Settle down, Ivan... Deeep breath... Goooood boy.
Um... fire/magic/cold resistance armour vs armours that raise your overall AC. Hmm... How can I put this simply? Ok, here's the scenario:
You're the tank, say a dwarf cleric for simplicity's sake. You have the choice of wearing a black robe or a robe of turkey feathers. The black robe raises your resistances to magic, cold and fire. The turkeyrobe raises your ac with that blue aura crap. (Not sure on the exact amount/effect/codified, scientifically proven, absolute factual way that the turkeyrobe does it... I just KNOW, man!!!)
Here's what I would consider. You get hit by a magic spell when fighting a spell-casting npc, oh, say every 4 rounds, when you're butt a$$ nekkid. The average damage from said spell for the average spellcaster is about the same as a hard bonecrush (20-25 hps). So, if you raise your resistances 25 points a pop, that means that you should get hit on average 3/4 as many times as when you're nekkid. So figure you drop to getting nailed every 5 rounds, maybe 6... Pretty damn cool, eh?
Now... consider this. If you can raise your overall AC up a point, that means that you will get hit less, on average, by whatever percent your AC is raised. For gits and shiggles, let's say you're wearing eq that adds up to a 25 AC, and you raise it by +1. So that's basically a raise of 4%. That means that you get hit 4% less in every fight.
Sounds like the magic resistance raisers have it, eh?
Hmmm... let's not be hasty.
According to the NPC list that you can get to from this forum (http://www25.brinkster.com/funkyflea1/picklevel.asp) ... there's 56 lvl 19 NPCs on AA. Out of these 56 NPCs, 25 of em are spellcasters of some sort (Nit-pickers, do me a favour and make sure to quickly post the exact count, cuz I'm doing this quickly at work, and it's prolly wrong). So basically, slightly under half of the 9k kills on the game will cast stuffity stuff (aka, $hit) at ya... (btw, wtf is up with the non-swearing, non-cussing BS on this forum??? Did AA recently get promoted as a learning tool for freaking kindergarten classrooms or something? I feel like I'm posting a note on the knigglet's board, or something. Why don't we see if you can get the forum hosted by Playboy or Maxim's website!!! *grin* )
Annnyways. I had a point somewhere. *tthink* Oh yeah. So anyways, you end up saving yourself 1 out of every 4 spells that would've hit you before if you wear the ability increasing stuff. On the 49.55456% of the kills that actually cast. *tthink* So, in the average party, the lvl 19 npc is beat down and his corpse is looted in what... 20 rounds? So instead of getting hit with 5 fireballs, you eat 4. So you saved yourself a grand total of, what, 25 hps? Woooooo!!!
If you used the AC increasing armour, you get a 4% better chance on -every- round that you won't get hitted. That's 4% on the total damage from 100% of the possible kills...
It really isn't all that much of a difference, really. But, what I've found out from what little personal experience I have playing tanking alts *gaze*, is that I'd rather have all of the added AC points I can, and screw the resistances. I'd take SPC any day over magic surcoat, and any of the prot/regen rings over a garnet magic/cold resis rings. I'd much rather use flying shield, or even silver goblin, than that wigwog piece of .. uh. *tthink* (what's that politally correct word for $hit again?
)
I've basically kept mental track of how much damage I take and how many heals I have to use all of the times I've tanked. I pay special attention to the eq I'm using at the time, and I try to use different things to test them out as often as I can. And I can tell ya that I take a he||-of-a-lot more damage when I load up on the resistance bonus items than if I stick to the AC boosters.
I mean, it looks neat and everything to have a 83(+117) fire resistance... but you still get a bunch of fireballs crammed down your throat when you beat down the Chaos Warrior. *shrug*
Ok... enough rambling. I'm sure my boss would appreciate it if I actually did some *gasp* -work- today...
--CalviN and HobbEs (Rookie Basher) *and shitty tank* (tm BismarcK)
****DISCLAIMER****
Any and all of the numbers, references to NPCs, and other random information were pulled from that void I call a brain. Calvin, et al, shall not be held responsible for any innacuracies in the above statement. The numbers were used to back up an opinion, not prove a mathematical theorum.
Oh, and btw, I'm curious about this Steerpike guy... I've only been around AA since March 1993, playing pretty much continuously, and the name doesn't ring a bell. You got another alt that I might know, or are you a wizzie that doesn't wanna come out of the closet? *grin*
Oh yeah, and Abyss!!! I still can't login to my account I registered here as Calvin... Ain't you the big bad moderator dude??? fix it!!! NOW!!! *duck* *cower*