The sad state that is Armor

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Peterlerock wrote:

Again:
I'm not advocating Armor is a good defense on its own.
You gotta combine it with something else, as you gotta combine Evasion and ES with something else.

But you're advocating that Armour is not worse than the other 2 defense options - which is the only explanation for your continued effort to "win" the discussion.
And you are wrong.

Even if Evasion or ES on its own aren't enough, they're STILL better than Armour.

Think of ANY combination of defenses - with or without Block, MoM, IC, etc, if you want.
Now pick 2 among Evasion, ES and Armour.
Anyone with a brain will leave Armour out on over 90% of the cases.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

Make a 2H Sword marrauder that stacks life and armor (That does not use LC) and try to reach Atziri.

Why on earth would I want to play a character with only one line of defense?
My 2h sword marauder has Acrobatics and Immortal Call for a reason.

Evasion alone is a shitty defense as well (even ES is), that's why people stack other stuff on top of it: block, dodge, long selfcast IC, Lightning Coil, MoM, ...
You didn't, and now your Marauder sucks. Congratulations.

Again:
I'm not advocating Armor is a good defense on its own.
You gotta combine it with something else, as you gotta combine Evasion and ES with something else.

It's funny that you should say that.

Armor builds, which spend too many points into armor to get another line of defense, do not ever get another line of defense. The best they can do against attacks is to get the Crest of Perandus, but that drastically cuts into their actual mitigation.

As to your previous post, try not trolling. Trolling when someone has called you out just makes you look like a [censored due to forum guidelines. Use your imagination].

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Natharias wrote:

Armor builds, which spend too many points into armor to get another line of defense, do not ever get another line of defense. The best they can do against attacks is to get the Crest of Perandus, but that drastically cuts into their actual mitigation.

Again:

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Peterlerock wrote:

1. So you'd rather give up 2k armor on the shield slot for random 40% damage reduction ?
But giving up about 800 armor on the chest slot (2k rare vs Lightning Coil with Iron reflexes) for a stable 40% damage reduction, that's impossible?
2. And if armor means so much to you, you'd better use a rare shield with 36% block, not a Perandus with 40%.
Edit: oh wait, your idea looks even more stupid, you're not gaining 40% random damage block, but only 4-10% compared to any other shield... ;)

Getting 4-6% more block with Perandus means: 2-3 skillpoints saved. Maybe 3-5 including travel points.
Losing 1500-2000 armor of a rare shield is equivalent to how many skillpoints? You're actively reducing your armor by 20-40% that way (depending on your skilltree, shield defense nodes, auras etc)...

This is in no way "the best they can do".

You can easily stack your Armor with:

Block - done a hundred times by many players
Lightning Coil - just a gear swap + Purity of Lightning Aura
MoM - such builds were very popular a while ago (EB+IR+MOM)
ES/Aegis Aurora - actually requires a good Armor rating to work
Evasion - why not add a bit of Evasion into the mix?

The possibilities are given, and skilltrees that implement them are commonly used.

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Maybe I just don't understand what an "Armor build" is for you.
Maybe show me a skilltree of this failing 2h sword Marauder.

I'm using Armor since forever, and it always felt fine.
Coupled with a large health pool and life regen, a decent armor rating of about 15k lets you feel invincible against most monsters, and the rest you have to combat with a little strategy.

Maybe it is just my mindset: When something doesn't work, I try to make it work, instead of crying for it to be "fixed" by someone else.

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Peterlerock wrote:

I'm using Armor since forever, and it always felt fine.
Coupled with a large health pool and life regen, a decent armor rating of about 15k lets you feel invincible against most monsters, and the rest you have to combat with a little strategy.

Maybe it is just my mindset: When something doesn't work, I try to make it work, instead of crying for it to be "fixed" by someone else.

I'm using armor since ever aswell because I like playing the semi-tanky 2H berserker known from pretty much any action RPG.
I always felt fine with using armor and never bothered playing EVA/ES because it isn't my taste.
I died often (1400+ times on my first armor/2H sword char) but didn't bother too much even with my realtively good gear, since I knew I lack the defense because I use a 2H Sword.
Deaths are the drawback of the extra damage the 2H brings me (atleast thats what I thought back then).

Then, with the beginning of the recent season I did my first 2H Sword Eva build that I realy played past lvl 40, he is 79 meanwhile, since I still mostly tinker with my 2H sword armor marauder.
Suddenly I noticed I have infact never been fine with armor.

You just grab some eva gear and you are good to go, no eva nodes needed.
Add in acrobatics, immortal call and grace and you prettymuch do not die anymore unless you are entirely desync.

However, you are right in two regards:

1.)
Beeing geared to 20-40k armor most certainly means your armor is verry reliable.
In hinsight to physical damage maybe more than Eva and ES even since you got a garuanteed reduction.

With my gear I do not manage to reach anywhere near 12k armor without a shield.
If you reach 20k armor using 2H Sword (whilst using acrobatics if I got you right???) im quite certain you own equipment thats well suitable of doing any sort of engame content with relative ease.
If I were to invest more skillpoints into armor my 2H Sword DPS would break down so considerably that I cound not attempt lvl74+ maps anymore.

2.)
One line of defense does not deliver "reliable" protection.

But that is simply not what is beeing discussed here.
The point of this whole topic is that armor, considered without any further lines of defense, is inferior to Eva or ES without any further lines of defense.
To what extent it is inferior is hard to tell because of the non-linear scaling of armor.


The actual problem (that really has been stated numerous times by now and I don't know why I even bother to type it yet once more) is that is just way more easy to be "fine" when building a other form of defense.

Nurvus stated it a good dozend of times now with the simple exampe of:

+ Take away half your Eva and you still come along rather well. Your die more often sure, but you still do evade a subest of attacks.

+ Take away half your armor and you just don't reduce any damage anymore.

Considering LC, Immortal Call, MoM and whatnot benefits ANY of the three forms of defense,
the statement that one should use some of the above to make armor reliable just proves our point.

Once again, this discussion
IS NOT about:
- high-end armor equipment past the 20-40k beeing too weak
- armor in conjunction with LC, MoM, block, dodge, immortal call... beeing too weak
- it beeing impossible to make a good armor build
- buffing armor so it does not require any further lines of defense
- buffing armor so it makes you more "tanky" than other defenses
- any other imputation that people want armor to be foolproof in general

it IS ABOUT:
- Armor beeing more difficult to make a build with that comes along "fine" than making one with the other two defenses. So armor should be canged to be on par with them.

Thanks for your long reply.

It seems to me we actually agree on most points (and we even play a similar build).

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

If you reach 20k armor using 2H Sword (whilst using acrobatics if I got you right???) im quite certain you own equipment thats well suitable of doing any sort of engame content with relative ease.

Holy shit no! :)
I don't have access to gear that allows me to do that if such gear even exists. When I'm talking 20-40k armor, I'm talking about IR, shield, grace + determination.
Would need ridiculous gear and even more ridiculous skillpoint investment to get to that armor value with acrobatics and no shield.

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Considering LC, Immortal Call, MoM and whatnot benefits ANY of the three forms of defense,
the statement that one should use some of the above to make armor reliable just proves our point.

It's been argued here several times that an armor user can not use LC (for whatever reasons).
That's when I start to "nitpick" and ask: "Why would that be? Just wear that thing."

My point regarding LC is and has always been:
If it offers more protection than a well-rolled rare (because 40% damage reduction beats pretty much any armor rating against certain attacks), then "fuck your armor rating", let it drop by a bit and wear a 1000 armor unique instead of a 2000 armor rare.
This has been questioned in like 5 posts, and I simply don't get it.
How is that thing BiS for like every evasion build out there, but the armor users are fighting against even taking it into consideration?
It actually offers more protection for an armor user. He can convert the evasion into armor, and he gets hit more often, ergo LC comes to shine more often.

The post that baffled me the most was "I'd wear Perandus". Why? 4-6% more block against 2000 armor? Why would anyone do that? Suddenly the armor rating doesn't mean anything anymore, but before, it did (because "you can't wear a LC, it ruins your armor rating")?

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IS NOT about:
- high-end armor equipment past the 20-40k beeing too weak
- armor in conjunction with LC, MoM, block, dodge, immortal call... beeing too weak
- it beeing impossible to make a good armor build
- buffing armor so it does not require any further lines of defense
- buffing armor so it makes you more "tanky" than other defenses
- any other imputation that people want armor to be foolproof in general

Sure it is, half of that stuff comes up like every third post.
Add in: "My twohanded Armor build doesn't negate enough damage and still is less damage than Dagger."

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it IS ABOUT:
- Armor beeing more difficult to make a build with that comes along "fine" than making one with the other two defenses. So armor should be canged to be on par with them.

I'm still not 100% convinced.
I've never seen an Evasion build that relies solely on Evasion, and I've never seen an ES build with just ES (*).
There is always some sort of "LC, MoM, block, dodge, immortal call,..." involved.
And for a good reason.

Yes, armor does not cut it alone.
But neither do Evasion and Energy Shield, you'll find hundreds of situations that get you killed.

So even IF Armor is the weakest defense of the three, what does it matter?
They are all weak.

(*): except for some mirror gear freaks with 20k ES, but that's probably not what we are talking about here.

It's very true that just Armor is not a well rounded defense. Armor does one thing very well, it mitigates the first bits of flat physical damage.

Armor then is like Artic Armor. A higher level Artic Armor might mitigate 200 damage. That's more akin to 2400 armor...

Now, Armor only does phys, but for many quick small phys hits armor is pretty op.

But armor doesn't do % phys reduection. For that GGG created Endurance charges... Did you know if you like a crazy 8 endurance changes, you'd also have an additional 32% physical damage reduction!

I'm no longer of the opinion that Lightning Coil or Cloak of Defiance are op.

I'm thinking that any triple hybrid - Life + ES + (Either Armor or Evasion) are actually very well positioned with just rare items. You can get a 600 Armor + 400 Es chest.

Add block, and all the better.


It is not hard to get 4k life and 4k ES, and still have some Armor or Evasion... 8k Effective life is pretty op. But ES isn't op. Check out the crazy life on a serious righteous fire build. (If you try hard, you can have 6k life and 6k ES | or 5k life 5k ES and some armor/evasion/block)

GGG is actually right where they need to be.

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Nurvus wrote:

Even if Evasion or ES on its own aren't enough, they're STILL better than Armour.

I disagree, none of the defensive choices are best on its own. Also, you forgot to mention Health. The health pool its another way to diminish the risk of death, same goal as the other defenses. However, same as ES, it does not mitigate any kind of dmg, but is still a defense.

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Nurvus wrote:

Think of ANY combination of defenses - with or without Block, MoM, IC, etc, if you want.
Now pick 2 among Evasion, ES and Armour.

I would pick Armor, the other two do not mitigate any kind of the game damages.

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Nurvus wrote:

Anyone with a brain will leave Armour out on over 90% of the cases.

Anyone with brain would pick armor. A stat that diminish a game damage before picking any of the other 2.

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Peterlerock wrote:

It's been argued here several times that an armor user can not use LC (for whatever reasons).

No one argued that.
People are arguing that the fact that LC is mandatory to mitigate the only type of damage Armour can mitigate - and does it better than Armour - evidences that the design behind Armour is broken.

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Peterlerock wrote:

Maybe I just don't understand what an "Armor build" is for you.

This.
I started to think the same.

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Peterlerock wrote:

I'm using Armor since forever, and it always felt fine.
Coupled with a large health pool and life regen, a decent armor rating of about 15k lets you feel invincible against most monsters, and the rest you have to combat with a little strategy.

I also went the same way. Life regen, armor, gem armor aura, health pool, and 75% all resistances. Currently on cruel, got all resistances already (capped).

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Peterlerock wrote:

Maybe it is just my mindset: When something doesn't work, I try to make it work, instead of crying for it to be "fixed" by someone else.

I agree with that, i felt it was done with a handicap degree for players to look forward and figure it out on how to "live with it".

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B34C0N wrote:

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Nurvus wrote:

Even if Evasion or ES on its own aren't enough, they're STILL better than Armour.

I disagree, none of the defensive choices are best on its own. Also, you forgot to mention Health. The health pool its another way to diminish the risk of death, same goal as the other defenses. However, same as ES, it does not mitigate any kind of dmg, but is still a defense.

I didn't mention it because there is no build without a pool - life or energy shield.
Energy Shield is worth mentioning because it adds a mechanic to the concept of pool (recharge delay).
So no, Life isn't relevant to this discussion, because it's guaranteed any build will have life (or energy shield replacing it as CI).

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B34C0N wrote:

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Nurvus wrote:

Think of ANY combination of defenses - with or without Block, MoM, IC, etc, if you want.
Now pick 2 among Evasion, ES and Armour.

I would pick Armor, the other two do not mitigate any kind of the game damages.

You're discussing semantics at this point.

If you want to do that, you can also say Energy Shield mitigates damage based on time.

In the end it doesn't matter if it's avoidance, mitigation or absorption, because it all boils down to effective health.
If your effective health is higher than incoming damage, you live.

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B34C0N wrote:

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Nurvus wrote:

Anyone with a brain will leave Armour out on over 90% of the cases.

Anyone with brain would pick armor. A stat that diminish a game damage before picking any of the other 2.

Haha.
You mean a stat that diminishes ONE of the damage types AFTER and IF Evasion/Dodge/Block/Blind fails, does not even synergize the SLIGHTEST with Energy Shield due to Recharge Delay, and requires optimal gear to be even viable in endgame.

Very smart.