by ZsaZsa Vavoom » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:06 pm
Every time this discussion comes up, I do chime in with a similar argument to the one being made here: if all you are concerned about is getting the absolute best performance when you are tanking the toughest things you ever tank, then yes, you should put your biggest AC aug in your shield. But for my purposes, I'm worried about lots of different situations. I solo a lot; in those cases, I use 2h. The most important thing for me is going to be to kill before I get killed, but if doing so caused me to lose my best AC aug, the "before I get killed" part would start to suffer. Similarly, in a raid, especially against undead, my dps is irrelevant. I might as well switch to 1h, because I'll be more resilient and my dps is a drop in the bucket. In a group, while I'm still not the main dps, my dps starts to matter more. If I can tank 2h, I may do so even if it makes things a bit bumpier, because the extra pain is offset by extra dps. In fact I should, up to the point where I'm dying or the group is having to med because I'm becoming a mana sponge.
When I consider all my situations, my current balance has me putting a good AC aug in my shield, but not my best AC aug. This is all further complicated by the fact that I don't think anyone has done the painstaking work it would take to quantify what real benefit you're getting by raising the soft cap by this small incremental amount. I believe it has some benefit, but it isn't going to be like taking my breastplate off or something. It is likely a benefit that would be small enough to be difficult to parse. To put it in perspective, let's say my armor class is 4200. We're talking about whether you get the full benefit of adding another 30 AC, or only getting partial benefit from adding 30 AC.
If anyone *did* want to parse this (I'd like to, but can't imagine when I'd find the time), you'd need to fight the same mob or mobs a LOT in two different situations:
1) Fight with AC X, with a shield, but no AC aug in the shield.
2) Fight with AC x, with a shield, and as big an AC aug as possible in the shield.
Can't do one parse without a shield, or shield block will mess things up, as will whatever gain you get from the shield itself moving the soft cap. You'd want everything controlled, except moving 30AC or whatever from elsewhere to the shield to move the soft cap. You'd then want to demonstrate a decrease in DPS taken. My money would say you'd need a huge sample before you could get any sort of reliable, observable decrease in DPS taken, but that's what science is for; I could totally be wrong.
ZsaZsa Vavoom of Drinal
85th Level Paladin of The Kindred and Keeper of the Funk