Claw of Lightning is disappointing (ranger)

[bcbrown]

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

A couple months ago common belief was ranger AC capped around 100 and it has been parsed to hell and back and when someone actually bothered parsing it, it was inaccurate. We still don't know what the actual caps are.

Careful you don't overstate conclusions. What Sogundordor and I found was that against level 40-45 mobs, worn AC has an effect. Sogundordor found that against a storm giant escort, adding AC up to around 200 reduces damage taken in a similar manner to SKs. What I found is that against Shiel Glimmerspindel, worn AC has an effect up to around 160 in a similar manner to a Cleric and a Druid.

What I discovered (or re-discovered, as I learned nothing Torven hadn't already found) was that there's mob-specific squelch points above which adding AC provides little or no benefit, and that the benefit of AC is effectively just shifting the ratio between max-hit and min-hit. There's almost certainly a lower squelch point below which losing AC doesn't increase damage taken.

My understanding of what the "ranger AC is broken and doesn't matter" people have been saying is that it's specific to tanking harder raid mobs. I would caution against extrapolating results tanking easy blues all the way out to tanking red raid mobs. I can think of several ways consistent with my findings that could lead to "ac doesn't matter" against those kinds of targets.

Furthermore, even if AC does matter when raid tanking, rangers aren't gonna be a good choice. Your only defensive-minded discipline lets you act as a speed bump for 15 seconds. Your Defense skill is lower. Gearing for tanking is gonna have tradeoffs with resists or DPS.

On topic, I suspect that if you get some good parses, you'll find that the +attack of Swiftwind leads to a higher hit percentage, and a high proportion of hits will be at or above the "2*damage + bonus" modal value. One interesting experiment would be to use a piercing or 1hb mainhand and get some parses with and without the swiftwind. That'll give you a sense of exactly how the +attack is helping and might give some insight into exactly where the crossover point is between added attack and a better ratio.