AC or STAFollow

I say AC.

I'm not sure how different it is for pallys, but here's my perspective as a warrior.

As I approached the 60's I found that STA buffs maxed me out at my stat cap (255 for levels below 60 I think). Even the STA buffs that raise my STA cap still max me out, so it seems like I am not getting all the value out of extra STA on my armor.

AC caps, if they still exist, won't become an issue for you for some time.

Edited, Mon Sep 12 13:43:13 2005 by JoltinJoe

Normally, I go AC > HP.

Kinda Depends if you are a race that has hi stamana like dwarf I would stick with hp and AC If you are a Hi Elf Pally and you didn't put all 25 of your bouns pt in Stamana when you created the toon you might need some STA to put you close to max. I made a mistake when I made my toon I am a Hi Elf Pally and put a lot of the bonus in WIS. So now I have really high Mana but not the best tank. I am a good secodary healer/assistat tank At lv 41 fully buffed I have 3020 hp and 2740 Mana

Thanks for the great input. I am a Dwarf with 25 point in STA. I was trying to max sta but will rethink that now. I had not considerd the STA buffs. With Virtue now I have slightly over 4100hp. I will also look for HP granting armor.

AC and HP. Never worry about STA. The benefits of STA are much, much less than raw HPs. AC is what will help you not lose HPs during fights. When you are high enough level, you must get the Combat Stability line of AAs as well. Notice I did not say you should. If you want to be an effective tank, you must get them. I am a level 70 Monk with only 96 AAs but I have all the Combat Stability and Combat Agility AAs (Including Lightning Refelxes, Innate Defense etc.)

I tank better than an equally geared level 70 SK with no AAs (had the experience recently)

However, a tank with 1500AC and 10,000HP will die much faster from a hard hitting mob than a tank with say 2200AC and 8,000HP.

Always, always, always go for AC over hp unless it's some ludicrous amount (like 3AC or 100HP).


My baby SK has a very lobsided AC to HP ratio. People tell me there's no way a level 43 SK with 1890HP unbuffed can straight up tank yellow con's.....I've proved those people wrong and attribute that due to having nearly 1100AC.....I only had self buffs and didn't use harm touch.

Don't take my word for it. Head over to The Steel Warrior or ShadowKnight.org and ask the real experts on this subject.

AC > HP.

Balance AC and HP out.

Any item that can give you both AC and a HP upgrade... well is an upgrade. But what about when you get "upgrades" that aren't always upgrades in both areas? That's when I would do math. The AC vs HP argument can get lengthy and horrible. But when you come down to it, you need both as a tank.

The exact ratio is up to you and your play style and upgrades available but I think a good average is to value 1ac to about 4-5hp. Some value it more some value it less. I think though at min you should value each point of AC as 4 hitpoints.

Say you have a bracer with 10 ac and 50hp. And you see a bracer with 25AC and 45hp. Well if you give each of those a point value, the 15 ac upgrade would be more than worth the 5hp loss. A 5 ac bracer with 100hp would be worth taking the 50 extra hp over the 5 ac loss.

I personally try to avoid losing AC at any cost since at my level my AC is only really average while my HP is far above average. Thus when I look at upgrades I really try to give AC more weight than HP.

But then again, you'll get to a point where some effects are more important that just AC/HP. Flowing Thought, Attack, Improved Dodge, Haste, Accuracy, Shielding, Combat Effects and many others will all have to come into play.