Just curious for the smart folks out there like Fenier, does Druid AC matter at all? I thought I read somewhere that anything over ~1400 AC, doesn't make any difference in relation to the melee damage taken by any caster class.

I think I know most of the deal with Defensive AAs, Shielding %, Avoidance, etc., but am just curious about AC itself.

People always talk about an AC hard cap and soft cap and I always thought that really only applied to Warriors. Maybe even Knights, but surely not casters. Yet, it continues.

I am 2450ish AC unbuffed and honestly unless I had Magelo I would have never noticed it at all... I still get beat down pretty darn good. :)

"Druid and AC... does it matter?"

Simple answer? No (unless you have terrible gear.)

However, AC on a shield* is not affect by softcaps.

*For 'shield ac' to be effective, the item in your secondary slot must be tagged as a shield. AC augs placed onto a shield will add more 'shield ac.'

If you concern is strictly increasing survivibility from mobs' melee, I'ld equate 1 shield ac to about 4 hp.

my friends "in the know" say leather ac soft cap is 1500, with a sharply diminishing trend after that. only difference between 2k ac and 2.5k ac on a leather class is bragging rights.

fyi I'm told silk is 1200, chain 1800 and plate 2500, but no one knows the hard caps. I was just talking to someone tonight who mentioned a test run on a 4400 ac tank and the difference all the way up to that point was small, but noticeable enough for a parser to detect a distinct difference.

There are mechanics that make over-softcap ac more beneficial for tank classes than druids.

You have to be looking at terms of raw mitigation AC. Mine, with mostly Qvic level gear, is around 700 iirc. I don't have the exact number on hand.

y Raid buffed AC is 1900. So alot of that total is avoidance of bonsues from spells.

As Kaimon said only Shield AC raises the mitigation value. All other armor values split ( I believe ) between mitigation and avoidance. Frankly, we woul dneed alot of mitigation to be able to tank hits anywhere near as good as a melee, most of our armor however is avoidance.

The attack debuffs have a effect akin to adding a 190~ AC shield to your body. This is why you see a huge differance on damage because it is all basically an increase to your given mitigation AC value.

That said, once you reach your softcap for leather AC, all futher ac values give partial returns so you need more ac between effect levels.

IE: 1400 AC is Cap (theory, I don't know) over cap yeilds some very low number which means you could require 200-400 visable AC (value in game) to have any noticable differance in mitigation distribuation, and it would be minor, not as extreme as our attack debuffs.

From my parses it seems you would need to raise appox 100 mitigation AC to see a decent noticable effect, which for Druids could range anywhere from 200 to 1000 shown AC (again I don't know the return over cap).

So basically once your to the point that your getting partial returns, expect a large amount of AC required to see any differance in the hit distrub you take from mob melee.

As a rough estimate, check TSW for the rough value per return over cap and then... increase it for 3 or 4 times to get a rough idea of how much visable ac you need to notice a differance.

No, I don't know of those numbers are correct, but it should give you a rough appoximation and answer your question.

-Fenier

Thanks all. Good info.

Taking all that info to account... especially:

If you concern is strictly increasing survivibility from mobs' melee, I'ld equate 1 shield ac to about 4 hp.

Do I augment my shield with an aug that has AC on it (AC:10) or keep the one with Avoidance on it (as I thought I read somewhere that Avoidance on a shield indircetly raises the shield's AC by that value)?

I have an avoidance aug my shield for the hell of it, but I've never heard anything that'ld elude to avoidance AC on a shield would do anything, and from my understanding of shield AC, avoidance ac shouldn't count towards it. This would be something that would be good to be parsed by someone.

Even if it did work, it'ld be minimal (since raw has a high AC multiplier, unlike avoidance.) Also need to consider that avoidance over 100 does nothing (note, magelo adds avoidance ac over avoidance cap, something that is NOT true in game.) If your well over the avoidance cap (which all high end druids are), your not gurenteed that it's counting the avoidance on your shield at any given time.

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Basically, if your worst aug is 55 hp or so it may be worth it to put this on your shield.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70278

If your a high end raider with poor augs it'ld prolly be better to use some of the dodh augs with stun resist spell shield etc over that, just personal need / preference.

The only really appealing druid-usable secondary equpitable ac augs are the following:

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=39326
From sullon

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=39236
From indiff named in rage