The sad state that is Armor

What Keystone should I take to receive a 0-effort defensive boost like the one Acrobatics offers whilst using armor?

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

What Keystone should I take to receive a 0-effort defensive boost like the one Acrobatics offers whilst using armor?

And what happened to your "let's only compare armor and evasion, without any further line of defense"?

There is no keystone in the tree comparable to "Acrobatics".
There's the option to equip a shield (which kind of does the same from the get-go and gets better and better once you stack block passives), but there is no keystone that simply says "take 30-40% less damage from now on".

(That's why my 2h marauder uses Acrobatics, since it's the only comparable strat to the non-available block)

Nobody ever said Acrobatics is fair.
It provides pretty crazy protection for 1-5 skillpoints.

But to get a useful Evasion Rating (8.000+, otherwise you may as well ignore it) also requires the stacking of Auras/Gear/passives, same as Armor. Not so much investment, but comparable.

10000 Armor is pretty nice defense against most of the stuff the game throws at you.
10000 Evasion, too.

5000 Armor will not make it.
5000 Evasion is probably a bit better, but still doesn't feel like "serious protection".

Anything below 3000, you can just ignore, it's like 0 defense.

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1stOfTHE5 wrote:

What Keystone should I take to receive a 0-effort defensive boost like the one Acrobatics offers whilst using armor?

Hmm. If Evasion can be overcome by high accuracy piercing evasion, then Arcrobatics is kind of like a percent evasion as opposed to evasion being more like a flat evasion. This is a pretty fair comparison to armor being flat physical damage reduction.

So, this is kind of like saying that Armor should have a keystone that gives percent damage reduction...

Not a bad point.


However, Evasion and dodge won't keep you from getting 1 shot eventually, and the physical damage percent reduction system is called endurance charges.

Also, don't give Dodge too much credit, there is at least a 5 point investment here, and more if it isn't on your travel path.


If you wanted a percent physical damage reduction keystone, I'd make it a mere 15% and still have it halve evasion and energy shield (50% less). This is because it could be quite op when stacked with armor against physical damage and endurance charges. For fun you could have it also generate a free endurance charge every 60 seconds.

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[...]

So, this is kind of like saying that Armor should have a keystone that gives percent damage reduction...

Not a bad point.

[...]

If you wanted a percent physical damage reduction keystone, I'd make it a mere 15% and still have it halve evasion and energy shield (50% less). This is because it could be quite op when stacked with armor against physical damage and endurance charges. For fun you could have it also generate a free endurance charge every 60 seconds.

Not what I had in mind originally but that sounds like a great suggestion.
Likely that is what GGG had in mind for Iron reflexes, but sadly that one is not zero-effort as accrobatics is. It just enables you to have a wider selection of gear but it's gear dependant afterall.
I too agree that such a keystone would need to be carefully ballanced and obviously also reduce eva and ES, else it would be kinda like a LC without any drawback, and likely be absurdly strong if stacked with LC.

Also, I should never have brought the term "oneshot" as everyone seems to solely respond to that now.
Feel free to replace any instances of "oneshot" with "relevant damage taken" and you are back at my original point.

By the way, even an armor user can have free acro/phase acro every 18 kills for 10+ seconds:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vaal_Grace

ggg can make a new lightning skill

making an interesting armor mechanic? basically asking for HL3

The reality is if you want armor to provide consistent damage reduction, it will have to be removed from Endurance charges or at least needed heavily there. I actually think that would be better and more interesting, but you'd need to find some replacement effect for END charges.

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Peterlerock wrote:

By the way, even an armor user can have free acro/phase acro every 18 kills for 10+ seconds:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vaal_Grace

We all get it that there are builds that work well with Armour under specific circumstances.

This isn't about whether Armour "can" work "sometimes" at a "certain difficulty" against "certain mobs".
It's about the mechanic itself that has poor scaling and massive flaws.

Armour is gimmicky.
Its damage reduction formula needs to be tuned so that its usefulness doesn't drop so drastically at suboptimal gear levels, and so that uber surprise crits don't melt you.

I totally agree on the matter that Armour is severely underpowered, in regards to late game, in relation to Evasion and ES.

I would really like the Developers to comment on this obviously unbalanced mechanic.

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C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

The reality is if you want armor to provide consistent damage reduction, it will have to be removed from Endurance charges or at least needed heavily there. I actually think that would be better and more interesting, but you'd need to find some replacement effect for END charges.

I'd agree. If you gave too much persistent percent physical damage reduction, then you'd potentially have to half endurance change effect, or remove them completely.


By the way, I killed one of my chars recently in the Beyond league to a rouge exile doing flameblast. I probably wasn't overcapped enough on resists, as he definitely cursed me. But I have to admit, with life + Energy shield, I wasn't very scared of pretty much anything. At least not of one-shotting me. Where in comparison, as some are claiming, armor doesn't really do that much to make one feel like a tank.

Therefore, here's a new fun idea: a Keystone that doubles armor against melee attacks. It would need some downside, such as reducing ES and Evasion or etc, but it sounds like the kind of thing that a 2h melee could use to me.