new Armour formula doesnt change a thing - it is still something you leave others to use

I see people posting various 'oh, we are saved, Armour is great again' revelations around. I finally have found why they think it is so - or I presume it is it.

I agree that AR formula calculation change is a buff. It is a buff, long overdue one btw. However, this 'buff' is meaningless.

why?

1) getting 'significant' values of AR is still prohibitively expensive. one big aura, all AR gear, flask and passive tree investment just to get 25k?

that 25k cuts 5k hit in half instead of by third now? in reality it means you die in 4 instead of 3 hits from a soup of aura-stacking mobs in end-game maps. Dodge worked so well because it solved the problem of being hit by 20 mobs AT THE SAME TIME (from the life regen/recovery perspective).

This buff makes you die just slightly slower. Harvest packs with haste/subst.phys/ele-as-everything will MURDER Armour characters just the same

2) big scary stuff (endgame bosses, modded blobs of doom etc) still hits for way more than used in the examples (where AR is far less effective) or deals mostly elemental damage or BOTH.

AR stacking character is fighting Maven, Sirus and Elder effectively naked. most phys damage that happens there is a) Damage over Time b) converted c) phys hits are so large you HAVE to dodge them

as long as things like Die Beam completely ignore certain mechanic (AR, Evasion (but spell suppression might be ok) - that mechanic is worthless. it doesnt matter it 'works vs thrash mobs' if it fails when needed the most. because, even in 3.16 there are mechanics that work all the time.

the biggest winner of 3.16 is Energy Shield esp the INT stacking variety that got exactly ZERO nerfs and all buffs. the biggest loser is Armour - it had one chance to be made relevant and.. here we are:

- slightly tweaked formula (it is a buff)
- promise of max res on the tree (i bet it is going to be added to the nodes noone ever used in the parts of the tree even POB doesnt know about)

i expect a very unpleasant reality check when poeple who are now happy about AR changes actually try to budget their builds with all these now-mandatory tree and items expenses

Except you now have to use AR.

Net result will be
- more investment (and gearing pain) into defenses
- less damage

a buff... /s

ps
life regen nodes removed from Marauder side if i'm not mistaken...

Determination and Grace still being 50% auras while Discipline is a 35% is still one of the most confusing design decisions in this entire game.

GGG clearly sees that very few players (aside from aurabots) were ever choosing to run these auras, and they're buffing the auras significantly to make them more enticing. But the reason nobody ran them before wasn't that they were numerically bad, it was that players can't afford to spend half of our mana pool on a defensive stat which doesn't apply to every type of incoming damage.

Giving us an amazing new Determination that single handedly gives us more armor than non-Transcend builds had last league but not lowering the reservation cost is like offering us trillions of Zimbabwe dollars. Like... cool, I guess, but I can't SPEND this anywhere.

Hey, they say every day is sunny in hell.

Ah well, any improvement is welcome, I had 3k-something base armor (no shield) this league without buffs. It was doing jack shit, of course, but now it would do jack shit X2, considering where it came from it's plenty.

At least the buffs were useful, fanaticism triggers, chug flask, pop molten and I'd get half a second more time to stand in one spot and make use of turbo mage mode. Worth. It.

"

Determination and Grace still being 50% auras while Discipline is a 35% is still one of the most confusing design decisions in this entire game.

I think that HH being still in the game WHILE adding end-end-endgame content that strives on HH takes the spot of the weirdest design decision.


As for the 50% auras tho:

- as listed in the initial picture, full set of T1 AR bases gives you ~2500 AR

- Lvl 20 Determination (alone, without ANYTHING else) is going to give you.. 3070 AR


One part of the 'AR rework' that one can already tell is a complete flop is 'making players care about AR rolls on their gear'.

Previously people got their AR from mana conversion or other, similar sources, ignoring AR on items completely. Now we are going to get the same situation:

Aura + Ironskin Granite + Banner (check the first post) all give you ~15k AR. without a SINGLE AR-related item. sure, 15k AR is still meaningless but it at least does something with the new formula. and you get it for one aura slot, one banner slot and a flask. sure, flask gives you HALF of it and for the most boss fights you dont have it but still.


As long as you can get MUCH more AR from 'outside' sources than from gear, the problem is not even nearly 'solved'.

Making people able to acquire 3000 AR chest (that is actually useful, not a dud with AR and nothing more), 1500 AR helmet or in general getting 8000 from items alone - then we can talk about solving the 'armour is horrible to stack and people are doing it via every non-item way possible.

making items drop with 10% RNG.. noone is going to see them anyway, you cannot drop GOOD item anyway nowadays

armour builds that care about armour are gonna be hitting 20-30k armour without using auras, flasks or taking any armour nodes on the tree that are not life nodes that have some armour on them.

armour builds that care about armour and use determ + flasks + spec specific armour passives on the tree are gonna have like 50k+ armour.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

armour builds that care about armour are gonna be hitting 20-30k armour without using auras, flasks or taking any armour nodes on the tree that are not life nodes that have some armour on them.

how?
dual Nebuloh and other 'special' cases like mana->AR conversion?

because otherwise it is VERY unlikely, it simply does not add up, have tried that before, POBed etc and it all boiled down to '%AR is a prefix and by picking %AR/+AR on gear you make your gear thrash'

boots and body armour have NO space for %AR/+AR unless you want to make a bad build

gloves have low base rolls, so even with top roll it is barely 600 AR, helmet can reach ~1000. some paltry stuff from rings/belts (if that is still a thing) and that is all you have to work with. you can even assume +100% AR from the tree (in reality it is lower value, but still)

how the hell that translates into 20k AR unbuffed? how?

"

sidtherat wrote:

body armour have NO space for %AR/+AR unless you want to make a bad build

thats not true, at all. people use flat and % armour on chest armours, same way people use 3 prefixes for energy shield on es builds.

ES is 'life', so no wonder people use up all prefixes to get as much of ES as possible

AR is NOT 'life'.

POE in current form (and that is NOT changing in 3.16) is buffer > everything else type of game.

and given what prefixes you can get:

bad choice:

"

Glorious Plate with:
3 T1 AR rolls
---
3200 AR

good choice:

"

Astral (resists) with:
T1 life
15% phys damage taken as fire
+Curse
---
800 AR

MUCH higher survivability, no matter how you look at it (excluding Transcedence build but it seems it got nuked from orbit anyway)



ps. EVEN with 3000 AR body, 2500 AR shield etc you still wont reach 30k AR with just 'accidental nodes'. and not every skill scales from thin air (toxic rain), most skills/builds actually need good gear and plenty of passives for damage

"

sidtherat wrote:

ES is 'life', so no wonder people use up all prefixes to get as much of ES as possible

AR is NOT 'life'.

POE in current form (and that is NOT changing in 3.16) is buffer > everything else type of game.

and given what prefixes you can get:

bad choice:

"

Glorious Plate with:
3 T1 AR rolls
---
3200 AR

good choice:

"

Astral (resists) with:
T1 life
15% phys damage taken as fire
+Curse
---
800 AR

MUCH higher survivability, no matter how you look at it (excluding Transcedence build but it seems it got nuked from orbit anyway)



ps. EVEN with 3000 AR body, 2500 AR shield etc you still wont reach 30k AR with just 'accidental nodes'. and not every skill scales from thin air (toxic rain), most skills/builds actually need good gear and plenty of passives for damage

Jugg Unbreakable + Brassdome.

Edit build armor:
https://pastebin.com/zjpEWChd