AC cap

[Thanatos]

Several times in other threads I've seen an AC soft cap mentioned (often when discussing Monks).

I've become fairly well bazaar geared in the last little while and my AC has risen accordingly.  Is there an AC cap (soft or otherwise) that I should be aware of?  Many advocate that HP > all but I would still like to concentrate on AC as well.  However, if there is a clearly defined point of diminishing returns for AC, I would like to be aware of it so I can make more informed upgrade decisions.

If it matters, I am currently level 63 and will likely stay fighting solo content (Nurga, Grieg's etc..) or PoP Tier 2/3 content for quite some time.

Anyone have anything on this?

[Coprolith]

AC soft cap for pre-PoP content is usally put at ~1000-1100 AC (with notable exception on some boss mobs). PoP mobs puts it around 1300AC, GoD is thought to be considerably higher still.

/hugs

[Oneiromancer]

I thought the magic number was 1200, especially for Luclin mobs.  Did I just hear wrong?

Game on,

[Tastian]

The mark of ~1300 is quoted from most of PoP, but also remember that CS/ID raises your softcap.  Most of the parsings I've seen have bst capping againist PoP mobs at ~1300ac with maxed defensive AAs.

[sunaj]

So is the cap of 1300 just for beastlords with regards to pop mobs? The reason I ask is that the general concensus at the Sk boards and the warrior boards is that you cant ever have enough, as they still havent seen the point of diminishing returns.

[Coprolith]

So is the cap of 1300 just for beastlords with regards to pop mobs? The reason I ask is that the general concensus at the Sk boards and the warrior boards is that you cant ever have enough, as they still havent seen the point of diminishing returns.

They do see diminishing returns. The difference is that their diminishing return arent as diminished as the diminishing returns of non-plate classes. The return for AC past the soft cap is class-dependent. For plate classes, the return is still visible underneath the statistical variance in parses, for non plate classes its not.

/hugs

[Bengali]

One thing to keep in mind:

AC functions the same way in all zones. Some old NPCs may have lower attack than new ones, but the formulas for combat do not change.

The AC formulas were changed a short while before PoP shipped. Perhaps that was confused as a content change in PoP. However, the Avatar of War does less damage to a warrior with 1800 AC than one with 1300 AC just the way that Bertox does. It doesn't matter that he's "old content" - his attack is still fairly high.

- Kavhok, SOE

I mention this because some people might get caught up in the idea of expansion specific caps when it has more to do with average mob attack values.  Even in a given expansion some mobs may have unusually low attack or unusually high attack.

[Coprolith]

The problem with Khavrok's statement (one of EQ's devs btw) that you quoted Bengali, is that his statement itself is also misleading. The softcap cannot be a straight function of the mob's attack. On the SW board it has been shown that a 100 ATK debuff lowered a PoF mobs damage output by more then the equivalent of 500 pts AC; once the warrior was past the soft cap that is. My own defensive parses have shown that varying the attackers ATK rating did not change the AC soft cap, it increased the average damage per hit but the point at which you get diminishing returns didn't change. It is possible that a mobs offense skill and level changes the AC soft cap, but skill alone is not enough to explain away the whole range of soft caps found. So its likely that there's some invisible parameter, a mob property if you like, that can be set by the devs at creation that also affects the soft cap against that mob.
That doesn't change your conclusion of course, the soft cap is not so much expansion specific but has to do with the average property values of the mobs in a specific expansion.

/hugs

[Araden]

AC generically was considered soft capped at 1k in original eq, 1100 in kunark, 1300'ish in velious and luclin,  and for PoP and beyond it significantly raised into the 2k mark'ish.  It wasn't until PoP really that we really started too see there were diminishing returns for different melee classes on AC.   I could be wrong, but I can't recall any discussions on any class boards prior to PoP about the subject.

[Dhantes]

From what i've read in GoD war's aren't seeing a softcap at 3k ac...

As such i pretty much have just given up on the idea of a softcap existing at all in the terms that once you hit this ac stop... monks for instance say that is pointless for them to have over 1300ac and such which is complete bull... i know i've read of GoD raiding bsts that tank reporting having 2k+ ac and it being effective...

[Thanatos]

Thanks for the replies all.

I'm currently sitting at just over 1100AC self buffed at level 63.  My main fighting spot is likely to be Nurga for a bit, so it appears that I'm probably at or very near the AC cap for Nurga mobs.

The reason I was asking is that I haven't really been concentrating on HP, but on AC instead.  Fights in Nurga rarely leave me hurting (0-2 heals per fight in Nurga).  Therefore from my viewpoint, concentrating on HP wouldn't really give me anything.  Concentrating on AC however, would lower the number of heals I had to cast, allowing for more uptime, more DPS spells, and therefore more XP/hour.

I was just starting to doubt myself as so many on these boards advocate for the pursuit of HP above all.  Obviously this pursuit of HP is geared towards fighting much higher content with AOE's and such.  I'll probably have to switch priorities if I ever move past BoT content, but until then I think I'll stick with my AC strategy.  It appears to be working.

Examples of this is I am currently using a Lodizal Shell Shield rather than a Moss Covered Cape and Gargantuan Armlinks instead of Gravedigger Arm Straps.

If any of you see any major flaws in this strategy, or have a different opinion, feel free to chime in.

[Bengali]

The problem with Khavrok's statement (one of EQ's devs btw) that you quoted Bengali, is that his statement itself is also misleading. The softcap cannot be a straight function of the mob's attack.

That's a good point to raise, and I actually didn't mean to suggest that.  The interesting thing that Kavhok said was the following:

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

Looking at both statements we can see that:

1.  The AC softcap is class and level based.  The level part is interesting because it suggests that the softcap may have been raised with PoP, since levels were added, and that it might go up again with Omens.

2.  There is a totally seperate set of diminishing returns if your AC is much higher than an NPC's attack.

What I was trying to say is that many people refer to the phenomenon in number 2 as the "softcap", when it's actually seperate from what the class/level softcap is.   If there is anything that varies by expansion, it would be attack values.

In other words, the way I interpret Kav's various posts, it would suggest that beastlords have an AC softcap at a set number (let's just make up a number, like 1500) and they get diminishing returns on all their AC after that.  Again, that number is totally made up.   But let's say Kunark mobs have an average atk rating of 900 (again, completely made up).

What would happen is that you might notice diminishing returns well below the 1500 point versus those Kunark mobs.  Maybe at 1100 AC your AC was sufficiently higher than the mob's atk to notice the diminishing returns that Kav mentioned, so going to 1200 AC versus Kunark mobs wouldn't make a noticeable difference to you.   If Velious mobs have an average atk of 1100 (more made up numbers) then you wouldn't encounter  the diminishing returns, and you'd see a benefit from going to 1200 AC (or higher) versus those mobs.

But a lot of people had experienced this, and started talking about the Kunark/Velious/Luclin/PoP "softcaps".  In some sense they were right, because there are definitely points in those expansions where people can hit diminishing returns pretty hard.  But some people saw the talk of expansion related softcaps and thought that the formulas actually changed depending on what zone you were in.  Kavhok was correcting that notion.

It also means that if you hit diminishing returns versus a particular mob, it doesn't necessarily mean you've hit the AC softcap.  You'd need to find a mob with a higher atk rating to see if what you hit was your class softcap or whether your AC just vastly exceeded that mob's atk.

So no, I absolutely do not think that the softcap is purely a function of mob atk -- in fact I prefer to think of them as unrelated.   I view it more like say, wis and mana.  There is a softcap on mana derived from wis at 200, in that every point after that nets less mana per wisdom point.  That softcap is the same no matter where you are.   However, if you're fighting a set of mobs in Antonica, you might notice that you don't run out of mana at 150 wis no matter what you do.  That would be a point of diminishing returns for you, but it wouldn't really be an "old world mana softcap".   They could always revamp or you could encounter some situation where you needed the extra wis above 150.

[Chubaka]

The mark of ~1300 is quoted from most of PoP, but also remember that CS/ID raises your softcap.  Most of the parsings I've seen have bst capping againist PoP mobs at ~1300ac with maxed defensive AAs.

I don't understand this softcap business.  Just tell me, if I have 1099 AC self buffed, do I buy CS or not? hehehe

[Bengali]

The mark of ~1300 is quoted from most of PoP, but also remember that CS/ID raises your softcap.  Most of the parsings I've seen have bst capping againist PoP mobs at ~1300ac with maxed defensive AAs.

I don't understand this softcap business.  Just tell me, if I have 1099 AC self buffed, do I buy CS or not? hehehe

What are you going to get if you don't buy it?  There's some things you might want to get before CS, and there are some things you might not.   It's kind of hard to answer that question.

Personally, I'd say everyone should get CS at some point, unless for some reason they can guarantee they'll never get hit by a mob.  But how you prioritize it depends on what you do and what you already have.

[Oneiromancer]

Well, I've been putting off buying CS also, because there were some threads a while back saying that unless you're at or above the AC soft cap for the mob you're fighting, extra mitigation has a very small effect.  (And this was quoted from a Dev.)  I even asked about it in that thread and I recall not getting a very definitive answer.  Right now I'm concentrating more on dps, unless a very good case is made for getting CS with the AC I am able to achieve (I think the highest AC I've ever had fully buffed is around 1160).

Game on,