Why armour stat is so trash?

For those asking about the 'cannot reduce more than 10% of its value' thing that is just a mathematical result about the armour formula, and has no real meaning aside from 'armour isn't very intuitive to look at and understand how much it will reduce if you don't know the formula'.

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biyte wrote:

For those asking about the 'cannot reduce more than 10% of its value' thing that is just a mathematical result about the armour formula, and has no real meaning aside from 'armour isn't very intuitive to look at and understand how much it will reduce if you don't know the formula'.

The beginning of the wiki regarding armor is :

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Along with evasion and energy shield, armour is one of the three defence types that can implicitly appear on equipment. Unlike resistance, armour has diminishing returns as its effectiveness is based on the magnitude of incoming physical damage (multiplied by 10). As a result, armour is most effective in mitigating small hits (i.e. 50% and better reduction for initial damage less than a tenth of the armor value) and least effective in mitigating very large hits (where its absolute reduction can at most be one tenth of the armor value).

That is pretty clear to me ( the parts in bracket can basically be ignored for a more simple explanation ).

They could put a hint IG I guess though ...

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biyte wrote:

For those asking about the 'cannot reduce more than 10% of its value' thing that is just a mathematical result about the armour formula, and has no real meaning aside from 'armour isn't very intuitive to look at and understand how much it will reduce if you don't know the formula'.

No, armor's formula does not cap out at reducing 90% of the hit. It can technically go beyond that, but GGG caps physical reduction at 90% (except Immortal Call) because it would be possible to get 100% with enough armor and other effects like Endurance charges and Basalt Flask. Kinda wish they'd cap max resists at 95% like D2 did.

If it's armor alone we're talking about, it takes 90 times as much armor as the hit to mitigate 90% of that hit. So if it was a hit of 100, that requires 9,000 armor to mitigate 90. A hit of 1,000? Yeah, 90,000 armor. Not even Zeno would go that insane on the armor especially since such a build would surely have endurance charges.

I meant that for the VALUE of armour you have, you can reduce (as a flat number, not a percent) at most 10% of that value. For example if you have 100 armour and you take a billion damage, you will reduce about 9.99999 something approximately equal to 10 damage.

The way the formula works the more damage you take the more you reduce, but it asymptotically approaches armour/10. The reduction amount compared to the initial hit will drop when the hit is greater, just like you said, and is what is commonly understood with the needles vs wrecking ball analogy or whatever, but the mathematical truth is the value of damage you reduce increases. You can test it with any armour calculator up there (just make sure it is using updated formula of /10 instead of the old one of /12)

So yeah If you have 100k armour, you can reduce up to 10k damage on a hit. But the incoming hit will still need to be ridiculous amounts, such that any player will die regardless.

The wiki gives the formula for the damage reduction proportion being:

Armour / (Armour + 10 * Damage)

Or, A/(A+10D)

To get the absolute amount reduced, you multiply that by the Damage. So:

AD/(A+10D)

The larger the damage gets, the less important the 'A' term on the bottom becomes (as the damage gets higher, 10 x the damage will get even higher, 'dwarfing' the A term).
If you ignore that term entirely, the formula is just AD/(10D), or A/10.
So as damage increases, the amount reduced gets closer and closer to that value of A/10.

It´s just confusing for new players. D2 is clear here 50% physical resist = 50% mitigation (50% was cap, 75% in 1.09)

I can´t see why GGG doesn´t make the same thing (I would cap it to 75% though and rebalancing some passives and such). It´s clear for new players and good for balancing game (or some sort of diminishing return with same result)

On the other hand we have absurdly OP ec+IC

Armor/life build should have some advantage against ES (but in fact stacking EC, IC, basalts and such is more effective)

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

Armour isn't for tanking humongous hits. It's for not getting surrounded and instagibbed by a pack of trash mobs.

Actually, it's for "tanking humongous hits", because in PoE, you usually dont care about stuff that doesnt insta-gib you. And for situations, where you take many simultneous hits at once, randomized defences (dodge, block, evasion+blind) work MUCH better anyway.
Armour isnt useless, it's reliable layer of defence, that can help survive. You just shouldnt rely too much upon it, cause it protects from physical only anyway.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

Armour isn't for tanking humongous hits. It's for not getting surrounded and instagibbed by a pack of trash mobs.

Actually, it's for "tanking humongous hits", because in PoE, you usually dont care about stuff that doesnt insta-gib you. And for situations, where you take many simultneous hits at once, randomized defences (dodge, block, evasion+blind) work MUCH better anyway.
Armour isnt useless, it's reliable layer of defence, that can help survive.

If you stack reasonable amounts of armour it will protect you pretty well from smaller hits. Most of the damage of regular mobs is physical and even if they get added elemental damage mods, resists mitigate those heavily. In my experience, a moderate amount of armour really helps against those simultaneous small hits from trash mobs scenarios that are the most common cause of death for my squishiest characters. If it's paired with a moderate amount of block and/or evasion, then that works even better. If I go evasion/block alone(without spell block), I end up dying to physical spells. Armour is definitely better as a defensive layer, but it's not going to save you from something like a vaal smash unless you really stack it and it's hard to keep something as just a layer when you're stacking it that high.

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

If you stack reasonable amounts of armour it will protect you pretty well from smaller hits. Most of the damage of regular mobs is physical and even if they get added elemental damage mods, resists mitigate those heavily. In my experience, a moderate amount of armour really helps against those simultaneous small hits from trash mobs scenarios that are the most common cause of death for my squishiest characters. If it's paired with a moderate amount of block and/or evasion, then that works even better. If I go evasion/block alone(without spell block), I end up dying to physical spells. Armour is definitely better as a defensive layer, but it's not going to save you from something like a vaal smash unless you really stack it and it's hard to keep something as just a layer when you're stacking it that high.

Armour can make the difference between one-shot from Izaro (for example) and non-oneshot.
The main problen is that gear provides too small amounts of it. Actually, the best source of armour is Granite+Jade flasks, with IR. Easy, and requires 0 investments.

Armour is fine bro lol, no troll, no bait , no white knighting. It really is fine. Armour in poe acts the same way it does in real life. If you have a trash can lid as a shield while people are throwing pebbles at you, its awesome. What if one of the kids own a cannon and shoot a cannon ball at you, what level of damage reduction will that trash can lid do?