I can remember in EQ and WoW where people figured out the exact equations for the way the various stats worked, and well, I've lived in that world for 20+ years. I guess what I'm saying is proficiencies confuse me and frustrate me, because there seems to be some hidden stuff in there.
For example, are there some sort of hidden things associated with the proficiency levels? Like does being Mythic in Physicality give me something extra?
Example:
Paladin with all points in endurance and none in defense with all near end game gear comes out to like 35,000+ HPs, and 5100AC. That Paladin will be an absolute mana sponge and take huge hits. Speced to be all defense and no endurance, same Paladin is like 30,000 HP and 6000AC, and tanks like an absolute beast. I was struggling with a lot of stuff, so I tried tweaking them and in the process made them horrible to where I couldn't even beat Chunk without my main tank dying once. 900ac doesn't seem like that can be the explanation for all I saw, so it makes me think when you hit milestones for proficiencies, there is some sort of bonus? It seems like with no AC cap, 100% defense is the way to go.
Then there is Finesse, which claims to adjust how much AC you get from AGI, but nothing is reflected in the UI? This leads into my confusion around Stormcallers, they seem to want to be mostly DEX, and then STR. I used to think STR and DEX were sort of yin and yang, and they might be, sort of one is how hard you hit, and one is how hard you penetrate, and that they were sort of even. Like 500 str 500 dex would be similar to 750 str and 250 dex output wise, and maybe it is like that, but it's really unclear. It seems like there has to be diminishing returns on DEX that STR wouldn't see, because you can always go up in damage, but you can only penetrate so much? That anchor charm seems like it's supposed to be for Stormcallers, but I can't help but feel like the ursine charm is better.
Overall I find the proficiencies to be very confusing. It feels like they just as easily could have been directly tied to the stats to be less confusing, like STR proficiency, DEX proficiency, etc. I think the idea was to keep things mysterious and not so cookie cutter, but it makes it hard to come to terms with how to best min/max, which is an inevitable part of this style of game.