The usual disclaimer applies here: We're all talking about an uncertain subject. The true effect of abilities and statistics on P1999 has seen a lot of debate here over the years. EQ-Emulator is separate from EQ-Live, and at this point P1999 has become fairly distinct from EQ-Emulator. For the sake of having a discussion--it's useless to sit around saying, "well, we don't know"--I'll assume things work here basically similar to how these factors worked in the original game in-era. As a reader just remember it all comes with an *asterisk.
Mitigation and avoidance AC are different statistics that happen to be displayed as a composite score together. There is a 1-20 roll ("Damage Interval," or DI) that determines damage taken. Mitigation AC (armor gained from equipment or AC buffs) works against that roll by weighting it lower, provided monster attack values aren't so high as to make any obtainable AC ineffective. However, there is also a fixed damage bonus ("DB") portion of incoming damage, effectively the monster's minimum hit, that cannot be reduced by armor or other means. Avoidance is something of a mixed bag. Skill-based avoidance--Dodge, Parry, Riposte (and Block, I believe)--are fixed values that depend solely on the player character's level in those respective abilities. However, a monster's raw chance to MISS is affected by "avoidance AC" such as AC gained from agility or defense skill. This type of AC shouldn't have much or any impact on mitigation. Character level plays a role in both as well as is plainly obvious from simple observation. A level 40 Cleric who never bothered to train defense takes fewer, and lower, hits in melee on P1999 than a level 15 Warrior who maxed out defense for his level and hence has it higher than the above Cleric.
In actual practice, in-game it is much easier and more effective as a tank to gear for health and mitigation and accept what avoidance/agility you get than attempting to gear specifically for agility. The few players who attempt to do the latter tend to have a tough time of it and typically show poor results for the effort. Available gearing doesn't really support that type of setup very well. Theorycraft aside, you have to wear the equipment that exists and for plate classes in this game it heavily favors hitpoints and raw armor/mitigation.
-----------------------------------------------------
What you gear for as a tank depends on what you're mainly doing. Hit Points are and will always be king when acting as main tanks for most raids because what matters most in a Complete Heal chain is minimum time to death, not average. Being able to definitely survive one more max-hit round is far more useful than usually-but-not-always surviving a couple additional rounds. Outside that there's a lot more wiggle room. I mostly duo with the wife and maybe an additional friend or two; she plays a Shaman. I receive a lot of Torpor and very rarely have a Cleric around for Complete Heals. Hence raising my own maximum health does very little for me--Torpor will heal its 1200 whether I have 4500 health or 4000--so I'm much better off raising my armor as much as I can.
Danth
|