STA/HP vs AC - can anyone please explain?

[Syndrae]

Can someone explain (or direct me to a post that explains) the importance of STA/HP versus AC for warriors?

* How vital is the allocation of your starting bonus ability points to STA for your chosen race?

How would the HP for a dark or wood elf with the minimum starting 75 STA stand against the HP for an ogre with the maximum starting 150 STA? How does the HP gain measure out in the long run? Would the HP for the 150 STA ogre eclipse the HP for the 75 STA elves if all other things (equipment, gear, levels, AA abilities, player tanking skill, etc.) were equal and the same for these characters?

Many players state high-end gear, equipment and buffs can balance out any such STA differences. How can this be true if all other variables are assumed to be equal except for starting STA? Just how important is starting STA?

My (currently) level 56 dark elf warrior started with a 75 STA and I've had continual concerns about her HP and ability to withstand taking a beating while tanking. She's been main tank in a few tier 1 PoP zones, as well as in many public and guild raids.

http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=406807

Of course the second part of this concerns Armor Class...

* How does AC and your character's defensive skills mitigate incoming hits and damage from mobs as a warrior?

I hear a lot about a "soft cap" for AC, or some other "mystery" value. Is there a definitive cap when AC becomes less important, and HP carries more weight on your tanking survivability? Should a starting warrior strive to reach this AC cap as soon as possible, and then work on acquiring STA and/or HP gear? Are there specific level ranges where a warrior should be more concerned about their AC or STA/HP?

I'm looking to get a better understanding of EQ warriors and how to address or compensate for any low STA/HP concerns. Thank you.

[Brutul]

Many players state high-end gear, equipment and buffs can balance out any such STA differences. How can this be true if all other variables are assumed to be equal except for starting STA?

Because STA is hard-capped. If you look at high-end warriors that are raid-buffed, they all have their STA maxed. Until you can max your stamina, larger races will have a HP advantage over you.

[gulug]

Ill make it simple.

If your sta is at 200 and an ogres is 200 and assuming you have identical equipment, then you will have the same no. of hitpoints.

Ideally, you want to reach about 220 unbuffed stamina to be able to max it with buffs although some people prefer to max sta to save a buff slot. Anyway, whatever your end goal, the advantage that ogres have is that they need less +sta to reach that given goal as opposed to a race like yours, so your equipment search in a sense becomes a little harder compared to the ogres, and perhaps more expensive.

As to how important it is, well, if your a race weak on sta, then to load in sta would be important i guess. However, if you didnt do that, then its by no means terminal as theres plenty of decent +sta equipment around.

Req your question about HP difference, if the ogre maintained a 75 sta advantage at level 60, then this would equal 75 x 6hps = 450 hitpoints.

HIgh end game gear and buffs CAN balance out sta. All it means is that perhaps an ogre may be able to go without a sta buff, but you take one so you lose a buff slot to an ogre.
Dont get me wrong, there will be a difference in equipment loadout. Whilst the ogre may when hes close to max sta ditch some sta items for more raw hp gear, it means you may have to keep that sta stuff. But i think if you look at the magelos of a lot of non warriros here, you will see that they have pretty much the same kinda hps as ogre warriors.


Now on to AC.
Parses on other threads have shown that there are gains to be made in mitigation by upping your AC up to 1800 or 2000 ac.

The old soft cap used to be for around ac 1250 and this was pre SoL if im not mistaken. However, with PoP, a lot of mobs will have an atk higher than this AC rating so i believe the soft cap, if there was one, would be much higher. My understanding is that the difference between someone carrying 1200 ac and 1400 ac is not that large, maybe less than 10 pct mitigation, although i could be wrong. basically, your ac and Hps/sta will have to go hand in had.

Personally, i reached a ac cap of around 1200 unbuffed and since then, have found it hard to make siginificant inroads into increasing that. What i have done since then is to try and maintain my AC at that level and increase my HPs and it seems to work fine for me and i have not really had any problems tanking mobs in Tier 2. I dont expect to get significant further increases to AC until we move to WToV and NToV.

I think as a general rule of thumb, at your level you want to start getting your ac up to around 1100 or thereabouts, then start concentrating on Hp gear. AAs help a lot, you get big boosts from ND3 and the others plus there are also big boosts in HP as you level up to 60.

Unfortunately i cant open magelo at work but will have a look at your magelo later to see what equipmpent upgrades you could look out for.

[wandor]

Here is the short and sweet version -

Starting STA becomes irrelevant as soon as you can max your STA. The advantage high starting STA gives is that you can equip more items with less STA and more raw HP and still hit the cap. In the end game starting stats are irrelevant since most warriors can max STR/STA/DEX/AGI with few if any buffs.

If you are fighting in pre-PoP zones then any AC over 1200 is useless. You gain no additional benefit from any more AC so it is said to be "soft capped". Once you start fighting in PoP that all changes. At least on boss mobs, gains have been show all the way up to 2200AC, so it would appear that there is no soft cap in PoP.

[Vergil]

I would agee: the evidence seems to point to the conclusion that there IS no soft cap for AC in Planes of Power.

But there isn't any data that rally PROVES this point against experience-level mobs: all of the testing that has been parsed and documented has been uber warriors (Ac 1600 + :) ) against elemental or higher MoBs.

Pre-POP I would shoot for around 1150 AC (unbuffed) and focus on hitpoints....but if you are planning on going to POP at some point (who isn't?) than you way want to seriously consider going mostly for AC...cause AC is king again, baby!

:)

[Braeorn]

But there isn't any data that rally PROVES this point against experience-level mobs: all of the testing that has been parsed and documented has been uber warriors (Ac 1600 + ) against elemental or higher MoBs.


I'm not sure I understand the difference...the parses prove that AC and Dmg taken are inversely related so there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to not believe this would hold for lesser-than-elemental mobs.

[Syndrae]

I see now, says the blind elf warrior! :cool:

Gulug, thank you for the very simple but thorough explanation, and Wandor and Vergil for futher clarification on a couple points! :D

I now understand why there is truly no "hopeless" warrior at creation, and I can say I now feel better about my warrior's survivability as a tank! :)

I will gladly appreciate any equipment upgrade recommendations too!

[Vergil]

Braeorn:
The fact that nobody has found an AC 'softcap' for the higher-end POP (elemental) content does NOT mean that a cap doesn't exist for the experience-level mobs, as it has for all of the other expansions.

[gulug]

well, if you go high enough ac wise, there will be a cap after wish you get diminished returns. however, seeing that you can see gains up to 2000 ac, the cap is probably so high that its not even worth considering.

[EmiliaEQ]

Stamina is useless, because there is a cap (which you will hit sooner or later).

AC/HP dont have a cap (at least none found yet).

All 3 AC/HP/Sta are important at start, but as time passes stamina becomes useless.

[Tanise]

"I now understand why there is truly no "hopeless" warrior at creation"

I'm proof of that. Thanks to Verants stupid "strategy guide" (From first EQ) I put 5 points into cha.

At 63 I have 5100hp unbuffed. Unbuffed sta is 230ish and I max easily with buffs.