Warrior AC, HP, and Sta

[Jimjam]

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

Hey all,

I'm leveling up a warrior and have some questions about ac vs HP vs sta. I played a warrior (albeit only into the high 40s) on live and always set AC as priority number one, then sta or HP as priority number 2. Does this still make sense in P99? I saw a helm going last night that had 22ac +5sta and -30cha. I currently have a Skull Shaped Barbute on my warrior (lvl 10) and was thinking the high ac helm was better overall. However, one of my friends said that the SSB was better due to the hp bonus. So my questions are:

Do you think the SSB is better at level 10, but then at some later point the other helm with higher ac would be better? (SSB has 13ac while the other had 22).

In general, how should I be gearing, i.e. how much ac should I sacrifice if an item has considerable sta or hp bonuses?

Thanks and sorry for the poorly worded questions. Any answers will be helpful [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If skull shaped barbute is the standard of your equipment you will have already completely drowned out the value of mobs ATK, and be way over the AC cap for your level anyway.

The skull shaped barbute is going to be good for a long time; the 35 hp is roughly equivalent to 6 Sta at level 60, plus the MR is going to up your chance to resist roots, blinds, etcs by about 5% more for mobs of your level (IIRC).

For the record the classic devs told us AC caps for trilogy era were 163 at 51 and 289 at 60. I have no idea if these are used on p1999, or what the return is for exceeding caps, but it makes sense to use these as a guideline in my view.

For those who way AC doesn't work, have you never compared taking hits naked vs geared? When naked max hits are so much more common! The live dev post I mentioned previously regarding AC caps also taught us the amount of damage a 51 paladin at the ac cap would take against mobs a few levels beneath it. Out of curiosity I took a look at my own logs in KC and a 51 paladin I was grouping with was taking damage roughly equivalent to what the live information suggested he should.

AC did go under a change on p1999 not so long ago, it certainly has merit now, even if mob atk values aren't perfect. However, there is sometimes a point where more AC stops being better, particularly at the earlier levels. I suspect the case raised by the OP is one of these instances.

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

Of course they don't. Because the developers were pretty dumb until around Luclin when they realized maybe the main tanking class should have some real ways of generating aggro.

Interestingly melee-stun (bah!) was intended to have similar aggro to spell-stun, but the bad code wasn't picked up on until circa Dragons of Norrath, at which point the way shields worked had just become an accepted part of the game. Rather than fix bash, they decided to increase focus on furious bash, shield block AAs and so on.

It would be interesting to have an eq emu where bash/taunt (which was often bugged not to work on yellow+ mobs) actually work as intended from day 1.

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

I think it really depends on how you level. If you solo a lot, I would go for ac (as hp will only help you at full health).

It does improve how much hp you can heal to with bandages, which matters. That said, I agree the important thing is to have 'enough' AC so you start to plateau on returns. Then you focus on other things that will help you.