Mob AC
 

If this is in the wrong place, forgive me.

I am curious to know if there is a formula or way of determining the AC of a mob.

I have noticed on the wiki that some are listed with an AC and others are not. Is this from info that was carried over from other forums/sites or was it found out by other means? I did a search for it but came up empty unless I wasn’t looking for it in the right way. Thanks in advance for any help with this.

count how many hits it takes to kill the mob.

that's their AC

Someone who knows more about this than I do will inevitably come along to give you a better answer. But to my knowledge AC has been changed (because of the Titanium client) to most accurately as possible reflect what it was like in the classic time frame. This is going to make a lot of old ZAM and Live data trivial in regard to AC. How people calculate a mob's AC is beyond me. I would guess it has something to do with parsing a large amount of damage vs. the mob you're determining the AC for versus a mob with a known AC.

Edit: The Prima Official Strategy guides for Kunark / Velious have AC values on the mobs, don't they? I'm not at home so I can't see the PDF I have for it currently. Maybe that's where people are getting their intel?

The Prima guides are full of comically inaccurate information. I wouldn't trust any of that data.

I would be surprised if the mob ac number on wiki is accurate.

I suspect, like in classic, that they do not disclose stuff like mob ac, resists, etc and it is up to players to learn how much dps is needed, what resists they need, what spells land, etc through experience.

i'm sure some math wizard could use a spell with a known ac debuff and parse out the difference between hits over a long period of time with a constant attacker.

so parameters might be:

* person with constant stats & weapon
* known debuff with minus ac
* known HP of mob under test
* lots of damage logs vs non-debuffed
* lots of damage logs vs debuffed

insert magic here

maybe you need another mob with a known AC as well? who knows, maybe i'm way off

I believe some classic ac and hp values are known as it is visible in ShowEQ data. It's kind of how people say drugs are bad for society, yet they influence a lot of music. Some of P99 is possible due to ShowEQ!

how does showeq get AC from 2001?

Because we used i... some people used it and compiled all the data back then.

I didn't know this sort of thing even existed back then, I guess I have always been a scrub.