how does the penetration mechanic feels like?

[KDubya]

 

 

 

 

Complete penetration = full damage. Full is 100%. That's common sense a lot of games follow. I think PoE1 followed this logic as well.

 

 

 

 Pen=AR gets you full damage. You only get bonus damage when you get Pen=2*AR

 

 

2*AR for 30% more damage. That was kinda joke? I think for final build of the game it would be real hard to gain 2*AR unless you are fighting severely under-leveled mobs.

 

 

 I don't think level has anything to do with the targets AR.

 

A low level guy in plate will take less damage than a high level guy in robes. A 20 damage attack will be 6 damage to the heavy armor, 20 damage to medium and 26 damage to the guy in robes.

 

30% extra damage is nice but not so big that getting all armored up becomes the best way every time. Unfortunately getting more penetration is pretty much the go to strat.

[Archaven]

@KDubya

 

My point is it will be difficult to get 2*AR unless the system mechanics allow for it? Is it easy to get 2*AR for you in beta? Sorry i dont have beta so from my analysis, it shouldn't be easy to achieve getting 2*AR and for the 30% damage, it wouldn't be worth it?

 

In regards to caster, i dont quite like the slow casting and recovery and the damage it deals are just mediocre. Why the big nerfs on caster? I think they are overnerfs at the moment.

[hilfazer]

 

 

 

Complete penetration = full damage. Full is 100%. That's common sense a lot of games follow. I think PoE1 followed this logic as well.

 

 

 

 Pen=AR gets you full damage. You only get bonus damage when you get Pen=2*AR

 

 

Pen = 2* AR is what i call complete penetration.

Complete armor penetration is the best result armor penetration can achieve. It's making armor totally ineffective.

If Obs wants players to do more damage it can be done via, surprise surprise, damage bonuses. Things like Secrets of Rime, that they removed and everyone seems to want back (i'm talking about shared talents in general).

 

Edit:

Perhaps i wasn't clear enough. What i want is basically normalizing current values to, say, 25%/75%/100%.

Or, in case OEI drops ternary nature of Penetration, making 100% damage the best result Penetration can give.

Edited November 19, 2017 by hilfazer

[morhilane]

If the penalty for being but 1 point short of your enemy’s armor rating wasn’t so harsh, stacking penetration wouldn’t be the be all and end all of combat.

 

EDIT: To clarify, I like the mechanic itself; I just think it should be gradual as opposed to "1 point short? Your DPS is severely undercut and you become useless in combat."

People would just go back to the next best way to deal more damage. The modifying the AR/Pen system isn't going to change that.

 

In fact, it would work better if none of the weapons could reduce AR or increase penetration. Then they could at least balance weapons pen and armors AR properly and have it act as if it was damage resistant to certain damage type instead of the current system being damage resistant to everything because base AR is higher than most weapon penetration is.

 

For example, a Greatsword has 5 penetration, Fine add +1, which means at Legendary (+4) Greatsword will have 9 penetration. While enemies are going to have ~15+ AR on everything (if armor enchantment are like in POE1, a Legendary Robe is going to have 11 base AR, looks like they gain +1 AR per enchantment so the difference would stay the same for the "normal" stuff...and Greatsword are only useful against Robe, Hide and Padded). The entire balance of the system doesn't work right now.

 

It's like the system was balanced thinking that players would be doing crits 50% of the time. The funniest part, the time when you need to increase your penetration even more is when enemies will have super high deflection that crits are basically impossible...

 

edited armor AR in POE2.

Edited November 19, 2017 by morhilane

[dunehunter]

I just feel the average penetration on weapons/spells is pretty low comparing with the average armour rate enemies has, maybe either rise the penetration of all weapon + spell or lower enemies  armour rate would make it works better at least.

[AndreaColombo]

People would just go back to the next best way to deal more damage. The modifying the AR/Pen system isn't going to change that.

 

And that's bad?

 

If you want a DPS-oriented character, you stack Accuracy and damage modifiers. That's how it should be. If you want a different type of character, you focus on other things.

 

Right now all characters must stack as much AP as possible or be completely useless. Spells don't have enough penetration to do anything (and take too long to cast and are too easy to interrupt to be a tag along) and even an Estoc with its modal is not enough to overcome a lagufaeth's AR. Packing large amounts of AP is disproportionately more important than anything else.

[morhilane]

 

People would just go back to the next best way to deal more damage. The modifying the AR/Pen system isn't going to change that.

 

And that's bad?

 

If you want a DPS-oriented character, you stack Accuracy and damage modifiers. That's how it should be. If you want a different type of character, you focus on other things.

 

Right now all characters must stack as much AP as possible or be completely useless. Spells don't have enough penetration to do anything (and take too long to cast and are too easy to interrupt to be a tag along) and even an Estoc with its modal is not enough to overcome a lagufaeth's AR. Packing large amounts of AP is disproportionately more important than anything else.

 

Making it gradual isn't going to make people stop hoarding +pen bonuses and -AR debuffss. They are going to try to get the 130% damage boost anyway. That solution doesn't solve anything, it just put a plaster on the real issue: the current balance needs works. A good AR/Pen system should have damage type that always bypass something, not have a base AR that blocks everything.

 

Also, the only things that has penetration checks are damaging abilities and weapons. You can still do other things like CC and debuff, the reason why the other things sucks currently has nothing to do with the penetration/AR system.

Edited November 19, 2017 by morhilane

[AndreaColombo]

Making it gradual isn't going to make people stop hoarding +pen bonuses and -AR debuffss. They are going to try to get the 130% damage boost anyway.

 

We're looking at it from a different angle.

 

My problem with AP vs AR right now is that being just 1 point short of your enemy's AR means your frontliner is useless in combat. A Fighter with a Fine estoc using the estoc modal has 12 AP; one of the lagufaeth kinds has 13 AR (can't recall which one.) The Fighter is useless against the lagufaeth and there isn't much else it can do in the fight except dealing minimum damage. The dip in DPS for being below an enemy's AR needs to be gradual.

 

The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes. However, I understand the 30% is currently multiplicative, which is way too much bonus damage. It should be additive. This way it would be just another damage bonus you could pursue, as opposed to THE damage bonus you want because it's so much better than any other. If 30% additive is too little for what it takes to get it, let's go with 50% additive—same as a critical hit. It would still be more balanced than 30% multiplicative.

Edited November 19, 2017 by AndreaColombo

[fiddlesticks]

My problem with AP vs AR right now is that being just 1 point short of your enemy's AR means your frontliner is useless in combat. A Fighter with a Fine estoc using the estoc modal has 12 AP; one of the lagufaeth kinds has 13 AR (can't recall which one.) The Fighter is useless against the lagufaeth and there isn't much else it can do in the fight except dealing minimum damage. The dip in DPS for being below an enemy's AR needs to be gradual.

 

Does PotD affect the AR of enemies? I don't recall any of the Lagufaeth having more than 9 base AR.

[morhilane]

 

Making it gradual isn't going to make people stop hoarding +pen bonuses and -AR debuffss. They are going to try to get the 130% damage boost anyway.

 

We're looking at it from a different angle.

 

My problem with AP vs AR right now is that being just 1 point short of your enemy's AR means your frontliner is useless in combat. A Fighter with a Fine estoc using the estoc modal has 12 AP; one of the lagufaeth kinds has 13 AR (can't recall which one.) The Fighter is useless against the lagufaeth and there isn't much else it can do in the fight except dealing minimum damage. The dip in DPS for being below an enemy's AR needs to be gradual.

 

You are under-geared and under-leveled in the beta. That 13 AR enemy is either level 9+ (all lagufaeth are level 7+, the Terror is level 11 with Exceptional gear) with a buff like Hardy (+4 to AR). Most enemies in the beta are level 7+, the only that aren't are the Delemgan armies and the Xaurips.

 

When Josh announced the change, the idea was that you should match damage type vs weapons damage type penetration. But it seems they just slapped POE1 DR values on armors instead of actually balancing the system.

 

This is how I understand the system should be working:

 

Greatsword: slash 5 penetration

Mace: blunt 5 penetration

 

Robe: slash AR: 3, blunt AR: 3

Hide: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 4

Padded: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 6

Leather: slash AR: 5, blunt AR: 6

...

Plate: slash AR: 6, blunt AR: 3

 

With this, the Greatsword is good against softies, but can only fully damage someone in plate if they crits. In the same way, a blunt weapon can hit well the softiest of the softies, but they have issues with soft-padding but dent plate super well.

Edited November 19, 2017 by morhilane

[Doppelschwert]

When Josh announced the change, the idea was that you should match damage type vs weapons damage type penetration. But it seems they just slapped POE1 DR values on armors instead of actually balancing the system.

 

This is how I understand the system should be working:

 

Greatsword: slash 5 penetration

Mace: blunt 5 penetration

 

Robe: slash AR: 3, blunt AR: 3

Hide: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 4

Padded: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 6

Leather: slash AR: 5, blunt AR: 6

...

Plate: slash AR: 6, blunt AR: 3

 

With this, the Greatsword is good against softies, but can only fully damage someone in plate if they crits. In the same way, a blunt weapon can hit well the softiest of the softies, but they have issues with soft-padding but dent plate super well.

This is how I understood the initial idea as well, but asides from the current implementation being unbalanced as hell, the math still dictates some rather unintuitive effects for the lower end of armor of your example:

 

When you upgrade both weapons and armor (so +1 to +4), the difference stays the same, but the fraction shifts. That's fine for normal hits vs reduced hits, since they only care about the difference, but introduces effects for the bonus damage. For each +1 on armor, you need +2 an weapons to keep the bonus damage.

Put differently, if your (light) armor is only supposed to keep you from taking the bonus damage instead of reducing damage (the difference is constant, so you can't hope to reach the next breakpoint), then every second bonus to armor is useless against that weapon. That's mostly a problem for the lowest tier armor - in this case robes - since you may not even feel the difference of upgrading it for the most part. Talents that grant +1 to your armor can have similiar strange effects as well - they can create big intervals where you upgrade your armor without it having an effect, making them less effective on low armor, against all intuition. On the flipside, it makes scoring the bonus damage much harder the further you are into the game, at which point you might just drop a lot of excess penetration altogether.

 

Ideally, a buff should always be useful, not only if the numbers align (that's kind of a bold statement though - a buff to damage is not useful if it doesn't reduce the hits needed to take down an enemy as well).

 

In general, you have the following issue: If buffs to armor can bridge the gap to the next breakpoint, that devalues the choice of armor, and if they can't, that devalues the value of armor buffs.

 

This could all be resolved by making the damage reduction a continous function of the difference of armor and penetration rather than having the arbitrary break points. You can still have differenct slopes between break points, so your damage might still plummet downwards quite fast once you're under a specific threshold, but at least that would make upgrades into armor and penetration more useful past fixed values.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Doppelschwert

[Akong]

The more I play, the more I like the penetration system. I think it's really fun to juggle penetration and reaching those thresholds on as many characters as possible. This wouldn't be as fun if the damage penalty was gradual. I like the system, but I do worry that it will be THE thing to go for in all circumstances. Like, right now, if something gives penetration or decreases enemy armor ratings, it automatically becomes top-tier.

[morhilane]

 

When Josh announced the change, the idea was that you should match damage type vs weapons damage type penetration. But it seems they just slapped POE1 DR values on armors instead of actually balancing the system.

 

This is how I understand the system should be working:

 

Greatsword: slash 5 penetration

Mace: blunt 5 penetration

 

Robe: slash AR: 3, blunt AR: 3

Hide: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 4

Padded: slash AR: 4, blunt AR: 6

Leather: slash AR: 5, blunt AR: 6

...

Plate: slash AR: 6, blunt AR: 3

 

With this, the Greatsword is good against softies, but can only fully damage someone in plate if they crits. In the same way, a blunt weapon can hit well the softiest of the softies, but they have issues with soft-padding but dent plate super well.

This is how I understood the initial idea as well, but asides from the current implementation being unbalanced as hell, the math still dictates some rather unintuitive effects for the lower end of armor of your example:

 

When you upgrade both weapons and armor (so +1 to +4), the difference stays the same, but the fraction shifts. That's fine for normal hits vs reduced hits, since they only care about the difference, but introduces effects for the bonus damage. For each +1 on armor, you need +2 an weapons to keep the bonus damage.

Put differently, if your (light) armor is only supposed to keep you from taking the bonus damage instead of reducing damage (the difference is constant, so you can't hope to reach the next breakpoint), then every second bonus to armor is useless against that weapon. That's mostly a problem for the lowest tier armor - in this case robes - since you may not even feel the difference of upgrading it for the most part. Talents that grant +1 to your armor can have similiar strange effects as well - they can create big intervals where you upgrade your armor without it having an effect, making them less effective on low armor, against all intuition. On the flipside, it makes scoring the bonus damage much harder the further you are into the game, at which point you might just drop a lot of excess penetration altogether.

 

Ideally, a buff should always be useful, not only if the numbers align (that's kind of a bold statement though - a buff to damage is not useful if it doesn't reduce the hits needed to take down an enemy as well).

 

In general, you have the following issue: If buffs to armor can bridge the gap to the next breakpoint, that devalues the choice of armor, and if they can't, that devalues the value of armor buffs.

 

This could all be resolved by making the damage reduction a continous function of the difference of armor and penetration rather than having the arbitrary break points. You can still have differenct slopes between break points, so your damage might still plummet downwards quite fast once you're under a specific threshold, but at least that would make upgrades into armor and penetration more useful past fixed values.

 

I wasn't trying to be super balancing in my example, just showing how I expected it to work. The system should be 0 (no protection), 2, 3 and 4 + the 50% bonus on crits and never get improved outside of temporary buff/debuff (not the current buf/debuff values) to keep it balanced.

 

Also, I do think that armor types should all have damage types they are great against and types they aren't great against. Plate should be resistant to weapon a lots more than robes, but that doesn't mean plate should be more resistant to elemental damage than robes are.

 

Also, AR/penetration isn't the only thing that need balancing right now.

Edited November 19, 2017 by morhilane

[AndreaColombo]

Also, AR/penetration isn't the only thing that need balancing right now.

 

On this I agree. But it's what this thread is about

[Doppelschwert]

I wasn't trying to be super balancing in my example, just showing how I expected it to work. The system should be 0 (no protection), 2, 3 and 4 + the 50% bonus on crits and never get improved outside of temporary buff/debuff (not the current buf/debuff values) to keep it balanced.

 

Sure, I only took your example as an illustration. My point was that regardless of actual numbers, additive upgrades don't work well with mechanics caring about the ratios of numbers. You're right that such a system works well with static numbers, but I don't think that's where they are heading.

 

Also, I do think that armor types should all have damage types they are great against and types they aren't great against. Plate should be resistant to weapon a lots more than robes, but that doesn't mean plate should be more resistant to elemental damage than robes are.

 

Also, AR/penetration isn't the only thing that need balancing right now.

 

I agree that armors should differ by resistance against damage types rather than armor rating versus recovery time. A trade-off between armor rating and deflection would be fine for me as well; at least, that would open the door to a couple of archetypes not currently represented well.

 

 

 

For everyone without beta access:

Currently, armor in PoE2 seems to be sorted in categories of constant armor rating for a given recovery penalty (in contrast to PoE, where armor covered an interval of damage reduction values with the trade-off 1 DR = X% recovery penalty), differing by boni and mali to certain damage types inside those categories. There seems to be 4 categories:

 

3 armor, 0% penalty (robes/clothing)

5 armor, 25% penalty (light armor)

7 armor, 50% penalty (medium armor)

9 armor, 100% penalty (heavy armor)

 

The current values make absolutely no sense:

Neglecting talents and proficiencies, you'd need a legendary weapon (+4) to be able to deal normal damage to a mundane plate armor (+0!), given that the standard penetration is 5 (it only has 5 armor rating against crush and shock though, but legendary equipment barely getting through seems rather strange).

Edited November 19, 2017 by Doppelschwert

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

What i'm wondering is: what's the point of padded armor right now? Or even of all lighter armors?

 

Pretty soon we'll figure out the penetration #'s of all the monsters and it'll be fairly clear that there's a threshold you need to meet for armor to be worthwhile; below that threshold, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in wearing armor at all. 

 

So why not just go naked? Faster action speed. 

 

 

 

I'm not committed to any final decision but at this point I'm leaning towards suggesting a sliding scale for penetration, where each point above/ below defender's AR would add or subtract 5% damage (additively not multiplicatively).

 

That way your armor would increase in direct proportion to the rate at which your recovery increased or decreased, at least approximately and not accounting for item to item variations. Each additional rank up in armor type you went, you'd lose 5% recovery speed but gain 5% damage resisted.

 

Such a system would be easy to understand but complex in its effects and would avoid the "break point" problem that seems to generally end up confusing players and causing weird and non-intuitive gameplay (i.e., taking off all your armor against high penetration enemies).

 

Example of how it would work in practice:

 

 

Blunderbuss (5 pen) vs plate ( 15 AR vs piercing in PoE 1)  would do 50% damage (ten ranks lower, five percentage lost per rank).

 

blunderbuss vs padded (5 AR vs piercing in PoE 1) would do standard damage

 

blunderbuss vs a naked peasant would do +25 % damage (five penetration vs. AR 0). 

 

 

It'd be easy and intuitive to understand (more penetration is more damage, low penetration is less damage ; each rank of armor literally trades recovery time for protection in a 1 to 1 corresponding relationship) but would prevent counter intuitive gameplay.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Doppelschwert]

To be fair, the current system of armor categories is an improvement of the linear ordering of PoE in the sense that you have more freedom in choosing an armor inside your class that looks cool without suffering mechanical consequences. From a mechanical point of view, it's more about a horizontal differentiation rather than a vertical one.

 

In the end, the current system would probably also work if the minimum value of damage that went through was in the 50-70% range, but I still think it's mechanically awkward.

[Climhazzard]

Stacking pen gives a disproportionate effect over anything else at this time. 

 

When you get to the threshold 1 pen = 70% damage.  How much pen would you have to overshoot an enemies armor before pen = might?  23....  and that's assuming you never reach the 30% bonus for doubling the opponent's armor rating.  Well, I'm sure I made some bad assumption or anything, but that's 70/3, 3 being the damage percentage might gives.

 

Let's make the effect of pen more gradual and see if we can get it a little closer.  Say...  25% damage loss per point of pen under an enemies armor rating, no bonus for going over.  Now, 3 points of pen at the threshold = 75% damage.  1 pen = 25%.  You would need to overshoot an enemies armor rating by around 8 points before pen=might, still high.

 

Next, 1 pen=15%, you need 5 points of pen over an enemies armor rating before pen=might.

 

Even that seems a little unreasonable but what happens if you go lower?  Armor becomes useless.  Can you even fix the value of penetration without making armor useless?  I don't feel like you can, spells like expose vulnerabilities would still be better than fireball if pen was valued between 15-25% per point.

 

I'll be okay with a system with a value of around 15-25% per point of pen, with no benefit for going over armor rating....  but at this point I don't think there's any way for me to believe it's possible to make this better than or as good as DR was.  With the exception of really high damage stuff like dragons, but they'd probably have a disproportionately high pen anyways which would make the whole thing pointless.  Besides to me relying on armor to reduce damage from a dragon doesn't make sense at all, he ought to be able to crush you and your armor like a tin can, please avoid.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Climhazzard

[Gromnir]

 

Making it gradual isn't going to make people stop hoarding +pen bonuses and -AR debuffss. They are going to try to get the 130% damage boost anyway.

 

We're looking at it from a different angle.

 

My problem with AP vs AR right now is that being just 1 point short of your enemy's AR means your frontliner is useless in combat. A Fighter with a Fine estoc using the estoc modal has 12 AP; one of the lagufaeth kinds has 13 AR (can't recall which one.) The Fighter is useless against the lagufaeth and there isn't much else it can do in the fight except dealing minimum damage. The dip in DPS for being below an enemy's AR needs to be gradual.

 

The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes. However, I understand the 30% is currently multiplicative, which is way too much bonus damage. It should be additive. This way it would be just another damage bonus you could pursue, as opposed to THE damage bonus you want because it's so much better than any other. If 30% additive is too little for what it takes to get it, let's go with 50% additive—same as a critical hit. It would still be more balanced than 30% multiplicative.

 

 

for one beta run we played an orlan street fighter rogue/devoted fighter dual wielding stilettos in a party with a chanter who has the armour reduction invocation and a wizard with expose vulnerabilities.  on a crit, at level 6, we were regular seeing 19.5 ap. were getting frequent crits. even without the addition o' the skald for armour reduction, the provided beta wizard will give you ar-2 with expose vulnerabilities, and the fighter's mace knocks off 1 point of ar.

 

is loads o' ways to build ap and reduce armour... but is bad game design.  best choice is to make ar a primary concern with correct weapon choices.  choose classes such as cipher and devoted fighter to exploit ap... or find a build to maximize crit chances as crits give a huge ap bonus.  such requirements is limiting choice. equal bad, casters don't appear to have as many penetration options as does weapon-based characters, so casters feel a bit underwhelming at the moment. obvious best/right/wrong character generation and development choices is bad design.

 

is not difficult to defeat high ar even with the provided party, but defeating armour shouldn't need be an all-consuming concern.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Answermancer]

 

 

 

The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes.

 

Yeah, it seems pretty clear to me that the 30% bonus is so hard to achieve that its only purpose is to make it easy to mop up low-level enemies if you decide to go back to a low-level area and play god. It's basically just a little cookie you get to make it less tedious and to make you feel like you've grown in power.

 

I think the chances of anyone getting this bonus in level-relevant fights is so slim in the current design that it's not even worth discussing compared to the rest of the issues with the system. I don't understand why a few people are so hung up on it.

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

 

The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes.

 

Yeah, it seems pretty clear to me that the 30% bonus is so hard to achieve that its only purpose is to make it easy to mop up low-level enemies if you decide to go back to a low-level area and play god. It's basically just a little cookie you get to make it less tedious and to make you feel like you've grown in power.

 

I think the chances of anyone getting this bonus in level-relevant fights is so slim in the current design that it's not even worth discussing compared to the rest of the issues with the system. I don't understand why a few people are so hung up on it.

 

 That extra 30% damage actually comes into play with crits, which give a penetration bonus.

[Answermancer]

That extra 30% damage actually comes into play with crits, which give a penetration bonus.

Oh? I didn't know that, that's really good to know actually, and makes a lot more sense of some of the things I've been seeing while playing.

 

Okay, then I take it back, maybe the 30% is worth discussing if it will potentially make crits ridiculously powerful.

[Boeroer]

 

 

Making it gradual isn't going to make people stop hoarding +pen bonuses and -AR debuffss. They are going to try to get the 130% damage boost anyway.

We're looking at it from a different angle.

 

My problem with AP vs AR right now is that being just 1 point short of your enemy's AR means your frontliner is useless in combat. A Fighter with a Fine estoc using the estoc modal has 12 AP; one of the lagufaeth kinds has 13 AR (can't recall which one.) The Fighter is useless against the lagufaeth and there isn't much else it can do in the fight except dealing minimum damage. The dip in DPS for being below an enemy's AR needs to be gradual.

 

The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes. However, I understand the 30% is currently multiplicative, which is way too much bonus damage. It should be additive. This way it would be just another damage bonus you could pursue, as opposed to THE damage bonus you want because it's so much better than any other. If 30% additive is too little for what it takes to get it, let's go with 50% additive—same as a critical hit. It would still be more balanced than 30% multiplicative.

for one beta run we played an orlan street fighter rogue/devoted fighter dual wielding stilettos in a party with a chanter who has the armour reduction invocation and a wizard with expose vulnerabilities. on a crit, at level 6, we were regular seeing 19.5 ap. were getting frequent crits. even without the addition o' the skald for armour reduction, the provided beta wizard will give you ar-2 with expose vulnerabilities, and the fighter's mace knocks off 1 point of ar.

 

is loads o' ways to build ap and reduce armour... but is bad game design. best choice is to make ar a primary concern with correct weapon choices. choose classes such as cipher and devoted fighter to exploit ap... or find a build to maximize crit chances as crits give a huge ap bonus. such requirements is limiting choice. equal bad, casters don't appear to have as many penetration options as does weapon-based characters, so casters feel a bit underwhelming at the moment. obvious best/right/wrong character generation and development choices is bad design.

 

is not difficult to defeat high ar even with the provided party, but defeating armour shouldn't need be an all-consuming concern.

 

HA! Good Fun!

You nailed it. The only thing I'm doing right now is to stack individual PEN buffs (like Devoted/Cipher) with AoE PEN debuffs (Hel Hyraf turned into one of the most useful things in the game). So I abandoned all characters if they couldn't contribute to PEN and behold: fights are a lot easier. That's not good.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 That extra 30% damage actually comes into play with crits, which give a penetration bonus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It also serves to backstop the system generally and keep everyone from just going full monty naked against high-penetration enemies. Like, why even wear armor at all against the Skulking Terror? It's only slowing you down! (unless you need it to prevent that 30% bonus damage).

[Katarack21]

So....I'm seeing a Devoted Fighter/Streetfighter Rogue in my near future.