Cloth Armor AC

[The Blonde]

I did a thing on the wiki; I don't know if I was justified to do it, but I believe in it, and I only realized it might ruffle feathers after I was already done.

First of all, here is the bug that I was trying to account for:

As we all know, Cloth armor provides Armor Class in one of two ways: it either has an enhancement bonus (which acts as the item's AC), or it has an Armor Bonus enchantment (or, in the extremely rare cases where it has both, only the highest of the two matters). However, when inspecting Cloth armor in-game, the "Armor Bonus" line (NOT the Armor Bonus enchantment; they are different things, both called Armor Bonus) only takes into consideration the item's enhancement bonus (and completely ignores any Armor Bonus enchantment the item may have, which is essentially the exact same thing). Instead, the "Armor Bonus" line should display the highest of the item's enhancement bonus VS the item's Armor Bonus enchantment.

As such, I changed the "AC" value on the page of every Cloth armor that had a value of "0" to the value of the item's Armor Bonus enchantment.

Take the Necromantic Robe for example; changed from +0 to +3.

Argument against my actions: When you inspect the item in-game, the Armor Bonus line (as shown in the image) says "0", so the AC listed in the wiki should also be "0".

Arguments that support my actions:
1) A wiki-listed Armor Bonus of "0" is useless when the item DOES have an actual Armor Bonus at the end of the day. This isn't a court, usefulness of information is just as important as technical correctness.
2) If we agree that the above text in italics is indeed a bug, the "Armor Bonus: 0" shown in game is incorrect, and the wiki should display the correct value (i.e. the item's Armor Bonus enchantment).

@ShoeMaker @PurpleSerpent

 

[PurpleSerpent]

I did a thing on the wiki; I don't know if I was justified to do it, but I believe in it, and I only realized it might ruffle feathers after I was already done.

First of all, here is the bug that I was trying to account for:

As we all know, Cloth armor provides Armor Class in one of two ways: it either has an enhancement bonus (which acts as the item's AC), or it has an Armor Bonus enchantment (or, in the extremely rare cases where it has both, only the highest of the two matters). However, when inspecting Cloth armor in-game, the "Armor Bonus" line (NOT the Armor Bonus enchantment; they are different things, both called Armor Bonus) only takes into consideration the item's enhancement bonus (and completely ignores any Armor Bonus enchantment the item may have, which is essentially the exact same thing). Instead, the "Armor Bonus" line should display the highest of the item's enhancement bonus VS the item's Armor Bonus enchantment.

As such, I changed the "AC" value on the page of every Cloth armor that had a value of "0" to the value of the item's Armor Bonus enchantment.

Take the Necromantic Robe for example; changed from +0 to +3.

Argument against my actions: When you inspect the item in-game, the Armor Bonus line (as shown in the image) says "0", so the AC listed in the wiki should also be "0".

Arguments that support my actions:
1) A wiki-listed Armor Bonus of "0" is useless when the item DOES have an actual Armor Bonus at the end of the day. This isn't a court, usefulness of information is just as important as technical correctness.
2) If we agree that the above text in italics is indeed a bug, the "Armor Bonus: 0" shown in game is incorrect, and the wiki should display the correct value (i.e. the item's Armor Bonus enchantment).

@ShoeMaker @PurpleSerpent

Hmm. Interesting point, this - I would personally have held off on making the edits before discussing, but there's certainly merit in your approach. Maybe we need to overhaul the template for Named Armor to account for the mismatch.

(I've posted a link to this thread on the wiki Discord to ensure more people see it, as a couple of users have already questioned the edits there.)

 

[The Blonde]

I would personally have held off on making the edits before discussing

That is entirely on me, apologies.

If the community decides they want to undo the changes and stick to the in-game displayed "Armor Bonus", no hard feelings.

Also please note that while doing the above, I also standardized whether AC is listed as (example) "5" or "+5"; most pages use the "+" version, and I think it looks better, so I converted all Cloth armor pages to this format.

 

[ShoeMaker]

You must be M0RF34S then. I noticed you were busy on the Special:RecentChanges feed (because now I have 45-50 edits to "check" before the system automatically gave you DDOWikiVIP user permission group). I looked at a couple and it looked like you were fixing a missing parameter name introduced by one of the admins a year ago using Kobold Sneak (possibly even me, IDR). No issues with that. As for the AC value (and honestly the rest of the values there on the page), it's intended to match the item inspection description window. "But why?" The reason for the text is to give the stats without needing a screenshot of the item description. Some people can't or don't want to take, crop, and upload images and this was a way they could add items without images and still get all of the information on the page. That said, if it's a consistent pattern across all of the Cloth armors, then the template that creates that table on the page could be adjusted to show the modified/final value in parens or something. Feel free to pop into the DDOwiki Discord and discuss it further and live. I have no plans on reverting you and would rather come up with a plan together to be accurate and maintain the historical purpose of those text lines allowing you to make the updates for that going forward.

 

[Krishna Devi]

This is slightly topic-adjacent I hope you'll forgive me.

10 years ago I felt that Cloth mrr cap 50 & Light Armor mrr cap 100 was basically well balanced. Even up until Myth Drannor Sun/Moon augments I felt that these mrr caps were more or less balanced.

These days and looking ahead to the future I feel that Cloth mrr cap 100 and Light Armor mrr cap 150 would be a better balance overall.

 

[PurpleSerpent]

This is slightly topic-adjacent I hope you'll forgive me.

10 years ago I felt that Cloth mrr cap 50 & Light Armor mrr cap 100 was basically well balanced. Even up until Myth Drannor Sun/Moon augments I felt that these mrr caps were more or less balanced.

These days and looking ahead to the future I feel that Cloth mrr cap 100 and Light Armor mrr cap 150 would be a better balance overall.

You'd be better off posting this in the Suggestions forum - this subforum is dedicated to the DDO Wiki, not DDO itself, and gets very little dev attention as a result.