Druid AC caps and shields

[Vexenu]

What's the current worn AC cap for Druids? Is it worth throwing in some higher AC items (i.e. Crystal Chitin Gauntlets with 20AC) to get near the cap when charming?

Also, does the shield AC bonus (i.e. going over the worn cap) apply to casters as well? Wondering if grabbing a Sarnak Battle Shield for charming would make a noticeable difference when taking hits.

[Solist]

There is no cap. AC returns scale linearly as far as you go. A Druid has tanked Vindi.

AC is the best and only stat to have if you take damage, especially if you stuff around charming on the Druid.

[PestilentCancer]

The shield ac overcap thing was a post-Velious feature, iirc. Something like Orb of the Infinite Void may be a better investment.

[Jimjam]

The cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap; it was a hard cap that had been there from day 1. After a certain point, which differed for each class, the benefit of more AC didn't just diminish - it dropped to nothing.

The change I referred to, just before PoP, changed that from a hard cap to a soft cap. You get a percentage of the amount over that soft cap. Shields increase both your total and your soft cap, making them more effective than any other item with equal AC. Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it.

Separate from this, there are diminishing returns if your AC is much greater than the NPC's attack. This is due to the nature of the formulas that produce the probability distributions that have been well documented on this board.

Does that help?

- Kavhok, SOE

https://web.archive.org/web/20041209...?threadid=7643

I found this really lovely post explaining how shields are counted after the game changed to AC softcap (from hardcap) system.

Obviously p1999 is set before this change, however it is reverse engineered from a system which included this change, and as other posters note above, p99 doesn't seem to perfectly emulate the pre-luclin AC system.

Note: the era that post was made was a really interesting time for learning EQ mechanics as SoE were just beginning to pull the veil since statisticians were managing to parse and twig how things work (one poster mentions "This "AC softcap" that we have just learned about in these two threads is clearly not the same as the "AC softcap" that people talked about back in Velious days" - the velious 'softcap' was an emergent quality due to characters being able to stack enough AC to completely squelch mobs attack values .... with the exception of AoW - mob attack values, and achievable AC on p99 is WAY over tuned).