What is, if any the cap for AC when it comes to us. I love to tank and have recieved a few AC augs lately and wondering if they will make any difference at all. I am also curious about the effect of Shielding/Avoidance.

Right now i am sitting around 1750AC 85avoidance and 4% shielding, i generally run the AC tribute as well, wondering if that is just tossing tribute points down the drain. What, if any, benefit would i recieve by bringing AC up to say, 2000...with or without buffs.

Thanks in advance,

Aegyen

Thats a LOT of avoidence...assuming thats not a typo, got a magelo where I can check out the gear? I too was always a fan of my druid tanking and be curious on what it would take to get 85 avoidence (only 4 shielding to go with it?)! hehe

There's no hard "cap" on AC, but there's a point for nearly all classes past which you get very diminished returns. On monks it's ~1350AC. After that point, it's something like every 6 more AC points you get that shows up as the number = 1 real AC point. (This was confirmed by a dev over on M-B after numerous parses showed it.) Warriors do not have such a cap (or if there is one it's somewhere around 2200-2400.) I cant tell you what it is on druids, but it would surprise me if it was a lot more than a monk's (well, not totally surprise me, considering the tremendous reaming monks have gotten in recent years.)

Bottom line, you'll always get *some* theoretical benefit from a higher AC. Whether it's distinguishable from statistical noise is another question entirely...

3400 ac SK's make me cry in the face.

http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=72782 (javascript:view_profile(72782);)


That is my Magelo. And i have talked to monks about their AC cap or point of diminishing returns anyways being lower than any other class. Theirs has not been raised since Kunark due to their mitigation nerf.

I dunno how to link my magelo =( number is 72782 i'm Aegyen on Brell if you wanna look it up on EQrank. Sorry maybe someone could help with that as well.

I believe you were trying to get this:

http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=72782

yup! thank you =-). what did i do wrong?

You apparently copied and pasted a link from somewhere that uses javascript to open magelo profiles in a new window.

3400 ac SK's make me cry in the face.

Yeah but apparently they dont see any gains past 2800 or so -- from what Im told anyway. I have a AC obsessed SK in my guild, who just broke 3k unbuffed and its only to fluff the magelo, and its doing nothing extra for him.

Ive been curious over a lot of the class caps as well.

Shielding I don't think helps all that much... from what the guild warriors say it only effects the min hits, so on most stuff you'd have a chance at tanking it's not going to make much of a difference.

It's good for warriors though where they tank stuff with much higher min hits so it has more effect and since they have better mitigation so the mob hits for min a lot more.

Shielding I don't think helps all that much... from what the guild warriors say it only effects the min hits, so on most stuff you'd have a chance at tanking it's not going to make much of a difference.

It's good for warriors though where they tank stuff with much higher min hits so it has more effect and since they have better mitigation so the mob hits for min a lot more.

Shielding works just like spell shield (against DB only, not Di), therefore its the same benefit for any class. If your obessed with testing this, take a caster with 35% shielding and a caster with 0% shielding to txevu and let the named aneuks (they have 1 di) smack them around a bit.

Warriors just like to tell lies so they get all the shielding for themself :lmao:
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Ok I know this is near imposible to parse, but does anyone have any guesses to what the AC softcap anguish trash is? I'm 'guessing' its 1500ish, way above what anguish gear will give us, but I'm still curious;p

hehe isn't that what I said?

It's been a very long time since I read much about db and di inregards to melee dmg so correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't db equate to the min hit?

shieldling works against the min hit / db ... it works the same for everyone but it's in practice is not as usefull for everyone.

the purpose of shieldling is to stretch the dmg range of a mob on the bottom end. For it to be useful you have to a) take enough hits to the pt where the avg hit matters b) have the mitigation to put more hits into the lower range of the spectrum and c) tank stuff with high a high min hit

Normally for druids the stuff you'll be concievably taking hits on will either have a lower min hit value where shielding has little use, or hits hard enough that the hit range is wide enough to not make that much of a diff (ie: taking 350dmg off the min hit from 1k is not gonna make a difference when the next hit on you is 2k+).

About the ac soft cap though;

From what I understand it's pretty low for all classes, and at the highend most ppl are way over it. The mitigation aa's supposedly just raise the cap but even then it's still low.

Most interesting thing I've heard is shield ac is caluclated seperately from the cap, so an ac aug there would be a very good idea. Otherwise you'd probably get a better return on more hp than ac.

Hell I have not a clue what DB and Di actully are =p, those are just the terms I'm used to from TSW boards.

Damage Base and Damage Interval. Melee is calculated as DB+(DI*ran(1,20)), before mods.

DB + (DI * /rand 1 20)

Example:
DB = 1,000
DI = 50
Min DI = 50 (50 * 1)
Max DI = 1,000 (50 * 20)

Player with 0 shielding
Min hit = 1,050 (1,000 + 50)
Max hit = 2,000 (1,000 + 1,000)

Player with 35 shielding
Min hit = 700 (650 + 50)
Max hit = 1650 (650 + 1,000)

Mobs across the game have big differences in DB / DI. Some are heavily weighted in DB while others weighted more towards DI. Ones that are weighted mostly towards DB get the most help from Shielding. The /rand 1 20 that is done to decide what DI is multiplied against is weighted largely on the persons AC and some other factors I have no idea about. So a warrior with 3k AC and a much higher softcap than a druid would end up having their DI average /rand of maybe 8 while us as druid might average 15 on the same mob.

Just read a post on this a few weeks ago from some warriors, hopefully I relayed it correctly. Personally I think shielding is nice to have after hearing how it works, planning to concentrate a little more on shielding before next expansion.

it works the same for everyone but it's in practice is not as usefull for everyone.

I definaly agree that high shielding is of course better off on a tank class, but with how raids are setup nowadays - its good for priests as well (mainly do to the fact we can't always choose 'what' we want to pull aggro on while being effective.) Especially druids since our Di mitigation sucks and we can't DA.

A large cause to druid deaths on non-wiping raids is dying to adds (ie on vish and OOM event), and surviving these is very posible. I'm not sure how much DB these adds have, but IMO anything that helps you live til a heal lands on you help. it seems like the liches in the vish event are DB heavy from what I've seen.


Most interesting thing I've heard is shield ac is caluclated seperately from the cap, so an ac aug there would be a very good idea. Otherwise you'd probably get a better return on more hp than ac.

With 100+ ac shields out there I'm sure this could parsed easily enough.
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The generic caster / druid quest gear from anguish+ has shielding all over it - you don't have to concentrate on it at all to get 15-20% shielding. Most druids who have shielding values like that also happen to be over the avoidance's 100 hardcap, so thats the only thing they can work on to lower a mob's DPS to them - no matter how marginally effective shielding actually is to us.

as far as shielding only affecting the min hit...

agro a mob, sit down, let it hit you once (guarenteed max hit)

take off a shielding item, then repeat.

Gonna clear a few things up...

First off, yes a mob hits in a range of DB + n*DI where n is a random 1-20. On a Warrior, its slightly different, as a warrior only takes 95% of the DI, or DB + n*( 0.95*DI ).

Shielding affects the DB portion and is capped at 35%. Meaning if a mob has a DB of say 100, and a DI of say 50 ( min: 150 max: 1100 ), with 35% shielding, the mob would effectively have a DB of 65 ( new min: 115 new max: 1065 ).

AC helps in many ways.

First off, per dev's post on the EQ boards, each class has its own 'soft cap'. This isn't a soft cap like folks use to think, but a true softcap where instead of gaining a 1:1 ratio of additional AC show vs AC used in formulas, you get less. No one knows where any class's softcap lies, but according to devs, most anyone at lvl 70 is over their respective caps. Warriors have the highest cap, followed by knights, then monks, etc ( devs did not state order of the remaining classes that I recall ). So, hypothetically speaking, a warrior may have a soft cap of 1400, a knight of 1200, a monk of 1000 - just using made up numbers.

For each point of AC over this soft cap, each class has its own ratio of return. Again, warriors have the highest return, then knights & monks ( actually made the same recently ), etc. So made up example to illustrate this would be 1/5 for a warrior, 1/8 for a knight or monk ). This AC value that is calculated ( not what you see, but what is used internally ) is used in formulas versus the mob's attack value to effect the 1-20 values that are used to calculate the hits. Higher AC means on average a lower 1-20 value, a more predictable hit distribution ( less spike damage ), etc. Since the formula is a sort of comparision between the mob's attack and your AC, this gives the illusion of deminishing returns as your AC pushes the average 1-20 value closer to 1 or lower ( no return ). There is still quite a bit of benefit to lowering the avg DI, as it is referred to, as the increase in AC is also flattening out the incoming distribution of hits. Its actually more meaningful / powerful to lower an avg DI from 3 to 2 than it is to lower it from 6 to 5.

Avoidance adds to the chance a mob misses you entirely. Parses so far have shown ~10 avoidance is about an additional 1% to the miss rate of your class. Meaning that if as a knight, a mob is missing you 48% of the time, the mob will now miss you 49% of the time. Avoidance is capped at 100 so most ppl say, but its still debatable.

So in the end, depending on what you are fighting, shielding is important ( high DB mobs ), AC is important ( high DI mobs ), and avoidance just flat out rocks. As a caster, however, you have one of the lowest returns on AC over your class's softcap, and one of the lowest caps. IMO, avoidance > shielding > AC for a druid.

As for no returns in benefits of going over 2800 AC, that is totally false if you are hunting in GoD or OoW. So far, the only reported sense of deminishing returns in OoW on trash mobs in Rifts has been around 3500 AC. In GoD, AC is actually more important.

Edit: forgot to add that items marked as a shield are somewhat different. A shield's AC is added directly to your class's softcap, per dev comments. So if your class has a softcap of 1000, and you equip 100 AC shield, this gives you 1100 AC to add to whatever your remaining AC is before it is deminished per your class's return ratio over the soft cap, making shield AC the most valuable AC item in the game.

Avoidance is capped at 100 so most ppl say


Avoidance hardcap = 100
Accuracy hardcap = 150
Combat effects hardcap = unknown (the only hardcap that's not confirmed)

I have 120 avoidance, so I'ld like to think that it wasn't such a low cap too, but trust me, its 100. Feel free to prove me otherwise :smile:

Avoidance cap is such a debated topic. Personally, I have never seen a parse that should lead anyone to believe its over 100, but some folks swear it is. C'est la vie. ;)

combat effects is supposedly capped at 100 for 100% increase in procs (in most cases + 2 procs / min) ... weapon affinity is 10% / = to 10ce per lvl for 50% total. So max increase to procs for melee would be 150% or 5procs per min unless coded otherwise. (that's 5 procs total, 2base 2 from 100ce 1 from maxed WA)

Avoidance is easy to prove, get to 85 avoidance and add one avoidance aug and your ac will go up... add another while at 100 and it won't move. Like mentioned 10avoidance = 1% increase in misses on you 10% at cap

Accuracy is 150 for 10% gain total when capped, 1% per 15 value


Improved dodge I think I have **heard** (was from a post on the SK boards) is considered directly against the mobs accuracy, and otherwise would only save against attacks you're already missing with full aa and avoidance cap'd

ie: say your avg mob has no accuracy mod to it, and it's miss rate = your avoidance rate. If your avoidance rate is 40, lets say 5 from ea. avoidance aa set, +10 from maxed avoidance mods, and 15 base (pulled those numbers out of my arse) adding improved dodge 3 to you will not make you dodge 70% of the mobs attacks... instead your avoidance rate should stay at around 40ish.

but take a mob like the wurm for epic 2 that seems to never miss.. say for that it has like a 80% accuracy mod to it. If you went against that with the generic 40% avoidance rate then it'd still hit like 80% of the time. Go against it that avoidance rate and add ID3 and it should hit for 50% of time.


The main pt I was trying to make about shielding is it's not something that should become like ac for some warriors where they get it to the exclusion of other things and end up with, like I think for our warriors the ac fantic is 250ish ac ahead of the others but 1.5-2khp behind. Though a lot of the other stuff isn't to hard to cap I would put a lot of it ahead of shielding.

If you can get it with upgrades you would have grabbed even if it didn't have shielding then great. Otherwise, meh...

Here's some useful information: Damage from "melee" rifts trashs is ~22% DB. That means if you have max shielding, their max hit (~1237) will be lowered by ~8% (to 1138.) While that may look minimal, I'm sure anguish mobs's melee damage is a higher % DB - but since my warrior isn't a raiding twink I'll never be able to test it myself ;p


but some folks swear it is

those people are wrong, Avoidance hardcap = 100

EDIT:

Improved dodge I think I have **heard** (was from a post on the SK boards) is considered directly against the mobs accuracy, and otherwise would only save against attacks you're already missing with full aa and avoidance cap'd

Wheather if that's true or not, I do not know. But with a YALP parser it's easy enough to test its effectivness. I tested IMP dodge 3 on my warrior in rifts. Each parse was looking at the overall dodge rate over 2 hours of xping at the same camp. Not "as" precise as it could be i guess, but it shows that it does work.

Dodge rate in rifts on a warrior:
avg dodge rate w/o ID3 = 5.1%
avg dodge rate w/ ID3 = 6.2%

You can't just look at the dodge rates. The parse Mellen was mentioning can be found here (http://shadowknight.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22474&highlight=improved+dodge). Basically, it just turned misses into parries ( Imp Parry was the test subject ) - it didn't actually increase the avoidance rate by any meaningful margin. There is another parse on TSW, that is very inconclusive - it was a parse for AC and Frodlin threw in some parses that added Imp Dodge, Imp Parry, and avoidance, but all at once. Too many variables to be precise.

Can't remember where the original thread was but there were 2 posts linked off of it, think that may have been one of them but not the one I was talking about. But that's pretty much the same idea... if a mob does not have a specific lvl of accuracy (ie: the bw epic 2 wurm is probably the most tangable example of this I can think for druids) improved dodge / parry work towards hits that are already being covered if it's working at all.

If you want to test this try and find a druid that can pop the wurm in BW and parse that fight with and with out id3 ... I would imagine you would see a much larger difference there than in rs.

About the RS example the problem with that is I'm guessing by db% you mean x% of the hits are for their minimum amount... first thing is that will not be the same for ea. class or person. It varies based on class stats, ac mobs atk etc. Warriors or knights will have the higher %s of min hits on them. Debuffs mobs fully with hand sc and gelid claw and that % will go up even higher (<-- this may be a factor in your belief that anguish mobs have a higher db %)

The 2nd thing is shielding will not change the max hit, it will change the avg. hit since the spectrum of possible hit values has been stretched on the lower end.

ie: say a mob hits from 100 to 200... for the sake of easy numbers assume the avg hit is in the dead center of the hit range. In this case that would mean the avg. hit would be 150. If you were to factor in max shielding there the hit range would change to 65 to 200. Assuming the same circumstances that would change the avg. hit to 132.

Just to clarify how I came up with that number....

Data on Kamea (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=989461) vs Pyrilen Guard:

Max hits (sitting, same mob same debuffs):
0% shielding - 1237
13% shielding - 1203

Math to determine DB:
1237-1203 = 34(100/13) =262

DB = 262, or 21.1% of 1237
Max di = 979
Min di = 49

Estimated Effectivness of capped shielding:
262 * 0.35 = 91.7 / 1237 = 7.4%

EDIT, ok i really need to stop trying to do math ;p added a min di value...

Not gonna make any statment on the effectivness of Improved parry III since I really wouldnt know...but...

Basically, it just turned misses into parries

The order of operations on a hit has the chance to parry /rand`d before hit / miss /rand. So that's the reason why it would appear like so - but it doesn't mean that improved parry isn't causing you to parry hits that would have landed.

When a mob hits you, here's the order of defensive /random operations:
1-2) Parry or dodge (dont recall which comes first)
3) ripo
4) hit / miss

of course only dodge and hit/miss apply for a druid

The 2nd thing is shielding will not change the max hit, it will change the avg. hit since the spectrum of possible hit values has been stretched on the lower end.

This is incorrect. I have tested max hit with and without shielding on the same mob and it does change. Shielding affects DB and the DI remains the same, thus changing the max hit.

Estimated Effectivness of capped shielding:
262 * 0.35 = 91.7 / 1237 = 7.4%

This assumes max hits only and that isn't a very common scenario. Lets say the damage is distributed evenly over the damage interval. The average damage would then be (262+1237)/2 = 749.5. Effectiveness in this case is 91.7 / 749.5 = 12.2%.

Here's a more simpified version of my last post's math....

Y= Mob's max hit with 0 shielding
X= Player's shielding value


Z= Mob's max hit with x shielding0.x[(y-z)(100/x)] = How much hp X% shielding will take off of a certains mob's average hit


My warrior's 13% shielding will take off ~34 hp per hit in rifts. After extended parsings of me tanking there, you can say a reasonable average hit is 490. Since that's with shielding, you can add 34 to that. Conclusion = over a long period of time 13% shielding will be responsible for ~6.49% of my warriors damage mitigation.

But, For a druid, parsing an average hit vs a high level mob is near impossible. So predicting the 'true' effectivness of shielding vs a anguish mob would be inaccurate.


Estimated Effectivness of capped shielding:
262 * 0.35 = 91.7 / 1237 = 7.4%

i meant to say against a max hit ;p what does that show? well, good question...

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In the end, the information that's important to the situation - how well does this **** work - is almost imposible to find. What would really help is a list of DB / Di (also perhaps atk accuracy etc) of anguish trash mobs, rampaging raid bosses, etc etc. Because the purpose of all this is to figure out "Is shielding worth looting? Will it effectivly help keep me alive?"