Armor and Mitigation Changes

[Ayseifn]

How will things that give a shield bonus to AC that aren't shields work, will they give any PRR/MRR? I'm mean stuff like the shield spell and Shield of Whirling Steel Tempest abiliy.

[thegreatneil]

Stuff.

+1

Ummmm... ***?


Are we able to "evade" damage now?

Like dodge it?

[Delacroix21]

We have been looking at the epic elite melee damage.

That said, the reason we don't only do this is because there are a number of well designed builds currently in play that already thrive in the epic elite content. Lowering the damage and capabilities of the creatures would do nothing to convince the players to move to less powerful builds, nor would it provide a compelling reason to examine the benefits of lots of builds, classes and items that are being largely ignored at the end game. Our goal is not to make the game easier, but rather to provide a wider variety of compelling and fun character builds.

When we examined the current builds being used and read through the player feedback in the balance thread one thing was clear; armored characters were not well represented in the end game. Not only does this shut down a lot of classes, but the heavily armored character is an iconic figure in D&D lore and art. We wanted to give players a reason to develop those types of characters.

Sev~

You are the barbarian Dev?


So how do barbs really benefit from this compared to heavy armor fighters etc. Their DR benefit is useless in the current system.

[Delacroix21]

Like dodge it?

And when they dont dodge they get annihilated?


Basically I see= Heavy armor gets no-save spell and meele mitigation.

Robes= Get a higher "chance" to dodge meele, get hit MUCH harder by both meele and spells, and unless their saves are super high get destroyed by spells. EE reflex saves are NOT easy for evasion builds, and usually require paladin splash. If your "evasion" build cant hit 70s+ reflex, your evasion doesnt mean carp.

[Thumbed_Servant]

And when they dont dodge they get annihilated?


Basically I see= Heavy armor gets no-save spell and meele mitigation.

Robes= Get a higher "chance" to dodge meele, get hit MUCH harder by both meele and spells, and unless their saves are super high get destroyed by spells. EE reflex saves are NOT easy for evasion builds, and usually require paladin splash. If your "evasion" build cant hit 70s+ reflex, your evasion doesnt mean carp.

Nothing has changed for the Robes....everything has changed for the armor wearers. Before, armor wearers got destroyed by spells and got hit hard by melee/missle damage while monks had super high ac so as not to be hit, dodge on the off chance they were, and evasion to avoid magic damage. Monks still have that, no armor wearers have defenses too. It's not a minus for monks it's a plus for armor wearers. I don't think a plus for everyone else is a minus for robe wearers/monks.

I don't see where monks/robe wearer's are getting hit harder either.

It's time that armor meant something in the game again.

[Seikojin]

I think the base idea is awesome, changing the PRR system to mitigate better in heavier armors. Adding the MRR system makes sense considering the idea of mitigating the evadable damage types.

My biggest concern was brought up as a high AC in a different thread. A fighter pali was able to combo enhancements to get up to 340+ AC. Great, however, a pure classed Pally nor could a pure classed fighter get close to that. I think a combo class shoud have benefits, but they only way to get ac to the high 5% hit chance; that is a big problem. Especially when declaring that pures should be viable too. Because 250 ac is nowhere near the miss chance as 350 ac.

In this new system, mitigation is stronger, however the above would still hold true. Ultimately, I would have to see it on lam, because there are too many variables that can make or break the use.

Also, Defender and Stalwart: Give the stance a bypass for Single Weapon Fighting for shields. This alone would put them back in the group.

[HatsuharuZ]

MRR... I think that if this is implemented, it should not be done as stated in the OP. With the number of absorption sources available to all players at lvl 20+, this may be a bit overpowered. I would suggest making the MRR rating much harder to obtain.

Suggestions:

~ Make MRR either equal to half the player's PRR.

~ Make MRR only available if using a shield.

~ Make MRR a function of Shield and/or Armor AC.

[Delacroix21]

Any toon using a shield (not JUST heavy and tower) should get the double bonus to MRR, as the dps hit with a buckler/small shield is the SAME as a heavy/tower (except for swash bucklers, but that is ok). Heavy shields allow evasion too so you can't use that argument.


I don't get what you are trying to achieve here. So why would anyone use anything but a heavy shield evasion or not? Why does the small shield even exist as it can't even be used with swashbuckling making it the most worthless item ever?


Shields should ALL provide a bonus to MRR, buckler to heavy should provide the same, and tower (the only no evasion shield) should provide a bonus.


So:
Buckler 1.5 MRR
Small shield 1.5 MRR
Heavy shield 1.5 MRR
Tower shield 2 MRR


You don't need to give increasing buffs to small and heavy over the buckler, its ac does that allready.

[droid327]

If no one's already brought it up....

How will DR and/or Elemental Resists play with PRR and MRR? Like it currently does?

Right now, AFAIK, flat-value DRs are taken off the top, and then PRR mitigations are calculated. If you're running a magical mitigation of 22%, that means that having Elemental Resist 40 only ends up taking about 9 actual damage off the attack, because your flat-value mitigation is effectively reduced by your percentile mitigation. DR and Resists are, thus, made obsolete by having higher PRR/MRR values. By increasing the potential of PRR and MRR, you're driving the knife even deeper into another neglected mitigation system.

Doing the math on the above for an example: 500 damage Fireball, 22% mitigation, no resists: 500 * 0.22 = 110
With 40 resists - resists off the top: (500-40) * 0.22 = 101.2 damage. Only 9 less than no-resists.
With 40 resists - resists off the bottom: (500 * 0.22) - 40 = 70 damage, a noticeable effect
Incidentally, with the above scenario, any magical damage under 182 is totally negated...not automatically God-mode in Epic Elite, but definitely enough to make a party (especially a healer) find an armor-tank, especially for non-boss content.

I hope you'll consider changing the formula so that flat-value reductions are taken off the bottom, not the top - ie, after percentile mitigation is calculated...that would really open up another layer for mitigation, especially for Barbs and FvSs that are built for it, and WF that universally ignore their DR options right now. It also makes Hammer/Axe/Spear-block into much more useful affixes, and Stoneskin becomes a much more interesting spell. It also will prevent the new Resist ship buffs you've worked on from being made pointless.

[L2Marshall]

Considering that you can only get 27 PRR from past life feats, you know what you SHOULD do with a hard PRR cap? Take some of the feats/enhancements/gear you're using to get PRR and put it in something else. You're not FORCED to wear gear and take feats etc. that will increase your PRR above the new cap and make your "hard work" "useless". Swap out some of your gear/feats/enhancements/etc. Those are optional.

If you actually had 150 PRR *purely* from grinding epic past lives, that might be something. But you don't. You have 27, if that. The rest all comes from somewhere that you're now free to get rid of and take something else. You might (OMG) even be able to use a stance that's NOT EARTH STANCE!!!

The difference between 100 PRR and 150 PRR is 7% damage. SEVEN. PERCENT. If a mob hits you for 250, you take an extra SIXTEEN DAMAGE. OOOOOOOOOOO. End of the frickin' world there. Unlike heavy armor wearers who have a dodge cap around 5%, so compared to YOU they're taking (on average) an extra TWENTY percent damage. Oh, wait, more than that, because you probably have ninja spy incorporeality to boot. And you have evasion, so you're ignoring most spell damage while heavy armor folks are eating it full in the face.

Yeah, you're totally the one getting the dirty end of the stick.

Ohhhh where to start? First off there are 3 divine spheres and PDK that is 9*3=36, so incorrect on that point. What I should or should not do with my character is none of your concern but the fact is, I spent a very considerable amount of time building it the way I wanted it, and part of that was epic and iconic TRing. If I had known ahead of time that there would be a hard cap much lower than what is achievable now I would not have done the TRing, the fact is, right now an unarmored toon can get to around 150 without the past lives, as other have also stated in this thread.

If I was concerned with other things my toon could use instead then I would have made those changes on my own, but i guess items like Dumathoin's Bracers (Bracers): Natural Armor +10, Elemental Resistance +45, Sheltering +30, Blue Augment Slot, Dexterity +11 really are useless without the PRR so I will just dump that. I will dump earth stance too, because I dont really care about the extra multiplier on my crits, that is in no way a part of why I choose earth at all and the extra hit points from meditation of war in earth stance are basically useless to. I guess that non stacking bonus to attack speed from air stance is starting to look really tempting though!

Next up, if 7% is not much, then what does it matter if I have it or not? Oh It does matter? Then your point is moot. But just for the record the target range was 180-200 not 150, that is roughly 15%, exactly the difference between me having Shadow Viel over another toon having an incorp item, which you went on to make a big deal about. Anyone can get 10% incorp on an item, and heavily armored wraith form wizards don't have any incorp at all right? Because that is an actual thing. As far as the dodge argument, well in this very thread Sev has stated that heavy armored toons will be getting a boost to dodge, no to mention the fact that right now on live servers heavy toons can get around 250+ PRR so no, they are not taking 20% more damage. In fact the best S&B Pallys can stand and take it from EE DQ (among other raid bosses) and SELF HEAL through it with no problems, something a monk is not going to do, why, they can't shield block and absorb extra damage!

If this update went live today Heavy armor toons will not only get more PRR, not only get more dodge, not only will they always take 1/2 or less damage from spells (without even having to THINK about working on their saves), ANNNND they can reach much higher AC totals, but unarmored toons also have to take a nerf to their PRR as well. I never stated once that the boost that heavy armored toon are getting is bad, I never addressed a single point other than the hard cap on PRR. In my first post in this thread I stated that Heavy armor should get boosted, that is great, everyone should be able to have fun and play the game in a way that is meaningful to them.

ALL of that is completely beside the point though. I and others, went through those past lives with a specific purpose, and given these changes, that purpose is being rendered pointless, and some of us would have decided to spend our time in other ways. All I want is some acknowledgement from the devs that a) they are taking this into consideration or b) they just don't care. I can live with either, but what I can't do is spend more time doing things in this game that are supposed to be permanent improvements to my character but end up being a useless waste of my free time, which could be spent doing something else.

[Derana]

Well, yes and no. Or have you forgotten that there exist Light/Medium armor wearing DPS classes like Barbs and Rangers? Is it your intention to completely exclude these from EE content now? It was bad for melees before, but this feels like it will be even MORE exclusionary.

Barbs are pretty much excluded from EE content already for a while because they cannot self heal and divine classes that actually heal are rare thanks to the healing abilities in destinies and enhancements...

[Alternative]

sorry don't have time to read the whole 10 pages, but anyone raised the issue of bladeforged/warforged? what of casters, say a pure drow sorc with no evasion should be looking for a heavy armor and -arcane failure items now?

[Hilltrot]

Not only does this shut down a lot of classes, but the heavily armored character is an iconic figure in D&D lore and art. We wanted to give players a reason to develop those types of characters.

Sev~

Full plate and packing steel. 99.9% of Miniature Giant Space Hamsters agree.

The absurdity of cloth wearing fighters with 2 levels of Monk all over the place is well known to everyone except many who have dominated this forum for nearly a decade.

I'm glad some actual thought is being placed into this with changes in about a year, I guess.

[Monkey_Archer]

My biggest concern was brought up as a high AC in a different thread. A fighter pali was able to combo enhancements to get up to 340+ AC. Great, however, a pure classed Pally nor could a pure classed fighter get close to that. I think a combo class shoud have benefits, but they only way to get ac to the high 5% hit chance; that is a big problem. Especially when declaring that pures should be viable too. Because 250 ac is nowhere near the miss chance as 350 ac.

This is my biggest concern with AC changes as well. A typical pure class fighter/pali struggles to get over 200 AC whereas an optimal mutliclass build can get over 300. Our unfortunate light/medium armored rogues/rangers/barbs struggle to get over 100 AC, meanwhile monks can get well over 100 without even trying. With such a wide range of possible AC values I don't see how making AC viable in EE is even possible without limiting the range of optimal builds even further.

If the new target AC for EE was set to around 200 (a reasonable point for pure fighter/pali tanks) the result of this would actually be a much larger buff to monks (who definitely don't need the help) and an indirect nerf to all light/medium armor users (who arguably need the most help in this regard). While I would definitely like to see typical heavy armor builds see meaningful results from investing in AC, I can't really agree with any changes that would further marginalize light/medium armor more then it already is.

[legendkilleroll]

I once had a heavy armored tank and i like ideas here, how it all works out tho will have to wait and see

Nice to see enhancements to improve shield wielders, i recently TR'ed mine as compared to other chars his dps
was almost non existent lol

Regarding Melee builds and EE, you need to look at Blitz, ive been avoiding it to see how my builds really fare, alot seem to think they have EE builds because they cleave at entrance and blast through a quest blitzing

[GeoffWatson]

One problem with comparing MRR with Evasion, is that Evasion only works on Reflex saves (and only if you make the save).

There are enough Fort, Will and "no save" magic damage sources, plus plenty of "You've got to be kidding" Reflex DCs(mainly traps).

MRR looks like it will be vastly superior to Evasion.

Geoff.

[Dalsheel]

PRR and MRR Cap for armor

Robes or Outfit: 100
Light Armor: 200
Medium Armor: No cap
Heavy Armor: No cap

Note that we have designed this so characters cannot gain both Evasion and the shield bonus coupled with high levels of resistance rating. This is intentional. If you see a hole in our design that allows for this please warn us!

Seriously? You're putting a cap on the PRR we can have based on the armor we use?

Let me just point out, some of us (or more accurately a LOT of us) have worked very hard to obtain those PDK and Divine Sphere past lives so we can have PRR > 100 while using a robe/outfit. Please reconsider this. It is very rude to invalidate our efforts to improve our characters so bluntly.

[pesch1991]

One problem with comparing MRR with Evasion, is that Evasion only works on Reflex saves (and only if you make the save).

There are enough Fort, Will and "no save" magic damage sources, plus plenty of "You've got to be kidding" Reflex DCs(mainly traps).

MRR looks like it will be vastly superior to Evasion.

Geoff.

No sir it Wont without evasion they will destroy you doesnt matter what they hit you for 800 or 700 dmg it Wont make a difference do you Even play this game ?

[Schwarzie]

epic version of Orchard

Epic Sciver? Epic Deathnip? Please tell us more.

Epic Elite Inferno... I hope the portals don't get the EE HP increase

[thegreatneil]

No sir it Wont without evasion they will destroy you doesnt matter what they hit you for 800 or 700 dmg it Wont make a difference do you Even play this game ?

Spells hit for 1600 damage? huh.