Armor is bad, and it should feel bad.

It seems to me how armor should work is the same as resistances.

[Edit] See below [Edit]

Is there some reason that I'm not seeing why that wasn't done?

[Edit]
Thinking on it more, I might have the comparison to evasion wrong. Evasion would probably be better against low rate of fire attacks whereas armor would be better against high rate of fire attacks, because evasion cancels the whole hit whereas armor lets part of every hit through but doesn't take the full brunt of any of them.

Both would still need health enough to soak spike damage (evasion more-so), and both are still in aggregate a percentage decrease in DPS taken. Evasion transoms all damage into spikes separated by periods of nothing and armor just lowers the DPS.

This would mean melee needs armor because they can't really lower the rate at which they take attacks effectively, but ranged characters can use their engagement range and move around to help cut down on the number of tries the enemy gets to defeat their evasion.

I have a lvl 48 marauder built for defense and block...using 1h axe and shield. Have 80all res and 0chaos res. But ibdef get slaughterd....melee is a joke. I use shield bash and heavy swing or whatever that's called. My guy dies so fast...I have a lvl 41 ranger def overpowered wayyyyy

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Incompetent wrote:

How many Endurance charges do you fight with? Are you drinking Granites whenever you try to tank a strong melee monster?

I'm sceptical about Blood Magic, to be honest. It pretty much nixes Determination, which makes a huge difference to how much Armour you can muster.

the problem is we are forced to take endurance charges and we shouldnt be, its like the frenzy rangers back in beta, they got fixed, why endurance hasnt been changed i don't know

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FacetiousTomato wrote:

I don't think people are understanding that damage reduction from armor isn't linear, it is based on the damage you take. Lets say you have 5k life, and are fighting a monster that does 4999 physical damage each hit. No matter how much armor and endurance charges you have, you're going to die in two shots, someone with 100 armor and someone with 5k armor + 7 charges are BOTH going to die in two hits.

That isn't the case with magic. A 5k hit on a naked target will one shot them. A target with 80% resists will take five hits. Essentially, stacking armor is poop.

Here is a spreadsheet with some info about "hits to die".
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Am6TRSFYA1tTdFJIY2pOc3pMN3VoM2d1Tk82ZTc1a1E&usp=sharing

First of all you are drawing the wrong conclusions.

The problem isn't that armor is too bad, the problem is that Resists are way too good and easy to obtain.

Take your example.

If you get hit by 4999 elemental damage and have 5000 Hp you survive:

2 Hits with 0 resist
for 3 Hits you need
+50% Resits
for4 Hits you need
50% + 25%
for 5 Hits you need
50% + 25% +5%.

That sort of scaling is stupid and there is a very good reason why games are implenting a dimishing return on things like that.


->
Armor works fine
Resits is OP
l2p.

Well, more evidence that making a viable true melee character is impossible. It's not because I can't kill things, but, oddly enough, things are doing too much damage for me to survive. Let me tell you a little about this character: 45% damage reduction from armor, 75% all resists, and EIGHT endurance charges. And I'm in NORMAL! I should be borderline fucking invulnerable to damage with the amount of defenses I have at this point. The only thing I have left that I could reliably improve is my max resists, and they're going to all be 80% next level.

Normally I'm a guy that says "People think it's impossible? Challenge accepted." But I think I have to concede this one.

Edit: The main thing I'm having trouble with is elemental damage. Clearly 75% resists aren't enough, but 80% resists should only lower the damage an additional 20%. Flasks probably last too short of a time to be a viable means of elemental defense for a low damage character, even if I rolled an Avenger's prefix and improved its quality.

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StarlightGamer wrote:

Well, more evidence that making a viable true melee character is impossible. It's not because I can't kill things, but, oddly enough, things are doing too much damage for me to survive. Let me tell you a little about this character: 45% damage reduction from armor, 75% all resists, and EIGHT endurance charges. And I'm in NORMAL! I should be borderline fucking invulnerable to damage with the amount of defenses I have at this point. The only thing I have left that I could reliably improve is my max resists, and they're going to all be 80% next level.

Normally I'm a guy that says "People think it's impossible? Challenge accepted." But I think I have to concede this one.

You are not nephalem, You are an exile. Armor acts realistically in this game.

If you were a medieval knight your armor could protect you from most of attacks, but if somebody would hit you with big two handed warhammer it really didnt help. Naked or in armor you would be dead.

The idea that fighters should be "tanks" is streamlined idea of world of warcraft and many other games. However its not the case here(nor it should be).Through all history warriors were blocking(parrying) or dodging attacks. There was no "taking hits".

I like ggg realistic approach more.

p.s.shield?

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honzapol wrote:

"

StarlightGamer wrote:

Well, more evidence that making a viable true melee character is impossible. It's not because I can't kill things, but, oddly enough, things are doing too much damage for me to survive. Let me tell you a little about this character: 45% damage reduction from armor, 75% all resists, and EIGHT endurance charges. And I'm in NORMAL! I should be borderline fucking invulnerable to damage with the amount of defenses I have at this point. The only thing I have left that I could reliably improve is my max resists, and they're going to all be 80% next level.

Normally I'm a guy that says "People think it's impossible? Challenge accepted." But I think I have to concede this one.

You are not nephalem, You are an exile. Armor acts realistically in this game.

If you were a medieval knight your armor could protect you from most of attacks, but if somebody would hit you with big two handed warhammer it really didnt help. Naked or in armor you would be dead.

The idea that fighters should be "tanks" is streamlined idea of world of warcraft and many other games. However its not the case here(nor it should be).Through all history warriors were blocking(parrying) or dodging attacks. There was no "taking hits".

I like ggg realistic approach more.

p.s.shield?

what about 2 handed meele? should we all be forced in to ranged AOE build becuase armour sucks unless you go out full tank?

Armor doesn't need to act realistically. It's a game, with magic.

There's give and take. The game is perfectly willing to let you achieve incredible levels of DPS if you give up all of your survivability by taking only offensive passives. But the opposite doesn't seem to be true. If you take only defensive passives and wear heavy armor with a shield, the game still doesn't give you enough defense to survive, even if your damage is so low that you're actually incapable of killing unique mobs with regeneration bonuses.

"

honzapol wrote:

p.s.shield?

Hold on, apparently I had my alternate set on so I can't link it for a couple of minutes.

Edit:


Edit: In fact, the other gear:


Edit: I forgot to mention in the last post that killing Gravicious was impossible too. He had too much life and did too much damage for me to beat. The Molten Shell he uses took off about half my life when it exploded, which means it must do about 1000 damage. To achieve damage that high, the Molten Shell would need to be around level 15, which would require a level of around 55. And yet a level 33-35 boss has it. Huh.

Edit: Well, I beat Gravicious after resorting to wielding my awesome two-handed Brass Maul and using a Ruby Flask. And it was still a close call. But it's crap that I had to resort to using those to win.



But I leveled, and am now at 80% all resists. Literally 20 steps after that I ran into 5 Arc spell Archmages, one unique, and had to run away. Woo, 80% lightning resist!

Edit: Welp, got slaughtered by Kole and his overpowered ground pound slam. What a fucking surprise. I opened a portal because I knew it would happen. Couldn't avoid the slam, cause, you know, constant desync. I guess I just have to skip him..

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KrO wrote:

When exactly does melee become unplayable? Right now I am having an easy time with with my melee Marauder hulk smashing everything, with my Ranger I had to rely on traps and tactics and really pick the skills with a measure of thought, lots of kiting and you know, learning how to play to get me to merciless. Both on hardcore.

edit: strangly enough I did find the marauder tougher in the first few levels though.

Most people will get difficulties starting from ACT 3 in cruel, but in merciless you will definitely feel it

I think the biggest deal with armor right now is that endurance charges are required for anyone that wants to tank big melee hits against oak, brutus and the like, but that endurance charges are basically impossible to generate against anything you need endurance charges for.

We generate endurance charges with enduring cry and warlords mark. Warlords mark only returns endurance charges if you kill the monster in question, and enduring cry requires that there be multiple monsters nearby. Neither applies on a boss fight like brutus, and only apply to the beginning of oak.

tl;dr: melee needs a way to gain endurance charges against single targets