Beastlord AC post softcap returns

[Camikazi]

it all depends on play style, i tend to over nuke i am also slowing on Inc so i get the Hate mod on me b4 the tank can get it going on them so on as i am Normaly Main slower DPS CC on my ench and healer on my shammy so i pull and have a chunk of hate b4 the tank even see's the mob.  it's getting betetr tho i now have 2 life tap weps to lower my hate a little bit.

I slow on inc, have very nuke I can possible cast greyed out always and my botted SK can hold aggro over me with no problems at all, your tanks are slacking.

[nedoirah]

Not planning on making a switch to a warrior. Just thinking about adding a warrior to my mix and maybe one for the guild to use on raids.

Back to the topic at hand though. Almost everyone here has had or is having issues with having to take hits due to agro switching to them and away form the tanks. I feel this is a good case for us to bring to the devs and ask for a bit higher ac softcap. Mobs get higher in level and hit for a lot more, and we just don't have the mitigation to go toe to toe with them. So what's the answer? Raise our ac softcap. It's not like we're asking for something game changing just a little bit more survivability.

[thor]

Not planning on making a switch to a warrior. Just thinking about adding a warrior to my mix and maybe one for the guild to use on raids.

Back to the topic at hand though. Almost everyone here has had or is having issues with having to take hits due to agro switching to them and away form the tanks. I feel this is a good case for us to bring to the devs and ask for a bit higher ac softcap. Mobs get higher in level and hit for a lot more, and we just don't have the mitigation to go toe to toe with them. So what's the answer? Raise our ac softcap. It's not like we're asking for something game changing just a little bit more survivability.

Actually AC is not much good unless your always getting Hit Avoidance is what counts for the occasional hit, so we should ask for a avoidance boost for your reason.

[Grbage]

Not planning on making a switch to a warrior. Just thinking about adding a warrior to my mix and maybe one for the guild to use on raids.

Back to the topic at hand though. Almost everyone here has had or is having issues with having to take hits due to agro switching to them and away form the tanks. I feel this is a good case for us to bring to the devs and ask for a bit higher ac softcap. Mobs get higher in level and hit for a lot more, and we just don't have the mitigation to go toe to toe with them. So what's the answer? Raise our ac softcap. It's not like we're asking for something game changing just a little bit more survivability.

Actually AC is not much good unless your always getting Hit Avoidance is what counts for the occasional hit, so we should ask for a avoidance boost for your reason.

Actually it's not our avoidance that is the issue and I kinda doubt devs will give us more anyway, they almost didn't give any more ranks to CA this expansion because avoidance is getting to high as is. Our issue really started raising it's ugly little head when mobs got strikethrough. Which brings us back to AC again.

We are hurt in 3 areas.
-Low soft cap, would'nt mind seeing this upped a bit but our over cap ac is a lot larger then under cap so probably have a larger effect.
-Low AC on leather, doubt anything will change here since we share it with two other classes and we all have different returns post softcap based on leather ac.
-Poor return post softcap. This is where we need to concentrate our efforts but will be a tough sell since devs don't think we should ever be hit.

[Khauruk]

We are hurt in 3 areas.
-Low soft cap, would'nt mind seeing this upped a bit but our over cap ac is a lot larger then under cap so probably have a larger effect.
-Low AC on leather, doubt anything will change here since we share it with two other classes and we all have different returns post softcap based on leather ac.
-Poor return post softcap. This is where we need to concentrate our efforts but will be a tough sell since devs don't think we should ever be hit.

I really wish the devs had just done it "right" from the get-go and made displayed AC the real mitigation value (i.e. raw AC), and controlled relative mitigation levels between classes via itemization only.  No differing softcaps, overcap returns, differing itemization groups, etc, etc, etc,...  Make all jewelry one set of AC values (or none at all), and control the AC via shield and visible armor slots.  Much easier to tune and clear to the player.

[nedoirah]

My CA/CM is maxxed up to HoT as is my ac aa. I haven't bought any HoT aa yet because I've been working on 90. However as Grbage stated CA isn't the issue, AC is. I have seen a difference in hits taken with CA/CM maxxed and not maxxed. Does it make a difference? Yes it does. Is it enough? I don't think so. That's where the ac softcap comes into play. Raising even a little bit will help.

A warrior in one of my former guilds explained the ac vs. hit system. I can't remember all of it but I do remember that a mob hits you based on a set chart formulated on your ac softcap and ac returns for any ac you have over it. Shielding, worn avoidance, dodge, CA/CM and a few other abilities all factor into the hits taken but this is only from our side of the fight. Mob abilities such as attack rating and strikethrough also affect hits dealt. If I remember correctly AC is the first check the system makes when determining a hit. Sooooo.... this is where AC softcap comes into effect.

Don't blame me if the info is wrong or outdated. I'm recalling this from 3-4 years ago.

[Khauruk]

Not quite.

A mob has 20 possible damage values it can hit you for.  There's a base damage (db) and what we normally call a "damage interval" (di).  There are 20 possible values to the di, and these are added to the db (we talk about di as 0-19 typically).  This allows for tuning a mob that "responds" to AC in different ways...you can have a very large damage value spread (say 2000-40,000) and "rewards" high AC, or one which effectively ignores it (say, 10,000-18,000).  Either way, if you take off all Vie spells, runes, etc, and parse a mob, you will always see 20 different values there.

Shielding works on db - if a mob has a db of 1k, 35% shielding will reduce every hit by 350 points.  That (potential) 20k hit on that mob though is reduced by only 350 points as well.  Shielding is great because it works on every hit, every time, and no other worn mod can say that.

AC vs. Attack - Each mob, like us, has an attack rating.  That attack rating gives them a loaded die, as it were, to hit di19s (i.e. hard).  Our AC weights the die in our favor...towards di0.  This allows for mobs that hit harder than anybody can mitigate, like Avatar of War back in Velious, or mobs that can be trivialized by having high AC, like Demiplane bosses vs. cultural/Last Blood gear when that was current.  It also is why when I go to Loping Planes, I only take 300some dps vs. the mobs there because my AC is loading the dice stronger than their attack can.  When I first went to Loping Plains at 75 or so, it took many heals since I couldn't weight that die much at all.

Note that AC is not the only thing weighting this die.  Relative level between the mob and you has a huge impact, as does defense skill, etc.

You're bringing the order of defensive skill checks in here a bit, and I'd ignore that since it doesn't impact us *that* hugely.  I also would need to look it back up to talk about it myself.

How much would raising the softcap help us?  Well, it would help us most certainly.  But, say we get an extra 100AC added onto the softcap (it's only probably around 400 now prior to AAs, but I don't think anybody has parsed it in quite a while).  Well, that's, after the CS AAs which boost our softcap, going to be the equivalent of gaining 650 displayed AC.  Most certainly useful, but not that huge.  Certainly not enough to significantly reduce streaky damage intake.  An improvement of overcap returns would be much more beneficial (though no easier to convince the developers of).

[bradam]

Oddly enough I have 0 issues tanking any T4 named in HoT in just group gear with omm raid range/neck.   I think the issue will come up next expanion if they pull a UF 2.0 on us myself though. 

On the above mentioned warrior agro thing..   I used to think warriors held crappy agro till I made a warbot and played around with one.  Thier actually pretty good at holding agro if played/geared right.  Most the time I find the crappy agro holding ones are the same ones that worry about where they parse out at dps wise.  And thats going sword board.  The new HoT aa's to enhance agro with a shield on wars makes quite a diffence imo. 

[Grbage]

It's not that CA doesn't matter, it does, the issue is devs don't want to give us anymore then we already have. It wasn't until after a bunch of arguing by beta testers that we got 5 more ranks this go around because the devs didn't want to give us more. That means next expansion we probably wont get anymore and if we do they will just bump up mob strikethrough to compensate. Giving us a net gain of 0.

That's why we need to concentrate on bringing up or post soft cap return. Pulling from memory but we are placed with rogues/zerkers on return but of course chain ac is much higher to being with. Meanwhile monks have the same return as knights because they argued it was needed to survive pulling. That's why you will see monks survive a mobs attention better then we do (though they don't have the agro generation we do). Again from memory but think we are 6:1 post softcap while monks are 2:1. That means for every 6 displayed ac we actually only gain 1 ac.

[thor]

It's not that CA doesn't matter, it does, the issue is devs don't want to give us anymore then we already have. It wasn't until after a bunch of arguing by beta testers that we got 5 more ranks this go around because the devs didn't want to give us more. That means next expansion we probably wont get anymore and if we do they will just bump up mob strikethrough to compensate. Giving us a net gain of 0.

That's why we need to concentrate on bringing up or post soft cap return. Pulling from memory but we are placed with rogues/zerkers on return but of course chain ac is much higher to being with. Meanwhile monks have the same return as knights because they argued it was needed to survive pulling. That's why you will see monks survive a mobs attention better then we do (though they don't have the agro generation we do). Again from memory but think we are 6:1 post softcap while monks are 2:1. That means for every 6 displayed ac we actually only gain 1 ac.

Monks are no longer on the same returns as knights they share after cap returns with Rangers/Bards and Clerics this has been dev confirmed now where these classes softcaps are i have no idea. And those return figures your giving are before SoF expansion when they decided to boost Rangers up so much = to monks.

[nedoirah]

Thanks Khauruk. That's what I was trying to remember. Like I said it was 3-4 years ago when that warrior explained it to me. Although it was in far greater detail but mainly the same as what you explained.

Didn't say CA didn't matter. I'm saying the issue is our AC softcap. At least for this topic, I'm trying to get this thread back on track. :)

[Camikazi]

Again from memory but think we are 6:1 post softcap while monks are 2:1. That means for every 6 displayed ac we actually only gain 1 ac.

BSTs have 4:1 ratio Monks are around 3.3:1

[Blarp]

 From parseing it. i find that any ac past 5100 5250 ish + is worthless and only yields a 1 to 1 return AC vs HP. so i just stick with Mixed augs that are both good ac and hp. mostly Heroic focused now days tho.

[Zunar]

From parseing it. i find that any ac past 5100 5250 ish + is worthless and only yields a 1 to 1 return AC vs HP. so i just stick with Mixed augs that are both good ac and hp. mostly Heroic focused now days tho.

While we don't gain much AC, it all helps some....but we do still gain full returns like any other class from the heroics.
I've done something similar lately.. I even swapped out a 38AC aug for another with 20AC and +5 Hdex.

[Brane]

Mobs get higher in level and hit for a lot more, and we just don't have the mitigation to go toe to toe with them. So what's the answer?

Get higher in lvl.
Dont go toe to toe with them.