The Spirit Realm

I remember years ago there was a soft cap on all chain classes at appx 1600 AC, i have recently came back to EQ and have seen plenty of shamans well above this 1600 AC. Aswell as myself i am beyond this cap and wondering is it really worth it? Should i just stay around 1600AC and just work on stat,hp/mp,focus effects and other stuff that are on the items and disregard the AC completely and just keep it around 1600. I have asked several shaman and chain class friends in game and they are not 100% sure if it has been removed or not. Some of my shaman friends are upwards of over 2500ac base so i mean is it really worth it? i have searched on Samanna's site and just haven't seen any information on this matter so i just wanted to throw this out there and see what the general shaman population thinks.

(btw) Samanna... Excellent site i read this site almost daily for updates and ideas keep up the good work

Unmei's rules of thumb on AC:

#1: There is an AC softcap
#2: You are already over it.
#3: Unless you are a tank, you should only prioritize AC on your shield.
#3b: If you are not a tank, the AC upgrades on your general gear as you improve should be perfectly fine.

The ac cap hasnt increased for anyone in a very long time. However, that being said, the effectiveness of ac over the cap was dramatically increased for clerics (and clerics only) sometime this last year

Thanks for the info so far, and usually i am an offtank when i am in group situations just because its the same people i group with over and over, but yes i will be focusing primarily on stats and such from now on and AC will be put on hold unless an item can increase in all situations.

Is this a general rule in ALL chain classes or just shamans? i mean a very close friend is a ranger and he has about 150 more ac than me and he is usually the tank and i would like to pass on this information for him as well.


Also i am posting my magelo page it is current with all my armor etc.. any suggestions i would appreciate it
I apologize i was out of game for appx 4 years and just recently got back into game around 5 months ago and it is a very different game than what i left it.



http://eq.magelo.com/profile/125858

AC makes a significant difference to the damage you take.

Your personal Softcap AC equals (Shaman Class Softcap AC) PLUS (The AC of your shield)

AC above the softcap operates at something like one fifth of the effectiveness of AC below the softcap (approximately). So every point of AC on your shield is worth 5 points of AC on your body. Shield AC is king.

I've noticed that as my AC has increased my ability to offtank mobs is a lot better, especially against harder mobs. sure a wild high damage round can kill me, but I notice that I survive way better than any other shaman in my guild.

I specifically work my AC up at every opportunity and go for the higher AC items rather than the lower ones. It takes a lot more work as a shaman to do this than a warrior, but I find that it is well worthwhile. I get every buff that improves my ac and they all add up.

When mobs have a damage interval of 100 (or more) mitigating hits down by another damage interval is well worthwhile.

get avoidance and improved dodge mods before working your ac to oblivion...its far better to be missed than hit for less. also work defensive aa for avoidance and mitigation, and pick up shielding where ever you can. shaman AC softcap is miserably low, and its easy to max it. getting avoidance and shielding has a much more visible effect than worn ac. Ive never had an ac aug on my shield, but i would if i could get ahold of one that didnt lower my hps. Like Ophidin, i like stuff that helps me all the time, i canni HPs alot, i get hit sometimes. the difference of 25 ac on my shield or not at 16.5k hps and 2500 ac isnt really noticed all that much, to me.

Well, there are ac+hp/mana augs from TSS raids that are pretty spectacular, I could easily move my avoid aug to my shoulders and throw an AC aug in there, but I know that aug is going to go to tanks and shit first. As for the AC aug from AG, If i move that into my secondary and throw the 909090 into my shoulders i would only be losing 10hp/70mana.

Well i have talked to like 10 different people and they are all oldschool players been playing since i have (but i left for a few years) and they all said appx 1600 ac so why would you say 1200 or 1300 ac? and yes a couple of these people i talked to have shamans with around 2500-3000 ac base so i mean its multiple people saying this.

I guess in all truth the only way to know for certain is petition the heck out of SoE and see if they will shed any sort of light on this subject but like 99% of all there answers to anything else will be sorry we will not disclose this information.

Pre-AA, base softcaps are very well defined because they used to instead be hardcaps. Until changed several months into Luclin, AC returns over caps were -0-. This led to rediculous situations like the premier warrior pants being 12ac (but 65! hp). These hard (now soft) caps are raised by the melee mitigation line of AA that began then and continue through the DoD expansion.

Yes, Scowls, as described at http://samanna.net/gen.info/effects.shtml for a year or more now, there is a point of diminishing returns to be observed against any particular monster when you meet and then pass its ATK rating. This value is so dynamic, though, as to not be worth discovering. It can vary by 100s & 1000s within a single zone, let alone across zones or between level-expanding expansions. With AC, more is better, even past these points of diminishing returns.

Shaman AC hardcap, equal to the current pre-AA base softcap, was 1100 or 1150. Forgive me, it's been a long time. The only one I remember with absolute surety is the Monk one, at 120 worn, since it is exactly 2x AoW pants. It's concievable that the current softcap is up around 1600, but the exact value is mostly meaningless, since all shaman who devote attention to their gear are well over it.

The exciting thing about AC on shields is that all that softcap nonsense doesn't apply. Every 6ac provides the same delta of protection that you gained putting Banded Bracer over your naked bod. (that's hot stuff) In the hard-to-directly-see world of melee mitigation, shield (not just any item, actual shields) AC in the secondary slot (back slot-shields need not apply) is godlike.

With AC, more is better, and the only way for shaman to access non-kneecapped (oops, I mean non-softcapped!) AC is via secondary slot shields. This is why I'm committed to always wearing an AC augment there.

Cool, thanks. Will try to get to them later today. As long as they pass local muster first.

How does this look?