What if the Armor was Non-Newtonian?

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

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."

Changing Brass Dome to Cloak of Flame in this case doesn't really change much.

With 20k armour, a 2.5k life char can survive a 3.811 physical dmg hit. That is ~3.8 eHP.

Calc: dr = a/(a+10*d)
a = 20k armour
d = 3811 raw dmg

result -> dr = 34.4%
hit after reduction = 2499.35

With Cloak of Flame plus 82% resist, ignoring armour rating and ignite, your damage reduction would be:

dr = 0.4*0.82 = 32.8%

Which is slightly less than what the reduction on the previous situation. You would survive a 3.720 physical dmg hit with that.

I don't know where that "20% additional reduction" you mentioned come from. 20% is a lot, but I cant get it into the calculation without knowing its source. That might be why it feels "much better". Without that, number are almost the same for big hits, and armour would work better for small hits.

Regardless, you probably would be a lot better with a rare armour with around 1.2k armour and T1 life prefixe and some strength. It would give you about 400 extra life, on a Titan, at least.

In your case, it would be 2.9k life and about 15k armour rating. With that, you would survive a 3.990 physical dmg hit and be more tanky against elemental dmg.

Btw, my titan had 4.879 life, 9370 armour rating plus flat 7% physical dmg reduction from shield. I did every endgame boss with it, except Arbiter. It actually handled well endgame content on SSFHC but finally got one shot by a rare mob with added elemental dmg. I have no idea how you can manage elemental dmg on endgame content with only 2.5k life. I suggest you stack some STR and grab some life soulcores. That is the way people are stacking life. As I said previously, the main problem is life, not armour in itself.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Changing Brass Dome to Cloak of Flame in this case doesn't really change much.

From what your explained, it's not that CoF is good but BD is not good (stacking armour does not work well by itself).
If so, that is the main point in the context of original post.

What about the higher the armor value, the more unlucky the hits ? :D
(My ghost is whispering that GGG separated the main part of armour's functionality to make an unique stats.)

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finisterre#5659 wrote:

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Changing Brass Dome to Cloak of Flame in this case doesn't really change much.

From what your explained, it's not that CoF is good but BD is not good (stacking armour does not work well by itself).
If so, that is the main point in the context of original post.

What about the higher the armor value, the more unlucky the hits ? :D
(My ghost is whispering that GGG separated the main part of armour's functionality to make an unique stats.)

Armour builds aren't that good currently, but what I'm trying to say is that the problem is not related to how damage reduction is computed, but actually about other aspects.

Armour (and Evasion too) doesn't work alone, differently than how ES works. It is just a damage reduction mechanic. That means that even if you can reach cap (90% DR), it would be worthless if you don't scale Life properly.

When you calculate the actual numbers, you see that armour is still effective enough against big hits. Obviously it is more effective against small hits, but an acceptable amount of Armour Rating (15K, for example) still can work like a 27% DR against the biggest physical hits currently in this game, and that is a fine number.

But again, all that doesn't really matter if you don't grab a good amount of life to combine with it. That is true for evasion as well, and that is why pure evasion builds aren't good either. Because you cannot scale life properly in this game for those to work.

ES is different. It gives you directly flat eHP. It doesn't need to combo with life as Armour or Evasion do.

Another problem with Armour is that it doesn't work with elemental dmg. GGG tried to solve it adding Max Resist nodes on skill tree around warrior region and a mechanic that allows armour to apply on fire dmg (which doesn't work well currently). But again, those are just damage reduction and won't work well if they don't fix how Life scales.

With all respect to OP, those kind of posts proposing new ways to calculate how armour applies don't really address the main problem. They can buff Armour effectiveness as much as they want, but it won't solve anything if they don't buff life scalling.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

With all respect to OP, those kind of posts proposing new ways to calculate how armour applies don't really address the main problem.

It might sound "problem avoiding" rather than "problem solving" to you and I understand how you see the situation. You could simply say "it's working as intended". We know that.

"stack armour then don't stack armour" is rather "double binding" (hierarchical and conflicting designations) than self-evidential. When we say "armour does work", it doesn't necessarily mean "at least".

We want to say "armour is good".

Does that make sense to you or not at all ?

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They can buff Armour effectiveness as much as they want, but it won't solve anything if they don't buff life scalling.

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It actually handled well endgame content on SSFHC but finally got one shot by a rare mob with added elemental dmg.

It's rather about monster's damage multiplier. "stacking life" is not ignored in this conversation in the first place. It's not "armour or life" but "armour and life". We know that :)

Edit
Here is another context from me. I want to enjoy the damage :P

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Btw, my titan had 4.879 life,

Which is more than twice as much as I have, but it doesn't matter. I don't see any point in going into the numbers, especially since I haven't logged in to the game in over two weeks. I know how to use Excel, and calculations that take into account all the factors, not just those mentioned (which was indicated not for building a build, but to show the usual average situation) showed a significant bonus, which I felt in practice.

But that's not the point at all.

You can't deny the many negative reviews. There are too many of them. There is a reason for them. This reason can also be traced to the fact that I abandoned the armor, imitating its effect with the help of Cloak of Flame, so even a fake works better than the original. And I still have the resources to invest in damage.

This is the reason for the theme. The fact that the armor is bad. You can of course just change the factor of 10 in the denominator, for example, to 8 or even 5, but this will not change the concept, which in its actual effect (ignoring crowds of small threats) coincides with Evasion.

So I suggest we discuss this change. And at the same time as improving the armor, change the concept. The warrior will feel better than others in boss fights, or at least feel better than now.

P.S. And again. I keep reminding that in addition to all these interesting changes, the most important thing is to simply give the warrior more HP, stupidly through the built-in bonus in equipment. So you and I agree on that.

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Btw, my titan had 4.879 life,

This is the reason for the theme. The fact that the armor is bad. You can of course just change the factor of 10 in the denominator, for example, to 8 or even 5, but this will not change the concept, which in its actual effect (ignoring crowds of small threats) coincides with Evasion.

Apparently in POE1 this denominator is 5. It is hard to fathom why they made armor so much worse in POE2. I laugh when I go back and watch old videos where GGG said that melee was going to be good in POE2, maybe too good they remarked.

They need to make the denominator 5 and give a little bit more ways for a warrior to push their Life. Getting 5k life is pretty hard currently. Compared to 5k mana or ES which is very ease. They could lock the life behind ascension or even just make pure armor equipment roll higher life to lock it behind strength. Something to make it a warrior thing so warriors were clearly the highest life characters in the game.

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Radonegsky#6656 wrote:

You can't deny the many negative reviews. There are too many of them. There is a reason for them. This reason can also be traced to the fact that I abandoned the armor, imitating its effect with the help of Cloak of Flame, so even a fake works better than the original. And I still have the resources to invest in damage.

I mean, I just proved with simple math that your change to Cloak of Flame isn't any better. And most of the "negative reviews" about armour also aren't based on number, but around "feelings". Instead I showed that the effectiveness is not that bad even on the worst situation the game currently has. But sure, believe in what you want.

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FanaticGuru#2780 wrote:

Apparently in POE1 this denominator is 5. It is hard to fathom why they made armor so much worse in POE2. I laugh when I go back and watch old videos where GGG said that melee was going to be good in POE2, maybe too good they remarked.

They need to make the denominator 5 and give a little bit more ways for a warrior to push their Life. Getting 5k life is pretty hard currently. Compared to 5k mana or ES which is very ease. They could lock the life behind ascension or even just make pure armor equipment roll higher life to lock it behind strength. Something to make it a warrior thing so warriors were clearly the highest life characters in the game.

I used to defend that change, and actually I wouldn't mind if they do it, but in the end I realized that poe1 has bigger spikes of physical dmg than poe2, so makes sense to have a lower multiplier there in order to increase effectiveness. As I said, with around 5k life and 15k armour you can tank most physical slam in this game. You cannot do the same on poe1.

Yeah, 5k is a hard thing to achieve currently and GGG shouldn't force player to go the STR stack strategy in order to reach that, specially when there are pure evasion builds (DEX). But once you get there, the current armour effectiveness makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the spikes of elemental dmg, that is why I defend a huge buff on life. With Less than 4.5k or 5k it is not really safe on endgame maps even with 80% max resist.

P.S.: I know that you can reach crazy amount of life with Mahuxotl's Machination, Morior Invictus and other OP uniques, but I don't think that it is a good standard for this discussion as general builds shouldn't depend on specific uniques to work well. Specially those restrict drops.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Yeah, 5k is a hard thing to achieve currently and GGG shouldn't force player to go the STR stack strategy in order to reach that, specially when there are pure evasion builds (DEX). But once you get there, the current armour effectiveness makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the spikes of elemental dmg, that is why I defend a huge buff on life. With Less than 4.5k or 5k it is not really safe on endgame maps even with 80% max resist.

P.S.: I know that you can reach crazy amount of life with Mahuxotl's Machination, Morior Invictus and other OP uniques, but I don't think that it is a good standard for this discussion as general builds shouldn't depend on specific uniques to work well. Specially those restrict drops.

I have Morior Invictus which does not give me crazy amounts of life. It is 3 socket and life. Admittedly I don't have all the best other life gear to go with it but I am equipped pretty good.

I have 4.8k life, 75% block, 79% elementals, 75% chaos, 8% physical reduction, and I still get one shotted on a regular basis. I never feel as safe as my caster with ES and Grim Feast. Part of that is ES plus Grim Feast is too good buy most of it is that 4.8k is just not enough life to feel safe regardless of lots of mitigation.

I am hopefully that 0.2.0 provides some help because even though my warrior is my weakest character, I actually like the play style the most because I am using multiple skills, positioning, and actual playing the character instead of just spamming one skill mindlessly.

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FanaticGuru#2780 wrote:

I have Morior Invictus which does not give me crazy amounts of life. It is 3 socket and life. Admittedly I don't have all the best other life gear to go with it but I am equipped pretty good.

Sure, "crazy amount" might be an exaggerated term, but you got what I meant. A 4 sockets with life mod would give about 50% more life than a t1 life + STR rare body armour. Obviously the exact number depends on how it fits on the specific build.

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FanaticGuru#2780 wrote:

I have 4.8k life, 75% block, 79% elementals, 75% chaos, 8% physical reduction, and I still get one shotted on a regular basis. I never feel as safe as my caster with ES and Grim Feast. Part of that is ES plus Grim Feast is too good buy most of it is that 4.8k is just not enough life to feel safe regardless of lots of mitigation.

Probably mostly by elemental dmg. Don't know your armour rating though. I supposed that "8% physical reduction" is an additional reduction, right?

Anyway, I'm not claiming that it is 100% safe for mindless mapping like some ES builds, but it would be a fair amount for the balancing team in my opinion. If you look at HC ladder, specially on SSFHC, where we don't have easy access to OP gear, you will see a lot of Titan players pushing over 90 with less than 4k or 5k life and no ES. So it is hard to say that this amount wouldn't be good enough as a target for the balancing team.

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DEvil27#6183 wrote:

Anyway, I'm not claiming that it is 100% safe for mindless mapping like some ES builds, but it would be a fair amount for the balancing team in my opinion. If you look at HC ladder, specially on SSFHC, where we don't have easy access to OP gear, you will see a lot of Titan players pushing over 90 with less than 4k or 5k life and no ES. So it is hard to say that this amount wouldn't be good enough as a target for the balancing team.

About another 1k life would probably make a warrior feel pretty good and about right.

I believe the warrior is much closer to what GGG was hoping for all classes' offense vs defense. The problem is just relative to every other class, warrior is weaker on both defense and offense.  I can accept the warrior being weaker on offense if they were stronger than most class on defense.

I hate to use the 'N' word but I believe other classes should be nerfed down about half the gap and warriors should be buffed up about half the gap to have all classes relatively the same as far as defensive and offensive abilities.

Every class top build uses ES and Grim Feast except for spark mage MOM mana builds. ES + Grim Feast and MOM are the only viable defenses currently. Warriors are not the least played class because of play style. It is because warriors are so relatively weak.