I see your point. However, wouldn't other factors (ie. prominent houses, signs, particular element emphasis etc.) be able to quickly cloud people's judgement regarding the person in question's rising sign?
I suppose. Though it's hard to mask a person's health overall, or a general personality. Say a person with a prominent Saturn in the 10th. Naturally we want to affiliate Saturn with Aquarius in the 10th. That would make this said charts AC Taurus. So person A (said person of this chart) is very Taurus in appearence (despite the fact that his Venus is in Aquarius in the 10th along with Mars and Mercury). Now his Jupiter is found in Leo in the 4th, Moon in Cancer in the 3rd and Sun in Pisces in the 11th.
There, all the planets are situated, so we begin to delineate. The dispositor of Chart A is Saturn for Mercury, Mars, and Venus along with the AC, MC, and DC. Dispositor for the Sun and Jupiter are null (well not technically), because they are in eachothers' signs, meaning they are in mutual reception by domicile. The Moon is its' own dispositor in Cancer.
Ultimately 2/3s of the chart (about 66%) is affliated with Saturn in some way. Now let's pretend Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn are in conjunction, in exact accordance as above illustrated. Let's put Mercury at 22* Aquarius and Saturn at 19* Aquarius with Venus and Mars falling in-between (now I realize this is a rare setup, but it is only to make a point).
Basically while the Sun may hold some ground being in the 11th and in Mutual Reception (which saves him from the peregrine state along with Jupiter), one is in partial halb and the other partial hayz. Saturn is in hayz, domicile, in the 10th, free of the sun's combustion and beams, direct in motion and partile conjucnt the MC by 0'34 degrees. Which means that Saturn squares the AC and DC and opposes the IC.
This person has so much Saturn that he should portray all of Saturn's qualities with ease, yet incidentally, Taurus shines through with no planets in the 1st. He has all the often attributed traits of Taurus with a blend of Aquarius and Saturn. In other words, Saturn does not over-power the AC, it only merges with it to create an unique individual. If the AC never really merged with the rest of the chart, then we'd all look the same as our other AC counter-parts.
Which is why sometimes the AC is hard to find in an individual soley, without looking at the rest of the chart. Though a good Astrologer would anayze the chart thoroughly and give his/her best judgement on those analyzations. What Astrologers like to call "Chart Ramification".