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09-17-2023 01:16 PM |
The previous steelwarriors link within the quote above does not work, but the first page can be accessed using the link below.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040805...php?t=7643&
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Old 06-17-2004 #5
Fitemore
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If your AC is high enough, then yes, a 50 AC shield will help you more than a 50 AC breastplate. The benefit increases as the AC on the shield increases - it isn't a static bonus.
- Kavhok
How high is high enough? Does this mean tanking older content with a shield helps more than new content? This does seem to be talking about the ac softcap, which hasn't really been found AFAIK in GoD or really even in PoP.
EDIT: Fixed the quote.
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Quote:
Old 06-17-2004 #6
Kavhok
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AC functions the same way in all zones. Some old NPCs may have lower attack than new ones, but the formulas for combat do not change.
The AC formulas were changed a short while before PoP shipped. Perhaps that was confused as a content change in PoP. However, the Avatar of War does less damage to a warrior with 1800 AC than one with 1300 AC just the way that Bertox does. It doesn't matter that he's "old content" - his attack is still fairly high.
- Kavhok, SOE
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Old 06-17-2004 #9
Gront
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Originally Posted by AThousandYoung
It sounds to me as though the statement means:
There is an AC cap. After AC goes above a certain point, the value of each point of AC decreases or becomes nonexistent.
In addition to adding AC points, shields raise the value of the AC cap, probably by some percentage of the AC of the shield.
For example - if the AC cap is 2000 without a shield, and a shield with 50 AC is equipped, the new AC cap may be 2050, or 2025. If a shield with 60 AC is equipped, then the new AC cap may be 2060, or 2030.
Well, that's kind of the question we're asking. For example, an alternative interpretation that's still fully consistent with everything the developers have said so far is:
"No matter how high your AC is, and how low the mob's ATK is, the mob *always* has a 5% chance of hitting you for the maximum. Shields reduce this minimum chance to between 1% and 3%, depending on the AC of the shield."
Or "...the mob *always* has a 2% chance of hitting you for any given DI multiplier..."
This "AC softcap" that we have just learned about in these two threads is clearly not the same as the "AC softcap" that people talked about back in Velious days (and which was a local abberation caused by the combination of Velious-era gear limitations and the massive disparity of ATK between the AoW and all of the other Velious-era mobs). So we have a new concept, also called "AC softcap" (and boy, are people gonna get headaches from confusing the two), which is inherent in the calculations for AC, and which shields modify. Let's call the former "the Velious-era 1300 AC softcap", and this new one "the AC formula softcap".
We don't know how the "AC formula softcap" that we're now being told about is implemented, whether it's relative to the mobs or innate to the player character. That's what we're asking about now--exactly what the "AC softcap" that the developers just told us about means.
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Gront/Graa, Ayonae Ro.
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Quote:
Old 06-17-2004 #10
Kavhok
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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
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