The sad state that is Armor

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B34C0N wrote:

No, i just said: dont rely ONLY in one thing, you gotta have a backup plan to some extent (i.e. Armor+health) Now you see how iron reflexes also work? you give up on some extent of Eva or almost all of it. But you get more Armor in exchange, therefore, you only need to stack more heatlh (you just gave up on Eva by choice, you cant have all stats rolling at the same time).

Now it sounds you're just trying to win the argument.
You said you gotta roll eva.
Everyone knows you got to have a high enough effective health.
The problem is Armour doesn't have one effective health.
It has one against incoming hits of 1000, another against 2000, another against 3000.

Now, Evasion isn't perfect, but it has defenses against everything. Spells included, elemental damage included.
So does Energy Shield. It's a pool, but also a defense. Instead of mitigating, it gives you a window of safety, but requires you to avoid damage to recover that benefit.

It's not just numbers - it's balance & flavor combined.
It makes sense that if you cover yourself in full armour you should be protecting your weak spots the most when compared to leather or cloth - not the least.

I'm not asking for near-immunity to crits like pure Evasion has, but armour should have decent protection against crits.
Elemental damage as well.

But whatever. It's not like we're short on melee armour users in hardcore or anything.

Armor is so sad lol.
I took like all armor nodes in the tree, ended up dying every 2 minutes (exageration but yea...)

It's funny how the best way to get a lot of armor in this game is to stack evation, hahhaha

You can actually just use armor flask when you actually need Armour and stack everything else.

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Kranyum wrote:

Armor is so sad lol.
I took like all armor nodes in the tree, ended up dying every 2 minutes (exageration but yea...)

It's funny how the best way to get a lot of armor in this game is to stack evation, hahhaha

Iron Reflexes + Lots of armor nodes + Lots of evasion nodes...
Lol.

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Crazy Idea:

Iron Reflexes
Your % Evasion becomes % Physical damage reduction ...



So, now instead of evasion becoming flat armor, it becomes % physical damage reduction.

Broken beyond all measure. It's infinitely easier to get a higher %evade than it is to get %EPDR.

Oddly, I'm starting to feel armor may be in a good place...

Armor can't be so strong that it makes it hard to balance the game for evasion, either. Evasion has the chance of getting 1 shot just like armor.

Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance are good items... but a good rare Energy shield chest can be better. (40% of phys to lightning vs 40% or all damage to mana vs 100% of all non-chaos damage to energy shield.)

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Oddly, I'm starting to feel armor may be in a good place...

Armor can't be so strong that it makes it hard to balance the game for evasion, either. Evasion has the chance of getting 1 shot just like armor.

Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance are good items... but a good rare Energy shield chest can be better. (40% of phys to lightning vs 40% or all damage to mana vs 100% of all non-chaos damage to energy shield.)

Boss deals a 8k crit that has checked against all damage avoidance. Each build has 7k combined hit points.

LC would reduce it to 4,800. This build survives.

CoD would take 4,800 to life and 3,200 to mana. These builds would be lucky to have 2k mana free, so let's assume 1k is free. Total "mitigation" of 1k, while 7,000 goes to life. The build is likely to be dead.

ES shield, giving 883 maximum, would give about 750 base. A good ES build would have no less than 250% increased ES. That's 2,625 hit points, bringing it to 9,625. This build survives, but isn't likely to survive another hit unless it has time to recover.

Armor cannot even begin to compare to this and evasion cannot be compared to an actual hit.

So why do you thing armor is in a good place?

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Natharias wrote:

Boss deals a 8k crit that has checked against all damage avoidance. Each build has 7k combined hit points.

Who in this game crits for 8k (non elemental)?
Or... who in this game crits for 8k in a non "long ass animation telegraphed attack that is super easily avoided"?

Long story short: your example stinks.

Make it a 4k hit, and all mitigation types can survive, including armor builds.

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Natharias wrote:

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Armor cannot even begin to compare to this and evasion cannot be compared to an actual hit.

So why do you thing armor is in a good place?

Exactly. Both Armor and Evasion users are dead. So I'm happy.

Perhaps the 8k hit wasn't very reasonable if it's going to also kill an Evasion user in a single shot. Armor can't be so powerful that this is too hard to balance for evasion...

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By the way, one of my guild members running Incinerate Righteous fire has over 9k hp. Not sure how much armor, but I know he's not going to be dead from that 8k hit.

Serious end game Hybrid Life/ES builds run 5k life and 5k ES, even a little better than that crazy RF'er.

They say for the 8k hit with 6k life you'd need 32k armor. But perhaps that is possible, and as practical as the 8k hit in the first place.

Eh, I'm all over the place. Armor should have a weakness. I'd think that doing nothing for Fire, Cold, Lightning, and chaos would be plenty. But then, certainly Evasion has a big weakness in this one shot too.

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I'd recommend focusing on armor for negating the little stuff, and not counting on it eliminating the one shot unless you are seriously prepared to go all out. Armor is more like Artic armor, and far different from more life, ES, or lightning coil/MOM.

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So now you need to separate your defenses into TWO types: One-Shot-Safety vs Sustain.

Dodge doesn't stop the one shot from happening Eventually, but it helps you sustain. Same with Block and Evasion. Armor also mostly helps with sustain from many small physical hits.

Your one-shot defense is then mostly your Life + ES. Things like lightning coil and COD only extend your Life + ES by up to 40% more, in optimal circumstances. But say with ES, 100% of non-chaos damage goes to it.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Boss deals a 8k crit that has checked against all damage avoidance. Each build has 7k combined hit points.

Who in this game crits for 8k (non elemental)?
Or... who in this game crits for 8k in a non "long ass animation telegraphed attack that is super easily avoided"?

Long story short: your example stinks.

Make it a 4k hit, and all mitigation types can survive, including armor builds.

Yeah, even with 9k life, or 5K life + 5k ES, you still don't want to intentionally take a 8k hit.


This is mostly talking about Colossal skellies with hard crit mod. So be careful around all of them, no matter who you are.