With HP being revamped can we please take a look at AC?

[ChristopHilljr]

With HP now being looked at and melee being mentioned for (one of) the reasonings. Can we please take a look at AC? I don't know if AC need to contribute more toward PRR or just take a look at defense chance as a whole since there's been obvious power creep. On Argo our top tanks have stated that they consider AC to be close to worthless, sticking more with PRR and HP for end game. I know it's not possible for the game to go back to hit/miss system we used to have but AC doesn't feel like it does much at endgame. I might also just be completely wrong as well. *shrug*

[EdsanDarkbane]

I remember doing VOD raid when it was endgame. Back then I played more and was comfortable being raid leader.
So I started the group, and we got to the tank phase, and i remember dragging suulo to the corner.

And one guy over voice chat says " he's the rogue?! The rogue is going to tank?!". We all lol'd, the guy who spoke up came from
WoW and was used to a rigid dev controlled class system.i remember being so proud of
Being a DDO player, believing that this was a players game and not some big box corporate scheme to lighten the pockets of dnd fans. ( I was running a monk/rogue/ranger)

Any way I miss those old ac builds too.

I guess I'm still salty about those changes to AC...lol ��

[slarden]

It depends on what you are building for.

If you are building for R10 questing AC is very effective. With an AC around 450 it's mostly misses even by doom reapers against my tank. There are enemies that debuff AC and some that have a really high "to hit", but I've never encountered a quest where AC was useless and I've completed every quest on R10 at least once except the last one in TOEE because as a group we needed to get used to the end-fight mechanics a bit more as we always skipped that chain until it was revamped.

My assassin has an AC of around 240 or so and again I am getting missed enough I feel there is some benefit - it's not useless, but the difference between 240 and 450 is very significant.

High-end raiding is a different story - raid tanks do tell me AC becomes useless in some raids (VOD reaper is an example). We all took turns using or hood of unrest on the tank in VOD as dodge isn't really debuffed. I've heard some guilds use a dodge tank there rather than a traditional tank, but I heard that like 2nd or maybe even 7th hand - so can't verify that.

[droid327]

Yeah the issue isn't AC itself, it's crazy high to-hit on raid bosses. Everywhere else, it's very possible to reach useful levels of AC with reasonable opportunity cost.

The only possible issue with the AC system is it's possible to get crazy high AC if you sell out for it and have serious character investment...which I'm sure is why they set raid boss to hit so high, so that turtle tanks weren't effectively unhittable

You could try to smooth the curve out a bit to benefit raiders who aren't AC tanks, but then you're penalizing everyone who isn't raiding. Maybe just give raid bosses more dodge bypass and/or PRR debuffs, and tune their to hit down enough where non-AC-tank raiders can reach AC levels that are better than only-on-one

[PainStealer]

It depends on what you are building for.

If you are building for R10 questing AC is very effective. With an AC around 450 it's mostly misses even by doom reapers against my tank. There are enemies that debuff AC and some that have a really high "to hit", but I've never encountered a quest where AC was useless and I've completed every quest on R10 at least once except the last one in TOEE because as a group we needed to get used to the end-fight mechanics a bit more as we always skipped that chain until it was revamped.

My assassin has an AC of around 240 or so and again I am getting missed enough I feel there is some benefit - it's not useless, but the difference between 240 and 450 is very significant.

High-end raiding is a different story - raid tanks do tell me AC becomes useless in some raids (VOD reaper is an example). We all took turns using or hood of unrest on the tank in VOD as dodge isn't really debuffed. I've heard some guilds use a dodge tank there rather than a traditional tank, but I heard that like 2nd or maybe even 7th hand - so can't verify that.

Exactly.... The only thing that works in VOD past reaper 2 or 3 is a hit point Tank and a healer willing to chugs lots of pots. My 600 AC tank gets hit in there as much as a no AC Barbarian. It is like the developers can't stand the idea of an AC tank inside a raid. They seem to want only high hit point barbarians wearing 5-8 pieces of loot from shroud. Which is kind of sad really.

[Ghop15]

I remember doing VOD raid when it was endgame. Back then I played more and was comfortable being raid leader.
So I started the group, and we got to the tank phase, and i remember dragging suulo to the corner.

And one guy over voice chat says " he's the rogue?! The rogue is going to tank?!". We all lol'd, the guy who spoke up came from
WoW and was used to a rigid dev controlled class system.i remember being so proud of
Being a DDO player, believing that this was a players game and not some big box corporate scheme to lighten the pockets of dnd fans. ( I was running a monk/rogue/ranger)

Any way I miss those old ac builds too.

I guess I'm still salty about those changes to AC...lol ??

I started the game in 2019, so that is really interesting to me. How did AC use to work and what changes did they make? It sounds neat awesome that you could have a Rogue be a viable tank.

[Tyrande]

I started the game in 2019, so that is really interesting to me. How did AC use to work and what changes did they make? It sounds neat awesome that you could have a Rogue be a viable tank.

AC before 2012 works the same way as regular pen and paper D&D rules.

i.e. if the AC is greater than the sum of to hit of the monster + /roll 1d20 then the monster misses and no damage is done. If the roll is a 1, it is an automatic miss, if the roll is a 20, its a critical hit.
If the sum is greater, then its a hit and full damage is done, no PRR damage reduction.

So if essence if that rogue is wearing light armor with a lot of AC; that rogue could essentially be free of any damage.

Right now, doesn't matter how much AC a character has, there is still a chance to hit. But for damage, PRR damage reductions apply.

[thegreatcthulhu]

I agree that AC needs some sort of help. It isn't useless like some people are writing it off, but it doesn't have the same meaningful contribution to survival that it used to have in the old days of DDO. My biggest problem with it is that the amount you need to keep it useful in end game content is so high. You start having to divulge into pr, hp, evasion, blur, hp regen, temp hp and other sources of defense. On the bright side, once you figure it out, melee still feels solid. But to get there is convoluted and unclear to new players, regardless of their prior experience with table top. None the less, I get it that it is hard to balance, so I'm not going to be upset if an AC pass isn't in the cards right now.


At least it hasn't devolved into as big of a mess as Disgaea. Not used if anyone here has delved into that game series...

[jskinner937]

AC is a lost cause and impossible balance at this point. When to hit is in the hundreds there is no making a d20 system work anymore. PRR is AC. But PRR needs balanced for sure. It makes no sense that dodge is your main defense if you aren’t a turtle. And sword and board fighting makes you a DPS gimp.

[Eantarus]

AC is a lost cause and impossible balance at this point. When to hit is in the hundreds there is no making a d20 system work anymore. PRR is AC. But PRR needs balanced for sure. It makes no sense that dodge is your main defense if you aren’t a turtle. And sword and board fighting makes you a DPS gimp.

I spent a lot of time building a sword and board character only to find out it was borderline useless. Really really ****ed me off. Yeah the defense is great, but it doesn't mean anything when your DPS is so slow every fight takes many times longer. You end up taking the same amount of damage as a high-offence/low defense character.

[KoobTheProud]

What's wrong with bosses that require a turtle tank?

Just asking because unless all bosses require this it feels more like "plz let us cash in our loot pinata without anybody investing in being a tank."

[PainStealer]

What's wrong with bosses that require a turtle tank?

Just asking because unless all bosses require this it feels more like "plz let us cash in our loot pinata without anybody investing in being a tank."

I have a turtle tank. 600 AC almost 6k HP and it is near useless in mid skull reaper raids. This thread isn't about requiring a turtle tank. It is about AC being useless against reaper raid bosses. The only tank strategy that seems to work there is a high HP (10k HP) tank and a healer willing to chug.

[KoobTheProud]

I have a turtle tank. 600 AC almost 6k HP and it is near useless in mid skull reaper raids. This thread isn't about requiring a turtle tank. It is about AC being useless against reaper raid bosses. The only tank strategy that seems to work there is a high HP (10k HP) tank and a healer willing to chug.

What's the max AC + HP you could build for if you were selling out on those?

That's where an endgame raid boss at the mid-range of the reaper difficulty levels should be hitting you 1 out of 2 and critting for a significant percentage of max HP. That's what makes raid healers valuable and incentivizes raid DPS to kill stuff as fast as possible. It's also where having a couple of healers looking at the tank at all times would be more valuable because back to back crits would be a terminal event otherwise.

There are other things but those are secondary to a tank should take hits and be able to recover in a good group.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you are mid-skull reaper raiding the expectation should be that things are very difficult and require completely dedicated builds to survive in all roles.

The other things I alluded to above are mainly movement related and you either have them, lowering the requirements to avoid melee damage, or you don't. This assuming the boss is not one shotting a 600AC, 6k hp build when he hits.

[EdsanDarkbane]

I miss the dodge dps tank build we used to be able to run.

After watching that Wednesday weekends live stream with Severlin, I feel like these devs got a lot of work to do alrdy.
I know they must be really gearing up for the 50th anniversary of dnd next year.

We also have the dnd coming out next year.

I am sure these guys have plenty on their plate.

I miss those builds.

[ChristopHilljr]

I don't know how this has turned into a Tank debate but I thought I'd throw some more thoughts in here. My point isn't that I think we need to go back to the old AC system. I know why we have the one we have now and to a large degree I think it does what its supposed to do. However, I don't think AC is holding as much weight as it should in our current day. Melee builds largely have dropped Heavy armor at end game in favor of medium armor for the larger dodge cap. This to me points out that AC needs some sort of buff or rework to make it more appealing to melee and possibly help out their survival. My experience with endgame and yes reaper content is that melee can do decent enough damage but dies very easily, I believe that buffing and or reworking AC would solve a large part of issue for builds without having to resort to dodge. While I don't think that this whole game needs balanced around reaper mode I do think that the difficulty exacerbates and reveals power gaps in class and build balances. I think an AC buff/rework could go a long way toward addressing this issue. Thank you.

[Bjond]

we need to go back to the old AC system

Both YES! and NO!

The good thing about what we have now is that MPRR gives a %damage mitigation rather than the binary all-or-nothing that AC or Saves give. The bigger the damage numbers relative to player HP, the more important it is to balance to have mitigation NOT be 0 or 100%, but rather a partial value.

The bad thing about what we have now is that AC is more or less pointless in epics. It's a complete "don't care" for all but the ultra-rare "AC tank" builds with 600<AC. This is a problem for gear and enhancement balance that still give AC bonuses as if they mattered. And, it's extremely "anti D&D", where AC is the primary mitigation.

IMHO, what should have been done, instead of adding MPRR as separate gear & enhance values, would have been to add MPRR=F(AC); ie. use AC (and only AC) to derive a %mitigation value.

Upside is that AC would be the primary mitigation value and original D&D intentions for which classes can mitigate damage would again be in effect (eg. monks are supposed to be great "tanks" due to high AC, but .. not in DDO due to non-D&D features sewn into cloth armor here).

The ugly downside of trying to go back and make MPRR=F(AC) is that it would be a massive tuning effort. Even supposing SSG actually focused heavily on testing it, it's too big for them to do alone. They'd need to entice lots of us to hit Lam and give feedback. That's a near impossibility. So, I'd expect game balance to be completely trashed for a couple patches on live after this kind of change.

Really, the only gain from doing such a big effort would be giving DDO more of a "D&D feel", because we'd still want similar balance to what we have now (not class "who can tank" balance, but the more general one of how easy it is to do things).

[Wizard1406]

I think the problem with PRR is that the values are much too low for melee in legendary. So dodge mitigates much more damage. Since AC doesn't work except for very specific tank builds and medium/heavy armor has low dodge cap.

Maybe increase medium and heavy armor PRR BAB scaling? And improve shield PRR too , depending on BAB ?

[EdsanDarkbane]

Let's remember too that AC is not a Tank thing, it's available to everyone and everyone benefits from it.

Just wanted to say that AC is not a Tank thing, it's system all classes can use, and benefit from.

I think this is important because it means that no one class gets buffed. Everyone does.

Also please consider that in a dnd pnp build one might see a dpt bladesinger build with high AC. The tank can have the high AC without losing fun, they play differently in groups, and roleplay scenarios.

[originalbod]

Methinks that part of the problem stems from AC trying to represent both hit chance and damage mitigation in a single number - It just doesn't quite work that way.

I can see PRR/MRR as an attempt to separate these out, but AC does seem to have become largely irrelevant and PRR now rules, at least for those classes that can obtain high enough figures to make effective use of it.

The thing is that in reality, hit chance and damage mitigation tend to be inversely proportional: you can have heavy armour which absorbs a lot of damage but you WILL be hit more often because you can't move or dodge effectively. The lighter the armour, the more you can more or dodge but the less protection (damage mitigation) the armour can offer.

I can't help but wonder if there is a more accurate way of modelling these things in a real time game?

Sadly the current dev mentality seems to mostly be to try and invent their own (extremely removed but kinda sorta based upon the original d20) ruleset largely driven by the financial need to sell whatever the latest prestige/architype/fancyschmancy class is.

[Bjond]

in reality, hit chance and damage mitigation tend to be inversely proportional: you can have heavy armour which absorbs a lot of damage but you WILL be hit more often because you can't move or dodge effectively. The lighter the armour, the more you can more or dodge but the less protection (damage mitigation) the armour can offer

Eh. This is flat out not true. Real plate armor affords nearly the same ability to dodge as other forms of medieval armor. It's actually nowhere near as "heavy" or cumbersome as it looks. The only kind of armor that fits the bill there is jousting/tourney armor, which wasn't worn when not on a horse.

The problem with dodging comes almost entirely from situational awareness hampering as a result of ... HELMETS .. not armor. These days, you don't even have to hit up the local SCA to give it a try and see for yourself. There are a ton of youtube vids that talk about and demonstrate movement and movement impairment from medieval armor.

However, if you're bringing verisimilitude into the equation, plate or metal armor of ANY kind should be anathema to fights with elemental magic. It should actually MAGNIFY those damage types. You're basically wearing your very own personal lobster pot.

Want some very cool magic effects? Add elemental combinations like Sleet Storm + Fire Ball = Steamed Broccoli, Plate + Fire Ball = Lobster Bake, or Plate + Lightning = Deep Fry.

[slarden]

I have a turtle tank. 600 AC almost 6k HP and it is near useless in mid skull reaper raids. This thread isn't about requiring a turtle tank. It is about AC being useless against reaper raid bosses. The only tank strategy that seems to work there is a high HP (10k HP) tank and a healer willing to chug.

And this is the leader and experienced tank of the top raiding guild on Sarlona. He clearly knows his #s.

I'll also add that dodge works as you move up skulls -as far as I know it's the only defense that doesn't become less effective as you move up skulls.

12x hood of unrest for the win.


I think the problem with PRR is that the values are much too low for melee in legendary. So dodge mitigates much more damage. Since AC doesn't work except for very specific tank builds and medium/heavy armor has low dodge cap.

Maybe increase medium and heavy armor PRR BAB scaling? And improve shield PRR too , depending on BAB ?

Dodge miss chance is no different between Elite and R10 except possibly in a few edge cases and only if dodge bypass itself scales up by skull which is unknown to me.

On the other hand AC becomes less effective since the "to hit" exceeds values that make AC useful in some raids as you move up skulls. Vison of the Destruction is an example. Likewise the damage #s exceed values where the combination of PRR and HP are useful for traditional tanks.

This is why barbarian tanks and dodge tanks are a thing. Barbarian tanks have many more hp and higher dodge with an improved uncanny dodge clicky. This is why they can tank more hits in some raids.

I don't have any answers and I am certainly not a high-end push raiding tank, but to me it just seems wrong that someone invests in a high-end tank that is good for everything except the absolute hardest stuff.

The devs should really have a 15 min chat on discord with painstealer to understand the issue better.

[songswrath]

making a/c useful is a huge step to the needed buff of melee defense

[Zuldar]

Heavily nerf mob physical damage across the board than introduce a mechanic where if their roll to hit is significantly higher than your AC they penetrate X% of your PRR. Even if you can't get enough AC to meaningful avoid attacks putting in at least a token effort to raise it would reduce the damage you do end up taking when hit.

[songswrath]

i understand dev team wants to do a dodge revamp. this is where it can be done with out greatly nerfing dodge type builds aka monk and other light armor builds. how it adjusts is you give more dodge based of the amount of a/c you have. (i don't have numbers but sure someone will brake this down with my thought here ) doing this you lower hard dodge cap in place now but you can regain it via a/c. making a/c values useful again/ this will also help tank builds too. and reg melee in med and heavy armor.