"the armour problem" why it could be different, and what is the real issue.

i was watching some videos today and i saw ppl talking about the armour problem in POE2

personally while watching, I thought to my self "wtf are they even talking about, formula? that's not the problem!"

so here is the deal, my main/first character i stacked armour with a little more or less than 15 passive points investment techincally speaking and whenever i was fighting a boss my armour felt kinda meh. however! when i was fighting thick rares that hit harder than the boss, if i for example get against that rare monster with zero scavenged plating stacks i'd feel like i am being hit like a truck is hitting me, and if i go stack it and come back i'd feel like i am being tickled by the rare.

and in some cases when i fight a boss with adds you can see that it is day and night between having scavenged plating stacks and not having them.

to be very specific with numbers i think it's about 18kish armour without the stacks and almost 30k with them is what i had in that warrior "before i rerolled for multiple reasons".

there is also charge infusion which consumes charges but maintains a buff as long as you have charges, and it is a HUGE armour boost too!

the issue
while i was thinking about what the designers POV might be. i thought "maybe they found a sweet spot for armour based on those available buffs in the game"
and in some ways it does make sense, if armour is STRONG without those buffs. those buffs will make it so that physical damage does not exist against us in mapping and in the game where u can maintain the buffs.
on the other hand, those buffs are easier to maintain as melees while mapping than casters i assume. so in some ways scavenged plating is like the fortify of melee characters.
the only problem with all of the above, melees can't stack it on bosses, at least not slow hitting melees.


to put it briefly, it is impossible to stack it "at least as a slammer" on bosses. and if the bosses go into a little bit of immunity phases i'd assume no one can stack it ever.

solution?
i'd say a first step would be for scavenged plating to provide about 2 stacks vs rares and 5 stacks if the target is a unique monster.

as well as more reliable ways to maintain charge infusion for endurance charge focused characters. the ways to generate endurance charges is actually kinda impossible if the boss has high stun threshold or is stunned before.

The point you are missing from the videos is that they could make the stacks permanent and armor would still be completely useless against big attacks.

The point you are missing from the videos is that they could make the stacks permanent and armor would still be completely useless against big attacks.

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zaarakiekenpachi#0320 wrote:

"maybe they found a sweet spot for armour based on those available buffs in the game"

I don't think so. I think the devs just set the values with their toes, including the cast time and damage multiplier of the slam skill, just like they casually changed Giant Blood from 2X to 3X right before the EA release.

They definitely haven't tested the performance of armour/slam on endgame maps in person, otherwise I think any person with a normal IQ would find this to be a load of crap.

"

Sickness#1007 wrote:

The point you are missing from the videos is that they could make the stacks permanent and armor would still be completely useless against big attacks.

well, you are making a baseless argument because i literally played this character and with about 30k armour i face tanked t18 map bosses with a 3.5k life warrior.

regardless, when the mods are seriously deadly and i can't maintain the scavenged plating stacks is when my armour felt like shit.

so again , i literally tried this and it was fine depends on if i had the stacks or not that's all there is to it.

"

zaarakiekenpachi#0320 wrote:

"

Sickness#1007 wrote:

The point you are missing from the videos is that they could make the stacks permanent and armor would still be completely useless against big attacks.

well, you are making a baseless argument because i literally played this character and with about 30k armour i face tanked t18 map bosses with a 3.5k life warrior.

regardless, when the mods are seriously deadly and i can't maintain the scavenged plating stacks is when my armour felt like shit.

so again , i literally tried this and it was fine depends on if i had the stacks or not that's all there is to it.

No, it does not come down to the scrap metal stacks. It comes down to the fact that armor barely does anything to big hits. The damage reduction from armor is Armor/(armor+damage*12).

So for your 30k armor if you take 5k damage hit you will take 5k*(1-30k/(30k+5k*12))=3,33k damage.
For 20k armor it becomes 3,75k. That means that in this case you take slightly more than 10% less damage if you increase your armor by 50%. You can play around with the numbers here all you like but the conclusion will never be that the problem with armor is the armor scrap stacks.

"

zaarakiekenpachi#0320 wrote:

"

Sickness#1007 wrote:

The point you are missing from the videos is that they could make the stacks permanent and armor would still be completely useless against big attacks.

well, you are making a baseless argument because i literally played this character and with about 30k armour i face tanked t18 map bosses with a 3.5k life warrior.

regardless, when the mods are seriously deadly and i can't maintain the scavenged plating stacks is when my armour felt like shit.

so again , i literally tried this and it was fine depends on if i had the stacks or not that's all there is to it.

No its the other way around.
Im assuming your talking about kripps video.
In which he provides graphs, numerous examples of boss damage hits and how much would be mitigated, more research and graphs from his viewers showing how much mitigation different break points of armor do. Comparissons to cloak of flame, explanation of why other missing mechanics make armor even worse (endurance charges, conversion suffixes on chest, etc)

While your response is just:
No their wrong thats not the problem, i face tank bosses . While providing zero facts, examples or useful information.

Armor is bad because the numbers are way too low. But more importantly because were lacking mechanics like endurance charges and other ways to convert damage to make the hits smaller so armor mitigates more.

Also your example is just stupid because not all classes have the buff/mechanic your talking about

I like it how for Energy Shield this is just about stacking it and absorbing flat amount of damage, but for armour it is all of sudden some formulas, research, graphs, theorycrafting, and a bunch of other utterly useless crap.


Because it is "so hard" to introduce hard armour cap around 80% of physical damage reduction from any hits before other damage mitigation takes place, make that cap around 10k armour, and that's it.

"

B-but then everybody will be having a phy dmg reduction cap at all times! This.. This is bad!

- This is probably the stupid idea behind all this armour "problem", which was deliberately created by developers so that later on they can heroically "fix" it.


Why play armour/life at this point, when ES stacking is the universal solution to all problems in this game?


And I'm ready to bet that it will be "fixed" by completely nerfing to the ground two uniques mentioned by Kripp or just by a hard nerf to ES, rather than making physical damage reduction just normal and simple. Because that is the way incompetent designers behind this "armour problem" would fix it.

kripp is not the only one but sure, he brought graphs and all of that shit and the main point he brought up is how you would need 40k armour to do what he thought 20k would do.

then his ltieral words were about how 40k armour would mean you will have no damage or life, cuz that's how much it would cost you to invest fully in armour.

my argument is the opposite of his , 40k armour is easy, it literally is easy with scavenged plating. i am not against an armour buff, i am against an armour buff where things like scavenged plating exists because then you'd have a balance issue.


my point is simple,

you either remove those hard to maintain buffs and buff armour, or you make those buffs 24/7 sustainable even vs single target.

i personally would prefer the buffs fix, because if amrour ended up in a very strong position the competition over armour gear would create a shit show in the market. i would rather a siuation where only armour specific classes can use it easily rather than everyone in the community.

buff the base values of armour enough and literally everyone would be carrying armour hybrid gear or pure armour gear "especially shields" and eventaully it will warrent a nerf or a solution.

so yea we have a straight up easy solution with the available buffs, a spirit skill that can be easily used by the classes tha need armour the most. that's how i would rather fix it first.

this is early access, you don't need take a HUGE step, yoou take one step and if it is not enough you go next.

"

zaarakiekenpachi#0320 wrote:

kripp is not the only one but sure, he brought graphs and all of that shit and the main point he brought up is how you would need 40k armour to do what he thought 20k would do.

then his ltieral words were about how 40k armour would mean you will have no damage or life, cuz that's how much it would cost you to invest fully in armour.

my argument is the opposite of his , 40k armour is easy, it literally is easy with scavenged plating. i am not against an armour buff, i am against an armour buff where things like scavenged plating exists because then you'd have a balance issue.


my point is simple,

you either remove those hard to maintain buffs and buff armour, or you make those buffs 24/7 sustainable even vs single target.

i personally would prefer the buffs fix, because if amrour ended up in a very strong position the competition over armour gear would create a shit show in the market. i would rather a siuation where only armour specific classes can use it easily rather than everyone in the community.

buff the base values of armour enough and literally everyone would be carrying armour hybrid gear or pure armour gear "especially shields" and eventaully it will warrent a nerf or a solution.

so yea we have a straight up easy solution with the available buffs, a spirit skill that can be easily used by the classes tha need armour the most. that's how i would rather fix it first.

this is early access, you don't need take a HUGE step, yoou take one step and if it is not enough you go next.

Look, I agree that scavanged plating should be changed but it is really not enough. The problem is that the damage reduction is dimished too much by big hits. I gave you the formula earlier, investigate it and try to understand it instead of trying to come off as if you know better than literally everyone else.