Guild AC Dropper Needs:

[Delfestra Ruinvorn]

Ok, I understand that the point of the Guild AC dropper is to make tanks viable in guild combat, to allow for some parity between classes. And when they were invented, tank AB would never touch caster AC (or other tanks, either)

However, now things are skewed the other way as a matter of reality, thanks to LL-AB bonuses and +1514/13 weapons.

A tank, like say Malavaine Ruinvorn, has a 92 ab with the legendary AB adjustment. Now, thats real AB and not charactersheet.

However, using the AC dropper on a Cleric with a +20 shield and Girding...like, say Ariadne Ruinvorn...drops the 122 AC down to 82 or 72, depending on wackiness (See bug forum). Since I've SEEN it dropped to 72 with my own eyes...I'll use that number.

A 92 ab is not going to miss a 72 ac. Like, ever. (Baring ones of course)

Now, dexers may have more AC. Gry'Kati has had up to my knowledge about 146ish as a dexer bard. Well, a 96 ac after dropper has at least a sane chance against a 92ab. But...thats melee vs melee. I'm more talking about melee vs caster.

My wizzy self? With full BURs and a tower shield had about 115ish AC. -50 is about 65ac. A 92 ab fighter will hit them left handed while drunk.

Now, while I do think that AC drop maaay need to be looked at for the new Legendary AB bonus (Since 92 AB is by no means the cap...I know two fighters with more off the top of my head) that is NOT the point of my discussion here.

Point is, casters are now at a severe disadvantage in guild combat vs fighters. You've already seen the fighter offense vs cleric/mage defense (Yes, I know conceal wasn't taken into account. Yes, its also true that many meleers can strip conceal even if you're wearing both a mords and breach ring at once, so thats not why its part of this analysis.)

Casters offense vs fighter defense is all about DC vs saves. Assuming the caster finds the holes in the fighter defensive equipment (and they do exist, I'm not talking about immunities from gear either, since no one can cover absolutely everything at once)...consider this:

A level 58/1/1 Half Celestial Cleric, with max wisdom, demigod status, legendary evocation focus, and a wisdom artifact has an implosion DC of 57. Thats the level 9 spell, highest possible DC.

With legendary save feats, or strength tank saves, or pally level...any tank worth their salt will have a fort save WELL over 60. 60 is the TARGET MINIMUM for Hell saves now, and I think its safe to say that no str tanks will have less.

And the save check is save bonus +1d20 vs 57. So a 60 minimum +1d20 is ALWAYS greater than 57.

Thus - a tank has a 19 in 20 chance hit a cleric, and a cleric has a 1 in 20 chance of killing a tank dead. (Assuming no implosion immunity). And with the new crit ranges on many weapons...what do you think happens when they do hit? Even with BUR/Tia gear and an Asmodeus Artifact...the damage is really quite vile.

Well, a cleric can spam EQ...guess what, with over 1k hps for any str tank with even a 14 base constitution...that won't do too much with unlimited heal potions. And its not like the tanks will fail their saves, since thats a 56 DC at maximum.

How about Destructions? Well, thats a 55 save. So again a 1 in 20 chance of full damage. Don't expect instant death on that, since death immunity is soooo easy to get. And even if the tank somehow didn't have it, its a 1 in 20 chance again.

Harm? Assuming your touch attack even lands, 100% neg protection is sold in Rips, and hard for clerics to dispel (only one item in the game can do it for a cleric) Also, I don't know if touch attacks have legendary AB factored in, but I suspect they don't. Chances are, the 83 AC of your average STR tank with a guild dropper active won't land. And a dexer? Forget it.

Well how about mages? Flesh to Stone, level 60 pure wizard, with legendary transmutation and a max Genie int with demigod bonuses and int artifact is...59. Tanks have a 1 in 20 chance of ever failing that one. And if a tank can strip away the 80% conceal of a level 60 pure wizard (a) Easy to do with mord scrolls, and b) everyone else has less conceal), then the tank will definately always hit on 19 out of 20 swings. And then crit they'll the bejesus out of all non PMs.

Meteor swarms? Well, thats a maximum DC of 57 again. Melee classes are now designed for a MINIMUM of 60 DC for hell-checks. And since so many splash monk for tumble AC, or rogue for UMD/Scrolls...they have evasion. Which is again, a 1 in 20 chance of taking ANY DAMAGE AT ALL.

Wiltings? 56 fort save for half damage. And its magic damage, which is a LOT easier to defend against than when the guild AC dropper was originally designed. Then, there were zero magic immunity items. Zero. Now, a tank with rather good gear can get 75% 20/-. With only URs, a tank can get 60% 15/- vs magic. And with tank hps...a mage will be long dead before damaging down even a 1060 hp tank (mine) going about 50-70 pts at a time.

How about Finger of Death? Empowered even? Well, aside from neg protection being sold in stores, once a caster strips it away (which they can do easily, even through mords/breach rings), thats going to be a 55 fort save fort save which a tank will always make, and is unlikely to die from anyway. Plus they can always drink a potion for a quick 100% immunity again, and then toss on their 50% negative immunity.

Wails and Weirds? Forget it. Gear prevents it. But...even if it didn't? Thats a 57 fort save for wail, which will again never be failed by a tank designed for a base 60 hell save...and str tanks will be much higher, pally splash higher still. Weird? 64 willsave.

Finally something above 60! Assuming they have no mind immunity, a 64 might work on non-pally splash fighters, who have poor wisdom and didn't take legendary wisdom. Oh, but wait, there's a companion fort save. Still, 64 is over the target 60...but it will realistically be below a STR tank save. Indeed, Malavaine's saves are both well above that number.

The bottom line is that even with max int/wis, an artifact, demigod status, and legendary spell focus - a caster's DC simply will not have better than a 1 in 20 chance of breaking a modern meleer's saves.

That is why I suggest the following: That the Guild AC Dropper be altered to include a SAVES DROP. I'll leave picking an appropriate number to those who do balance and are better with numbers than I am.

But the end point should be that casters have a fair chance of their DC beating fighter save checks, since fighters now have an excellent to near perfect chance to hit caster AC.

[FunkySwerve]

Saves drop, me likey. You'll be seeing some tweaks to guild stuff in the near future, including that.
Funky

[Balduvard]

Figured I'd quote a post where this problem was previously discussed.

dodrudon said:

Maybe drop AC based on classes? Start with a base drop of 40 AC, drop 15 more for casters and 10 for 1BAB/1Lvl classes and for 3BAB/4Lvls classes. Characters with over 140 AC would only be able to be hit reliably by buffed AAs.

Or, for a range of AC from 90 to 150, squeeze that into the 57-84 AB range with a linear scaling. New AC would equal .45*AC+16.5.

Rounding down....

Orig AC	New AC
150	84
145	81
140	79
135	77
130	75
125	72
120	70
115	68
110	66
105	63
100	61
95	59
90	57

Assuming a normal AB of 60 for tanks/meleers, an AB of 65-70 for WMs, and an AB of 80 for AAs, anything with below 100 normal AC is auto-hit, like in LL areas. And like in LL areas, AAs can hit anything reliably, and WMs get strong bonus to-hit.

If I'm wrong about the AB assumptions, add a few points to the New AC column, and if the range is too big, drop the highest New AC by 3 and recalculate the slope....

This is a good idea but would need to be rethought now that the LBAB system is in place. Also the lowering of saves may be a good thing if done moderately...otherwise you'll just be seeing a bunch of bg/pal and casters in the Pillars, everything else will just get destroyed by saving throw spells.

[Delfestra Ruinvorn]

Yes. Clearly, casters only deserve a *fair* chance at a beaten save - not an instakill or autohit. Neither casters nor fighters deserve to always hit...but there's always going to be some range because of different build types, and there's not much that can be done about that afaik.

[sabregirl]

146 AC on Grykati? What HAVE you been smoking delf? That kind of AC is usually only hittable by rogues - which incidentally makes most rogues UN-hittable in pillars. Grykati can hit 135 outside of pillars - 137 with girding. However in pillars she's generally wearing jump boots at all times for quick getaways so it's more around 127-130 there. However in her case it's the 70% conceal that stops most hits. Definitely agree on the save lowering, PC saves are generally far too high to be hit by other PCs, which puts DC reliant characters at a distinct disadvantage, unless of course . . you have a bard on your team

-S

[thedomicron]

turk's in-town ac is 136, but in the pillars i walk around w/ 112, maybe that's because of the lack of dodge ac on the boots or whatever, i'm always too busy runnning around to care. i notice after a few minutes of fighting and ac lowering, i'll be down to 65 ac. on a dexer assassin. i'm not complaining or whatever but i'm saying its plenty easy to hit me if you can get past my conceal

[Yomi]

sabregirl said:

Grykati can hit 135 outside of pillars[...]

Hmm, wonders where my last 4 levels will give me the extra 13 AC from a similar build. Non-demi bards wear "plain old UR and Tia gear" using a BUR bard race are going to be about 9 down from this. Just trying to make sure we don't make anyone who isn't a demi wearing all BURs get clobbered. I just noticed Mish's bard gained 11 AC in the before and after demi shots and mentions it could get 4 more from equipment. Not sure where all that's coming from (2 from demi stats, 2 from girding, 7 from ?).

Yes Dom, my toons drop AC from using the +0 dodge leaping boots. Mage armor, UEF, and bardsong can all help (one reason Grykati and other bards don't suffer nearly as much). Alternately hotkey the different boots so you can have full dodge AC when needed.

Agreed on save lowering, though also don't want to turn the whole thing into 70+ needed. Stripping gear immunity would certainly radically change the equation, though probably too far. Something like "immunity on gear works 75% of the time" would be great as that would still give all those spells like bigby, harm, wail, and so on a chance to get through to be saved against.

[mishimayukio]

That screenshot was taken back when I could get shield AC on the import merchant daggers. Makoto's AC is now 132 before girding, 134 with. Her AC with a BUR shield is 140 before girding, 144 with, but I lose the 70% concealment from EV, however I still have 50% concealment from displacement.