Help me understand Armor and Recovery please.

[Sanctuary]

Does the recovery time penalty on armor affect everything (including spells), or just weapon attacks?  I've been going off of the assumption that it affects all combat actions, thus have not been using any armor at all on my three back row characters, other than Aloth's default due to the bonus.

They usually don't get hit, but if any of them do end up with something on them, they typically die in a single hit.  Is it ever worth using armor on ranged characters?  I get tired of being one-shot, but it's infrequent enough that I'm not sure having a 15% - 20% recovery penalty at all times is worth it just for a "maybe".  The AI seems to love to target Aloth in particular, as though he's programmed as the highest priority target by any teleporting enemy, even when he hasn't cast anything yet, plus he needs to be rather close to use Fan of Flames (which is why I barely use it).

[Omnicron]

Yes Recovery affects all actions including spells (otherwise we would all be playing casters with full plate )

 

AI seems to be programmed to go for targets with the lowest DR. I do not mind wearing robes with my casters since it is a priority for them to cast their spells quickly and I gave them tools to deal with any potential close combat. 

 

For an in-depth discussion or recovery and attack times you might want to browse this topic: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72272-combat-mechanics-attack-speed-recovery/

[Kaigen42]

The recovery time penalty on armor affects any action that has a recovery period, including spellcasting. The question of whether or not wearing armor is worth the penalty depends on a lot of things, ranging from party composition to the enemies you're fighting to play style. For instance, in my current PotD run I have three cloth wearers standing in the back. They're generally fine, but fights against enemies with a lot of archers or casters can get dicey. I counteract that by focusing ranged damage, using CC from my Cipher, and generally getting more aggressive with my use of spells. It also helps that I'm running a Paladin tank with Zealous Endurance active and a high Intellect to cover the party, but you could just as easily have a Priest cast Armor of Faith or a Druid use Woodskin, which protects against the three damage types your back line is mostly likely to have to deal with. Remember also that you can enchant normal clothing to have a small amount of DR. My cloth wearers are all wearing clothing that's Fine (+2 DR) and Pierce-Proof (+3 DR against piercing for those annoying archers), both of which are pretty cheap enchantments.

[Ouroboros226]

My melee wizard is using a -50% recovery sanguine plate, and I dont notice a big decrease in attack speed. 

However I make frequent use of alacrity buff which gives 1.5x attack speed, so I'm guessing alacrity simply nullifies the recovery penalty for me.

[spacekitten]

AI seems to be programmed to go for targets with the lowest DR.

 

AI seems to be programmed to go for targets with the lowest DR. 

 

I think they are programmed to go for targets with the lowest endurance, not DR. The AI doesn't target my naked berserker much at all with 0 DR but the highest endurance in the party.