So is Armour useless or not?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

If you put on your full plate mail, and I throw hundreds of toothpicks at you, you'll basically not feel it. If someone catapults a whole tree at you, don't expect the armour to prevent as much of the damage.

In lategame there are only trees...

This all seems stupid to me. I think it would be better if the damage reduction from armour was less but applied consistently to all damage, no matter how much: eg 25% reduction is 25% off, end of story. You could then cap it if you need to, or add diminishing returns based on your armour, not on the amount of damage.

Also, letting people stack armour because the character sheet claims a completely inflated value is rather poor form.

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GhostlightX wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

If you put on your full plate mail, and I throw hundreds of toothpicks at you, you'll basically not feel it. If someone catapults a whole tree at you, don't expect the armour to prevent as much of the damage.

In lategame there are only trees...

This all seems stupid to me. I think it would be better if the damage reduction from armour was less but applied consistently to all damage, no matter how much: eg 25% reduction is 25% off, end of story. You could then cap it if you need to, or add diminishing returns based on your armour, not on the amount of damage.

Also, letting people stack armour because the character sheet claims a completely inflated value is rather poor form.

pretty much.

I like the idea behind it.

I guess its suppose to keep you on your toes against heavy hitters while you are able to wade through the weaker mobs.

It makes it less of a straight >numbers game. I like that. I wouldnt want them to change the system.

So pretty much we need a "heavy damage" defense skill. A way to actively protect against heavy damage in addition to dodging.



I think we just need a better way to know what mobs deliver "heavy near unblockable" damage and what mobs deal regular damage mitigated by armor. Its almost like an element type.

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GhostlightX wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

If you put on your full plate mail, and I throw hundreds of toothpicks at you, you'll basically not feel it. If someone catapults a whole tree at you, don't expect the armour to prevent as much of the damage.

In lategame there are only trees...

This all seems stupid to me. I think it would be better if the damage reduction from armour was less but applied consistently to all damage, no matter how much: eg 25% reduction is 25% off, end of story. You could then cap it if you need to, or add diminishing returns based on your armour, not on the amount of damage.

Also, letting people stack armour because the character sheet claims a completely inflated value is rather poor form.

i think that simplifies defense too much. I think the point is that a dangerous enemy will ALWAYS be dangerous. It seems like they want you to not just mindlessly wade through everything depending on only armor to survive.

Im sure there are some tweaks they can make, but it really is a good system for combat. Some of us (like me) also care about the slashing in these games and not just numbers VS numbers.

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GameQB11 wrote:

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GhostlightX wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

If you put on your full plate mail, and I throw hundreds of toothpicks at you, you'll basically not feel it. If someone catapults a whole tree at you, don't expect the armour to prevent as much of the damage.

In lategame there are only trees...

This all seems stupid to me. I think it would be better if the damage reduction from armour was less but applied consistently to all damage, no matter how much: eg 25% reduction is 25% off, end of story. You could then cap it if you need to, or add diminishing returns based on your armour, not on the amount of damage.

Also, letting people stack armour because the character sheet claims a completely inflated value is rather poor form.

i think that simplifies defense too much. I think the point is that a dangerous enemy will ALWAYS be dangerous. It seems like they want you to not just mindlessly wade through everything depending on only armor to survive.

Im sure there are some tweaks they can make, but it really is a good system for combat. Some of us (like me) also care about the slashing in these games and not just numbers VS numbers.

What it makes in the end is that no matter how much you stack you will have like 10-20% reduction which is not good for any melee. It forces you to stack only hp and get some armor there and there just so you have the reduction against weak monsters, doesnt matter if you have 18k or 7k armor it feels the same versus weak and versus strong monsters.

ya armor is garbage, another reason why melee is worthless

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Fargali wrote:

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1235 wrote:

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GameQB11 wrote:

i still dont understand armor in this game. its hard to tell who knows what they're talking about and who is just complaining. The mechanics post doesnt help either.


1. So you mean to tell me that armor doesn't do ANY damage reduction at higher levels? i thought it could do up to 90% damage reduction?

2. If it is true that armor doesnt reduce damage at higher levels, why did they do this? what is the logic behind making armor useless?

getting 1 shot by a big crit isn't the only thing that kills you

getting hit by a bunch of flicker strike or leap mobs can also kill you, and all it takes is a second of not paying attention which is going to happen eventually, armor is going to save you in this case

Actually no.
If you are talking about normal and cruel then maybe.
You talk about merciless then no armor will save you from 5 goat mean leaping on top of you.

and yes armor is not that useful unless you endurance charge it "using it as a base value before the charges" which will actually make a big difference.

i am talking about high lvl maps lol

From an analysis perspective, it is useful to derive the formula for the last variable that GGG did not post (namely armor):

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Let:
D = Final Damage
B = Base Damage
A = Armor
P = Percentage Reduction
Given:
[1] P = A/(A+12B)
[2] D = (1-P)*B
Solve for A:
[3] A = 12B^2/D-12B

Comparing [2] and [3], we can see that the raising the base damage by a factor C will essentially reduce the armor by that same factor C. This means that if your armor increases at the same rate as incoming damage, your mitigation will stay the same. The relationship between mitigation and armor (expressed as a ratio of damage) is linear, contrary to what you may expect from the way GGG presented the armor formula. I was a bit surprised by this until I thought of A being expressed as a ratio of B in formula [1], and subbed that into formula [2]. What I mean is that focusing analysis on just one formula is misleading.

To illustrate the point, here is a table showing how your armor must relate to the base damage dealt to achieve some specification mitigation values, from [1]:

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10% reduction: Armor = Base Damage * 4/3
20% reduction: Armor = Base Damage * 3
25% reduction: Armor = Base Damage * 4
33% reduction: Armor = Base Damage * 6
50% reduction: Armor = Base Damage * 12

Anyway, the point is just that if armor gets worse at higher levels that is simply because GGG multiplies the damage values of monsters by a higher factor than they multiply the armor values of corresponding gear. If they used the same factor on both sides, then armor's usefulness would remain constant throughout the game.

Viewed from this perspective, it seems like an obvious oversight by GGG, not the fundamental mechanical flaw the community likes to paint it as. However, it is true that the larger the difference between the scaling of armor and damage, the balance point (ie. armor's usefulness) changes faster than the ratio of the two scaling factors. So it is fair to say that they designed a system that is inflexible and quickly breaks when the balance is only slightly less than perfect. That's probably not the best way to design a core game mechanic in a game that is intended to last for years, but it can be made to work with some extra blood sweat and tears.

Is armor worth it? Depends how much it can increase your survivability compared to other sources. At higher levels, it currently does not do a good job of that because it does not scale high enough. Maybe it will be balanced better in the future.

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GameQB11 wrote:

So pretty much we need a "heavy damage" defense skill. A way to actively protect against heavy damage in addition to dodging.

And we have it: Shield Block.
60% or superior shield block is very life safer.
I had a ranger with 69% shield block and 60%+ evasion on closed beta. You can negate lots of damage with a decent shield block.

Like I said... GGG thinks Armor/Evasion is fine.

Sigh...

Well, add all the f'ing melee gems you want, that's still not gonna make pure "melee" anymore viable...

Prepare to Ground Slam or GTFO... Or LS... Or w/e fancy new AoE skills you add, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE IN MELEE RANGE.

With this logic, it's no shock that desyncs have been this problematic for 2.5 years...

Eventually GGG will see the issue, probably not for a while and then instead of "fixing" armor they'll nerf mob damage... /facepalm