Armour should scale on enemy strength instead of hit damage.

Armour is so damn inconsistent in this game due to it scaling on enemies' hit damage instead of a more controlled variable. It's so weird that against the same enemy you can mitigate between 1-90% of their damage depending on the hit size. The mechanic is a scaling mess.

Evasion doesn't have this problem since it is factored against an enemies accuracy rating which is a consistent and controlled variable.

I'm pretty sure enemies already have a 'base damage' stat built in that scales on level, mob type, rarity etc. so it would make more sense for armour to scale against something like that. If that were the case some numbers would have to be changed like 'armour applies to ele damage percentages' and the armour formula could get adjusted slightly overall, but it would simplify the mechanic and make it less of a balancing issue in the long run.

They made Armor that way because it's more realistic. It is a more realistic representation of how physic works in real life yes, but this is also a videogame and people prefer to have a standard % damage reduction that stay the same whatever the size of the hit.

But it feels so terrible when you reach 90% (been there) and you get one shot by random attacks as Armor does phys protection, even with the "applies to elemental" it doesn't really do much.

So you're forced to play hybrid

It's poor design. Diablo 2 didn't have an armor cap so they made one up. The problems with using scaling like that shows more with a higher cap apposed to resists at 75% though.

For instance 89% DR takes 10% more damage than 90% DR. Apposed to 4% more damage for 74% Vs 75%. It gets even messier past 90% which is why it's hard capped.

The trick is to simply work with smaller and more controlled numbers. 20-55% DR. This includes resists. In fact Armor used to be both Evasion and DR in older RPGs. Armor in PoE could simply be called "Physical Resist". If you keep that in mind, you should be able to see the problem.

The Big Hit Vs Little Hit interaction is pointless. It can be simplified through penetrate % DR on lower numbers. Fact is you don't stop at 90% Armor DR. You keep going because the reduction is numerical not % based. They use the old (Armor * Armor / Armor + Number) method. They just added Hit Damage into the calculation which doesn't solve the flaw of that system.

Using smaller numbers is always more healthy and easier to maintain over time.

I think part of the problem is how obscure the damage of incoming physical hits feels.

elemental/chaos can be mathed out pretty easily, Lose 1k life from fire with 75% res means incoming hit was 4k.

I can't do that for physical damage without pulling out a graph/chart.

Would be nice to have some sort of traps that did set amounts of physical damage to gauge our defenses. Like a range of objects that can fall on top of us.