Armour question

[Ryan220]

I have a L11 Dwarf Stalwart that I sometimes run and today I logged him for the first time since the update and it appears that his Mithril full Plate and Mithril Tower shield is no longer as good as it was.

I looted some Plate of the Giants (on an alt) which was an improvement to his AC and PRR but can I do better?

What armour and shield should I be aiming for for him for the mid levels (not raid loot though) and has the armour class requirements changed regarding how much is needed ?


I normally run Arcanes so any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

[Kinerd]

AC has changed dramatically. The old formula was...

attack + 1d20 >= AC

The new formula is...

1d100 vs. (attack + 10.5) / (2 * AC)
I say "vs." because I don't know if the >= was retained. I would think it would, but I have found that what I think does not generally carry causal force on the universe.

Armor has also changed pretty dramatically. You may have seen new types of armor: Magecraft, Mountain, Feycraft, blah blah blah, things with "Absolute Minimum Levels". The point of these is they crank the base armor value (and in some cases other armor values such as Max Dex Bonus). (Some [most? all?] named armors also saw their values cranked.) Compounding this, Stalwart Defender now gives 40% bonus to the AC you get from your armor and shield. The net of this is you're going to have literally useful AC everywhere in game, but you will also never enjoy the 95% miss rate of yore at level. It's better this way, believe me.

If you are really interested in proper tanking, the place you're going to really need to put work in is your Reflex save. Luckily you're a dwarf, so you have an enhancement you can take for that (Dwarven Spell Defense). PRR and AC have pretty astonishingly diminished returns after awhile, but Reflex save is still on the d20 system so go nuts.