Armour Weight Class Balance

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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Does anyone else feel that the stamina/protection balance of armour class is off?

Ill preface this now; Im mostly a PvE player, but I loved encounters on PvE-C back when. Still, Im curious as to how everyone else sees it.

(Just popped into my head, I would love it if we could take only unequipped items off of player bodies. Theres still risk/reward for PvP but its a bit more forgiving on the loser. Goes without saying you’d still have to retrieve your gear off your body)

Now then, my thoughts on weight classes;

  • Light
    Pretty much perfect. My only problem stems from how armour kits are a flat increase, providing a huge benefit to the already best balanced class, making it the best.

(due to how armour rating to % reduction scales, light gets a much higher mitigation bonus)

  • Medium
    Isnt far off being perfect IMO. Part of this stems from how the light class can get very close in terms of mitigation while maintaining its stam regen advantage and roll cost.

  • Heavy
    Feels the worst by a fair margin. You get really great damage mitigation, but at the cost of ass stam regen and roll cost.

Due to this, practical fighting in heavy is really slow, due to stamina limitations. One roll takes almost 1/4 of your stam at middle levels of grit. That stam then takes about 4-5 seconds to return if you stay disengaged. Should you press the opening you might have made, you’ll stay down on stamina until you get the chance to breathe. This leads to frequent disengage’s and a slower fight.

It could be argued heavy should face tank, but combo stun lock is still deadly and damage not taken still beats damage mitigated.

Now for how Id address this.
Firstly would be changing the master level armour plating kits. Id place a smaller flat bonus, like 5-10 rather than 25, then Id add a % bonus of what the base armour was. I cant suggest a % though, it’d take some maths to find a balanced point.

Thats light sorted.

Medium armour I would change the roll cost to that of current light armour.

Heavy I would change the regen and roll cost to current medium values, then Id slightly shorten the roll distance and change it to the ye old hop dodge we used to have (maintaining current I-frames tho).

P.S I really loved that little hop animation, despite how terrible it was in gameplay.

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Stamina regen was equal to each set so we had huge complaints here about the “mistake” of the company to have heavy as best choice.
I play heavy, but really heavy more than 1300 because of my console. I suffer rendering issues and invisible mobs and npcs, so really heavy is a good protection against this. However until I get there I use the light encumbrance, because as you said your agility in fight is momentum, you are swift and effective. Yet I avoid a lot of fights with light armors and sometimes I flee as well. With 1300+ armor you don’t need to flee either worry, yet you need strength perks too so you’ll be more efficient than your thrall. A tank that damages a lot is always a good choice :wink:.
I personally don’t care if this is going to be changed, but expect 10 posts per day saying that Funcom ruin light and medium armors :rofl::rofl::rofl:.

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Personally i think all armors are a bit more acceptable now than in the past. I still run heavy in pvp, despite stamina regen, me and my clan all do actually and we dont lose, then again fight closer together and usually we dont need the stamina for running, it may be more out tactics in group v group. Either way im happy with armor as it is, the reason heavy became meta for a wile is it had very few drawbacks, they say its not meta now but after fighting guys in light armor and not dying i think its in a good place

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I have already said this here on the forums and I will say it again:

Light armor should peak out at 40% damage reduction (DR)

Medium at 60%

and heavy at 80%+

Because now we have 69% DR in SL light + Dragonhide + Bulked + 20 Agi
Medium armor is around 76%
And heavy is 82%

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Gonna use this idea in my pvp mods.

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this is the right answer =)

I’d just change it to
Light = around 50%
Medium 65%
Heavy 80%

Actually there’s no point on wearing anything besides light armor.
65% - 69% dmg reduction, 6 dodge rolls, best stamina regen.

Heavy = 80% dmg reduction, 4 dodge rolls, worst stamina regen.
You are going to be killed with the same amount of blows on both armors, but light give you other advantages.

I hope they change it in 3.0

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I’ve done some tests just now, but Im about to start work. Ill update this post in later when Im back.

I went and took some rough times for regen and roll cost over the weight classes.

All this was with 20 agility & 0 grit (100 stam), done with green encumberance, testing basic crafted epic armour modded with Bulked Plating.

Light:

  • 60% Damage Resistance
  • 3.5s (5s including regen delay) for 0 to 100 stamina
  • 19 Stamina Roll cost

Medium:

  • 73%
  • 6s (7.5s)
  • 22

Heavy:

  • 83%
  • 7.5s (9s)
  • 26
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Looking at those numbers, I’d drop medium regen to 4.5s and heavy to 5.5s. Up roll cost of medium to 24, heavy to 28.

From here, I think we should add some other buffs and debuffs as the armour weight increases.

Some ideas:

  • Higher Sprinting Cost for Medium, even more for Heavy
  • Lower Block cost for Medium, even less for heavy
  • Quicker stagger recovery for Medium, faster still for Heavy. (Including block Stagger)

What are peoples thoughts?

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Not really, no.

Could it stand to be tweaked a bit? I dunno I would have to play it after the tweak to know. It’s pretty good now tho. I’m not having any problems. I use all and also a mix of Medium, light, and heavy. Seems fine. Of course each needs slightly or radically different attribute settings - which BTW, end up addressing pretty much all of your ideas and concerns.

I’m prolly wrong but this seems like one of those armchair threads that was started out of boredom more than anything else. ~=shrug=~

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I think armour right now is just a flip of the meta before. Heavy you could fight in back then but couldnt run away effectively due to the hop dodge and climbing cost. Light it was very easy to escape in, due to its massive roll distance, it was dangerous to fight in though.

As for your clan tactic of group fighting in heavy, it makes sense. You guys can cover each other while you recover stam. You mightnt even need to roll out of combos due to the pressure their presence has.

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For all I know I could just suck and be playing the armour class wrong, it has been ages since I did PvP so Ill admit I cant speak well for that side.

Combat in general is kinda based around rolling. That itself isnt a bad thing, but consider that medium and heavy make rolling significantly worse on two fronts. Rolls take a big chunk of stam, and a little more at medium and heavy, which would be manageable if the regen penalty wasnt so strong.

Stamina is your ability to attack and defend, so less stam hurts combat a lot.

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I highly doubt a competent full heavy team wins vs a competent full light team.

With competent I mean players who hit 95% of their spear attacks.

Once one of your team gets to 50% HP he is the target. Focus on him will be so intense, that healing will be impossible. You NEED to dodge roll after taking aloe potions if you manage to get through the animation without interruption. Heavy armor roll will always lead to someone hitting you to cancel your healing effect.

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Unless you are carrying more than a light load. That is why I do medium because it’s more stable in regen time between load sizes.

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Yes and this is why light armor should barely protect you. Not the 70% damage reduction we have now. Light armor should be a playstyle, not a META.

In heavy you should be able to tank some hits before being forced to dodge roll.

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Off topic a bit, sorry @tobbiusness…
I really enjoy the redeemed set on unnamed city. It is for me the best balanced pve place of all the map and from Siptah too. No surprisingly great hits and opponents that gives you satisfaction to fight them with each set. If you go light you enjoy your freedom, if you go medium again the balance is very good. Heavy however is really tanky there, it gives you great confidence and multiple times you prefer to take hits than risk to stay without stamina. I totally agree that the game must invest more to these roles, the assassin, the fighter and the tank even in pvp. Most of the times the tank is the bearer now in pvp which is a bit “off satisfy”. I want to see the new attributes how they will evolute in pvp. In pve you always “find the way” faster. In pve the soonest you decide to “leave” your old playstyle, the best it gets. In pvp, this thing was always more complicated, because your skills was “walking” with your playstyle.

Edit. I like your pvp videos more :grin:.

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When you all are running your numbers, understand that 80% DR takes 1/3rd the damage that 70% takes (20 per 100 damage instead of 30), and half the damage that 60% takes (20 instead of 40). Also understand that the damage reduction is equal to Armor / (Armor + 250).

Not saying anyone is wrong or right thusfar, just pointing out some math. This helps when determining adequate and/or desired Time to Kill (TTK) values.

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Please funcom,
Read this topic. Lol

Light= 250 armor max = 50% dmg reduction
6 rolls, best stamina regen
Medium=500 armor max= 66% dmg reduction
5 rolls, average stamina regen
Heavy=1000 armor max = 80% dmg reduction.
4 rolls, lowest stamina regen.

Or maybe you could bring back the resistance armor attribute (which prevented knockbacks), so heavy armors have some advantage, because currently, with light armors giving around 500-600 armor (66%-70% reduction), heavy armor is far inferior on pvp and even pve than light.

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