Hybrid Armor seems...bad

Anyone else thinks hybrid armor seems bad?

Ive just been theorycrafting thus far, so please forgive any mistakes in some of these assumptions.

In any case, from what I hear, you need to invest in defensive passives to survive in the endgame. The way defensive passives work is as a percentage based increase in either armor, evasion or energy shield.

Standard "pure" armor gives a large bonus in one of the three aforementioned stats. Hybrid armor gives a smaller defensive bonus to two stats (often ~1/2 of pure armor).In order to boost these you get passive defensive nodes. Sadly, most nodes only give bonuses to one defensive stat (with very few exceptions, like near the Shadow starting point or with those Defense on Shield nodes).

In most cases, to boost both stats on hybrid armor, you need to pick up two nodes. Moreover, since the base armor stats in hybrid armor are low, the perentage based nodes yield less effective armor to the player than those that go for "pure" armors. So, in hybrid armor you use a point for lets say 10% more evasion but that does alot less for you if you use pure evasion armor.

So, looking at item data...

Glorious Plate (STR armor) - 390 AC
General's Brigandine (STR/DEX Armoc) - 207 AC, 207 EV

10% more armor would yield 39 AC on the Glorious Plate and 20 AC on the Brigandine. Thats almost half the effect for the same point spent. I must then pick up anoter defensive node in evasion or armor to pick up the slack on the Hybrid build.

Ultimately, this seems to make hybridized armors less desirable. Wouldnt it make more sense to make the passive defensive nodes apply to all armor types? Therefore, instead of 10% more Evasion or Armor or whatever just make it 10% more Defenses. I mean, hybridized armor already has lower base defenses per type. Why penalize players that use them by forcing them to pick up twice the amount of defenisve nodes to yield similar effectiveness?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

In the hybrid areas of the tree, there are hybrid defense nodes that grant a bonus to two defense types in the same node.

Example

I mentioned those in my original post. However, those are few and far between. Certainly, those alone are not enough especially for those wishing to melee. Moreover, forcing hybrid armor players to go for specific defensive nodes seems to go against the free form nature of the current skill tree.

Wouldnt just having defensive nodes give a generalized bonus be more balanced and allow a wider range of itemization?

As it stands, I don't find the hybridized armors mathematically attractive compared to their "pure" counterparts.

On my melee Ranger I like hybrid armors now and then, depending on what DR / CTE balance I have. I take shield passives which boost the armour or evasion on shield, so I tend to alternate evasion / armour on other pieces to try to balance 40-50% DR/CTE. Hybrid armours give me more options.

Enough theory, more practice ;)

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Shevek wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

In the hybrid areas of the tree, there are hybrid defense nodes that grant a bonus to two defense types in the same node.

Example

...
Wouldnt just having defensive nodes give a generalized bonus be more balanced and allow a wider range of itemization?

This is an excellent suggestion in my opinion and its viability ought to be investigated. It might indeed be a good idea to replace all Armor, Energy Shield, and Evasion passives with a more general "Defense bonuses from armor (Armor, Evasion, Energy Shield) are increased by 10%" sort of passive. This allows players to switch between armor types and not feel boxed in too much to a certain kind of defense.

I can see many pros and few cons. The cons I can see are things like "This allows classes to defy their intended armor types too easily" and this may be true, but they have to deal with not being able to wear the best armor of a given type because of their stats, then. It's a tradeoff, but for some experimental/unique builds it could be very interesting.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

In the hybrid areas of the tree, there are hybrid defense nodes that grant a bonus to two defense types in the same node.

Example

There needs to be more, and major keystones too.

ES has CI, Evasion has Acro, armor has Iron Reflexes and to a lesser extent Unwavering. But there aren't big keystones for hybrids, and what is more, the ones I mentioned kill any chance for hybrid armors, since they invalidate one of the bonuses.

So yes, more hybrid nodes and specially keystones would be quite helpful.

For instance, a keystone that refills part of your ES every time you evade an attack would be awesome.

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dashgalaxy86 wrote:

The cons I can see are things like "This allows classes to defy their intended armor types too easily"

Hybridized armor already requires ~50% in each stat to use. This makes sense to me. Half the bonuses in 2 two defensive properties, half the stat requirement in two stats.

Example:

Gladiator Plate (413 AC)= requires 164 STR
General's Brigandine (207 Evade/AC) = requires 88 DEX/STR

Stat requirements alone should prevent players from using it if they didn't spec for it. If the stat requirement is too low (maybe stat items could subvert it too easily), they could just increase the stat requirements a bit for hybridized armors (maybe to 60% of pure armors or something). If the item bonuses are balanced, however, changing stat requirements shouldn't be necessary.

Hybrid armor is bad.

This is a pitfall many games which allow hybridization fall into. Specialization is almost always rewarded to a much higher degree than hybridization by gearing and skills. I think the issue is that many people see the math as .5+.5=1. That is if i give you half of this ability and half of another ability it should be equivalent to stacking 100% of a similar ability. When in practice, it generally works out where having 50 evasion and 50 armor is clearly inferior to having 100 armor or 100 evasion.

Rather than looking at the situation as a .5+.5=1 scenario, look at it like a unit circle (remember trig from highschool?). Imagine the (0,1) (1,0) (0,-1) (-1,0) points are 4 ways to achieve balance (ideally, i wont get into the merits of armor vs. energy shield here). (0,1) might be 100% armor, (1,0) might be 100% evasion, but always the radius is 1. Then you start to hybridize; you move the ray around the circle between the various points. Notice the halfway point between (0,1) and (1,0) is not (.5, .5) but rather (.707,.707). The radius is still 1 just like full armor or full evasion.

Im willing to bet ~70 armor and ~70 evasion vs. 100 armor is much harder to decide on for many builds than the obvious 100 armor vs 50 armor and 50 evasion decision.

food for thought...

I think evasion is terrible anyhow, if anything on all characters so far i have stacked either Armor/ES or pure armor.

Only stacking armor with ES because the armor also mitigates the damage to the ES. That said evasion is fine with IR in fact i would venture to say if you use evasion and don't have IR you are in for a "dodge dodge dodge, dead" scenario.