The sad state that is Armor

Hey guys, (hopefully devs), longtime fan and player. Been around since CB, running maelstrom of chaos endlessly with my tanky 1k life regen marauder back in the day.

What I came here to mention is something I have seen several past and current top ladder & hardcore players discuss: Armor, and why it is a *bad* mitigation mechanism

Before I wrote this post, I was reviewing several builds (mostly melee/physical oriented) that I wanted to try out (this season has been good to me on drops, so I can afford some fun stuff). I noticed a trend that sort of bothered me.

For context, I have a pretty cool 6 linked armor:

Now, I am not trying to show off. I just wanted to find a cool build to utilize this. Several of the builds I found, in fact almost *all* of the builds I found (and all of the ones I wanted to try) required the use of certain items in order to survive.

Most notably, an INSANE amount of builds require the use of lightning coil for mitigating physical damage.

I typically play standard/softcore, but I still like to build my characters to be able to climb the ladder efficiently, and that means not dying. The builds that typically inspire me the most are hardcore builds that find great balance of damage/survival.

What is bothering me is that you almost HAVE to have a coil to mitigate physical damage. There is almost NO reason not to run a coil with a build that can sustain the lightning resist requirement. It provides great armor/evasion, high life and the strongest survival mechanic in the game for the kind of hits that kill people the most: Slow, hard hitting physical attacks (think colossal skeletons or colossal vaal mobs)

Normally, in many other games and RPGS, armor provides a flat physical damage reduction. In path, it "seems" to do this on the character sheet, but it is a well known fact that it tends to become useless against high damage hits.

Stacking defense is not easy, and almost completely worthless in the game right now. High defense means you take very little damage from fast, low damaging attacks. In the end game of path of exile, you will often find that these are not the kinds of things that can kill you (typically, elemental damage and high hitting physical attacks will)

The builds that benefit the most from armor are typically physical based builds (templars and marauders for instance) as they have many armor nodes nearby.

As someone who has watched the game evolve for a long time, I can say that GGG has always had a little bit of trouble catering to melee players. With how easy it is to desync and the sheer amount of punishment monsters deal out in the end game, it is a dangerous life to play a melee build.

Introducing lightning coil to the game seemed to me like the laziest solution to make allow melee builds some way to mitigate high damage hits.

The armor is incredibly common (I can grab one for a handful of chaos orbs), provides INSANE stats for what it does, and is fairly accessible (str/dex hybrid, so stat reqs are split).

And it isn't just coil. Belly of the beast is another armor which provides absolutely insane bonuses to survival and is cheap as well.


***My main point***

In the current game, it is MUCH smarter for someone who plans to play as a melee character to grab the avoidance bundle on the ranger side (acro/phase/ondar's) + running a grace aura. It is also a good idea to run block/spell block.

What does that boil down to? It means that the stat you would NORMALLY associate with surviving difficult physical encounters, ARMOR, is almost completely unused by many.

There have been NO innovations with armor, armor based builds or armor based items since the games release.

Running the avoidance bundle + a grace/evasion offers great synergy (because of the mechanics involved and entropy). What do you run with determination? What would a high armor build offer you when fighting against flicker mobs with some extra damage on them?

Block isn't something that is unique to the marauder/templar side of the tree. Take a look at the various BoE/WoE builds around or any dual wielding build for that matter. Achieving max block AND the avoidance bundle is VERY possible with scion/ranger/duelist, and offers an INSANE amount of effective HP without losing on damage (thanks to hybrid dual wield nodes!)

As it stands, I feel like any melee build I run WITHOUT coil is going to suffer a great deal on the tankiness level. I don't like that feeling. I would rather like to have OPTIONS for mitigating physical damage, that EXTEND BEYOND block/evasion/coil.

I *strongly* feel that GGG should reconsider the current way armor works in this game. As more content gets added, and monsters start hitting for more and more physical damage, the reasons to stack armor will begin to disappear more and more.

I seriously cannot fathom what led to the current state of armor from a balance standpoint. Players are punished for wanting to mitigate one type of damage. Certain items and keystones are FAR AND OUT RIGHT *BETTER* than others because of how much EFFECTIVE HP they offer compared to others!

As far as my suggestion, I only ask that there be a rework of armor or some kind of keystones/items to synergize with armor based builds to help mitigate high damaging hits.



***Some of my suggestions***

1: A lightning-coil-esque effect as a keystone. This way people can mitigate physical damage without having to use that item exclusively.

Example: Keystone - "All physical damage you take is split into 2 sources, each dealing 65% of the original damage to you" (effectively making a 100% hit for 1000 damage into 2, 650 damage hits. Thus technically increasing the damage you take as a downside)

This is cool for a lot of reasons, as it synergizes well with armor, but is not a great node to get for other builds (since you technically take more overall damage, and more sources = more chances to get through avoidance/dodge)

2: A keystone which reduces damage from magic sources by a flat amount based on a % of your armor. Perhaps the keystone also reduces your max resists by 10% each.

3: An item (shield?) which increases your chance to block based on how much armor you have (maybe 1k armor = 1% block chance). This way a character could invest more points into life/etc instead of blocking nodes to achieve max block.

4: Fundamentally changing the way weapons/melee skills work.

For example, I mentioned in a reddit thread the other day the idea of building unique defenses INTO certain items. For MACES,SWORDS, and AXES only, you would offer various forms of damage mitigation/prevention/offloading.

For swords, I know it has been suggested before of introducing a unique "parry" mechanic outside of blocking. I imagine it would be like block but with no recovery time (and a lower max %). The % to parry could be based off of attack speed, which would synergize with swords.

For Maces, perhaps a damage reduction or shield. I think a cool mechanic would be to offer a short duration damage-absorbtion buff whenever you stun an enemy. This would make some builds actually go for those stun nodes.

For axes, I would imagine a straight %HP increase.

If you wanted a more interesting mechanic, maybe you could give axes a "Blood lust" mechanic, where ~15-20% of attacks leech 100% of the damage back instantly. Obviously this could be tuned, but something like that.

Another option would be to give Axes a unique "bleed" mechanic or bleed supporting effect, where bleeding enemies all deal 25% less damage or something.


Now I know I only covered maces/swords/axes, but I think GGG could build off of the Stave block effect. For daggers, I think daggers are already in a great spot, with the nodes so close to acrobatics etc. If you really wanted to, you could give daggers an evasion buff mechanic, but like I said, I think dagger builds are fine.



Hopefully this post has vented out my frustrations in a way that people can understand, and I do hope that the developers respond back. I would LOVE to hear what their thoughts on the current state of the game is, specifically on damage mitigation.

Again, thanks for the hard work you all do, and I only write this much because I DO CARE! I will continue to support you regardless of how bad armor is.

the fundamental issue with armor , and evasion as well , is that it is rare for you to get most of it from gear until you are way over twinked.

1400 armor on a chest is what I would consider a luxury for most people with 900 being the norm.

in reality you are lucky to get 1000 from the chest 600 from the hat 300 from the gloves and 300 from the boots.

even with armor passives ( which are not terribly good) you are looking at around 4k armor with the lionshare of everything comming from granite flasks and maybe a shield / determination.

and this is why things like lightning coil are so popular now. essentially it is too expensive to get the prefered stats ie resists life .. and then also have armor in any reasonable amount without breaking bank.

with that in mind lots of people look toward specific mechanics to mitigate physical.

the aforementioned lightning coil is one , but things like arctic armor or even mind over matter or possibly the biggest offender of all immortal call and endurance charges.

even evasion builds throw on immortal call and enduring cry on a cwdt gem.

these mechanics often do a better job anyway. with two cdwt gems working you can take at most 1000 damage before becoming invulnerable to physical for several seconds.


the sad thing is that again you cant really get enough armor to not use these mechanics.

An interesting mechanic would be something like a keystone with:
'enemies are unlucky damaging you depending on your ratio of armor to life and energy shield'

The idea is that if you have a large ratio of armor / (life + ES) then mobs are more likely to hit on the lower end of their damage span. Instead of (life + ES) the denominator could also for example be (character level) or something else to make the suggested keystone less overpowered for builds that simply stack up life like RF.
Maybe something like that might help in mitigating the problem that armor is nearly ignored against huge single hits.

"

my small brain cant comprehend the all of text you posted.

Also, concerning armor, its fine. Just get around 60% reduction, thats pretty good, then use a flask for some more.

This is the type of reply that shows how bad the state of armor is atm. If any build really does want pure armor they just use lightning coil with evasion gear and IR..

"

my small brain cant comprehend the all of text you posted.

Also, concerning armor, its fine. Just get around 60% reduction, thats pretty good, then use a flask for some more.

have you even tried doing maps beyond 76 or atziri etc?

Armor is completely fine. Stop whining. There are many tank builds that use armor to get insane survivability. Check out Gellig Marauder tank build, or tinko's duelist old build. They can easily afk double Palace bosses with crazy mods. Also Havoc's cyclone Marauder - one of the first to do Uber Atziri in Invasion league.

The fact that the vast majority of HC players use armor and most end-game builds use Armor should speak for itself, but here you are asking for armor buffs.

"

Wishuponastar wrote:

Armor is completely fine. Stop whining. There are many tank builds that use armor to get insane survivability. Check out Gellig Marauder tank build, or tinko's duelist old build. They can easily afk double Palace bosses with crazy mods. Also Havoc's cyclone Marauder - one of the first to do Uber Atziri in Invasion league.

The fact that the vast majority of HC players use armor and most end-game builds use Armor should speak for itself, but here you are asking for armor buffs.

You probably didn't even bother reading anything in my post.

also nice constructive reply, starts with "stop whining"

you just listed some builds. They might have insane gear requirements.

Coil costs 5 chaos or less.


I don't need ignorant people to post in this thread, thanks though.

An armor piece requires:

1. A good flat armor mod.

2. A good percentage armor mod.

3. Two elemental resistances.

If the piece is missing even one of those points, the armor is just about useless. So when you look at a pure armor build that tries to max out armor, it can become near impossible even on standard with tons of currency.

Now look at non-armor builds:

1. Get max block. Easy with Crest of Perandus for leveling.

2. Get Acrobatics. A single point gives you a huge defense.

3. Get MoM and have the mana to run it. Any gear can get mana, mana regen, and with EB all ES gear turns into MoM-friendly stuff.

So not only is armor less effective when compared to actual damage avoidance, the damage mitigation armor gives is insignificant compared to the easy-to-get damage avoidance.

I'm trying to get a six-linked Wings of Entropy just because of this. It gets 174% increased maximum life, max block, max spell block, 40% dodge, and 30% spell dodge. I'll have plenty of life to take any hits I may take, and if I need more "mitigation" I can just use a Cloak of Defiance.

Armor is useless in this game. There is absolutely no reason to make a build using armor unless you already have the gear ready or have the currency to trade for it.

Crazy, random idea with no basis other that pure conjecture: would armour be better if Determination gave a flat bonus (like Grace and Discipline)? Honestly, I have no idea what is best here, but it just looked weird to me that two of the three defensive auras work one way and the third completely differently.