Is AC worth investing in?

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In a normal game on Insane difficulty, it seems that I can't rely on AC alone to survive melee (or ranged attacks, for that matter). Even when I've buffed up with spells, most enemies have a jacked up bonus to hit and wipe the floor with me. The only character who survives more than three rounds in close combat is the mage, because of mirror image.

I understand that with some powergaming and a lot of sacrifices, you can make a decoy who is virtually unhittable, even on HOF. But isn't it simply better to use a character with mirror images/stoneskin/ironskins? Not only are they well defended, they are also more well rounded.

 

Sure you can use Stoneskins and its cousins to survive, most of us do during the first play-through as that's "conventional" wisdom.

The problem with those is that you'll need to refresh them all the time, while a decent AC ( = around 10 less than in HOF mode if you play on Insane) will make you 97,5% immune* to physical attacks for as long as the buffs required to get there last.

* 95% since you can only be hit by a natural 20 roll plus another half of what's remaining since you can't be critically hit at all, in case you were wondering.

 

Focusing on fast-paced combat with high damage output is a viable alternative, also through Heart of Fury mode. High AC requires a lot of adjustments to your character, meaning you should go all the way with it, or not at all. Defense is secondary IMO; I distribute the defensive gear among the party.

 

AC is useful, every single blocked attack saves you from taking damage.
Getting hit 5 times per round is bad, but it's better than getting hit 10 times per round.

The overpowered mirror image spell in combination with improved invisibility is a way to survive quite long in melee, but the best way to survive is killing those who want to harm you fast. The easiest way is hiding behind summons.

 

Ahigh AC is also good to have if you consider critical hits. The enemies first need to make a threat, and then roll again to confirm if its a critical hit or not.

 

I value crit immunity high enough to play even World of Warcraft with a Protection specialized Paladin using tank gear when solo. It's got a whole lot of Strength bonus so it isn't all that awfull, dps-wise, compared to full dps gear that'd leave me unable to complete some tougher quests on my own instead.

 

Every tank in WoW is a Prot Pally nowadays

 

It seems AC is only worth investing in if you can get it to 72.

~

 

Well, you don't necessarily need to get it all the way to 72 for it to *matter*. Even low 30s make some minor difference during the HOF Prologue, ie. from getting hit every time to getting hit only a majority of the time. But pretty much from Chapter 2 onwards, anything below low 40s is just plain worthless.

 

I don't have the game installed right now, but IIRC, Insane mode doesn't give an attack bonus. That would make it pretty easy to make an unhittable character.

Deep Gnome Monk 16/20/14/3/20/1

10 base AC
5 dex
5 wis
1 dodge
4 DG innate
4 Mage Armor

29AC from level 1.

Cat's Grace will give you +1 or +2 AC at 1hr/level early on.

Brazen bands and PfE or a ring/cloak of protection +2 would bring that to 37/38.
I don't think there's much in normal with +17 attack.

Stoneskin + MI doesn't get you anywhere near "well defended" in HoF.

 

Insane DOES, indeed, give an attack bonus to the monsters. Last time I tried it, the monsters seemed to have consistently 10 less attack bonus than in HOF mode, which in turn is around +30 to hit bonus compared to Normal mode Core difficulty games.

 

Insane docks goblins have +9-+11 AB. Normal is 0-2 AB. HoF is +29-+31 AB and 3 attacks. If that is consistent (and it may not be, I believe docks goblins have some weird scaling), then it's doable, but harder than what I said. You'll need a Druid for Barkskin, and will probably want to go with 10 levels of Monk, first 3 ability increases into Wisdom, multiclass to Dreadmaster and plan on using the Every God Ring.
That'll bring you from 37 to 49AC in chapter 6. Spirit and Ghost armor can add to that.

So yes, for Insane, it would be a lot easier to go with four Drow Sorcerers and just torch the place.

 

Is there a an easy place to find what the average BAB of HOF monsters is?

The reason is, I'm planning more melee focused builds that trade AC for damage, and I can get some builds into the low 60s with no short term buffs (ie tensors transformation or divine shell). My question is, would that be a waste of time? I mean, is 60 practically the same as 10 as far as HOF monsters are concerned? I know Slayer Knights are the upper bound of normal monsters (not counting bosses obviously) at 72, but what are some other examples? That would be low 60s in late HOF mode obviously, counting all three of the generic AC pieces.

 

I *thought* I had some sort of a rough guideline in the JUPP guide, but here goes:

Prologue and Chapter 1 monsters seem to get "double upgrades" (once from the level difference autobalancing and then again from the HOF mode conversion) in that they have consistently about +30 bonus to hit compared to their Normal mode counterparts. Later on this tapers off and becomes almost universal +20 bonus, with some strange exceptions such as jellies & slimes that can reach above +100 to hit. COULD be something to do with their touch attacks and all?

60 is actually rather respectable AC even in HOF mode if you're willing to let the mobs have an actual, honest chance. The first mobs that break the +40 to hit mark come in Chapter Two, so you're well covered until then. Even after that, apart from the quirky jellies and some bosses, you don't see +50 to hit (ie. requiring 70+ AC for full coverage) until the very end of the game.

The 72 AC figure is the canonical figure just because the Slayer Knights are such a pain combined with the fact that AC benefits grow exponentially until you reach the cap.

 

Thanks. I decided to swap my secondary decoy out, with a character more focused on melee. And I decided to drop the cera sumat and shield from my main decoy in favour of 2 handed weapons and more damage. Main decoy can hit 57 AC without a shield in the ice temple, secondary decoy can hit 46. She gets hit a lot more often.

I decided I wanted the secondary decoy to drop expertise, and instead use power attack. This also freed up points that she had previously needed for intelligence, but served no other purpose. My calculations still have her reaching close to 60 AC once I get better equipment and a higher wisdom score.

Shes a Lawful Neutral Female Drow Monk 1/Rogue 1/Fighter 1 (for weapon feats)/Bane X. Minimized int and chr and maxed everything else, and I gave her the lucky knucky, one tymora's loop, and the massive halberd of hate. With power attack, holy power, aid, prayer and emotion: hope active, she can do a lot of damage, although she gets hit more often than before. At least she has heal. I'll carry on with both of my decoys as they are for a while, to see if its any easier or any harder.

Pretty sure I'll need slightly more micromanagement, as damage will be harder to avoid. I guess I wanted to play with a character that can really use melee weapons to good effect. It felt wasteful that all these awesome melee weapons existed, especially 2 handed weapons, but that I couldnt use them. So, the changes to my decoys are an attempt to raise the damage without compromising AC too much. We'll see if the loss in AC affects the effectiveness of the party too much.

I changed the primary decoy from a deep gnome Paladin 1/Rogue 2/Illusionist X to a Rogue 3/Paladin 3/Fighter 4/Illusionist X. Part of the motivation for this was the +2 damage from weapon specialization, but also the fact that you mention in your guide that the Paladin 1/Rogue 2/Illusionist X only gains small benefits after level 23. Thought I might see if I could put those levels to better use. Of course, whereas before he could cast level 8 spells, he can now only cast level 5 spells (or maybe even level 4, cant remember).

Sorry if you did mention the BAB progression, I know about the magic figure of 72 but wasnt sure what the rest was. Thanks for the advice.

 

I have never played Insane difficulty (only Normal and HoF) but I understand that it's something like +10 to monster BAB and double normal damage. Under those conditions, Stoneskin/Ironskin are still pretty important but way less powerful than in Normal mode, and I can't really see relying on them for a tank. Mirror Image doesn't last very long.

I think it's certainly feasible to do without a high-AC character, especially since a high-damage-output missile-using party can kill typical monster parties before any individual monster gets more than a couple of swings--and there's a good chance those swings are at charmed goblins or cheap summons (Monster Summoning I!) so you don't even care when they eventually die. But I don't think adding Stoneskin/Ironskin into this mix is better than relying on pure summons. Maybe if you had said Iron Body instead--that spell does wonders even in HoF, at least for defense. It does make travel painfully slow.

-Max

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I don't really agree. Even my decoys spend most of their time at AC 62-67, since most monsters don't have BAB +52 and getting to AC 72 takes short-duration buffs that are a pain to maintain. Also recall that there are monsters in the game that have BAB which is WAY higher than +52, so AC 72 is kind of an arbitrary cut-off anyway.

That said, it's nice to have the capability to pump AC to 72+ when you want to, so I probably would never build a party of 3 or more melee specialists because there isn't enough gear to get them all to AC 72, especially because that would mean that they spent most of their time at AC 57-62 instead of 62-67, which is much more hazardous.

-Max