Can someone explain to me the worthlessness of Agility?

[deadreaver777]

I've been reading recently that agility is worthless, and even did a forum search for a few threads that discussed this as well, but no one ever really gave any details on why it was a trash stat.

My serpentine bracers have 0 AC, but have 9 agility, when I equip them, my AC goes up, so how is this worthless?[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Laugher]

I would not go as far as to say its worthless, but in terms of AC it does not calculate precisely the way it did on live here on EQEmu. (Frankly I have no idea how close/far away it is from accurate, but I know its a long equation that currently works as close as anyone's gotten to live) AC does factor in, and I'm sure agility will help increase that, but the exact value of increased protection caused as a result remains arguable.

[Jimjam]

Not every increase in displayed AC is equal.

Displayed AC is made up of two forms of AC: mitigation AC and avoidance AC (i.e. reducing how hard you are likely to be hit, vs reducing how likely you are to be hit).

The second form of ac, avoidance AC is subject to a very harsh rule of diminishing return where you get a much smaller benefit after 75 Agi.

'Worthless' is just typical hyperbole where people are only capable of binary thinking (something is either good or bad, with no shades of grey). Worth less would be a better wording.

[deadreaver777]

So as a result, is AC itself a junk stat?

[Thana8088]

Doesn't AGI make you run a little (tiny) bit faster?

[Swish]

So all these iksar SKs actually aren't getting much bang for their penalty?

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by deadreaver777 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So as a result, is AC itself a junk stat?

Are you asking about displayed AC, mitigation AC or avoidance AC?

In all cases it depends on what you are fighting.

Sometimes your AC will be so low whatever you are fighting will have enough ATK to blow through it (think being attacked by a red).

Other times, you'll have so much AC that whatever you are fighting has little chance to damage you (think being attacked by a green).

Obviously there are increments between these two extremes, and it is at these increments where improving your AC is actually important.

Also note that there are caps on AC at each level, which muddies the waters further.

Adding Agi doesn't so much make you run faster, more losing agi makes you run slower as the cap for agi effecting run speed is pretty low. I think also 75.

I hope this explains/confuses everything for you!

[fadetree]

JimJam is correct.

My opinion : AGI is not actually worthless in itself, but it's pretty close. As a melee, I can't think of any situation in which I would say, 'Gee, I wish I hadn't of spent so much on direct AC, HP, or STA, because now I can't get my AGI up.'

[webrunner5]

I think what is crazy on here Agility wise, and it is worthless here, is that Every piece of Wu's Monk gear has Agility but one slot, Hands I think.

Now to me the original Devs must have thought Agility was a BIG deal, which it is IF it works for Monks, Avoidance, and on here it is a useless stat to even worry about.

Something smells "Rotten in Denmark" as they say. Does not seem "Classic"to me. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Jimjam]

EQ had a strange design philosophy. Most items weren't made to be 'good' for a class, even if they were class specific. Plenty of +int gear for priests as an example.

I think itemisation played to the imagery of the class more than to the game mechanics. Like "good monks should be super agile and be able to avoid anything" so they gave agi to the gear for 'good monks'. The person that made these items either didn't know or didn't care about the limits to avoidance gains form agi.

Either that or they thought NPCs would cast far more AGI debuffs than they did!