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#1
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Shield AC
Are things in this era like on live where items that are flagged as a shield raise AC above the softcap. From what I can see of this is the case Sarnak battle shield is the best shield a shaman can get outside big raid targets as surely the orb of the infinite void is not shield flagged? Surely then the 25 over soft cap ac is better than 35 already capped AC?
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#2
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In EQ (classic and modern) shield ac has always given raw ac at a 1:1 ratio regardless of class, softcap, etc. Making up numbers here but if the softcap for a class is 400 raw item ac and a class had 430 raw ac (minus shield), you'd get the 400 raw ac plus a very small percentage of the remaining 30. If that class put on a 25 ac shield, that class should have 425 raw ac plus a very small percentage of the extra 30 raw ac beyond the softcap. Bear in mind that raw item ac is not the same thing as displayed ac.
Whether or not this is coded to correctly reflect this on p99, I'm not sure. If it is coded correctly, from a survivability standpoint any caster who can wear a shield should wear a shield in those moments where they're taking damage. Whether or not you're getting hit depends a lot on play style and your class. As a shaman, I find myself taking rounds of melee damage very frequently. 25 coded shield ac should net pretty much all classes a lot more mitigation than 35 non-shield ac. What I don't know is whether or not shield ac is coded correctly here and if so whether or not the orb of infinite void is coded as a shield. One thing to always keep in mind is that NPC ac (including pets), there are NO softcaps. They get a 1:1 return on all ac (innate, worn via equipped gear, stat bumps by agility, and raw ac buffs). A trick for a pet class (including shaman) to make pets much beefier is to give them some cheap tradable raw ac gear and then agility buff and ac buff your pet. For shamans in particular, simply giving your pet an agility buff and an ac buff will really make a huge impact on their damage intake mitigation curves. This phenomenon is one of the big reasons that up until late 2014 and early 2015 on live that pets tanked (mitigated) circles around raid buffed knights and warriors. They got 1:1 returns on equipped gear and buffs, and the pet durability (mitigation) line of aa's bumped their functional mitigation way above and beyond what even the best geared players could achieve. I spent a lot of parsing this on live and posting it on SOE boards before daybreak took over, and they ended up nerfing innate mitigation on pets down to a less insane level (though still far better than what players could achieve). Pet classes were obviously pissed, but whatever. So, if p99 is coded correctly, all ac you give your npc pet effectively functions as shield ac. For pets that were designed/balanced initially to mitigate appropriate content in the raw as they are summoned - you can effectively give your pet several "shields" by simply giving them garbage bronze gear that drops off mobs (or simply give them an ac buff and agility). If you solo and use your pet as a tank, buff it's agility and ac. If you duo with a necro/mage/enchanter and use their pet as the tank - toss an agility and ac buff on it. You'd be shocked to see just how much less damage the mob takes via melee.
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Last edited by Troxx; 03-08-2016 at 03:52 PM..
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#3
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Thanks Troxx looks like it's gonna be sbs for me for a long time assuming the shield ac is a reality here on p1999.
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#4
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I'd imagine the original rules on live that governed whether something was a "shield" or not were either quite broad (like anything in secondary slot) or quite arbitrary. Somethings don't have shield or buckler in the name, but are most certainly shields (guard of the Marines comes to mind.) Either way you'd have to do a lot of parsing to figure out if it was coded correctly here, and also to find out if each individual item was considered a"shield." Or maybe get a response from a Dev
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#5
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wouldn't the tooltip reflect it accurately if you equipped a 35 AC shield in your offhand, then tried a 35 AC weapon in the offhand the AC increase would be different eh?
maybe its more complicated than that | ||
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