The sad state that is Armor

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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.

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Nurvus wrote:

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.

You cant run around with only Evasion/dodge/block/blind. You need armor. You can try prove me wrong tho. Go make a char, get those defensive stats, and do not take any armor point. Can you do that for me?

Edit: Btw,

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Nurvus wrote:

does not even synergize the SLIGHTEST with Energy Shield.

Are you drunk?

Forgot to add a comment about the chest piece Lightning Coil:

1. This item cheats (among the defense items and phys defense items available)

2. This item has a scaling defense effect property (%).

3. You can build around it and diminish the downside effect.

4. Allows you to go somewhat more offensive, and allows you to have other stats in your remaining gear slots.

5. I would agree this item is relative op.

6. Where can i get mine?

7. j/k.

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B34C0N wrote:

You cant run around with only Evasion/dodge/block/blind. You need armor. You can try prove me wrong tho. Go make a char, get those defensive stats, and do not take any armor point. Can you do that for me?

I can. My ranger specced out of IR into:

%75 block / %56 dodge / blind / %45~ evasion

My survival rate against what matters (compared to IR build) is WAAAY better. Not to mention my DPS is way better too because I dont need Determination/Grace anymore.

Trash mobs doesn't matter. Those big hits that 1-2 hit kill you is what really matters. Armor is totally useless against them.

Only exception to this is bear trap which is only 1 boss in entire game.

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Nurvus wrote:

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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.

How about:

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Natharias wrote:

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Peterlerock wrote:

If its mechanic is so super-powerful, why would an armor user not wear it, too?

That's because it doesn't offer armor equal to a really good or perfect rare chest, nor the mods that rare chest can give. Well, besides life.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Because that leaves no place for rare armour chests. And no place for other rare gear pieces with high armour on it.

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does not even synergize the SLIGHTEST with Energy Shield due to Recharge Delay

How about literally the thing that comes closest to immortality in this game, this?

There's some wonderful interaction between Armor and ES and a real benefit from stacking armor.

EDIT:
Looking at what I wrote here... I am scared of this wall of text.
Can't blame you for not reading it, but read the last paragraph.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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."

If you realy want to give us a chance and try to understand our point, you gotta seperate the posts that just complain from the ones that try to be constructive and give examples though.
I do not reply to other counter arguments (The sort like "Are you drunk?") than yours either, because yours are the only ones that got a point.

For my part, I said that my 2H-Sword Armor Marrauder got a way harder time than my 2H-Sword Evasion Duellist. The duellsit even got 2k less HP and both used Belly for a long time untill I 5L a LC.
This is, of course, MY PERSONAL EXPERIANCE, but it seems that is what other people experiance aswell, hence im bothering taking part in this discussion as it appears to me that there is infact something wrong with the desing of armor as it currently is.
Again, as to what extent, I can not tell. The best we can do is to use numbers to prove our point and this has been done numerous times in here.

Once again, try to filter the posts that try to give feedback and details about their experiances from the ones that are just plain "complaining".

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Peterlerock wrote:

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.

I totally agree with you. Already doing something as simple as using LC in a high armor build REALY helps and that armor builds can not use it is plain false, but such options apply to all other types of defense aswell.
You need to scrap the idea of other layers of defense. Stop thinking about uniques.

Yet alone that I do not WANT to use a shield but rather go with a 2H sword shows that my build neglects some possible layers of defense. People like Nurvus are also fully aware of this. You realy got to boil it down to armor considered all alone, like we do, to see our point.

You want to be construcitve (unlike most other counter-arguments here) and show us that it might just be individual mistakes that gives us this "bad experiance" with armor.
However, we have the opinion that armor, regarded all alone, seems inferior to other defenses because of it's different scaling.
To better see our point you realy got to focus on the "worst case" scenario and stop suggesting changes in gear or built. No doubt that the build and the gear are the major condition that determines wether a character survives or not but that is not whats the core of this discussion even though some posts get back at it.


I have created numerous 2H Sword builds that are all mostly the same but either go eva or armor and I made the experiance that eva got a way more easy life with less deaths.
I'll wrap this thing up in spoiler tags, since it's not exactly a testcase but rather my personal experiacne I had with my 2H Sword builds.


Peter, you seem to be willingly to understand why people are complaining, maybe it helps you to do so if you try to see it without any uniques that might exist.
I see how you are just reacting to posts that say, "it's impossible to be good with armor" and then proove the oposite by displaying the capabilities of things like LC and Aegis.
In my opinion you should just ignore that alltogether.
Everyone here that got the uniques you list knows how good they are and howmuch they help.
But again, try to see the plain worst case scenarion of one-layer-defense Eva VS one-layer-defense Armor to keep it simple.


Also:
Personally I would leave ES out of the armor discussion. ES is a mean to increase your HP pool by a flat value, without any further lines of defense ES isn't realy a "defense" at all as you would have to assume that you take full damage from every source, nonstop. Which would obviously not work endgame. ES, much like eva, mostly bases arround not beeing hit in the first place, e.g. beeing ranged and dodging manually.
Running away and regenerating shield (so again, pretty much beeing ranged) is already a additional layer of defense and would not work for the worst-case-comparison we should consider here in the first place.

You Peter, aswell as me, thankfully seem to take this discussion aligned to "real" melee as we both seem to love that playstyle.
So for Armor and Eva one can assume this worst case scenario:
Melee nonstop facetanking without any further lines of defense
No Block, no Uniques.
Which makes this survivabillity discussion rather complicated because with such a (theorteical) playstyle one can not exactly hope to survive at all.
However this simple exaple helps to take out plenty of variables to make it more easy to compare armor with eva.
So statements like "Facetanking with only armor and not using LC and Immortal ofcouse makes you die. Use whats there and stop complaining." are right and fairly obvious, but it's simply not the point (of the serious parts) of this disussion.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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.

That nailed it.
Now continue that thought.
Armor and Eva can be oneshot-dead when hit heavy, however eva got a chance to deal with it while armor does not.
Now take the "weaker" base for defense, armor, and build more layers upon it.
When a mighty oneshot blow hits you and all additional layers you had failed in that moment what happens?
+ Eva got a really decent chance of coming away, even with a lousy chance of 33% to evade, it's still something. (Moreso with the great option of accrobatics, phase accrobatics and Ondar's Guile.)
+ Armor got to rely fully on a absurdly massive armor value to still be able to reduce this mighty killing blow.

Every lethal hit armor takes is inevitable lethal and there is nothing you could do against to the be better off next time.
Even with a punny evasion chance of 33% eva still could take 2 lethal hits before it realy goes down and if you want to improve on the situation you got accrobatics, phase accrobatics and Ondar's Guile.


And once again, im not certain how much worse armor is, I think one can not plain calculate that, if so GGG would have done it.

The random chance to fully negate most damage is just more satisfying than a reduction that strangely does not reduce huge damage.
And huge damage is the ONLY damage that matters,
because this is when shit hits the fan once all other layers of defense failed.
There has not been a Hardcore Streamer yet that was slowly mangled down to death.
They die oneshot, when all other defenses have failed.
And this is, yet again, the scenario we are considering:
All defenses failed, huge damage about to hit you, Armor VS Eva protecting your healthpool.
Which one would you choose?

I would just like to point out that the fact that this thread has reached 13 pages and the debate is still on topic is all the proof we need to demonstrate that armor is fundementally flawed and/or lightning coil is OP.

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

You need to scrap the idea of other layers of defense. Stop thinking about uniques.

But that's kind of useless, the other layers of defense and uniques are in the game.

The way I experienced armor countless times:
You feel invincible up until Lvl70 maps (with the exception of several telegraphed oneshots that obviously can and should be avoided).
Then it starts to fall off.
That's why you prepared and added additional layers of defense.

Every "not extreme" defensive approach fails in high end maps and atziri content.
You want your "IC 100% uptime" and your "only be hit when this, this, this and this layer fails" when you're running extreme content.
But actually you only need it in this extreme content. If you run a Courtyard map with pack size only, you can search all day for "8k damage oneshots".

You can "keep the discussion simple" all day long. But that is just a theoretical debate, solely for our entertainment, as it doesn't mean anything.

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Armor and Eva can be oneshot-dead when hit heavy, however eva got a chance to deal with it while armor does not.
Now take the "weaker" base for defense, armor, and build more layers upon it.
When a mighty oneshot blow hits you and all additional layers you had failed in that moment what happens?
+ Eva got a really decent chance of coming away, even with a lousy chance of 33% to evade, it's still something. (Moreso with the great option of accrobatics, phase accrobatics and Ondar's Guile.)
+ Armor got to rely fully on a absurdly massive armor value to still be able to reduce this mighty killing blow.

Half a year ago, almost every week a thread appeared and grew to 20 pages with the exact same argumentation, but the result always was "Evasion sucks, make Evasion as good as Armor".

And why?
Because those sudden physical "Oneshots" that blast through armor and still deal 6000 Damage to your life pool simply don't exist.

I'm getting hit all day in 75-78 maps because my Evasion rating sucks, and I also don't have armor, my only line of defense if acrobatics and 5k Life (and random IC that is only needed for reflect), still waiting for these mysterious "8000 Damage oneshots".

(Maybe if you run into a rare Bone Giant with "extra damage, powerful crits" on a "vulnerability and extra damage" map, or maybe if you are too lazy to dodge uber Atziri Vaal Smashes, but other than that? And then it's really your own fault. You can read what a map or a monster can do beforehand)

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And once again, im not certain how much worse armor is, I think one can not plain calculate that, if so GGG would have done it.

I think it's something like this (numbers not 100% accurate, of course):
Damage per hit <2000: Armor is way better
Damage <4000: pretty equal
Damage >4000: Evasion rocks because of the chance of full avoidance
...however, you will meet 100.000 monsters that don't deal 4000 damage per hit until you find one.

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And huge damage is the ONLY damage that matters,
because this is when shit hits the fan once all other layers of defense failed.

This was also the argument why "Evasion sucks" half a year ago. ;)
That "one day there will be this mysterious oneshot".

@TikoXi
Nice troll.
The length of a thread doesn't show "the op is true", it shows exactly the opposite. It shows that there is room for discussion and arguments, and that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I agree with pete

@ Peter
I've tried to explain my perspective and the experiances I made with armor vs eva but you keep discussing how viable some keystones and uniques are, how blocking, dodging and immortal call protects one from damage, that it is not worth taking any base defense anyways and oneshots not existing.

Discussing it further wont lead anywhere I guess.

GGG must be seeing this thread everyday yet they did not give us any headsup on their perspective yet.

Either they think armor is in good shape and do not bother with the complaints here.

Or they are already working on it and are just not ready to release a statement yet.

I hope it's the later and hope for a reply to the whole topic of 2H, meele and armor in the near future.

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

but you keep discussing how viable some keystones and uniques are, how blocking, dodging and immortal call protects one from damage, that it is not worth taking any base defense anyways and oneshots not existing.

And you keep discussing very unrealistic scenarios.

Sorry, but when a rare powerful crit bone giant stands in front of me, I pop EC/IC before I go on him. Why would I trust my armor/evasion?

Players get killed all day, but I doubt that armor in particular is to blame for this.

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I hope it's the later and hope for a reply to the whole topic of 2H, meele and armor in the near future.

As written before: "Armor+2h+RT+melee" is in a horrible state, concerning endgame (and endgame only). The only way I see someone having fun with this is keeping up EC/IC or even Vaal IC in every situation that seems somewhat dangerous. But then why would you want armor?
You can call this a "noob trap" or "bad design" or whatever, but does it really need a change?

It only applies to the combination of all 4 of these.

RT is fine. I wouldn't take it other than for levelling purposes or very niche builds, but it's fine. It doesn't lie to you, you get what you want.

Armor is fine. Build around it, it works. Lots of people have done it, lots of people will do it.

2h is fine. 2h weapons do about 50% more damage compared to similar quality onehanders, that's pretty cool.

Melee is fine. It's worse than ranged because of obvious reasons (that imho cannot be solved without changing the game in its core), but it's still fine. If you want it, you can do it.

Just don't take all four of it.