GoD Weapons just got a lot better

[Arhallia]

After reading this thread on SteelWarrior:
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...3&page=1&pp=15

...I realize how much cooler the GoD smithed (and LDoN vendor-bought) weapons are by having BOTH a type 4 and type 7 slot. AC in the offhand... is GOOD, and AC augments aren't that hard to come by.

Raising the softcap of your AC by 10 or 15 could make a pretty large difference, especially since the devs have stated that the majority of pre-elemental warriors are well past this cap already. I'd be willing to wager that this cap is class-dependant, and that, for warriors, its darn near 1250 AC. Any AC past that yields a diminishing return... unless its in the offhand slot!

As an example, if AC past the softcap is worth 1/4th as much as AC before the softcap, an AC 15 item in the offhand would yield the same increase as an AC 60 upgrade somewhere else...

I'd be willing to go a bit further with my guesstimates, and state that somewhere around 10-15 AC in the offhand yields the same effective mitigation increase as +1% shielding or more... possibly more for chain and leather wearers. This is total guesstimation from casual observance of many parses, of course, and nothing more.

Shielding (and the mitigation AAs) are also stated to work by raising the softcap of the player's AC... thus you can see that a "12 AC" (which might come from an AC 7 or 8 augment) improvement would yield an approximate 1% increase for a softcap of 1250...

Since 15 AC gets turned into about 25 AC after the multiplier, it could be as large as a "2% shielding" improvement.

[Thorvari]

I can't get to Steelwarrior from work, but the question is:

Does the code allow ANY AC on an item in the offhand to get the "Shield" bonus, or does it only work for items that specifically show up tagged as a shield in the /baz search window?

If it only works for explicitly tagged Shield items, then putting an AC aug in an offhand weapon won't have quite the effect you desire.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I read the whole thread. No one knows whether a weapon with AC in your offhand counts as a shield... conjecture is that it does not as you can't bash with it.

Also, as of yet, no one has shown any parses that indicate this "bonus" has any statistical significance.

Parses were done with a very high end equipped warrior (2300 AC +) and there was no difference. No parses have been done with more average 65 warriors. I would guess that it won't make any difference there either, but I have no proof of that.

Even if it did, in this range of equipment I'd say the warrior probably cannot afford the loss of aggro for giving up that weapon for a shield.

That's my opinion anyway as a high aggro producer (wizard). I have had some warriors in my guild experiment with shields and I can tell right away that they are not producing the aggro (usually I tell this by getting summoned and killed messily).

I think this discussion is beyond the scope of eqtraders though.

[The Judge, Alchem]

Having a sword in your off-hand that has AC does not count, nor reproduce effects, of a shiled. The only thing your off-hand does for you is there is NO dealya counted against you, no penalty. I have had many people ask my Ranger why he wields such a high delay weapon, Defender's Lightblade, and I answer that's it's because it's the perfect off-hander. It has high damage and the delay means nothing.

The only use Warriors get out of using a shield is if the shield has modifiers, like Furious Bash. Warriors can gain much needed anger from a shield with Furious Bash, especially Trolls and Ogres. Trolls and Ogres can not be stunned from the front and the aggro from FB IV gives them the extra agro they need if they don't have or are not dual wielding a BoC and BF, or another high agro comboniation.

Softcaps and hardcaps are really not that hard to figure out. When you equip a new item or cast a spell on yourself, have your inventory open to see the actual results. Warriors are soft capped in AC at around 12-1300 AC. This doesn't mean Warriors won't want more AC. It has become fashion to reach the 10k 2k 2k mark, meaning, 10k Hps, 2000 AC, and 2000 Attk. My guild leader sits at over 2k AC 2k Attk, and somewhere in the range of 11k-12k Hps. He says that he has always noticed the non-existence of a AC multiplier. When you equip an item with 60 AC, you can see your AC go up 60 points.

[xaanru]

The only thing your off-hand does for you is there is NO dealya counted against you, no penalty. I have had many people ask my Ranger why he wields such a high delay weapon, Defender's Lightblade, and I answer that's it's because it's the perfect off-hander. It has high damage and the delay means nothing.

Bad news for you. Delay in offhand DOES matter. Its an OLD OLD rumor that secondary weapon worked off primary hand delay. In fact they are independent. The best way to prove this is to put something very slow in primary, and very fast in secondary (wurmslayer, moss-covered twig).

After a few rounds of seeing the twig swing 4 times between swings of the wurm, you'll see that the two are not linked.

The reason most people worry less about delay in secondary, is that there is no damage bonus. Therefore, the only important factors for secondary weapon are ratio, and the aggro generation of the weapon. The Defender's lightblade has a nice ratio, and is very low aggro, so its a good ranger weapon. But even with a stained axe of the scions (19 delay) in primary, the DL is still going to swing based on a 34 delay (every 3.4 seconds, without any haste).

[Arhallia]

He says that he has always noticed the non-existence of a AC multiplier. When you equip an item with 60 AC, you can see your AC go up 60 points.

This is just plain wrong. As a warrior, you'd see your reported AC go up over 90 points if you equipped an item 60 AC more than the current slot's AC. You guild leader is a warrior with 12khp, and 2k AC, and hasn't seen this? I think that, perhaps, you misheard/misread him.

In any case, the topic is moot -- the softcap raise apparently only applies if the offhand item is not a weapon, according to the devs. So the extra aug slot on the GoD smithed weapons is not any cooler than it's percieved to be.