When choosing between HP and AC, does one give you more bang for your buck? My instinct tells me to go with HP because it'll help with spell damage aswell as physical. Is their an exchange rate between the two? (as in 10 hp = 1 AC, etc) or if ac has diminishing returns beyond a certain point. Any insight would be appreciated!
To answer your question ask yourself "Do I get hit a lot?".
AC is king if you are getting hit. AC will lower your average DPS taken and more importantly reduce damage spikes. The spikes are generally what will kill you. Most bst get hit a lot so AC is the way to go.
HP is king if you are not getting hit. Of course if you are not taking much melee damage from mobs then HP's will let you survive the AE's, dots, etc.
That said, get both as it is easy to do. Devs have been putting in more hybrid augs so concentrate on those instead of pure hp or ac augs and you wont be disappointed. Also, most gear these days will upgrade both so that isn't an issue though it is for older gear.
Personally I don't worry about ratios between ac and hp. I look at AC first, HP second, focuses third, secondary mods and heroics fourth when determining upgrades.
AC as the number we see is not the accurate amount you have. The AC shown on the armor is just a figure to show what it has. There was a huge write up about it on several other forums, there are something like 3 different forms of AC. Visible AC is almost meaningless, the Iksar ac bonus is of this type, so its fairly hard to say what "enough" AC really is. I believe the second type was parse values, with a "base cap" on AC and the returns over that deminishing. The last type was the type of AC values that only the Devs can see, so its hard for players to know these values.
AC vs HP is an old debate, with alot of arguements to either side. Given that the easiest to see AC values are off of how much AC you actually have, its fair easier to deal with straight HP gains.
Getting both is easy to do, I personally focus more on the AC aspect of augs, but only go for the ones with good heroics for dps. I normally look at Heroic stats first, AC second, Spell foci/mods third, HP last. Mostlybecause thats how my play style is set up.
So I guess the answer is really about as clear as mud as to which one is actually better then the other. You could always sit down and talk to a good knight or warrior about it. But what you choose should suit your playing style not what others tell you to do.
Like a good gear plan and good aug plan can help you. I am one that looks to AC 1st Heroic Str 2nd. with my current aug plan I will gain the following:
693 AC
1335 HP
1185 Mana
585 End
24 hstr
32 hagi
21 hdex
13 hstam
so planing out what augs you want to match what you want your toon to do can help a lot.
I tend to give alot more weight to heroics now. On my SK I am still AC but I am retirng pure ac augs as fast as I can to get extra heroics and mod 3's (not mod 2's but the stuff like clairvoyance, spell damage and heal amount).
I've been giving alot of thought to reaugging my beastlord as well and there are so many peices of gear that are of tower quality in the new UF group game that I could bump him up alot just by upgrading half his slots to group gear. The problem is he has alot of the old type 8 augs. Not to mention that in the past (when mana pools were smaller and 90/90/90 augs were significant) I was a mana beast.
Now I think I am going to use hybridized augs and focus on heroics for him. If I were playing him as a main I'd probably be looking at high mana augs with heroics and at least 15-20 ac. I think group geared players are picking up alot more mod 2's in the new expansion too without having to work as hard at it - or that is how it seems. I get this sneaky suspicion that sony is gearing the differences between raid and group gear more heavily in terms of the amounts of heroics and mod 3's now.
Edit:
Wow I just made an alternate tier 8/9 group geared magelo for my sk and the results were interesting - almost all mod 2's are close to maxed and I think they can be maxed with proper aug choices. Thats good to know.
You definatly have to plan in order to max mod2's in group gear but at least it is now possible. Friend just returned after an absence, he was raiding solt when he left. Anyway he was complaining the other night he dropped below the shielding cap for the first time in ages by upgrading his gear to group gear.
even AC bst can do DPS
/GU Head Scryer Oomk in 539s, 11921k @22117 (<-- Raid Totals )
--- Mazame + pets 577k @10125
Edited
QuoteWow, that might be the most deceptive parse link I've ever seen in my life.
Was not trying to be deceptive. I just copied the line from gamparse and pasted as it was. My point was more so that even going after AC augs a bst can put out dps. in close to a 9 min fight I still hit 10k dps. I could be wrong but from what I seen that not to bad
Wow, that might be the most deceptive parse link I've ever seen in my life.
Appreciate all the feedback! I did a little digging and found the AC breakdown and how it works if anyone's interested.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=160153 (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=160153)
Quote from: Pharly on May 07, 2010, 04:04:41 PM
Appreciate all the feedback! I did a little digging and found the AC breakdown and how it works if anyone's interested.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=160153 (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=160153)
I still don't think those numbers are right, I have seen that 100 AC softcap for Leather for years but in SoF they revamped softcaps and classes were all raised and not all leather were given same boost, there is no way the number can still be 100 for our softcap. The rest seems good but those softcap numbers are not right, they can't be after the changes they made.
I'm going to derail my own thread.... I can do that right? It's in the rule book I swear!
I keep one of my gear pieces aug'd with a +10% to dodge skill, is it really worth it at all? I really have no data to compare it with, I've had it since DohD and kept it because it was unique.
Honestly I don't know what kind of benefits the +dodge % adds, but personally I use
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=42150
It's from everfrost ldon points, and it goes in slot3 so a real aug slot isn't wasted, and it's almost as good as the 10% you have.
Quote from: Pharly on June 04, 2010, 12:13:53 AM
I'm going to derail my own thread.... I can do that right? It's in the rule book I swear!
I keep one of my gear pieces aug'd with a +10% to dodge skill, is it really worth it at all? I really have no data to compare it with, I've had it since DohD and kept it because it was unique.
Dunno if it's worth it or not but since it's type 3, easy to get and we don't have many type 3 augs, it's not taking place of anything and can't hurt.
Quote from: Camikazi on June 04, 2010, 02:49:33 AM
Quote from: Pharly on June 04, 2010, 12:13:53 AM
I'm going to derail my own thread.... I can do that right? It's in the rule book I swear!
I keep one of my gear pieces aug'd with a +10% to dodge skill, is it really worth it at all? I really have no data to compare it with, I've had it since DohD and kept it because it was unique.
Dunno if it's worth it or not but since it's type 3, easy to get and we don't have many type 3 augs, it's not taking place of anything and can't hurt.
Now this, I didn't know. I'm not sure if 10% dodge is better than another 30 AC and/or 50+ hp. Since you can stick it in a type 3, I do know the stats are probably better than the extra 2% dodge from the type 7 aug, as opposed to the type 3. Going to be getting one of those.
Does the dodge mod skill stack or does the higher one take place?
Should be just the highest rated one taking effect.
It would take a little digging to find but over on TSW (thesteelwarrior.org) they did a bunch of work and came out with a table saying skill X=Yhp. This is of course for warriors but it will give you an idea of what they are worth.
I go all out AC, and the hp/mana gains are just a bonus. I feel like both are largely irrelevant in the raiding game (if you're gonna die, you're gonna die. Turning a 40k round from fippy into 30k won't save me too often and neither will an extra 1000hp for AEs IMO) but the AC will likely make a difference in the grouping game outside of raiding.
Quote from: nedoirah on June 04, 2010, 01:34:42 PM
Does the dodge mod skill stack or does the higher one take place?
Highest % takes precedence.
That's what I thought. From the way the topic of dodge mods was going I wasn't sure if it had changed.