Hey uh armor sucks

There was no rumi's a year ago.
No vaal grace.
No big HP flasks.

There was coil and it did get overlooked initially, I'll give you that.
Jade flasks only introduced in release, as well as making grace+determination harder to run due to aura changes.

With coil utilized people no longer fear physical spells and IR no longer as good. You still could get fucked in invasion by rt boss/exiles, but coil mitigates a ton of physical damage.

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CanHasPants wrote:

The reason IC "replaces" AR is because neither protect against really big hits (if CWDT) or requires ~str tree investment otherwise (if hard-cast). IC does not outright replace AR though, because a AR can protect against really big hits with sufficient investment, and hard-cast takes time (virtually no good str-accessible ICS), has a short duration without sufficient investment, and can be interrupted (by said really big hits).

Lightning coil protects against these big hits, as does AA/MoM.

None of the above pair well with AR; they pair much better with avoidance defenses--EV, block, and dodge. Any combination of these paired with any combination of IC, Lightning Coil, and/or AA/MoM, will be significantly better than anything one can do with armour.

Lightning Coil is the best thing for an AR char since sliced bread. It's calculated before mitigation so your armor value is compared to only 60% of incoming physical damage. So if you got a setup of lightning coil, high armor and 6+ endurance charges you can really go places even with big hits and if you also run AA (it's a bit unlikely to have both high AR and AA, though) you can be almost immune to small-medium physical hits.

Yeah, armor sucks enormous ass on its own but there are quite a few mechanics that directly synergize with it and can make it awesome. Evasion has no direct synergies whatsoever, every secondary defense method in the game works equally good for an evader as it does for a completely naked char.

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raics wrote:

Lightning Coil is the best thing for an AR char since sliced bread. It's calculated before mitigation so your armor value is compared to only 60% of incoming physical damage. So if you got a setup of lightning coil, high armor and 6+ endurance charges you can really go places even with big hits and if you also run AA (it's a bit unlikely to have both high AR and AA, though) you can be almost immune to small-medium physical hits.

I had a 100 post discussion with some dudes who claimed that an Armor build needs a 2k Armor chest, so LC is not an option for Armor builds (even though it solves every problem an "armor build" has, does more than a 2k rare chest can ever do and "for evasion it's fine to use it instead of a 2k Evasion chest"). ;)

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Peterlerock wrote:

I had a 100 post discussion with some dudes who claimed that an Armor build needs a 2k Armor chest, so LC is not an option for Armor builds (even though it solves every problem an "armor build" has, does more than a 2k rare chest can ever do and "for evasion it's fine to use it instead of a 2k Evasion chest"). ;)

In fact, it's one of problems of armor. You virtually can't build armor character using only armor from gear and even so, it will be much worse anyway than Coil build. To some exempt, it's better in relation evasion, but not by much.

Anyway, anybody is using rare armor chests now? I have a feeling recently, that it's not worth to pickup them and even yesterday I almost vendored this:



as I feel that I'm stopping to read rare armor chest mods... only hybrid or pure es are worth ID scrolls...

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tmaciak wrote:

In fact, it's one of problems of armor. You virtually can't build armor character using only armor from gear and even so, it will be much worse anyway than Coil build. To some exempt, it's better in relation evasion, but not by much.

No, that's not a "problem of armor".

You also cannot run a pure Evasion or pure ES build (well, maybe with brute-forcing 20k ES).

You need to layer defenses to defeat high-level content.

It's only that Armor users somehow seem to think they are the exception to this rule.
No, they are not.

GGG could balance the game so that Armor/Evasion are more "meaningful" (right now, I ignore both of them, I want life, block, Acro+VaalAcro, Lightning Coil, and don't give a shit about Armor/Evasion).
But there's no reason to buff Armor to a point when "armor only" does the trick.

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Peterlerock wrote:

I had a 100 post discussion with some dudes who claimed that an Armor build needs a 2k Armor chest, so LC is not an option for Armor builds (even though it solves every problem an "armor build" has, does more than a 2k rare chest can ever do and "for evasion it's fine to use it instead of a 2k Evasion chest"). ;)

Kinda, but that's what IR and grace are for, they probably made LC a hybrid armor for that exact reason. LC-endurance-armor stacking is a pretty awesome defensive option, if they made LC a 1,5k AR chest then everybody could get instant mitigation, they probably wanted that option to have a duelist flavor so it works best if you offset low armor on LC with some local duelist tricks.

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Peterlerock wrote:

You also cannot run a pure Evasion or pure ES build (well, maybe with brute-forcing 20k ES).

That is so, but 20% listed evasion on your char sheet does what it says it does, and some builds use a low ES pool to prevent stuns (aegis and some exotic EVA/ES hybrid builds) so it definitely has some use, 20% estimated mitigation does shit.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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tmaciak wrote:

In fact, it's one of problems of armor. You virtually can't build armor character using only armor from gear and even so, it will be much worse anyway than Coil build. To some exempt, it's better in relation evasion, but not by much.

No, that's not a "problem of armor".

You also cannot run a pure Evasion or pure ES build (well, maybe with brute-forcing 20k ES).

No, I meant, that you almost can't get any sensible amount of armor (like 10K+) using only items, without IR/Grace/Determination.

Considering, that as you mentioned, you still need secondary defense, it means, that, as you also mentioned, basing you setup on secondary defenses is better (as you can free resources that would be spend on primary defenses).

So this is why "armor sucks" because, even if you invest a lot into it, you don't get better than not investing into it at all.

For example, when I specced my SRS witch after FM release, I took IR, some armor nodes and was using Grace with in total of almost 10K ar. Of course with IC/CwDT/Rumi. And what I did when I started to do 75+? I respecced IR and armor nodes and put those points just into life. And I'm doing much better with it, running 75+ maps with like 200 ar and maybe 1500 eva...

No wonder armor sucks. Where is my scrotum protection eh? Poor templar, balls hanging in the wind

The most interesting thing about the way armor works, for me, is GGG's conceptual justification for it.

Im sure some of you are familiar with the wrecking ball analogy they use/used(and no I cant be bothered to find the actual quote, but feel free to do it for me :D) but for those that are unfamiliar...

Basically, if you were hit with a recking ball IRL, whether you were wearing the Templar's toga or a full suit of plate armor, you're still gonna get rekt. So in the game, if you're hit with massive physical damage you get rekt no matter how much armor you stack.


Thats all well and good, a bit of RP that is kinda cool, kinda interesting, or would be if it was a constant within the game world. However, we have block.

Now theoretically it should function similarly to armor. In that, if you get hit with a recking ball IRL and try to block it with a shield, you're gonna get rekt, probably more than if you were wearing full plate. But in game, if you successfully block a huge physical hit the worst thing that is gonna happen is you get stunned, but you negate all damage regardless of the size or power.

Just some food for thought.

My own personal conclusion from all of this is; scale the damage taken from large phys hits in the armor formula down a bit and apply the same formula to block, eliminate Block Chance and replace it with Block Proficiency. The more % Block Proficiency you stack the less damage you take on big hits when successfully blocked. Just off the top of my head, Im sure its quite flawed, interesting though.