My Solution to "The Armor Problem"

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Solely addressing the armor physical damage reduction problem here but it also has some beneficial synergies with other related defensive stats and mechanics.

My solution is to take armor rating and how it scales with diminishing returns as it is currently in the game with regards to % physical damage reduction, however, get rid of the "bigger hits bypass armor" mechanic and replace that with a new more elegant and synergistic mechanic(also arguably more thematically realistic to me and my brother). That new mechanic will actually be almost directly tied to an existing mechanic known as "stun buildup" and "stun threshold". My current understanding of how stun threshold works is that the more damage you take in a hit, there will be a greater % chance that you will be stunned up to a guaranteed chance at and beyond 100% of your stun threshold amount. So if you have 1000 stun threshold and are hit for 1000 points of damage you are guaranteed to be stunned. Likewise, depending on the amount of damage taken below your stun threshold there is only a chance that you will be stunned down to less than 10% of your stun threshold where you will never be stunned. The general idea is that all targets, be it a player character or monster, will have a global inverse linear conversion modifier to their armor rating based off of the chance to be stunned from a hit, i.e. a % starting from 100% when there is no chance to be stunned to some % when there's a chance to be stunned. Damage taken at and below 10% of a target's stun threshold would be mitigated by 100% effectiveness from armor rating and will linearly scale down to 0%(or possibly some minimum % like 20%) to the point the target is stunned and during the stun effect. After typing this all out this is actually sounding pretty similar to how the current mechanic works, however, it has the crucial interaction with building into stun threshold which will make it actually viable. I would expect that with this mechanic implemented, current armor values would actually need to be significantly nerfed as it would be far too powerful, however, I think with some testing and tuning it should be relatively easy to find a sweet spot.

It is also important that the stun threshold interaction is specifically scaling armor rating and not the final estimated % of physical damage reduction from armor. This will effectively give some nonlinear scaling benefit to armor stackers by allowing the armor rating that would give significant diminishing returns to have some recouped value if they are at risk of being stunned. This will also give more value to armor breaking builds which I go into further detail later.

This will give natural synergy with the Strength stat as Strength increases your stun threshold directly as your health pool increases. It will also give value to armor/energy shield hybrid classes as there are many passive nodes that supplement stun threshold based off max energy shield. You could even feasibly run a Chaos Inoculation build while stacking armor if you take some of the many passive skills such as "Asceticism" which states that "Stun Threshold is based on 30% of your Energy Shield instead of Life". Additionally, armor/evasion hybrid classes will synergize with this mechanic because they won't get heavily punished when they do inevitably take a hit. This will even give some value to the dreaded stun threshold rating from gear to an armor stacking class.

I do see a bit of an issue with this mechanic possibly cannibalizing the armor break mechanic, however, I think there is a way to make them both work together. Armor break can still work as is to be a flat armor value reduction, while stun buildup can be a synergistic % armor value reduction working better on more heavily armored targets. Armor break may need to be tuned down as this synergy will be a direct significant buff to physical damage.

I have learned from over 500 hours of PoE2 early access experience already that having some amount of stun threshold is actually just as valuable as resistances if not more so in some cases. Particularly, getting chain stunned by a firing squad of ranged mobs was the turning point in my mind when I realized how important stun threshold and/or stun charm really was. I believe that players will have no problem taking a bit of stun threshold nodes in the passive tree to boost the effectiveness of armor as they likely already were without this mechanic in the first place.

Lets talk about the thematically more realistic element of this mechanic. The current bigger hits bypass more armor doesn't even make sense. A deadly sharp broadhead arrow that would kill a man in 1 shot without armor has no effect on a sufficiently armored opponent. Even heavy blows with a sword or axe will have a hard time penetrating armor. However, an immobilized or stunned opponent that has their guard down will be open to precise attacks targeting their critical weak points in armor such as the armpit, the back of the knee, groin or eye slit for a well timed and placed dagger to slip through. When taking down a large powerful foe such as a dragon, it makes more sense to heavy stun a boss and take the opportunity to strike a critical blow in the eye or some other vital part while the beast is down. In conversations with my brother about this it makes a lot more sense in our minds for stunning to bypass armor than just big hit = bypass armor.

TL;DR
Effectively, if you're getting stunned you're fucked.

Kind regards,
[Removed by Support]

I don't think it really needs to be that complicated. GGG just needs to stop working with such large numbers. A softcap on DR starting from 20% works fine. I don't think they need to invoke vertical compression but it's not out of the question.

They should not need to hard cap armor DR because is simply will never go that high.

Armor Break can then be simplified to basic Penetration of numeric values. Your DR might only go up 1% by doubling your armor but it will be more reliable. Armor Break allowing negative results is also nonsense. I know why they did it but maybe they should consider negative resists is also nonsense.

As result the whole big hit, little hit also becomes unnecessary since armor would not really go beyond something like 50% DR. Their flaw in design is they believe a Rare enemy should deal 20x the damage of a white enemy by any means necessary and it's not needed.

The reality for PoE2 should be that the player's actions and use of skills is their primary source of reducing damage. This applies to Evasion as well. There are attacks Evasion is useless against thus an attack dealing enough damage to overpower 50% DR and kill should not be an issue.

If they intend to keep HP primarily level based the systems they're using are excessive.