Armor Explaination plz.

To start here is the main line from the POE Wiki article on armor.

"Armour is a rating that measures a character's physical damage mitigation. Every 12 points of Armour blocks up to 1 physical damage per hit. The absolute amount of damage blocked gets closer to the maximum the more damage the hit does; however, the proportion of damage blocked decreases."

Now I'm not sure what they mean with the second sentence of the paragraph, "The absolute amount of damage blocked gets closer to the maximum the more damage the hit does; however, the proportion of damage blocked decreases."

that just doesn't make any sense to me at all, but following the every 12 points of armor blocks 1 point of phy damage i can calculate that my lvl 63 duelist with around 14k armor can block around 1.2k damage. If this is the case then why is it that a black guard from the ebony barracks is able to 2 shot me when i have 1.5k health? does this mean the black guard is doing around 2k damage or am I missing something somewhere?

Any help would be nice but try not to throw out alot of overly complicated calculations plz.

Formula for calculating damage reduction is:
Armour/(Armour + Damage of enemy * 12)

Say, your enemy deals 1k physical damage.

That's
14000/(14000 + 12*1000) = 53.8% damage reduction. Some enemies of A3 are able to deal that much damage and considering your life is very, very low at that level, you won't survive long to anything.

that's p awesome of you to take the time to explain how armor works, mark, but what i've always wondered is how these formulas originated --- is there some guy on staff (maybe you?) with a math degree that cooked them up, or are they standard for genre, etc?

I obviously don't know the origins for the system, but it isn't standard for the genre. What D2 called "defense rating" was much closer to PoE's evasion. As I understand it, this is pretty much the "armor class" system from Dungeons and Dragons. PoE's is loosely based on armor concepts that I've seen in a lot of other games, where your amount of armor is the amount of damage subtracted, but the formula makes it so that attackers aren't doing a single point of damage against highly-armored targets. (Torchlight 2 uses this system and it has some clear problems). It also makes it so that you still get significant mitigation against heavy hits, while still being noticeably worse.

Diablo 3 uses a straight percentage-based system, which is a good deal less interesting. It makes "armor" functionally identical to "elemental resist."

"

Uvne wrote:

As I understand it, this is pretty much the "armor class" system from Dungeons and Dragons.

That's more-or-less the same as evasion unless you're referring to the newer garbage. About which I know little and care less.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

Androsity wrote:

"The absolute amount of damage blocked gets closer to the maximum the more damage the hit does; however, the proportion of damage blocked decreases."

that just doesn't make any sense to me at all

The forumla for physical damage reduction from armour is:
reduction = ( armour / ( armour + damage * 12 ) );

Say for example you have 2000 armour.

If an enemy hits you for 200 damage, you'll reduce it by
2000 / ( 2000 + 200 x 12 )
= 2000 / ( 2000 + 2400 )
= 2000 / 4400
= 45% damage reduction on a hit of 200 damage. That means you prevent 90 damage (45% of 200), and take 110 damage.

If the enemy hit you for 1000 damage, you'll reduce it by
2000 / ( 2000 + 1000 x 12 )
= 2000 / ( 2000 + 12000 )
= 2000 / 14000
= 14% damage reduction on a hit of 1000 damage. That means you prevent 140 damage (14% of 1000) and take 860 damage.

Notice that when the damage increased, the % damage reduction decreased (from 45% to 14%) but the absolute amount of damage prevented increased (from 90 to 140). That's exactly what the part you quoted is saying - % reduction decreases, but actual amount of damage increases because it's a smaller percentage of an even bigger base value.

Okay i guess my next question is why would you use a system like this? generally speaking when my stat screen says i get 76% damage reduction I would expect that to mean if I got hit by an enemy at my level then I would reduce the amount of damage that enemy did by 76%. I fail to see any point in ever building full armor if taking a bigger hit reduces that amount of damage I mitigate.

"

Androsity wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

Androsity wrote:

"The absolute amount of damage blocked gets closer to the maximum the more damage the hit does; however, the proportion of damage blocked decreases."

that just doesn't make any sense to me at all

The forumla for physical damage reduction from armour is:
reduction = ( armour / ( armour + damage * 12 ) );

Say for example you have 2000 armour.

If an enemy hits you for 200 damage, you'll reduce it by
2000 / ( 2000 + 200 x 12 )
= 2000 / ( 2000 + 2400 )
= 2000 / 4400
= 45% damage reduction on a hit of 200 damage. That means you prevent 90 damage (45% of 200), and take 110 damage.

If the enemy hit you for 1000 damage, you'll reduce it by
2000 / ( 2000 + 1000 x 12 )
= 2000 / ( 2000 + 12000 )
= 2000 / 14000
= 14% damage reduction on a hit of 1000 damage. That means you prevent 140 damage (14% of 1000) and take 860 damage.

Notice that when the damage increased, the % damage reduction decreased (from 45% to 14%) but the absolute amount of damage prevented increased (from 90 to 140). That's exactly what the part you quoted is saying - % reduction decreases, but actual amount of damage increases because it's a smaller percentage of an even bigger base value.

Okay i guess my next question is why would you use a system like this? generally speaking when my stat screen says i get 76% damage reduction I would expect that to mean if I got hit by an enemy at my level then I would reduce the amount of damage that enemy did by 76%. I fail to see any point in ever building full armor if taking a bigger hit reduces that amount of damage I mitigate.

They use a system like that because it's more realistic. While armor would work well against smaller, lighter hits, it would do very little against a hulking gigantour of a monster.

This is why against harder hitting mobs evasion works better.

I understand the confusion...and I'm not sure there is really a way around it...balancing it with evasion would be very difficult if armor reduced all damage by X %.

It really seems weird at first. A lot of this went over this exact issue when we started.

The general idea in this game is that no one defense on its own is perfect. That's not to say you can't go pure armor and have it work, but usually you need a mixture of defenses with that. Having pure armor using Iron Reflexes, and then using endurance charges (which reduce damage by 3% flat per charge, ALL forms of damage,) and a proper life pool for this game (life or ES are your defenses in this game, you should strive to have 3000+ HP by merciless A3.)

Mixing just those makes it so that you can survive, if you have the right numbers of each. But this is not like a traditional game where your Armour trumps all and you just hit the minimum HP.

Evasion also works differently then you likely think if you haven't checked into it yet. Let's say you have 33% evasion; The first time you are hit within a period of time a die is rolled to see if you evade or not, 1/3 chance. If you evade that first attack, the next 2 attacks will hit you, and you'll then evade the 4th, and so on. This makes Evasion function in much the same way armor does in other games, giving you a flat % reduction in damage at all times, but where armor is strong against light, fast attacks, evasion is strong against slow, big hits. There is also dodge chance that you can get through passives and gear that work with evasion, but more the way people are used to where RNG can be a factor, x% chance to avoid all damage each roll.

You can choose to run pure evasion, pure armor, or a mix of the 2. Combine those with high life or ES (again 3K+) then you also have dodge, endurance charges, other forms of damage reduction, not to mention shields which I haven't even covered here.

It all makes a lot more sense when you see the whole system, instead of just looking at the armor part.