How AC works

[logiktrip]

About the shield AC being overcap, I'm not sure it should be classic (if it's even on p99). There's a thread discussing it from awhile back here: http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...ead.php?t=7643

The original thread is gone, but there is a dev response that fills in a lot:

Originally Posted by Kavhok

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