The utility of Heavy Armor?

[Giant_Neckbeard]

Now, obviously, there needs to be something to make sure Heavy Armor is physically limiting in some regard, otherwise everybody would be running around and cart-wheeling in the stuff, but at the same point, the current usage of Heavy Armor seems to be ‘put it on your Thrall or get out’.

Would it perhaps be possible to increase the ‘jump’ range of the Heavy Armor by perhaps an additional half of the current range without it becoming game-breaking?

Alternatively, adding a resistance to what other posters have called ‘posture damage’, meaning that wearing a full set of heavy armor will make it far more difficult for enemy players and/or hostile NPCs to break your attack-combos with their own, could make Heavy Armor viable again for PvP and PvE usage for players.

This is the heavy armor, where you’re sacrificing agility and mobility for sheer, overwhelming staying power. Yes, you will be hit more, but the ability to endure heavy blows, shrug off crippling hits and even outright ignore attacks that would penetrate lighter armors with the damage reduction that comes from Heavy Armor, especially the Flawless and Exceptional Tiers, should be adequate compensation.

Light armor is trading extreme vulnerability for superior mobility, where you’re counting on not being hit at all to keep you alive and being able to out-run and out-flank your enemies.

Medium armor is a trade-off between the two, granting some added protection and the ability to weather hits with limited ability while not completely surrendering your ability to reposition easily in the middle of a fight to avoid an AoE or Cleaving attack that could easily kill you or severely weaken you.

Heavy Armor should, in theory, be admitting you are going to get hit, you are going to get hurt, but your ability to stay in the thick of the fight and deliver punishing damage in retaliation is unmatched and your ability to resist being knocked around or your combos stalled is greatly reduced.

[Giant_Neckbeard]

Yeah, that’s my concern.

On the one hand, being able to avoid some hits and weather the rest makes Heavy Armor useful for people who enjoy getting into the middle of a scrum and just flailing madly, but on the other hand, if Heavy Armor made damage reduction too useful, then everybody will jump onto that train, like serious Raiders and PvPers all go for the Spear/Light Armor combo because it allows them to out-run, out-climb and dodge-roll their way to victory against other players.

But at the same point, Heavy Armor is severely underwhelming compared to most other forms of protection in the game right now, and the builds that make the most out of Heavy Armors are excruciatingly costly and generally lock players out other, more useful talents.

[Born2bAlive]

It’s a very difficoult matter to discuss, because I think the only way to make things balanced is “on the field”.

What I mean ? We can discuss if being immune to staggering effects or resistant to them or to bleeding etc. would be balanced… but the only way to be sure is to test it.

I’d love for example being able, from settings in solo, to change how armors work to test it in game (at least for PvE).

For example a pool of armor settings for each kind (light, medium, heavy) like:

• [armor kind] values (0.1 - 3): meaning all armors points of a piece of armor of this kind will be multipied for that value.

• [armor kind] dodge distance (0.1-3): distance of the dodge while in that type of armor (if the value is low enough the caracter will perform a little jump-step like now in heavy armor)

• [armor kind] bleeding resistance (0-1): chance of resist to a bleeding effect while wearing this kind of armor (only if you wear a complete set)

• staggering resistance (0-1): chance to resist to a staggering effect while wearing this kind of armor (only if you wear a complete set)

Than people should be able to give feedback of their test to Funcom and than if people could agree on certain values being able to produce a testlive patch to test it on field in PvP.

Ok, really too much work to implement it and requiring a lot of players with the will to just test the game balance… but here in Italy we say “dreams cost nothing”