A few questions regarding armour

[Voss]

I think light armor is still useful to prevent over penetration. Also, there are ways to get AR from things like Potion of Spirit Shield for those times you're really close to the line, and several front line fighters can learn passives to make armor even better (Barbarians early on can get a +1 to Pierce, Slash, Blunt armor iirc, and Fighters at power level 5 can reduce recovery time, making heavy armor about the same as medium armor but with all the benefits of heavy). 

 

The biggest factor, and one we can't know anything about yet, will actually be the enemies we face. Everyone is saying Light is a deadzone and that's maybe true in the beta (maybe not for every fight) but in the full game the penetration values of the enemies you face will be a massive influence on how effective armor "feels". 

 

Also, just between two medium armor types (scale and mail) there can be a huge difference depending on what you face. If you are wearing scale armor with low AR vs. Piercing and getting pummeled by Bounding Missiles cast by enemy mages, you're going to crumple fast. If you have Mail armor on though, their damage will be minimal. But you can't know until you face them a few times AND know they are coming. 

Eh.  This isn't that hard to work out.    We know the base pen of all weapons (at least for the Beta 4 versions).  It largely ranges from 6-8, with a few outliers at 9 (like arquebus, stiletto, mace and estoc).  A solid majority of weapons look to be 7 pen base.   The armor piercing weapons of PoE1 are 9.  Swords are 6 base, but multi-damage.  Warhammers are also multidamage but 8 base pen.  hunting bows are 6 pen, but hunting bows are multi damage (pierce/slash).

 

Weapons and armor are pretty identifiable on kith (humanlike) models. 

 

if you wander into a fight with armor values of 6 or less, it's pretty much useless (without a handful of class abilities), even to weapons with no special qualities (including fine).  if you're facing ranged weapons with scale mail on, they're going to pincushion you.

 

So...

Hide, AR 5, 3 vs slash.   Universally useless.   Swords and daggers start out overpenning this crap, and you take +20% recovery for wearing it.  

Leather, 5, 3 vs crush.   Again, useless.  (And still +20%)

Padded, 5, 3 vs pierce.  Again.   Still +20% 

 

breastplate:  AR 7, 5 vs slash.  +35% recovery,  bad vs... almost anything.   The lower slashing value makes it effectively useless against the few things with lower pen.

scale, AR 7, 5 vs piece, +35%.   Largely bad. Equally bad vs the low pen swords and hunting bows.

Medium is weird.  If you're a barbarian, paladin, Unbroken or Wizard, you can make it work,  If you're not, you're either DR=Pen for most weapons,  bad vs swords and most ranged weapons OR sabres, or up against an armor piercing weapon that will ignore it. 

 

Brigadine, AR9, 5 vs pierce.   Actually good against many weapons, with a big weakness (which is fine), +55% recovery.  Ouch

Plate, 9, 5 vs crush.  +55% recovery.   (anyone seeing the theme yet?  There are essentially three armor types  with variants for weaknesses.

 

Warhammers, by the way, are really good.  At the same quality level, they get past AR of -everything-.  As pierce/crush, they get to bypass both heavy armors, and they're innately superior to medium armors.  Swords (and greatswords) are fine against everything but plate.

 

Robes and clothes are AR3.  

 

Basically unless you run into dogs or something with exceptionally low pen (2-4), all light and most medium armors are useless.  Against people with weapons?  Feh.  There are a couple specific matchups where you aren't hosed if quality levels are equal.  if they've brought ranged weapons of any kind, you must have plate, as brigadines are useless against basic piercing weapons. 

 

Deflection min/maxing seems far more important than any kind of armor.  

 

From the player's side, the problems really only start when you run into critters with immunities to specific damage types.  And to a lesser extent, critters that just get better than plate mail values for reasons. 

 

 

The only way past this system is if the player gets armor quality increases before enemy weapon qualities increase, or they exclusively single class (or  multiclass with) classes/subclasses that get AR increases.

 

tl;dr :

 

If the current values stay from beta 4 into the final version, the AR/Pen system is extraordinarily bad, and should have been reverted to PoE1 like the might/strength/resolve thing

Edited May 4, 2018 by Voss

[jf8350143]

I feel like they could keep the AR system, and just add DR back.

[Riftis]

So...

Hide, AR 5, 3 vs slash.   Universally useless.   Swords and daggers start out overpenning this crap, and you take +20% recovery for wearing it.  

Leather, 5, 3 vs crush.   Again, useless.  (And still +20%)

Padded, 5, 3 vs pierce.  Again.   Still +20% 

 

breastplate:  AR 7, 5 vs slash.  +35% recovery,  bad vs... almost anything.   The lower slashing value makes it effectively useless against the few things with lower pen.

scale, AR 7, 5 vs piece, +35%.   Largely bad. Equally bad vs the low pen swords and hunting bows.

Medium is weird.  If you're a barbarian, paladin, Unbroken or Wizard, you can make it work,  If you're not, you're either DR=Pen for most weapons,  bad vs swords and most ranged weapons OR sabres, or up against an armor piercing weapon that will ignore it. 

 

Brigadine, AR9, 5 vs pierce.   Actually good against many weapons, with a big weakness (which is fine), +55% recovery.  Ouch

Plate, 9, 5 vs crush.  +55% recovery.   (anyone seeing the theme yet?  There are essentially three armor types  with variants for weaknesses.

 

Robes and clothes are AR3.  

I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but it seems to me that the purpose of armour (outside of heavy armour) is not to get your armour over their pen, but to protect yourself from over penetration. At equal power levels, there's literally nothing that can overpen medium armour. So for medium armour it sounds like you're paying 35% recovery in exchange for generally not getting overpenetrated and taking 30% more damage. 35% recovery for the ability to (probably) not take 30% more damage does sound a bit steep, but that's that. Light armour is similar, at equal power levels its 20% recovery in exahange for probably not taking overpen damage except when they're attacking with your weakness. people in cloth almost always get over penetrated, so there is a reason to wear light armour over cloth, at least on paper.    

 

I still can't say I'm the biggest fan of this system but it is starting to make more sense in my head. 

 

Edit: also on the topic of preventing overpenetration, every point of quality on armour adds +1 armour to it right? Cause that would mean medium, light, and even cloth gets a lot better at preventing overpen as they go up in tiers, since one point of armour is equivalent to a two point pen requirement to overpen. Assuming of course that weapons are of equal tier, they still need 1 extra penetration to get overpen damage per tier.  

Edited May 4, 2018 by Riftis

[hilfazer]

 

I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but it seems to me that the purpose of armour (outside of heavy armour) is not to get your armour over their pen, but to protect yourself from over penetration.

 

 

Wrong. People on this forum give overpenetration WAY more importance than it has.

Josh said overpenetration isn't a necessary part of this armor system and merely serves as a bonus for those who managed to stack so much PEN.

 

Fun fact: IRL overpenetration is bad. In PoE2 it's good

[Boeroer]

Overpenetration will lead to 30% more damage. That's not unimportant. It's debateable if it makes sense though.

 

I don't think that this forum gave it more importance than it has. What this forum does is showing where the flaws of the PEN/AR systems are (under a pile of other stuff). Some people here are analyzing this way better than Obsidian seems to have done before and after implementing it.

[Madscientist]

Thanks Voss for your analysis.

So the basic statement stays the same:

 

Go naked or stack AR like crazy.

Everything below heavy armor is useless, except maybe for preventing overpenetration.

If you go against enemies with very high penetration ( like dragons I guess ) go naked or take an armor that gives you a good special ability.

 

I think a the highest might affliction is the only thing that can lower enemy penetration ( I am not sure.)

This could be very powerful, though I guess the really hard enemies will have resistance.

 

EDIT: Its the level 2 might affliction ( dazed ) so it should work on resistent enemies if you try to stunn them.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Madscientist

[Riftis]

 

 

I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but it seems to me that the purpose of armour (outside of heavy armour) is not to get your armour over their pen, but to protect yourself from over penetration.

 

 

Wrong. 

Josh said... 

I'm just working with the numbers here. As far as I can tell there is no point to light armour and very little point to medium armour without taking overpenetration into account. Regardless of what Josh's vision was, this is the result as far as I can tell.   

[Boeroer]

Josh having a vision does not mean that he's able to implement it in a way that it works out like intended.

 

Or maybe sometimes he can't make his developers implement it in the way he envisioned it.

 

There are examples where Josh had no clue how some ideas were implemented, like bash in PoE1 or MIG multiplier in Deadfire. He doesn't seem to run some tests or math in order to confirm if his ideas make sense or not. I think he relies more on testing the stuff in game and look how it feels. Fair enough, but you can only "testfeel" so much...

Edited May 4, 2018 by Boeroer

[Voss]

 

I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but it seems to me that the purpose of armour (outside of heavy armour) is not to get your armour over their pen, but to protect yourself from over penetration.

 

Wrong. People on this forum give overpenetration WAY more importance than it has.

Josh said overpenetration isn't a necessary part of this armor system and merely serves as a bonus for those who managed to stack so much PEN.

 

Fun fact: IRL overpenetration is bad. In PoE2 it's good

Eh. Josh is largely wrong. While it isn't necessary (which is a weird stance to take - sure it isn't necessary, but it is a deliberate design choice), it can happen often, even without 'overstacking' pen.

 

A warhammer crit build will regularly over pen ALL armor, and finding ways to get reliable hit to crit conversion isn't exactly hard.

 

Now, if you do want to stack pen, keep in mind a fair few melee abilities simply grant bonus pen, and several classes can mess with AR and\or pen with minor investment. (Cipher body attunement has a hilarious effect on the AR system as do chanters with Hel-hyraf, and that comes at level 1).

 

Snapping this system in half is pretty trivial. It isn't in a good place to start with, and just using one or two innate and low level abilities allow a player to simply kick it to pieces.

 

 

The sad fact is, armor as DR has been beat to death in various incarnations and variants and alternate rules for D and D (and related games). It doesn't work. It hasn't ever worked. It can sometimes act as a wall at low level, but it quickly becomes trivial to bypass or blow through.

 

But while the PoE1 system wasn't great either, it was better than this mess. A guy with a knife or club and no bonuses at all ignores more than half the armor types. That is trivially and -obviously- wrong. Gods help you if random Joe has both.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Voss

[Madscientist]

My personal favourite was the system of Drakensang:

Armor absorbs damage ( like PoE1 ) up to the point that hits cause only 1 point damage.

The downside of armor is that it lowers your hit chance and increases your chance to get hit.

Heavier armor absorbs more damage but it hinders you more.

In PoE terms, armor gives you DR but lowers acc and deflection.

You could learn special attacks that ignore armor pertially or do extra damage at the cost of stamina.

So use an attack that causes tripple damage against enemies with low DR and faint ( +hit chance and ignoring half DR ) against enemies with high DR.

Idiot me attacked a stone golem with a tripple damage attack and did incredible 3 damage.

 

The system of PoE1 would be my second best system.

 

The system of DnD 2nd and 3rd edition ( IE games and NWN 1+2 ) make no sense to me.

A person in full plate armor can dodge attacks easier than a naked person, but when they get hit they take the same damage.

 

All systems above have the advantage that getting a better armor always gives you a better protection.

The system of PoE2 is terrible.

Either be naked or stack AR as much as possible. Most things in between make you slower but you do not take less damage.

As an attacker, stack penetration and reduce enemy AR and you overpenetrate all the time ( until they add some dragons with super high AR, where it will be hard to do any damage at all. Stacking bleeding effects might be useful there.)

[hilfazer]

 

The sad fact is, armor as DR has been beat to death in various incarnations and variants and alternate rules for D and D (and related games). It doesn't work. It hasn't ever worked. It can sometimes act as a wall at low level, but it quickly becomes trivial to bypass or blow through.

 

 

It works in Starcraft.

Also in The Dark Eye, Age of Decadence and In Legends of Eisenwald.

 

It won't become trivial to bypass if it's properly designed. Obsidian failed terribly with DR in PoE1, they didn't even try. Lvl7 spell gave same amount of DR as lvl2 spell...