If the AC bonus was that big of a deal I think we'd be seeing a lot more iksar wars/SKs.

So end game dungeon crawling you should pretty much have BE greaves always equipped only using FD/DP for emergencies. This could easily equate to thousands of extra mana in a sustained grind/crawl session where that mana could be spent on things like tap/dps and such and not splitting mobs. I don't think a minor AC bump is worth giving this up for. But would be nice to see a parse just to see. I have a 60 troll sk with moderate AC to be able to see an iksar AC difference giving the iksar more favor being below the soft cap to try and test this if someone brought forth an iksar sk.

That was my thought as well. We have had Kunark for 10 years now, and we don't see tons of Iksar Wars. Either nobody has done the calculation, or nobody has been impressed. But yeah I would love to see a parse if it can be produced.

ac doesnt have a big impact when raid mobs are beating on your face. it matters a ton when fighting even and uncon mobs though.

Oh yeah, AC isn't useless. The question is simply how impactful is a bit of extra AC past the softcap. SK's are going to hit softcap due to being able to wear plate. While it's difficult to accurately judge precisely how much AC actually helps at what breakpoints (especially past the softcap), saving mana is typically going to be a bigger boost in performance. SK's rely heavily on mana for damage mitigation in most cases.

There isn't a soft cap per se (not like how it is with Agility at 75 skill), it's just itemization is limited because there are 3 expansions and 90% of the BIS stuff comes from only one of them. If you can pick between Item A and Item B which are BIS and they have different stats you ultimately still have to choose a path. Even if you can't pick BiS items you still have to choose...Ivandyr's Hoop or Hammered Golden Loop? You gotta wear one...

Slowing stuff (slow), killing it faster (dps), and recovering lost hps (taps) is what matters. That and some old fashioned luck.

But also conserving resources (mana) with clickies and avoiding damage (NPC harm touch) at the cost of reagents (bonechips). Any mana not spent on feign death can then be used towards dps and hp recovery.

S tier:
Erudite
Dark elf

A tier:
Iksar

B tier:
Troll
Ogre
Human

…

S+ tier:
Gnome

Being a big fat tubbybutt is dumb.

The secret to mastering spellcasting is to weave butt scratches in between casting. No pretty princess will do that!

Ogres and Trolls have a hidden ability called "smell my finger."