Strongly Dislike

My poor little roguish brain struggles to find appropriate words to describe exactly what it is that so disappoints me with the AC changes... I think that, as response to the possibility of particular characters or builds achieving AC 30 points beyond whats average for a melee character of the same level... well, as a response to THAT maybe addressing AC inflation itself might have been better.

If the changes are an attempt to give high level arcane classes a chance of hitting something with a melee attack: Tensor's transformation. You think a wizard's BAB sucks, you should see my rogue's FOD DC.

If the changes are an attempt to help various arcanes get some AC, there are Elves, Warforged.... and twilight items...
But you know, if you think a wizard's AC is bad, you should see my rogues will save. How about a nice little diminishing returns curve there? [please don't]

And anyway, speaking of diminishing returns, the diminishing returns curve in DDO takes place in character creation with the stat-point buy system, in character leveling with the enhancement and the feat system, and in equipment selection with the availability of slots and level restrictions on gear.

Now look, as far as nerfing goes, if anything my favorite characters have been anti-nerfed. Between the AC they can still get and the dodge percents they can now achieve, they're the new black as far as unhittabilty goes. But that uber-ness comes at a steep price.

And its not just the adulteration of the die roll, although that movement away from the d20 does mean something to me... its that the essential problem is the failure to keep achievable AC in a reasonable relationship with level. I'm sure it would be a lot of trouble and time and effort to go back through 6 years of items (well, 3 maybe), feats, and enhancements and fit all that **** into a spreadsheet based around the idea that, if the maximum Sustainable Attack Bonus a melee character can get is +65, then, in order for one 20th level melee to have a 50% of heading another 20th level melee, the maximum Sustainable AC a character can get should be 75.

Don't people do spreadsheets any more? Used to do them on graph paper. Remember graph paper?
You write down a column for level, then you make a row for the stats to make achievable at each level, then you make columns for all the **** that you want to contribute to making that happen. Then you make sure that NOTHING available in the game pushing any stat beyond the value you've decided is appropriate for a given level. Its called a progression.
If graph paper isn't progressive enough, do it in excel or open office.

Instead of making the uber cool 12th level armor give twice as much AC as the normal 12th level armor you, you make it do something else really cool that doesn't break any other 12th level progression but adds some cool thing that the armor wearing character wouldn't ordinarily be able to do.

The existing solution to the wide range of AC available to melee characters of the same level doesn't address the problem, it just adds a layer of cheap math to hide the problem. Lazy.

And Disappointing. And even though there may be other game related issues to argue more passionately about... they say the universe can end either with a bang or whimper... a whimper is nevertheless an ending.

But I'd hope that, even though there may be more fun things to debate, any one who agrees with the sense behind my poorly articulated sentiment wouldn't hide that agreement, but would instead, however briefly and however occasionally ...write it.