Cap AC by level

[thegreatneil]

I think my wiz (when raged) has an AC of 7.
Still with SS, dispacment, resists and a guard or two, survivability is still there.

[Aaxeyu]

I think my wiz (when raged) has an AC of 7.
Still with SS, dispacment, resists and a guard or two, survivability is still there.

AC would give you even more survivabilty, and with this suggestion a wizard could actually get useful AC without gimping himself in every other aspect. Now, I'm not saying that you would have to, I'm saying that you would have the option. And I believe the consensus is that more options is a good thing.

[Aaxeyu]

You could also add, rare or non stacking ways to increase your AC cap to make it even more interesting.

The amount of people who can only complain about the numbers used in the OP does give me more reasons to belive that it's actually a good idea.

[Inkblack]

Another way to expand the useful range of AC is to increase mobs variety in a combat encounter.

If you are facing 6 opponents, then make it so they have the following BAB (at level 20):
+10
+20
+30
+30
+40
+50

Then a naked THF barbarian is getting hit every time, and your AC tank at 70AC is only getting hit on 20's. The guy at 40 AC is getting hit half the time.

[Arkadios]

Ok for all the naysayers , what AC does your capped toon currently have ?

Class and AC please , wearing your standard gear .

How many of your level 20 toons have anything like 50 on your standard gear ?

Mines 38 , but thats on a fairly high dex/wis build clonk .

38? :O that is like sooo high *cough* *splutter*

Level 6 dwarven cleric:35ac, 10base+8armour+6shield(i think it's a +5heavy steel) +1 dex +3 prot+2deflection(shield of faith)+3(barkskin)+2blocking, i'm sure i actually have more than this, please stop being useless and drop AC as a clonk, thanks.

[ahpook]

I dislike the idea of a hard cap to AC. I don't think that addresses the issues adequately especially with the to hits that the OP included.

The max AC is too high (and the devs cranked up epic in anticipation of that highest possible AC thus breaking it for everyone else). As a previous poster mentioned, there are too many stacking bonuses. I would like to see many of the buffs changed to be non stacking. E.G.

• Make the AC buff from Bards and Pally auras non stacking (maybe ranger too?)
• Make Monk AC be typed as shield so it doesn't stack with the spell or tempest PrE.
• Remove the stacking of dodge equipment.

These are a few examples but a thorough review should be done to get a solid picture of what can be combined.

The biggest problem with the stacking buffs from other players is that AC has a failure point. Look at fighter that spends a lot of gear slots and enhancements to get a good AC. Fully buffed by a pally aura, bard and ranger he gets his AC to a point that he gets hit only 15% of the time. But if he jumps into a party that doesn't have those 3 classes at the right level his AC drops by 11 points. Now he is getting hit 60% of the time. No wonder people say AC is useless. Why spend so much effort getting it when it is useless if he is not playing with the right party.

I should add that reducing the stacking bonuses should give a lower set of max AC's that are obtainable at every level. This would actually do the same thing the OP suggested but without coding it in as a hard rule.

Another good idea to fix AC is the fortification suggestion that Angelus_Dead made a long time ago. Basically it changes fortification to an Anti-seeker stat that builds on top of your AC. Completely dumping your AC would make it difficult to avoid crits. Moving fort items to shields and heavy armor only would also help to justify those items.

[moorewr]

Perhaps you could kindly tell me what rules in the source game supports the idea that my 1st level character cannot wear +3 armour?

DDO has power increasing by level.

I'm not sure what your argument is here. Two wrongs make a right?

[justplayingthegame]

AC would give you even more survivabilty, and with this suggestion a wizard could actually get useful AC without gimping himself in every other aspect. Now, I'm not saying that you would have to, I'm saying that you would have the option. And I believe the consensus is that more options is a good thing.

Too funny.
How do you make a viable wiz, with AC worth a ****.

[krud]

Ok for all the naysayers , what AC does your capped toon currently have ?

Class and AC please , wearing your standard gear .

How many of your level 20 toons have anything like 50 on your standard gear ?

Mines 38 , but thats on a fairly high dex/wis build clonk .

If 50 AC were hard to come by in this game then AC wouldn't be broken, the d20 would still be working just fine, and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

My intimitank has a standing 61AC unbuffed, with evasion. Fully raid buffed and blocking puts him well into the 70s. Even while twf he's in the high 40's unbuffed. More dedicated players get much higher than that.

[Aaxeyu]

Too funny.
How do you make a viable wiz, with AC worth a ****.

You can't do that at the moment because the mobs tohit are balanced around the max/near max AC possible. But if the mobs tohit was based on a hard cap that is much lower than the that, it would be easier for everyone to stay "viable, with AC worth a ****".

[Irongutz2000]

lv1 20
lv2 22
lv3 24
lv4 26
lv5 28
lv6 30
lv7 32
lv8 34
lv9 36
lv10 38
lv11 40
lv12 41
lv13 42
lv14 43
lv15 44
lv16 45
lv17 46
lv18 47
lv19 48
lv20 50
lv20 entering epic quest 70

Then set trash in level 1 quests to have a +5 to +10 to hit , bosses +10 to +15 ,
build this up through the levels so that generally at "capped ac" trash has between a 50-75% to miss and bosses have between 25-50% to miss.

Why ?

Well with this system it would mean an achievable ac would be possible without making people able to completley out run the AC curve to make them 95% immune to ac .

This would then make having some devotion to ac desirable , without having to put the kitchen sink in to make it feasable

I like the idea of making ac useable again, but ur numbers r messed up dude lol

anyone can have a 50 ac with gear, but having an 80+ ac an still being hit onn epics is what bothers me.

[h4x0r1f1c]

This suggestion is ridonkulous.

[LookingForABentoBox]

Please take a little time to learn the mechanics of AC before making a post suggesting how to fix it. Your post demonstrates your complete lack of understanding about how AC works and is supposed to work in the game.

http://my.ddo.com/tolero/2009/11/08/...able-feedback/ Read this

[grodon9999]

I like the idea of making ac useable again, but ur numbers r messed up dude lol

anyone can have a 50 ac with gear, but having an 80+ ac an still being hit onn epics is what bothers me.

For non epics it's fine but it'd be nice for a Kensais/KoTC to be able to get something decent while still wearing armor. Right now it requires monk, but I guess that's balanced by the DPS-sacrifice of not going pure.

AC is only broken in epics and it doens't need anything complicted to fix it, just lower the to-hits.

[bigolbear]

Another way to expand the useful range of AC is to increase mobs variety in a combat encounter.

If you are facing 6 opponents, then make it so they have the following BAB (at level 20):
+10
+20
+30
+30
+40
+50

Then a naked THF barbarian is getting hit every time, and your AC tank at 70AC is only getting hit on 20's. The guy at 40 AC is getting hit half the time.

That system works. I use it in pen and paper games frequently and i can sure you it does fix the 'd20' variance issue, i see no reason why it wouldnt work in ddo.

I dont like the idea of an artificial cap, just feels wrong and it would discourage people from going for ac builds.

The other method ive used in pen and paper games where players ac can have massive variance is to allocate some enemies in any given quest good to hit rolls and others poor to hit rolls - the end result of which is the high ac guys only get hit by the high to hit enemies wheres people who dump ac will get hit by all enemies.

DDO doesnt do this past about lvl 8. At low lvls a high ac char will be safe from weaker enemies but in serious danger from nasty enemies - eg ogres. whereas a high hit point guy will take more damage from the weaker enemies but is easier to heal so a beter tank against the big hiters.
At high lvls its seems as though all enemies to hit rolls are very high rendering any ac useless.

What we need isnt a fix to the ac system, its a fix to the medium and high lvl quests to add in more variability - some strong enemies (best tanked by high hit point guys) and some weak enemies (best tanked by high ac guys). The CR's of mobs in ddo are somewhat excessive and that is due to high hit dice, especialy on elite. That means that their to hit rolls are going to be much higher due to an over inflated BAB.

[krud]

For non epics it's fine but it'd be nice for a Kensais/KoTC to be able to get something decent while still wearing armor. Right now it requires monk, but I guess that's balanced by the DPS-sacrifice of not going pure.

AC is only broken in epics and it doens't need anything complicted to fix it, just lower the to-hits.

Is the 20 pt spread enough to do this? I think the spread between a kensai/kotc and the high AC builds is probably still greater than the d20 can cover.

[NaturalHazard]

Just when you think you've seen it all.......................

thats a no by the way.

[wonkey]

I think we can, at least, recognize the spirit of the first post, dealing with the following realities (even if he himself denies at least one of them):

A. Due to the nature of this game, a very high AC can be reached relatively easily.
B. Due to this being a D&D game, a D20 is used for attack rolls.
C. The higher the AC we are dealing with, the lower 20 is, as a percentage.
D. In order not to make maxed AC builds nigh invincible, the DMs have to scale monster to-hit to hit max AC.
E. In order that players without max attack bonus can hit ANYTHING, DMs have to scale monster AC to relatively low to-hit.
F. Without serious sacrifices that go beyond build decisions to simply gimping most everything else, getting within 20 AC of max AC is next to, if not absolutely, impossible.
G. For most players and monsters, therefore, AC is useless, and most players and monsters will hit just each other on a 2.
H. AC, which adds another element to the game, is largely irrelevant.

These are the realities of the brokenness of AC. The trick is to find a solution that is not too hard to implement, and won't cause nerd rage of epic proportions.

Capping AC (with higher numbers than the OP) is an idea that would let the devs scale to a lower AC, making more people able to reach within 20 points of max. Top-tier AC would still have the same effect, but there would be more ways to get to it. The cap, though, has to be sufficiently high that getting high AC is not trivial, and requires build and gear investment.
However, doing this would not be complete without doing something similar to to-hit, so that monster AC can be relevant again as well. This, of course, would probably cause a lot of nerd-rage.
It's doable, but I think there are better solutions.

My personal favorite, for ease (relative term) of implementation, is to scale the die roll size (eg, from a D20 to a D30 at some point) as levels increase. In order to anger purists less than the inevitable storm, this can be done by granting all players and monsters feats that do this at certain levels, in order to give a veneer of following the rules. This would accomplish the same thing. It would allow builds to not gimp themselves in other areas without falling off the dice. For example, if a D50 was used at max level, the devs could, say, scale the attack bonus to 5 points below max AC, so that max AC would be missed on anything but a 46-50. A build with AC 40 points below max would still get something, but a lot less.

Of course, making AC effective would have to be balanced by such things as reducing healing effectiveness and adjusting attack rolls, which would cause a furor, but I think it would be a huge benefit.

Other, more complicated (to understand. The computers could probably handle it relatively easy) suggestions I've seen often revolve around curving the likelihood based on relative AC to to-hit bonus, rather than adding the D20 to the to-hit directly and comparing it to AC.
And then there's the idea mentioned in this thread of having monsters have 'power attack' that scales to your AC, so that more AC means less damage (essentially similar to AC becomes DR, which I think would be a shame).

[justplayingthegame]

You can't do that at the moment because the mobs tohit are balanced around the max/near max AC possible. But if the mobs tohit was based on a hard cap that is much lower than the that, it would be easier for everyone to stay "viable, with AC worth a ****".

LOL you miss my point, wiz's have no room to be wasting points or feats or skilz to ever get a decent AC.
Not and be viable as a wiz. if the mechanics of the game were changed to were it would be possible. then it wouldn't be DDO, not to mention the game would be SOooo unbalanced It really wouldn't be anyfun to play.

[Aaxeyu]

LOL you miss my point, wiz's have no room to be wasting points or feats or skilz to ever get a decent AC.
Not and be viable as a wiz. if the mechanics of the game were changed to were it would be possible. then it wouldn't be DDO, not to mention the game would be SOooo unbalanced It really wouldn't be anyfun to play.

With all the skill points wizards get, don't you think they can spare some of them to get higher AC? Oh wait...

And with that I will dismiss the rest of your post, sorry.