Heavy Armor vs 100 % Penetration

I had a thought the other day regarding damage reduction, heavy armors and how 100% penetration seems to make it superfluous in most instances.

My “unrefined” idea is this and also feel free to make it better, provide input and reasonings for why, why not.

Give heavy armor an “untouchable” % of damage reduction that cannot be removed by 100% penetration.

The % can be determined by how many pieces of heavy armor you are wearing.
This would limit how much 100% penetration affects heavy armor, making it more feasible to use.

Even if each piece had a range 5% or 8%. This would give something between 25% or 40% reduction on armor penetration from weapons if wearing full heavy set.

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That’s a pretty good idea, I think. A major problem with heavy armor at the moment is that such a large portion of it can be ignored by the various ways to increase Penetration. Heavy armor is already heavy, and makes dodging much less effective, so it should at least retain most of its protective value instead of being trivially ignored.

Where the actual numbers would sit is a matter of testing and balancing, but as a concept I believe your idea has lots of merit.

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there are no 100% pentration weapons in game. They got nerfed, so no need to worry.

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Maybe you’re right. Still think it has merit in the form of differentiating medium from heavy and them having a clear purpose in game.

At the moment. The extra mobility in medium far surpasses whatever advantage you receive from full heavy damage reduction while medium still retains a fair amount of damage reduction. This would help build a purpose for using heavy armor as a player.

I think 40% dmg reduction is too much if 100% pen was nerfed. I still think there should be a basic untouchable % of dmg reduction on heavies. Even if it’s a measly 10-20%. 2-4% per piece.

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I once proposed heavy armor to give a super-armor (anti-stun) to the wearer in exchange of completly ditching out the dodge.

It might require some armor stat adjusment, but that would make heavy armor its onw thing.

But many people seamed to dislike th idea.

I can see that working if it were a secondary type of threshhold before getting stunned or interrupted tbh. I just think issues would arise if people could not be stunned in heavy armor. That may be why people disliked the idea.

Maybe 2 hits to interrupt instead of 1 type bonus for wearing heavy… or am I misunderstanding?

Edit: I do think I agree with you about heavy armor being its own thing for players. Just not sure how to go about it so bringing up a thread to discuss it is probably the best way to see it get improved.

I really like this idea of a hard % set for the Heavy Pieces pieces.
Per Piece based on level
Basic—1%
Flawless—2%
Epic—2.5%
Epic Flawless, SL, and all legendaries (no matter the type)—3%
all per.

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You forgot Exceptional and Epic Exceptional in your list.
Basic – 1%
Exceptional – 1.5%
Flawless – 2%
Epic – 2.5%
Epic Exceptional – 3%
Epic Flawless, SL, and all legendaries – 3.5%

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I see how it could be problematic : getting perma-stuned by an unstunnable opponent. (even though Heavy armor wearer would still be vunerable to throws and knock-downs, perming these would be problematic)

How about that : have the stun effect replaced by something else for heavy armor wearers.

Something like Hits prevent the heavy armor wearer to attack but allow to move (possibly only walk, preventing running) and raise a shield. (while still being vulnerable to throws and knock-downs of course)

Heavy plays a huge role in this game, just not for you. Put it on a thrall they don’t dodge much anyways.

My idea for fixing heavy armor would be to…

  1. Reduce the armor of light
  2. Double the amount of status effects weapons give.
  3. Change percent damage reduction to a savings throw.

If you have 75% damage reduction right now you get hit by a 100 damage hit you take 25 damage and you the full status effect, eg. 1 bleed from daggers.
If you change it to a savings throw each 100 damage hit has a 25% chance of doing full damage AND you need to do damage to give the status effect, e.g. 1 bleed from daggers.

This means heavy armor avoids completely the effect of 3 out of 4 hits including stagger, bleed, sunder etc. Without effecting total damage taken.

Unfortunately, averaging out in the long run won’t help those people who fail their “saving throw” three times in a row and die in their full armor. It would change combat into a lottery where a lucky dude could face-tank seventeen hits in a row and the unlucky guy fail every save.

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if you get that “one in sixty four chance” for missing three savings throw in a row level of bad luck you’d be dead no matter what.

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