AC softcap and low level hardcap discussion

[Goregasmic]

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

Yes, I agree he is talking about worn AC. That is the better metric to go by, as the displayed AC in the UI is basically useless, other than letting you know if your AC went up or down.

Mob level does have an impact on parses.

Going back to the D20 function:



The lower the mob's wrath, the lower their damage is against you.

As an extreme example, let's take an orc pawn attacking a level 60. A level 60 Warrior is going to have at least 300 mitigation, and an Orc Pawn's wrath is probably going to be well below 100.

If 50 Wrath and 100 Mitigation weights the D20's average rolls to ~6.5, a Wrath value of 50 and a mitigation value of 300 would weight the average dice roll even lower. This is why orc pawns basically always hit high level characters for 1 if they aren't sitting.

My bad, that was a big shortcut. I was a little too much in my ranger's scenario. Ranger EC bis on a somewhat balanced build will be around 200 AC, which appears to be the squelch point on a 45 mob. With self buffs you can probably stay around that clamp point all the way to 60 on mobs around 45-51. Rangers get little wiggle room for optimization if you're not fine with going full glass canon before raid gear. Raid gear opens up more options but you don't really get hit at that point like snaggles said so extra AC becomes a moot point unless for some reason you want to tank high end group stuff.

TL;DR get ~200ac if you plan on getting hit then YOLO.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

My bad, that was a big shortcut. I was a little too much in my ranger's scenario. Ranger EC bis on a somewhat balanced build will be around 200 AC, which appears to be the squelch point on a 45 mob. With self buffs you can probably stay around that clamp point all the way to 60 on mobs around 45-51. Rangers get little wiggle room for optimization if you're not fine with going full glass canon before raid gear. Raid gear opens up more options but you don't really get hit at that point like snaggles said so extra AC becomes a moot point unless for some reason you want to tank high end group stuff.

TL;DR get ~200ac if you plan on getting hit then YOLO.

I agree with 200 worn AC for Rangers.

It's easy enough to get with EC gear in Velious.

If the EQEMU softcap numbers are correct, 200 worn AC is the softcap for Rangers. With a 17% return for Rangers, 400 worn AC would amount to only 234 worn AC after the softcap is applied.

I have a hunch those EQEMU numbers are correct, as you figured out the 200 number yourself, and many Rangers feel like AC doesn't do much.