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 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[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.

[Nordenwatch]

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

[fishingme]

Originally Posted by Nordenwatch [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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