Monk AC & Weight
 

Is there some "behind the scenes" magic happening with AC and weight? Or is the "weight penalty" as simple as exactly what it shows you as your new AC?

Specifically, if you equip a heavy item with AC, but the NET Armor Class shown is positive - is it "worth" putting on the extra armor class from the item?

Is armor class "what you see is what you get" on the stats in terms of weight penalty?

AC softcap is low, so a lot of folks hit it from regular entry level raid gear etc. Personally, I am a HP > all guy, in that, if you are at 0 hp ac does nothing. Some folks swear by ac, but im fairly sure its been shown to have negligible effect on incoming damage.

AC is best for solo/group content. It does indeed reduce incoming damage. For raiding AC is less useful, due to monsters hitting harder, faster, and having higher minimum damages.

As for how detrimental the AC penalty is at lower levels, I am currently leveling a monk. From 10-30 I didn't see a huge difference, but I do have a Fungi hehe. It may be a bit different for Monks without fungis, or higher level monks soloing harder content. My monk from 20-30 usually had 25-40 stones worth of weight from coin and fine steel weapons, and I didn't have a problem.

The client AC values I am pretty sure are wrong, and the Server is the one doing the calculations. But I believe the client is correct in terms of when it starts showing your AC being reduced due to weight. According to the wiki my level 30 can hold 16.9 weight before my AC is reduced, and this seems to be reflected in the client.

tldr: stay under weight cap, get moar gud AC and HP

this is the way of the monk

Some velious dev must have had a serious hard on for monks to give them 60 ac pants when their mitigation was already broke af in kunark.

In all fairness I don't think the dev's really expected AoW to be killed with frequency lol. On live that was a much harder fight, and people had to figure it out. The loot was probably designed around the idea that only a handful of people per server would ever have any.

The AoW loot makes sense lore-wise. He should only be dropping stuff that is for melee classes. You have 2 Warrior drops, a Rogue Drop, a Monk Drop, and 2 drops that can be used more generically. It's very "war" focused hehe.

I understand that point, but they easily could have made the pants like 30 ac and they still would have been good for a leather class who already was mitigating like a boss lol

Lol yeah 60 is a lot. But the Monks aren't complaining:D

I would trade AoW legs getting lowered for all other leg items getting more AC. SS legs have 6 AC.

6!

They're also 900k.

It's not like every single Monk has them.