of damage mitigation here. For instance, a level 50 Anything will take FAR less damage with 700 AC than a level 30 Anything with 700 AC, after allowing for secondary defensive skills.

^

This sounds about right IIRC.

[Messianic]

Works fine for me. Shit, I can tell the difference when I remove my shield and switch to 2H on my SK. I almost always sword/board when grouping now because it's just that good.

IIRC Shields were unique in ignoring the hard cap...just something out of my memory tho

[Grozmok]

by several high level players And to not even bother stacking it.

Honestly, just test it yourself. Find a dark blue con, solo it first naked and then again with your highest AC gear and look at the results.

I would be willing to bet that with your AC gear, you're getting hit less often and the hits that do land have a much smaller range.

[Slave]

IIRC Shields were unique in ignoring the hard cap...just something out of my memory tho

That is the way it works here, too. Shields add to your AC cap.

Honestly, just test it yourself. Find a dark blue con, solo it first naked and then again with your highest AC gear and look at the results.

I would be willing to bet that with your AC gear, you're getting hit less often and the hits that do land have a much smaller range.

This test becomes a little harder when we know there's a cap. So, we're talking, use your 500 AC set or 300 AC set. Not a lot of people have a 500 AC set. hehe

[Asher]

Any Dev or GM care to comment on this?

It would be nice to know if AC actually matters. I still talk to people that insist it is broken like all EMU servers.

Asher

[webrunner5]

I still say Agility has more to do with not getting hit along with AC than we think. Look at Wu's armor. Every piece of it is agi except the hands which only has AC. And we all know a Monk is just about as good of a tank as a Warrior on here, maybe better. I know that they have higher damage caps over others. But no that much. I am not saying at the top end you are going to use a Monk as a Raid Tank. But the devs had the right idea, Agi. I know a Monk does get a AC boost, but.

As a Cleric for years on live I KNOW that AC is the hot setup, but Agi really does help. If you don't get hit you don't have to heal.

[Lagaidh]

I remember about a year an a half ago in a discussion with someone, I mentioned "AC is king" parroting my old line from live. The person laughed at me... said HP was the way to go.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembered in truly classic EQ, AC was king (up to a point) if you expected to take a sustained beating. Later expansions made it the "how deep is your HP bucket" game.

[Bewk]

I still say Agility has more to do with not getting hit along with AC than we think. Look at Wu's armor. Every piece of it is agi except the hands which only has AC. And we all know a Monk is just about as good of a tank as a Warrior on here, maybe better. I know that they have higher damage caps over others. But no that much. I am not saying at the top end you are going to use a Monk as a Raid Tank. But the devs had the right idea, Agi. I know a Monk does get a AC boost, but.

As a Cleric for years on live I KNOW that AC is the hot setup, but Agi really does help. If you don't get hit you don't have to heal.

There's a number of posts by devs and others on these forums that link to and talk about the way AC works. I believe that agility and defense skill contribute to avoidance (NOT including dodge, parry, etc.), and then buffs and armor and such contribute to mitigation, and that the number displayed ingame is a weird combination of those two different values.

[Lagaidh]

There's a number of posts by devs and others on these forums that link to and talk about the way AC works. I believe that agility and defense skill contribute to avoidance (NOT including dodge, parry, etc.), and then buffs and armor and such contribute to mitigation, and that the number displayed ingame is a weird combination of those two different values.

This is what made me surprised that I haven't met more tanks with a Cat o Nine Tails on this server. Of course, most tanks probably group with a shaman more than I tend to. I duo a lot and me and the druid try to be as self sufficient as we can; or at least take every gear advantage we can afford for one last little smidge of survivability.

[Slave]

This is what made me surprised that I haven't met more tanks with a Cat o Nine Tails on this server. Of course, most tanks probably group with a shaman more than I tend to. I duo a lot and me and the druid try to be as self sufficient as we can; or at least take every gear advantage we can afford for one last little smidge of survivability.

Ouch, enjoy it while you can. Lack of slow and upper level heals really starts to tell after level 34.

[Lagaidh]

I'm a masochist. We're L52 now.

I'd guild up and group more, but I desperately want my wife's druid to remain the same level as me. So my paladin ends up farting around a good bit- which works in its own way. I can farm enough pp to keep us decently geared.

Sometimes I end up catching her up.

[Lagaidh]

And actually- the pally druid combo was quite efficient through the 40s. I noticed the big slow down when we dinged 51.

Of course, with so many min maxxers out there, what we consider efficient may be horribly slow to others.

Even with all of the hindsight in the world, we still are happy with visibly moving XP in a play session. That's classic!

[fishingme]

i was told it was broken specifically for monks, with the wt cap and whatnot. keeping to 14.9 is fucking hard man

Most of the time as a monk you don't need to keep it to 14.9. With mine I was always generally 10 over (5-8lbs of shurikens) But unless you're soloing you shouldnt worry about being 10-15 over. thankfully the weight raises to 22ish(cant remember but it's somewhere between 22) at 55 and then at 60 i believe it's 29

[Schortt]

To quote the info in the wiki:

"As of the 5/29/2011 patch, monks will face an AC penalty for exceeding a weight of 14.9 stones, reflecting the classic mechanic.
This limit was independent of level.
As of the 8/13/2011 patch, monks gained an additional weight allowance, granted at levels 55 and 60. The exact amount is 18.9 at 55, and 22.9 at 60."

To echo what a few other people have said, AC does matter, but no one has done enough parsing in the right conditions (and published their research) to figure out where the hard/soft caps are at any particular level. There is definitely a difference in mitigation with sub 1000 AC and over 1100 (I have enough parses of a 60 IKS war vs a 60 Ogre war at various raids, especially Sky, to demonstrate this). I don't know if the difference would be greater with 1200 or 1300 AC or whether it makes sense to stop before then. One of my goals during the eventual Velious beta is to test some of this stuff more rigorously. Since boxing on the beta server will likely be allowed again (it was during Kunark beta) it will be a lot easier.

[Danth]

To comment on the original post without reading most the thread: When P1999 first opened, AC had no effect that anyone could notice. Consequently many players opted to gear for straight hitpoints. This was changed awhile back such that AC has some effect now (whether its classic or not is questionable, but it *does* have a measurable effect). However, reputations and perceptions only change slowly, so the mantra of AC being broken lingers on.

Danth