Tanking - HP vs AC

[eqravenprince]

Is there a rule of thumb for figuring out value for armor at later levels? Would an AC30 item be better than an AC15 item with +50HP. At early levels, the +50 HP is king, but wondering if eventually the higher AC item becomes the better item. I solo a lot if that helps.

[Ripqozko]

Is there a rule of thumb for figuring out value for armor at later levels? Would an AC30 item be better than an AC15 item with +50HP. At early levels, the +50 HP is king, but wondering if eventually the higher AC item becomes the better item. I solo a lot if that helps.

Raiding hp is king, grouping ac works better. I try at 60 to keep 1300 ac on my knights buffed with as much hp as I can.

[Toxigen]

Yeah the lower level the mob the more effective AC is.

[Troxx]

This topic was all the buzz on live when augments were introduced. On live from OoW onward the answer was that ac was always better. Better in groups. Better on raids. During those eras and beyond i typically used a 1ac = 6-10 hp when making gear decisions. This really only boiled down to augments as raid level gear had predictable hps per slot - so you just gravitate to the higher ac items where available.

Here it is a lot more fuzzy. I honestly don’t think it’s a difficult decision as the best ac items typically have a lot of hp on them. Additionally in this era it’s really hard if not practically impossible to have enough hp to easily survive those tank killing rounds vs the big ass beaters like AoW without BiS gear.

Just go with the flow. The “better” item is usually the obvious choice. Balancing other things like stats and resists are where it gets a bit trickier. More resists, in particular, may have a bigger influence on your decisions than simply raw hp or ac. Being able to crank your resists up high while wearing your tank gear is very nice.

For groups? Mitigation is typically the way to go but again … the better item is usually obvious.

[Troxx]

Pertinent discussion from another thread with regards to ac vs hp on live:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3635396&postcount=505

Differences here:
-you won’t be maxing all your stats or resists with any old random piece of gear (raid or high end group).
-tier for tier each piece of gear had pretty predictable and consistent hp/mana per item.
-here complete heal is complete. Even if the 10k cheal limit on live were implemented here, no tank could possibly reach that threshold. Max hp from buffs is 1100+405+200 + whatever extra you might get from stam buff if under the cap.

Even with BiS gear nobody is cracking the 10k mark.

[patrick210]

WTB Incomplete Heal , heals for 7k 300 mana

[unsunghero]

What about resists on a non-tank? Is it even feasible to get resists high enough with a full-time set of non-raid gear? Or should one give up on full time high resists and instead go after a set of resist gear to have to lug around?

[Troxx]

What about resists on a non-tank? Is it even feasible to get resists high enough with a full-time set of non-raid gear? Or should one give up on full time high resists and instead go after a set of resist gear to have to lug around?

At the lower end you haul around resist gear to swap in. At the high end I would imagine you look for excellent BiS gear that has solid resists … and then skip the extra resists kit altogether

[Solist]

Maximize ac and dps at all costs until 60. Then max hp. Easy rule.

[Seducio]

Maximize ac and dps at all costs until 60. Then max hp. Easy rule.

Along these lines. If OP is soloing mostly like he said order of focus while meleeing a tank is:

DPS then AC then HP

The faster the mob gets killed the less overall hits you will take.

[Troxx]

Maximize ac and dps at all costs until 60. Then max hp. Easy rule.

A very solid rule I can get on aboard with

[Infectious]

Can we get a DsM ruling on this? He does have a 58 sk he leveled in guk

[7thGate]

Pertinent discussion from another thread with regards to ac vs hp on live:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3635396&postcount=505

Differences here:
-you won’t be maxing all your stats or resists with any old random piece of gear (raid or high end group).
-tier for tier each piece of gear had pretty predictable and consistent hp/mana per item.
-here complete heal is complete. Even if the 10k cheal limit on live were implemented here, no tank could possibly reach that threshold. Max hp from buffs is 1100+405+200 + whatever extra you might get from stam buff if under the cap.

Even with BiS gear nobody is cracking the 10k mark.

As a note, Cheal the spell is 10k limited, though the bp clicky version apparently is not. This can matter when healing pets; captain bvellos has 23k+ HP, for example, so when using him to tank vindi 10k cheals are common since you can just ch at 80% life.

[Troxx]

Can we get a DsM ruling on this? He does have a 58 sk he leveled in guk

I lol’d

FWIW PCs are subject to ac soft caps. From the parsing I have done here NPCs (to include summon pets) are not. If you got a pet you want to keep alive (summoned or charm), ac buffs (and agility for that matter) go a long way.

[Solist]

There is no substantive soft caps on p99 worth worrying about. 1800ac scales from 1500 the same as 1500 from 1200. Every class except rangers which seem to have zero effect from AC at all, at any level beyond about 60 worn ac. Literally nothing else counts or makes a difference (source, my naked except dagarn leg ranger takes the same damage as fully clothed to 1300ac, also takes identical damage to my 1000ac ranger)...

Every other class AC is godly, its borderline broken. But raid content is also broken. So beyond ToV trash there's almost no point sacrificing HP for anything if you can keep aggro.

[Jimjam]

There are emergent soft caps specific to each mob- points after which no substantial improvements to tanking are made. Is 1300 vs 1320 ac going to impact mitigation when struck by a decaying skeleton? No but at low enough AC it will consistently hit for more- so at some point a soft cap for that mob was reached. This principle applies to all mobs, but using an extreme example to demonstrate which I believe we can all intuitively agree on (sorry no logs/vids supplied).

[Sizar]

I was told by a well known and basically BiS knight that the 1100 and 1200 AC soft caps were noticeable when soloing. So during my time soloing in HS from 55-60 I made a point to pay attention to how well i was doing when under 1100 AC, over it, and even when i hit 1200 from buffs. The difference between 1099 and 1101 was actually noticeable, but I did not notice much difference of a low 1100's and just over 1200.

I would sacrifice some better hp gear if it got me over 1100 AC, felt right

[Jimjam]

I was told by a well known and basically BiS knight that the 1100 and 1200 AC soft caps were noticeable when soloing. So during my time soloing in HS from 55-60 I made a point to pay attention to how well i was doing when under 1100 AC, over it, and even when i hit 1200 from buffs. The difference between 1099 and 1101 was actually noticeable, but I did not notice much difference of a low 1100's and just over 1200.

I would sacrifice some better hp gear if it got me over 1100 AC, felt right

How much worn ac was on your equipment @ 1100 ac?