Why aren't there more (any) epic half plates?

[zukt]

So I'm playing around with update 14, and its fairly obnoxious to me that there's no epic half plates? When the best epic full plate heavy armor (mithril is medium) has a max dex bonus of 2, it leaves you wanting a bit. I suppose its alright on builds with enough feats and action points to pump up the MDB enough so even a starting dex of 8 manages to fill it out, but many of us would like some decent half plates.

As is I can choose to use the chitin breastplate and sacrifice PRR for the set bonus, or I can craft up some planeforged half plate and ignore set bonuses so I can actually use a heavy armor with a max dex bonus of 8. (planeforged half plate dex allowance of 6 with a greater nimbleness shard.) The best I can do with a heavy plate is get the vellah armor and slot greater nimbleness in the blue slot for a MDB of 4... Which even a first life melee is going to outsize with just a +2 tome and just the tiniest amount of dodge, not to mention its a rather painful use of a blue slot.

In the meantime, could we just maybe make the Cormyrian armor from the challenges part of the item sets for purple dragon knight favor, so we can at least try to farm up some decent half plates even if they aren't as useful as embrace of the spider queen.

Just not happy with MDB of 1 on full plate, which just about everyone is too agile for at endgame.

[RabidApathy]

The reason that there are no epic half-plates, is because half-plate is bad. Terrible even. Half-plate has a worse MDB, a worse AC rating, a higher ACP (penalty to skills), and a higher spell failure. Half-plate is worse in every single way than full plate.

[zukt]

Why do people respond without reading?

No, post update 14 half plate is better than full plate for nearly everyone that can't afford feats and action points to raise max dex bonus.

Planeforged half plate is 3 points of ac worse than planeforged full plate, but has a max dex that is 5 better.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Armor_by_Proficiency

planeforged half plate base ac bonus is 21, MDB 6
planeforged full plate base ac bonus is 24, MDB 1

[RabidApathy]

Ahh you want light plate then. Half-Plate is AC 7, MDB 0

They didn't have any named light plate in U14, and since it didn't exist prior to U14 it makes sense that none of the old content has any named light plate

EDIT: Hmm, I wonder if Insulated Armor got retyped as light plate (as it's one of the very few named half-plates). Anyone have a set lying around?

[zukt]

On live its called half plate, and existing half plate is changed to match tier 0 half plate. I would have thought with the armor change, embrace of the spider queen would have been half plate, or the purple dragon knight plate, or either of the new dragon plates, while retroactively changing some (any) of the named full plates to half plate...

I think the only ones that get more out of full plate than half plate are dwarven stalwart defenders, and possibly first life toons without any tomes.

[RabidApathy]

I stand corrected about it being called half-plate.

On live its called half plate, and existing half plate is changed to match tier 0 half plate.

However you are mistaken on this. Existing named items were updated, but randomly generated items were not. I just went and snatched this pic of +1 Half-Plate from the AH on live.

[Bloodyfury]

Funny. I actually looted a Cormyrian Half Plate in an epic challenge lately (the one for Tricrowns, in the end chest).

The 4 random stats on it were freaking good...

...but I completely forgot them when I saw it was "Bind on acquire". Duh...

I was on my WF artificer. Only other person in the party? My buddy, WF too.

Great!! Vendor trashed before I could even see the freakin look, on the only Cormyrian thing I ever looted... Such great loots logic!

P.S If by chance any devs read this, you guys should rethink your binding logic really. No matter what you get, you deserve it and deserve to keep it, so if you feel it should be bound, make all that stuff bind on ACCOUNT, not on acquire... wasn't it originally a rule set in place to compell people in raids to transfer/roll for stuff that wasn't really designed for their class? Well guess what, it's no longer an issue cuz now anyway everyone rolls for anything and if you say something, they just throw at you: " Who cares? I'll Tr!" *sigh*

[nibel]

However you are mistaken on this. Existing named items were updated, but randomly generated items were not. I just went and snatched this pic of +1 Half-Plate from the AH on live.

This one is probably a legacy item. I have a Hide armor on my barbarian that don't drop anymore.

All ML 1 half plates that drop now have 7 base AC and 2 max dex bonus.

Unless you dump dex all the way (not a wise decision since dodge and mobility also got a bump), using a half plate is always better than using a full plate.