Should I care about armor any more?

[Kaervas]

Another benefit of ditching the heavy armor is Jump.

Having full plate and tower shield, but without massive strength of a melee class, means you might not be able to hit 40 Jump even with the +30 from an arcane, since your natural jump score will be in the negatives.
I'm addicted to springing around wildly on my wizards, it helps me avoid more damage than any amount of AC (with displacement picking up the slack when I don't jump away in time), and helps with avoiding spells too.

[Zenako]

OP keep in mind the context of many of the answers you are getting as well.

There is a HUGE difference in what AC is effective depending on the setting of the quest (Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite or even EPIC).

Many long time players tend to choose to run on Elite almost all the time, since that gives them the best shot at better loot pulls, and the added challenge of those settings is not a significant factor to those characters.

AC of 40+ is useful on most Normal Setting quests and should be achieveable without sacrificing any feats (clerics have too many other good options in general). On the end game quests, AC40 will be getting hit most all of the time, but on quests short of that, even having mobs miss you 20% of the time is useful. Every miss is one less chance of taking damage, or being tripped or otherwise affected. Will it make a HUGE difference in the amount of healing, not really.

Most players tend to consider AC to be really effective when it is reducing the mobs chance to hit you to almost nothing. This is really a function of the RATE of damage taken and the Rate of Healing we can achieve in game.

IF your AC is so high the mobs need a 20 to hit you, then you are taking damage at a very low rate compared to the no AC character next to you getting hit on a 2. That always getting hit character will need an almost constant healing IV to stay in the fray. The seriously HIGH ac toon can survive a long time without tending. The point of transition between those extremes is where issues arise.

If we end up at an AC where the mobs are hitting you 50% of the time lets see what happens. While you will be getting missed half the time, you are getting hit half the time. Healing Spells have cooldowns, so the RATE at which they can be recast is limited.

Hypothectical example here.

Mid level Fighter with 300 HP. Mobs are doing 30 points a hit to the Fighter. Mob swings 1/sec.

With no AC, fighter is out of HP in about 10.5 mob swings.
With 50% AC, fighter is out of HP in about 21 mob swings
With 5% getting hit AC fighter is out of HP in roughly 200 mob swings.

With a 5 second cooldown, cleric can drop a HEAL spell of 300 Points every 5 seconds.

No AC fighter in a one on one fight with a mob has about 10.5 seconds before he will die. Can be maintained easily. Others cases even easier.

HOWEVER mobs are generally not solo. SO lets get 4 of them into the act.

No AC Fighter would be dropping in under 3 seconds from 4 mobs.
50% AC fighter would be dropping in about 5 seconds from 4 mobs.
5% AC fighter would be dropping in about 50 seconds from 4 mobs.

With a 5 second healing refresh rate both the no AC and 50% AC fighters are either dead or on the hairy edge of being dead. Both are very stressful to maintain. The HIGH AC build has lots of time margin.

So unless your AC reduces your rate of incoming damage fairly significantly, then it makes littel difference in the dynamic aspects of the game. Healing will have to be flat out maxed to keep up both cases.

Now clearly all quests are not cut and dried like this, and gradients along the way might be worthwhile in some quests and not others depending on the monsters involved.

Personally I have clerics running around with viable AC 40+ and wearing Armor like Platemail of the GIants, who can turtle up and Tank in some quests with enough DR to hold off quest bosses for quite some time while the rest of the party resets them selves. I also have caster clerics in DT robes with AC in the teens...

Both can be viable, but need to be played appropriately.

[zopzop]

Thanks to everyone for their help. After a little googling and searching this forum it seems I'm just gonna go ahead and delete my character (givin' up on the Cleric class) and make a warforged wizard. Better melee defense, better spell defense, better immunities, superior damage spells, better utility spells, better buff spells, and I can heal (well warforged but hey).

It wasn't too big of a hit even though I'm level 6 and a half, I have access to Vet Characters so I can restart at level 4.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

35 AC @ lvl 15 is probably doing very little for you, and will get worse real fast.

[xtchizobr]

Thanks to everyone for their help. After a little googling and searching this forum it seems I'm just gonna go ahead and delete my character (givin' up on the Cleric class) and make a warforged wizard. Better melee defense, better spell defense, better immunities, superior damage spells, better utility spells, better buff spells, and I can heal (well warforged but hey).

It wasn't too big of a hit even though I'm level 6 and a half, I have access to Vet Characters so I can restart at level 4.

there's almost always an arcane or bard in the group, and a cleric should be the first person receiving a Blur or Displacement... and stoneskin i suppose... and .... hey wait a minute, where's my divine buffs?!

[biggin]

Wait, wait, wait! Don't delete your character unles you are absolutely needing the character slots. Every type of cleric build has it's advantages/disadvantages. Just because you don't have a build for end game AC doesn't mean he isn't a viable build. Having more than 2+ clerics of different builds is a great thing.

For example.....

Been working on another set of Dragonscale armor for my monk splash. I find it much easier to run him through Tor than my pure 20. He has much better AC and evasion makes the giant/dragon rooms easy because cometfalls/electric floors/bursting acid almost never hit him. But if I see a PUG SHroud go up I always feel better walking into it with my pure 20 with 400 more SP, all my TOD clickies, etc. You'll find over time that the same class but built differently can be played in different quests and be more effective than the other. At only level 6 you haven't really gotten to see the big differences.

Believe me, before you know it, you'll be in those upper levels wishing you had more toons. It's nice to have, even if all you use them for is farming tomes and shroud ingredients. Plus, there are going to be times when you log on and can't find a group in your level range. Doesn't hurt to have a few characters spread out in different level ranges if you have a short play time and just want to log on and play the game. Take it from someone who used to build/cap/delete/build again. If I had even 1 out of every 10 characters I deleted I would have to have 6 more accounts.

[Zenako]

Wait, wait, wait! Don't delete your character unles you are absolutely needing the character slots. Every type of cleric build has it's advantages/disadvantages. Just because you don't have a build for end game AC doesn't mean he isn't a viable build. Having more than 2+ clerics of different builds is a great thing.

For example.....

Been working on another set of Dragonscale armor for my monk splash. I find it much easier to run him through Tor than my pure 20. He has much better AC and evasion makes the giant/dragon rooms easy because cometfalls/electric floors/bursting acid almost never hit him. But if I see a PUG SHroud go up I always feel better walking into it with my pure 20 with 400 more SP, all my TOD clickies, etc. You'll find over time that the same class but built differently can be played in different quests and be more effective than the other. At only level 6 you haven't really gotten to see the big differences.

Believe me, before you know it, you'll be in those upper levels wishing you had more toons. It's nice to have, even if all you use them for is farming tomes and shroud ingredients. Plus, there are going to be times when you log on and can't find a group in your level range. Doesn't hurt to have a few characters spread out in different level ranges if you have a short play time and just want to log on and play the game. Take it from someone who used to build/cap/delete/build again. If I had even 1 out of every 10 characters I deleted I would have to have 6 more accounts.

Excellent advice and if you look at the roster below you can see I adhere to much the same type of mindset. Although I only have deleted 2 characters, ever. (Which is also partly why I have two accounts with 15 slots on each...)

I have Level 20, 18, 16, 10, 7 clerics on the one server. I have bards 19, 14, and 6 on the same server, etc. etc. etc. No matter what is going on I have characters to mix and match with. Different gear out and feat sets can make the gameplay rather different.

[KKDragonLord]

That's what I was worried about

Zop and the OP shouldn't worry so much about Cleric AC after lvl 15 anyhow, the best way to not get hit is to not get Aggro, which means, as long as the melees do their job, Clerics should be safe from melee attacks most of the time, which would mean that even a cleric with 0 AC will be an asset to the party. And nothing prevents would be battle-clerics from managing aggro as well, simply by attacking the same target the melees are pounding on (except for those with cleave attacks such as orthons ofc).

[theweehours]

The only real problem I noticed after taking my cleric to robes/outfits was with archers, so fitting in a spearblock item is nice.