Why is armor designed this way?

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sidtherat wrote:

then - if that is what you meant - you might check the Evasion defensive mechanic. it works and it is pretty damn strong.

Evasion is heavily unreliable in HC. All it takes is Xandro to show up one time with a bad set of mods and you're pretty much done. Essentially any hard counter that shows up with a set of bad mods and it ruins your fucking day.


Armor on the other hand, as bad as it is, at least works 100% of the time how it is supposed to, even if it is shitty vs big hits. You can play around it, predict how it will perform, and compensate by adjusting your build.



In all honesty, both defensive mechanics are pretty much garbage compared to things like Endurance Charges, Flasks, Block, Dodge/Spell Dodge, and huge hit point pools. However, I'd much rather rely on armor if I had to choose out of the two in a HC environment.

Armour is working like this, because against very big hits ... you're still supposed to take significant damage ( imagine a guy wearing a heavy plate getting hit by a truck ... ).
I think that it is the thinking behind it, there is still a big shock, and it is supposed to be scary.

Now, as pointed out before, if people could just stack flat physical mitigation to high values, the game would need to be balance to still be a threat to those, and people without armour would get screwed big time.


And I have to agree with Allbusiness here, evasion is nice ( with dodge )..... but not for tanking.
Nugi went full eva until lvl 94 I think, but he was not taking, he was blowing everything up and kiting all the time.
I pushed a HC 90 full evasion, and .... it is not tanky.
It's relatively solid, but the damage potential when against many monsters is just much higher than with armour, and that is where it can be dangerous and rippy.

I played armored EQ slayer in parandus, ran around with perm fortify, increased fortify effect, 85k+ armor, end charges.. still got one shot by phys all the time

something needs to change, not really sure what. but something for sure..

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85k+ armor, end charges.. still got one shot by phys all the time

Bullshit.

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Yesu wrote:

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85k+ armor, end charges.. still got one shot by phys all the time

Bullshit.

I was thinking the same, especially coming from an account with no character over 90 ( yes, it does matter when it is about owning top end gear ).
This look like a big and blatant lie ( there used to be a bug regarding chest armour and projectile, but that much armour means that only a "small" part is coming from the chest ).

Not saying that it is impossible, if one has good gear and focuses only on armour ( with iron reflex, grace and determination, with basically no other significant layer which is kind of stupid defense-wise ) it can be reached, but then physical damage is a joke, apart from very seldom telegraphed hits.

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Fruz wrote:

Armour is working like this, because against very big hits ... you're still supposed to take significant damage ( imagine a guy wearing a heavy plate getting hit by a truck ... ).
I think that it is the thinking behind it, there is still a big shock, and it is supposed to be scary.

Now, as pointed out before, if people could just stack flat physical mitigation to high values, the game would need to be balance to still be a threat to those, and people without armour would get screwed big time.


And I have to agree with Allbusiness here, evasion is nice ( with dodge )..... but not for tanking.
Nugi went full eva until lvl 94 I think, but he was not taking, he was blowing everything up and kiting all the time.
I pushed a HC 90 full evasion, and .... it is not tanky.
It's relatively solid, but the damage potential when against many monsters is just much higher than with armour, and that is where it can be dangerous and rippy.

well, you can tank with evasion, its actually a rly good tool for tanking, but you need more than just evasion.

Dodge is actually what makes evasion not tanky most of the time, dodge is actually a bit of a trap for evasion builds that holds a lot of people back from appreciating the mechanic. They always go dodge with evasion, and that means either theyre a lightning coil build or they have a shit character.

So lets start with just evasion. Whats the problem we have? Getting fking wrecked by high physical hits. So how can we fix that? Either by having a massive life pool or physical damage reduction. What gives us a massive life pool? CI. What gives us phys damage reduction? Armour. What does fuck all to help us getting smashed up by the phys hits that land? Another layer of avoiding attacks, something we already do very well. So were evasion, lets grab dodge which stops us using es and armour that would actually fix our defensive holes and does what exactly in return? Dodge is shit with evasion, its not at all good unless you are using a lightning coil which replicates what a decent level of armour will do, or maybe a kaoms which could give you the lifepool but thats not a combo Ive rly tried out yet. I cant see it being as good as using CI tbh.

What is good with evasion is armour, energy shield and lightning coil, you can tank some heavy duty stuffs with those setups. Only the coil is compatible with dodge.


You know what, more often than not, are really shit nodes for an armour build to take? Iron Reflexes and Unwavering Stance. You know whats awesome for an armour build? Evasion. But people flock to IR+US and hardly anyone properly hybrids their defense, and then they all say armour is shit.


the result of all this? People think evasion and armour are shit, and by extension that life is shit.


Personally I think armour, evasion and life are good, and I rarely take those nodes. Am I a deluded player who just doesnt know how to build characters and what a good defense setup should feel like? Maybe.

Yeah, hybrid defenses are underrated imho ( evasion + armour ).

Accro + phase accro do have the advantage of being pretty cost efficient, but it comes at a price.
I think that it does fit range gameplay pretty well.

My HC raider has like ~65%+ ( more under phasing, so all the time ) evasion, ~40+% dodge and ~40%+ spell dodge, on top of a correct buffer ( 3 slots without life ).
Queen of the forest => no coil.
Fortunatly, I am often under basalt and the Thief's torment does reduce the effect of vulnerability, but the build .... is not using other forms of mitigation ( Well there is like 15%+ block, or 20%+, don't remember ), that's what happens with an invested QotF + Dream feather character.

So it's nice if I'm not trying to tank stuff too much.
I would not farm uber Izaro with this character, I have uber ascended solo but ... kinda scared, whereas my Aegis guardian had like no troubles with it, but it was using much stronger defensive mechanics ( sustained MoM + Aegis + guardian block + armour + guardian regen )

Another thing that can be nice with evasion ( but not for sustained tanking ) is cloak of defiance, with enough mana leech and mobility.

But it seems to me that people are just expecting to be able to tank the content with anything, which just ... does not work.

Meh, having flasks that provide 3750 flat armour or evasion and up to 99% increased renders heavily armour/evasion investments by picking all the % nodes on the tree underwhelming...

The problems are actually having one shot damage due to broken "Sponge" mechanic and instant logout.

No auto-attacks should drop you below 75% of EHP per hit, no matter what, presuming you hit the minimums - the mandatory 75% resistance default cap (after all penalties), a flat 5K HP or 7K ES and any another defensive layer in a satisfactory amount...

And of course the untankable hits should always kill you, except for one instance, when using Vaal Immortal Call, no questions asked about all the cool slams that should have thresholds of at least 100K pure physical/elemental damage - if you're meant to kite to survive, you should always do it...

It would be a great improvement to have the value of the armour formula adjusted, and either have it work versus elemental damage by having the conversion apply to the reduced value post armour formula, or at least have a better placement for a few +1 max towards the armour part of the Skilldrasil - up to 77/78% for example...

Absurd armour stacking should also stop, and a few thresholds should apply to the broken duelist Art of the Gladiator node, and it should allow total ignore on movement speed penalty only for the first 25K armour, each subsequent 25K should drop the efficiency with 25%...

The evasion should always mitigate a part of the hit, as evading a hit partialy, could still make the difference from life and death, so even a failed evaded hit shouldn't drop you below the 75% EHP pool, except for untankable damage...

Of course when discussing multiple hits or DoT the bets are off...

each time i read discussion like these it is always 'armor is bad' and then 'evasion is bad'

guys. these defences have holes in them ON PURPOSE. to make us make choices and accept consequences of these choices

AR has strong and weak points. EV has strong and weak points. ES has strong and weak points (sadly - Ghost Reaver + Vaal Pact ruin this system entirely removing all ES weak points)

so when i say 'try evasion' i mean 'try mixing AR with EV'. not 'try pure EV'


you know that you can build a ranger/raider/whateverRightSideOfTheTree with reasonable EV, minimal AR, ~50 dodge/spell dodge and reasonable phys reduction?

or a juggernaut with beefy AR + 6000 EV?

mixing stuff together works better than stacking one trough the roof. sure 74% -> 75% block chance is higher increase than 73% -> 74% but it is pretty expensive. similar gains can be made cheaper with different sources of 'defence'


problem lies in GR+VP making ES UNIVERSAL. this makes many (including some posters here) to think that ALL primary defences should be UNIVERSAL. unfortunatelly it is ES that is TOO GOOD (with GR+VP) - not the other way around. ES without leech is perfectly fine mechanic-wise (it is the STOOOPID scaling ES got for free from Elron rings and top-ES items GGG happiliy introduced that is the problem)