What if the Armor was Non-Newtonian?

Well, you already know that the armor in the game is not very effective. It protects you from blows that are not important, but it doesn't protect you from the ones that really matter.

Reason:
Formula for reducing armor. Because of this, the greater the damage, the less important the armor.

Subject of the offer:
What if we change the formula? What if the armor would work better the more damage the enemy deals?

For example, if you have 100 armor, you could reduce 100 damage to 50, and 1000 damage to 400.

Justification:
Crowd damage reduction already works with evasion. At the same time, evasion gives you an acceptable chance to survive the boss's hit. In this regard, the armor in its current form is not fundamentally different, but it does the same job but worse. Why do we need a bad employee?

What if you change the principle of operation so that the tank can have more effective health against bosses and big damage? He will finally begin to fulfill his role in the groups. Given that the armor-carriers, the warriors, are damn slow in hitting and moving, then having a higher effective health at this particular moment would be great.

The armor will still work against small blows, but you will no longer be able to ignore all the small blows at all.

I'm not a mathematician, and couldn't quickly find the appropriate formula. But a friend suggested to me that maybe the viscosity formula of a Non-Newtonian fluid can help. A non-Newtonian fluid becomes harder if it is hited harder.

I suggest that we discuss the conceptual feasibility of this approach. And also maybe someone can deduce a possible formula if the idea seems interesting?

PS
I still think that wherever there is armor, additional health should be built in.

Bump

The topic may still be relevant in terms of increasing the competitiveness of Armor.

- Introduce a new physical resistance stat, interacting with physical damage same way as elemental resistance with elemental damage.

- Physical resistance can only be increased by armor stat with diminishing returns based on player level (and not affected by +x% to all resistances mod). i.e. as you level up, you need more and more armor stat to keep same percentage of physical resistance.

- Passive notables and item modifiers related to old armor formula can instead provide things like +1% to max physical resistance or %increased armor effectiveness (better conversion curve with level).

In the past GGG reworked curse resistance on unique mobs in poe1 stating "curses are least efficient when they matter most, this is bad". But they keep doing same thing with armor. Another fine poe design, as in "who cares why it works this way" :shrug:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

- Introduce a new physical resistance stat, interacting with physical damage same way as elemental resistance with elemental damage.

You list things that are literally already in the game.

IMHO, people overcomplicate things. And Armour is fine. Yeah, it is!

In this game, almost nothing hits with more than 4k physical dmg in this game, so a reachable amount of armour rating on endgame, lets say 15k, would reduce around 27% dmg from a 4k physical hit, which is a lot. In that example, it would mean 39% more eHP against pure physical dmg and that more than enough.

The main problems aren't about armour, but about:

1) Stacking Life
Currently it is a lot easier to stack ES than Life, that is why it feels unbalanced.

2) Elemental/chaos dmgs
They are a lot more dangerous than physical. And armour is useless against that, while ES (and even evasion somehow) work better against that. Even the high-physical-hit monsters are really dangerous only when they have some additional elemental mod.

Even the passive node that applies armour to fire dmg is worthless as it makes armour apply before dmg reduction from fire resist, so armour effectiveness is a lot reduced in this case.

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

- Introduce a new physical resistance stat, interacting with physical damage same way as elemental resistance with elemental damage.

You list things that are literally already in the game.

Point was, remove imbalanced dependence of armor damage reduction from incoming damage, this is one of factors creating notorious "full hp or dead" gameplay. 99% of the time armor stacker is nearly immune to common mobs physical attacks and can outheal them easily. Then 1 random rare or boss rolls lucky crit and you are instantly dead.

Incoming dps level should be consistent over time, so players can anticipate it and link with amount of mobs on screen. And then develop manual combat skills, how can GGG not understand it. Ideally player's health meter should oscillate as much as possible during combat, not stuck at one of 2 discrete states: full or empty.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

1) Stacking Life
Currently it is a lot easier to stack ES than Life, that is why it feels unbalanced.

Yes, I constantly suggest this everywhere as a mandatory point. But the armor also deserves a change. As I described at the beginning, armor does the same job as evasion, but worse.

The suggested option where you have more eHP against bosses can make a difference. A slow warrior will have the right to make mistakes.

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

- Introduce a new physical resistance stat, interacting with physical damage same way as elemental resistance with elemental damage.

You list things that are literally already in the game.

Point was, remove imbalanced dependence of armor damage reduction from incoming damage, this is one of factors creating notorious "full hp or dead" gameplay. 99% of the time armor stacker is nearly immune to common mobs physical attacks and can outheal them easily. Then 1 random rare or boss rolls lucky crit and you are instantly dead.

Incoming dps level should be consistent over time, so players can anticipate it and link with amount of mobs on screen. And then develop manual combat skills, how can GGG not understand it. Ideally player's health meter should oscillate as much as possible during combat, not stuck at one of 2 discrete states: full or empty.

This! This right here! wading thru hordes with nary a scratch only to go from 99 to 0 in one hit is not difficulty and it teaches NOTHING. It is a sign of a dysfunctional system and it needs to be fixed.

There is no improvement without a feedback system.

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

As I described at the beginning, armor does the same job as evasion, but worse.

The main difference is about consistency. What you said just apply for multiple small hits, but not against big hits.

Armour will always apply, while evasion doesn't. You can use it consistently to facetank pure physical damage bosses, like Trialmaster, while pure evasion chars would have trouble to do the same. Specially when it requires Acrobatics for that to apply on most boss moves. That is so true that it is a recommended trick for Invokers to respec an Ascendancy point in order to pick "... protect me from harm" before Trialmaster.

I know that you might think that "armour effectiveness is low against big hits", but as I said previously, it is not that bad. A char that gets a reachable amount of armour rating on endgame might have 37% more eHP against the hardest physical slams currently in the game. That is a lot. You cannot do it consistently with evasion. Evasion is great when combined with ES, and this game offers a lot of oportunity for that. But pure evasion is not that great currently.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

I know that you might think that "armour effectiveness is low against big hits", but as I said previously, it is not that bad.

I had over 20k armor, Brass Dome, additional damage reduction, 2,500 HP (couldn't get more yet). This is not enough.

I've now taken Cloak of Flame, raised my fire resistance to 82%, and added an additional 20% damage reduction. And it's much better. And I don't have any armor (5k doesn't count), even though I still catch all the punches with my face. (and I don't have a penalty on the speed of movement).

So yes, the armor is that bad. It doesn't help at all on bosses. With evasion, you at least have a chance. Here, the simple math says, " No, my friend, you don't have enough HP."