Proposed armor solution

Problem: Armor is in a weird place. It does not fit the fantasy and underperforms ES and evasion (which also could use a fix).

Proposed solution: Have additional layers of defenses built into the armor that scale up with more armor or unlock at certain armor thresholds. Numbers can be varied, but I wanted to put the concept out there.

At any level - current formula - works at start of the campaign, allows for damage mitigation from multiple low hits, benefits those who choose to get a little bit of armor.

At 5k - unlock % physical damage reduction equal to 1% per 1000 - so at 5k it will be 5% and at 30k it will be 30%.

At 10k - unlock % elemental resists at 1% per 1000 - so at 10k it will be 10% and at 30k it will be 30%.

At 15k - unlock armor break resist - armor break can only break up to 50% of armor.

At 20k - unlock % max elemental resist at 1% per 4000 so at 20k it will be 5%.

At 30k - unlock % global damage reduction when in close proximity - benefiting melee classes who choose to invest in armor.

At 40k - unlock full armor break resist - armor cannot be broken.

This way getting more armor will feel impactful and there will be more reasons to stack and chase the next level.

monsters breaking your armor definitely needs to be removed. no such mechanic exists for evasion/ energy shield users nor should it. would be cool if armor gave inherent stun/ daze/ pin immunity. other than that yes armor need buff, or make life overflow possible. there is currently a chest piece that gives overflow called couture something, but it only has 300 armor and 100 energy shield. if this was buffed maybe life based characters would be in a better place, but builds relying on items to be viable isn't a great solution

I don't specifically like tieing armor buffs to the amount of armor you have but to types and quality of armour pieces that you already have.

As for buffs, if, for example, ES & Evasion are kept roughly the same and armour is buffed then I'd prefer a different way to achieve that effect:

Pure armour pieces should have one or more implicit modifiers that improve the base functionality. The amount of those modifiers would depend on the type of armor as well as it's tier. The normal rusted cuirass would be the low armor on the totem pole while the various "Expert" armours would be at the high end of those implicits.

One or more of the following on ALL pure armor pieces may suffice:

1. Additional % physical damage reduction

2. Flat physical damage reduction [similar to Guard per hit or Ward]

3. +Flat or +% increased life

4. Delayed damage: Some percentage of incoming damage taken against life [post mitigation] is converted to a DoT over 8 seconds.

5. % Chance to avoid stun / daze / hinder / maim / whatever



In addition to the above other things that may help are:

1. Create a passive skill tree node so that [1/4?] armor protects against Elemental and Chaos hits [instead of just Fire]

2. Update the armor formula so it provides a "floor" in protection against large hits. Perhaps something like one half or 1/3 of the displayed value shown would be the floor / minimum effectiveness.

3. Change Scavenged Armor (?) so that it ALSO gives "% more armor" at all times.

4. An "unbreakable" keystone on the passive tree. Something akin to "Your armor can not be broken or overwhelmed ... you cannot evade hits"

1. Easiest - Armor is just % dmg reduction
Armor takes away a % of dmg not matter how high is the dmg it's allways a %.
From what I understand now it deosn't work like that and higher dmg isn't reduced the same way (it works worse for high dmg for some reason).

2. Add to what is now - % dmg reduction
Keep the formula that is now but add %dmg reduction.
It will be just X% per 1 armor (it can be 0,001 or whatever is right).

Doing any weird formulas or benchnmarks that at X armor something starts, complicates things more and is unncecesary.

Implicits are actually a good idea and would diversify itemization more.

My thought about armor tiers was to reward armor stacking somehow. With the current formula it leads to diminishing returns and a contrast to ES. With tiers (or inherent scaling) it would feel rewarding to amass more and more armor.

Agree with the extra passive nodes/keystones. The unbreakable would be a must. That's why I initially thought to tie it to armor directly but it could live on the passive tree just the same.

The problem is more complicated than just armor...

In PoE we have so much unpredictability in damage and part of the "rush" and enjoyment of the game comes from this tension.

However, if you start giving too much passive DMG reduction to the player the game then becomes stale.

That's the problem with high resistance cap too, once you cap them you don't fear fire/ice/lightning skills and the game becomes too easy.

1 - The resistance cap needs to be lower, period. like 60% and max 70% if you invest into increasing the cap.

2 - Armor needs to protect better against Physical

BUT

3 - Most powerful Mob/Boss attacks need to have some ammount of Armor/Ele Pen. so they don't become irrelevant once you get enought resistances.

AND

4 - Introduce active tanking skills to the game, that give you more defensive bonuses for blocking/activating them

And yeah... ES doesn't need to be that strong either

"

Bakubylozajete#1182 wrote:

1. Easiest - Armor is just % dmg reduction
Armor takes away a % of dmg not matter how high is the dmg it's allways a %.
From what I understand now it deosn't work like that and higher dmg isn't reduced the same way (it works worse for high dmg for some reason).

2. Add to what is now - % dmg reduction
Keep the formula that is now but add %dmg reduction.
It will be just X% per 1 armor (it can be 0,001 or whatever is right).

Doing any weird formulas or benchnmarks that at X armor something starts, complicates things more and is unncecesary.

While PoE offers an estimated percentage, you are correct that it is not applyed that way in the games math.

Short version of it is that your armor subtracts from each hit (up to a limit). If you have 500 Armor, you take 500 less Damage from hits. So it becomes easy to see this way why 2,500 Armor isn't that useful against a hit that deals 7,500 Damage. You're still taking 5,000 Damage, enough to kill most characters. Even at 5,000 Armor, you'd take 2,500 Damage, still lethal for a lot of characters.

It's nice to see a thread where all of the posts are constructive and bring something unique to the table.

As another posted we need to make sure that we don't get carried and make the game too easy.

To me it's unclear exactly what vision GGG really has for the game and before we buff armor too much we need to make sure that "tankiness" doesn't trivialize the game even more than the "blow the boss up in 5 second" meta that seems to be forming.


To bring some spice to the equation some things that might be nice to see are:

-- Helms providing stun, ailment, etc. resistance [at least stun]

-- Boots providing maim, hinder, slow-effect, avoidance

-- Shields with +% PDR

-- Body Armour with +% life

-- Gloves with +% block chance

Feel free to go wild with combinations ...

"

KingAlamar#4071 wrote:

It's nice to see a thread where all of the posts are constructive and bring something unique to the table.

As another posted we need to make sure that we don't get carried and make the game too easy.

To me it's unclear exactly what vision GGG really has for the game and before we buff armor too much we need to make sure that "tankiness" doesn't trivialize the game even more than the "blow the boss up in 5 second" meta that seems to be forming.


To bring some spice to the equation some things that might be nice to see are:

-- Helms providing stun, ailment, etc. resistance [at least stun]

-- Boots providing maim, hinder, slow-effect, avoidance

-- Shields with +% PDR

-- Body Armour with +% life

-- Gloves with +% block chance

Feel free to go wild with combinations ...

Seems to me that they want a more skill based gameplay than just relying on pure stats.

Too much passive tankiness defeats this purpose so it needs to be rewarding mechanically.

As a tank I don't want to dodge every boss/dangerous attack I want to block it(at the right time) and be rewarded for it.

Some attacks shouldn't be blockable but that's part of mastering the game, knowing your enemies.

Agree. Always best to work a problem rather than just posting criticism.

Good points on the potential of trivialization of difficulty. May be just an issue of numbers (whether on implicits or with armor tiers). ES is in that state now - get lots of it, mitigate most (or all) form of damage, don't worry.

The active damage avoidance through block may not be available to everyone - 2 handers or dual wielders. And I feel the active block option is in a good place. Block most but not all. Still have to position or dodge roll.

The armor fantasy, however, does conjure images of a heavy iron clad warrior taking blows and not being phased. Slow, lumbering, unrelenting. Working up to 30k armor will be hard and will sacrifice damage, so it should feel impactful. Can take large or lots of hits and not get crushed right away. Would prepare one well for high tier maps.