HOW AC WORKS

this is copied and pasted DIRECTLY from a forum on the everquest website... hope it answers any questions anyone has.. ive been asked a LOT about how AC works and figured this would be the place to put it.. enjoy..


The AC you see on your stats is stroke AC, it holds no true value, your true ac, referred to as Real AC (rAC) is a hidden value. This value is based on a partial value of the AC of the gear you are wearing. You begin with what is called the Soft Cap. Pre soft cap 100% of the AC on the gear is applied to your rAC, post soft cap your return on the AC from gear is a % dependent on multiple factors, First your armor archtype, second the lvl of Combat Stability. Your soft cap is also affected by one thing directly and one indirectly: AoW raises soft cap by 50 when maxed, your shield ac value is added to, or exempt from, softcap, so you ALWAYS receive the full bonus from your shield.

Soft Caps:

Cloth/Druid..........= ~75 worn AC / 125 with AoW *****Does the second 5 ranks of AoW add 50 more?******
Leather......= ~100 worn AC / 150 with AoW
Monk..........= ~120 worn AC / 170 with AoW (if they are under 15 stone wieght)
Chain.........= ~200 worn AC / 250 with AoW
Plate .........= ~300 worn AC / 350 with AoW


Ok so if you are an enchanter, and you equip a piece of 75 ac gear, you get the full value from it and are now at the soft cap. From this point on, every piece of gear you equip will only use a partial amount of the AC shown. Again it is important to note that the "shown AC," the value you see on your inventory means nothing.

Post Soft cap, ie once you have reached the soft cap value, you receive a percentage of the AC shown on each piece of gear. As stated above, these values are affected by the AA combat Stability which increases the percentage return every level you buy. Here are the assumed base values:



War: 34.38% (Keep in mind they have a natural DI advantage)

Knight: 32.25%

Bard/Monk/Cleric/Ranger: 30.3%

Beast/Rogue/Sham/Zerk: 25%

Druids/Silks: 20%



What this means is that with no CS at all, you receive the above value return on AC. Using the enchanter above who has equiped one piece of gear with 75 AC, when they equip a second piece, lets say 100 AC for ease of math~ The enchanter would now have a rAC of 95, 75 from their first piece of gear and 20 from the second piece of gear. Each 100 shown AC that the enchanter has, post soft cap, will return 20 rAC.

For very basic terms, not sure how entirely accurate this would be (don't know if it's total AC = computation or per piece) but it will give you an idea of your rAC, you can add up all your gear AC, again do NOT use the shown number in your inventory, look at each piece of gear and add it up, then subtract the softcap, and figure the %.

Lets take our chanter, they are fully equiped, the total AC from all their gear is 3075. Subtract the soft cap, they have 3k left, 20% of that is 600. So their rAC (not including shield since it is exempt) is 675.

rAC: 675, this is the number that is used when calculating the amount of damage you can take from a mob. How that works will be explained later. This is base, no AAs. Now we will work with AAs included. Two AA apply to rAC, Armor of wisdom, which adds 50 to your soft cap, and Combat Stability which adds the following values:

AFFECTNAME BASE_EFFECT_1
1 - ACLimitMod 2
2 - ACLimitMod 5
3 - ACLimitMod 10
4 - ACLimitMod 13
5 - ACLimitMod 16
6 - ACLimitMod 19
7 - ACLimitMod 22
8 - ACLimitMod 25
9 - ACLimitMod 27
10 - ACLimitMod 29
11 - ACLimitMod 31
12 - ACLimitMod 33
13 - ACLimitMod 35
14 - ACLimitMod 37
15 - ACLimitMod 39
16 - ACLimitMod 41
17 - ACLimitMod 43
18 - ACLimitMod 45
19 - ACLimitMod 46
20 - ACLimitMod 47
21 - ACLimitMod 48
22 - ACLimitMod 49
23 - ACLimitMod 50
24 - ACLimitMod 51
25 - ACLimitMod 52
26 - ACLimitMod 53
27 - ACLimitMod 54
28 - ACLimitMod 55
29 - ACLimitMod 56
30 - ACLimitMod 57
31 - ACLimitMod 58
32 - ACLimitMod 59
33 - ACLimitMod 60

The last number for each line is the %. So once you have the first 3 ranks of CS your return on AC post soft cap for our enchanter is 30%. Given the above example, they would now be at 975 rAC. If they purchase all 33 ranks of CS, they would have a return of 80% per piece of gear, 2475 rAC.



Now we have AoW, which when finished (unknown on the 2nd 5 ranks for silks and druids) is 50 to your softcap. So our enchanter with that finished, now has... screw math on this little coffee~ Our enchanter got an upgrade, their total shown AC is now 3125, so we subtract the 125 for AoW-soft cap, leaving 3k, and 80% of that is 2400 so their rAC is now 2525.

If our chanter had a 100 AC sheild equiped they would have a rAC of 2625, because remember shield AC is exempt from soft cap values and is applied in full, directly to rAC.


From Mnesis:

"


AC opposes ATK every time a mob hits you.

Every mob has a Base Damage (BD) and twenty Damage Intervals (DI). The DI is one value twenty times.

The amounts of these vary from mob to mob, but they all have one BD and twenty DIs.

As an example, the much-touted but rarely-spawned Dire Fictionality (yes, a fictional mob I just made up for the sake of this explanation) has a BD of 500 and a DI of 50. Remember, the DI can occur up to twenty times.

So, the Dire Fictionality, when it does spawn and attack you, can hit you for damages like 550 (Base Damage + 1 Damage Interval), 600 (Base Damage + 2 Damage Intervals), 650 (BD + 3 DIs)... all the way up to 1500 (Base Damage + 20 Damage Intervals).

**********

AC is 100% effective up to the softcap, which softcaps are discussed above, and these softcaps can be increased using the AA Combat Stability. Once AC goes over that softcap, each point over cap only counts for a fraction of a point using to following table:


War: 34.38% (Keep in mind they have a natural DI advantage)

Knight: 32.25%

Bard/Monk/Cleric/Ranger: 30.3%

Beast/Rogue/Sham/Zerk: 25%

Druids/Silks: 20%


Warriors get the best return from overcap AC, druids and silk classes get the worst. So, once a Rogue is over his AC cap, each point of overcap AC only counts for 25% of a point. For a cloth class, each point of overcap AC only counts as 20% of a point. Etcetera.

**********

Every mob and player has a ATK score that defines the strength of their hits, as opposed to how often they hit. This ATK contests the player's worn AC every single hit, with something of a random calculation thrown in. The more times the mob's ATK wins, the more Damage Intervals it gets to add to the damage. The more the player's worn AC wins, the fewer Damage Intervals it gets to use, with a minimum of one.

So, let's say the Dire Fictionality is level 50, has a high ATK for a level 50 mob and attacks this poor passing level 35 monk in leather armor: It's ATK is high, and it only hits him once (it's attack algorithm only lets ity swing once this turn, although it could attack up to three times. It's not one attack because the rest missed, it's one attack because that's all it got this turn), but the player's AC is low and it's ATK wins 18 times in the contest, so now the Dire Fictionality deals, in that one hit, it's Base Damage and EIGHTEEN Damage Intervals. It deals a whopping 1400 damage to the poor guy in one hit.

Now, this monk gets upset, and calls his level 75 Warrior friend to come kill the Dire Fictionality. The Dire Fictionailty has a high ATK for a level 50 mob, but it's nothing compared to a level 75 plate armor wearing tank class. The warrior has great gear for his level, so he has high worn AC, and the poor Dire Fictionality's ATK just can't seem to win any contests. It hits the Warrior for one Damage Interval several times (550 damage, 500 Base + one Interval of 50) and manages to get ONE hit in where it wins 3 contests (500 + 3 Intervals of 50, so 650 damage).

In the meantime, the warrior, with his excellent gear and high ATK is making short work of the Dire Fictionality. He keeps winning most or all of the ATK versus worn AC contests with each hit and is dealing Base Damage plus 16, 19, even all 20 Damage Intervals with every hit. He has one bad hit where he only deals BD + 10 Damage Intervals, but he still makes short work of our poor Dire Fictionality and it returns to the nothing from whence it came.