Is Gates based off of AC, or weight. And as a follow up did armor standardization screw with AC? Thanks

Standardization did involve modifying AC values so they made a bit of sense (or at least were consistant across the board). We tried to take armor material into account (steel protects you against piercing attacks better than leather) as well as (to a lesser extent) armor make or enhancements ("hardened" or "studded" armors being slightly better against certain attack types, though a little heavier as well, for example). Higher-level armors will have better AC values than lower level armors as well - call level an indication of "craftmanship".

Overall, I found that AC will probably rise (get worse) across the board for most characters, but characters who want to gear specifically for high AC will have an easier time of it - since the objects they should look for will be more obvious.

I didn't touch affects, so a -10 across-the-board AC object will still have that affect. In future AC projects, I expect that particular stat will either go away or be associated with magic in some way. But that's still on the back burner.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

And if anything there was more eq after that was good. Its actually not that hard to get enough ac if you have a half decent knowledge of warrior eq in general.

What about AC from an item's effects?

For gear locations that don't involve a multiplier (e.g. wrist), would a 10/10/10/10 bracer be any better than a 0/0/0/0 bracer w/ -10 AC?

or at least so close that your not going to notice any difference. If your teetering on the border of getting it to kick in just quaf an armor potion or sit by your cabal healer.

There's a hard cutoff point? That's silly. Seems like it should work gradually. Starting at a fixed point but being very weak, then increasing in effectiveness as one's AC improves until some absolute "cap" is reached.

You get an echo each time your AC gets you to another tier. And afaik it is capped at roughly 15% damage reduction.

That's pretty nifty.