Armor and Mitigation Changes

[Silverleafeon]

Uh, what?

How are heavy armor users giving up Jump? Are you referring exclusively to the low levels? It's so easy to cap Jump (40) that few characters ever bother with more than a rank or 2. Heavy armor has no discernible impact on the ability to jump around somewhere between level 11 and 18 (earlier if you have access to the Jump spel and caster levels, or group with full casters, later if you have to wait until you can get Morah's Belt from Amrath). Items with bonuses to Jump on them are almost entirely useless unless you, inexplicably, don't have a high CL Jump clicky (or need to be able to hit max Jump in quests where you're getting dispelled alot/have over 30 minutes between shrines).

Why are you jumping around a lot in combat?

Swim? How many dungeons do we have where swimming is a necessity at all? In how many of those can we dolphin-hop across the top of the water to avoid a slow Swim speed? How many of those put any emphasis whatsoever on being able to swim fast? And, finally, in how many of those do you have swims that are both long enough to really be annoyed by a slow swim speed, and have reasons to need to wear heavy armor while swimming? Sure, it takes a little while to get your armor back on, but if the swim is long enough, it would make more sense to take it off, do the swim, then put it back on.

I cannot imagine many players give any thought whatsoever to how heavy armor impacts things like this.

As an aside, we have to consider the entire leveling experience as well as end game. Especially since many players end up cycling through the heroic levels quite a bit. Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

Actually if you test the jump ability of any toon with a jump skill of 40+ while wearing heavy armor and while not wearing heavy armor,
you will find the one in heavy armor has less jump length/range.

Why?

Because Heavy Armor slows movement speed.

Don't believe me, go to sands or marketplace, get out a stop watch, test it for yourself.

[Thar]

As an aside, we have to consider the entire leveling experience as well as end game. Especially since many players end up cycling through the heroic levels quite a bit. Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

Fighter lvl 1 - 4 ranks jump, 18 str, plate armor = 8-5 = 3 jump + 10 pot = 13

Sorc lvl 1 which need jump a lot more than fighter to avoid hits... 2 ranks of jump cross class, 10 str, no armor = 2 + 0 = 2 + 10 pot = 12

armor users need no assistance with skills. This shouldn't be part of the discussion. if you can't make a necessary jump in armor... you take it off, make the jump, put it back on. it's the way it's been done for years in pnp and ddo.

[Dawnsblood]

As an aside, we have to consider the entire leveling experience as well as end game. Especially since many players end up cycling through the heroic levels quite a bit. Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

This is the part that worries me a bit. I always thought that heroic levels were more geared toward the new player than toward TRs. I'd hate to recommend this game to a friend and then have to babysit him/her through a few TRs before they could play without me. If your plan is to rebalance lvls 1-20 toward TRs I'm not recommending this game to any more new people I know in RL. I'd never hear the end of how unforgiving it would be. That or I guess I'd have to be prepared to twink them out at the very least . . .

[Pseudograph]

As for Evasion + shield tanks, the design is that they will use light shields. It actually gives light shields a use. Yes, I realize that there are a lack of good light shields at the moment, precisely because in the past they had no use. We will be looking to add good light shields to the mix. I know we have light shields and bucklers planned for the content released with these changes.
Sev~

You probably can't show or tell us much of anything about the (evasion allowed) small shields yet to be released. This is unknown.

We can see what we have now (and for the past several years) been able to use with evasion. This is known.

I have been pleasantly surprised before (more than once) after my "fear" had overcome my faith in the people that make this game happen.

Yet again, we are asked for (not merely feedback, but) our trust.

I do believe Severlin that you feel that certain changes will be genuinely necessary to get the heavy infantry back on the battle field.

I share your wish to get the metal back on the front line.

I am (naturally) still compelled to question the necessity of the "nerf" that will make heavy shields incompatible with evasion.

If we knew more...If...."small shields"....How many birds in the bush???'....

Just remember poor Fernando Paiz and his paralyzer crafting recipe.

Pseudograph

[cdbd3rd]

.... Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

Hero for the little people!!! (and I don't just mean the halflings)

[Thar]

Here's why that's an issue, 300PRR/MRR is probably around where players will be able to get which will be 33% damage taken, let's say the player has 1200hp and the base damage the monster does is 100. Said monster will now only do 33 a hit or about .275% of the total hp per second, however, at the point when tanking starts to have issues there will be 16 creatures attacking at least once a second, so that 33/0.275% becomes 528/44% per second meaning the tanks death occurs in ~2.27 seconds.

However it gets worse, on normal with full scaling that 100 becomes 170 (On hard does it only scale faster or is the cap also increased?) which is 56/4.666% at 300prr. Against the spawns of 16 it will be 896/74.666%.

This system works fine against bosses, even at 250 damage a hit, but a tank will have to sit back and try not to get hit until they make it to the boss because their defenses will fall apart when facing off against numbers.

Against reflex saves the some tank would only take ~10% damage (150/750=.2*.5(for tower shield)?) from every hit, so lets say it's 180 with resistances factored in, resulting in 18, and magic users spawn in groups of up to 8 (haven't seen any groups of 16 AoE spell spammers yet) results in 144 damage every 3 seconds, half if they can also make the reflex save.

Now lets compare that to a light armored imp. evasion character that jumps around and tries to get hit as little as possible (ranged and run, or Displacement, Incorp, Dodge, Blind). With around 150prr/mrr if they get hit they will take 1/2 damage as apposed to 1/3. When hit by an evadable effect, 5% of the time they will take 25% of the damage dealt (or grant them an effect similar to Imp. Evasion if they have only evasion).

No armored toons will probably be less effected depending on sources of mrr for them.

This isn't enough to make heavy armored characters viable beyond where they are currently, it will however add to the power creep of the current meta (and help boost light armor options).

Heavy armor tank can use incorp, dodge at a lesster %, blind, displace and tactical movement just the same as your light armor guy. As someone that has both, the light armor takes much more of a beating due to less ac, less prr. You can't do epic elites and stand toe to to against anything in light armor now as the melee tear you up. the trade off is you have evasion for the spell damage which is getting nerf'd in our favor but mainly only for heavy armor tanks which can already today handle the melee damage with cocoon and asorb, bladeforge healing, etc. try a tempest ranger vs a starward defender. the tempest ranger gets torn up. adding double mrr with a shield negates even more to the heavy armor build. with 73% mrr damage mitigation, any toon can tank the storm reaver in heavy armor/shield on hard with no other absorb items with some self healing. what more do you need? this is with no character build sacrifices. no levels in a class that adds minimal benefit. Monks will have some competition for king tank.

light armor already doesn't always take spell damage for most reflex items with evasion. they will take a little less but I don't see any comparable prr on light armor that i see on a stawart defender or DOS.

[sephiroth1084]

As an aside, we have to consider the entire leveling experience as well as end game. Especially since many players end up cycling through the heroic levels quite a bit. Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

Note that in my comment, I was referring to about half of the heroic level range, and, really, there are very few places you need 40 Jump. A Str-based character in heavy armor isn't going to be hurting for jump enough that their armor check penalty is going to be a deciding factor in what armor they're wearing--the deciding factors are: do I get more damage mitigation by wearing light/no armor, or from heavy armor? what worthwhile named armors are there for me at whichever part of the game is relevant to me (middle heroic, level 20, early epics, endgame)? What class features/enhancements do I have available that benefit from one type of armor or the other?

An exception might occur if a character is just on the cusp of having enough Tumble for flips, or enough Balance to resist being knocked down somewhere (very few places in the game), where the additional ACP would drop them below the threshold. Most of the time, however, if the player cares about these things, they strive to get their bonuses high enough to overcome the ACP.

Well i do recall long ago in the way back a party wiping in I think it ws von3 because the cleric couldnt make a jump to reach a much needed shrine, no matter that they stripped down, had their dumped str buffed as much as it could be, a GH and a jump spell all cast on them, and they just couldnt reach it.

I think that jump was later tweaked or removed to make it much easier and not actually require an investment in jump to make. I always thought such where a far more fair way to approach making some shrines less then a given then say trapped shrines which still require trap skills to safely clear during a moment most typically noted for being when players are worn down, low on life and mana, and need that shrine.

Right. Note that, even with their armor off, they couldn't make the jump. That's largely due to their not having Str, and not having ranks in the Jump skill. And, yes, that difficult jump was removed, because it unfairly penalized certain characters (clerics mostly). There are very few places in the game where jump is that important, and where you need a very high jump skill.

Most non-cleric characters wearing heavy armor have no problem with their jumps, and once the Jump spell maxes out, even fewer characters have that problem.

It's called armor check penalty. If you do not value skills in ddo then it will matter little to you. There is a large majority however who make great use from ddo's skill system.

I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic, or derogatory, or are genuinely trying to be informative, but in any case, you missed my point.

The ACP from heavy armor is only very rarely, and predominantly only at low levels, enough of an issue to warrant removing your armor. Given that, why, if heavy armor suited you better than light for every other purpose, would you choose the lesser armor as your primary outfit?

[sephiroth1084]

Also, because it has been brought up, I'll add my voice to pointing out that simply adding MRR and having heavier armors and shields provide more PRR is not going to significantly improve the stock of heavy armor wearers, because the PRR/MRR system's diminishing returns are still skewed to more heavily benefit lighter armored characters who get between 1/3 and 3/4 as much effective mitigation from PRR/MRR, while having 15-25% more Dodge, and adding Evasion and Improved Evasion to the mix. It's been a problem for a long time, exacerbated by all of the non-armor sources of PRR available to everyone, like augments, which allow even lightly armored characters to get 80+ PRR, while still being able to maintain a high Dodge%, and retaining Evasion.

I still haven't seen much talk about AC and how that is going to get fixed to actually be worthwhile.

[Ayseifn]

Also, because it has been brought up, I'll add my voice to pointing out that simply adding MRR and having heavier armors and shields provide more PRR is not going to significantly improve the stock of heavy armor wearers, because the PRR/MRR system's diminishing returns are still skewed to more heavily benefit lighter armored characters who get between 1/3 and 3/4 as much effective mitigation from PRR/MRR, while having 15-25% more Dodge, and adding Evasion and Improved Evasion to the mix. It's been a problem for a long time, exacerbated by all of the non-armor sources of PRR available to everyone, like augments, which allow even lightly armored characters to get 80+ PRR, while still being able to maintain a high Dodge%, and retaining Evasion.

I still haven't seen much talk about AC and how that is going to get fixed to actually be worthwhile.

The low hanging fruit issue with PRR/MRR is mainly problematic to melees IMO, casters can get a lot more out of these changes as a shield doesn't really lower DPS and neither does shield blocking. So I'd guess we'd see more clerics in heavy with shields after the change and less robe wearers but you're right about not changing enough for melees. PRR is also skewed too heavily in favour of monks right now, 15 PRR in GM earth, +15 from shintao, another +15 from a twist and 10 from meditation of war = 55, while a cleric in heavy on live is at 64-69(?) if they take 2-3 shield feats and twist shield mastery. That ~10 PRR difference will only get more meaningless as you stack on more PRR.


AC is a pretty big part of the puzzle here that's unfortunately been ignored, the damage from grazing hits are affected by what shield you use or how many centered monk levels you have so it's somewhat relevant.

[Systern]

Just a thought... Why is the PRR formula tied to BAB at all? Why is the Base ATTACK bonus used to determine defense? People have pointed out the diminishing returns of PRR. What if instead of having 2 systems, one of which is completely broken and irrelevant, it's incorporated into the new system?

What if Light Armor adds 60% of its AC to PRR, Medium 80%, and Heavy Armor 100%? That would mean that those "Armored boots of Natural Armor" you found would actually provide some meaningful defense. It would mean that all the AC effects in the game, either affixes or enhancements, weren't just a waste of space.

The enhancement value of the item could then be added to MRR. A +5 armor adding 50% of its AC to MRR, and a +13 Armor adding 130%...

Heavy users would have inflated PRR values, but that system is designed to hyper-inflate. And while the purist won't like that this AC change is not d20, the proposed system isn't either.

K.I.S.S. right?


DDO has a history of abandoning the legacy systems for new code. I'd really like to see DDO evolve, instead of constantly reinventing.

[janave]

(Edited based on player feedback.)

Greetings.

I wanted to jump in and talk about some upcoming changes we are working on.

We have been looking at player feedback and we wanted to make changes to the game to open up more templates and character types. We are currently fairly happy with the high end potential of casters and characters who wear no armor or light armor and use Evasion. These characters can kite and use magic to do fairly well in our content.

The characters that seem to be falling behind are the heavily armored characters. Part of the problem is that they can’t use Evasion, and part of the problem is that armor doesn’t really offer that much more armor class than robes or light armor. We have been discussing this a lot lately.

We don’t want to hurt Evasion builds. We would rather bring the mitigation of armor and shields to those levels. Our only caveat is we don’t want Evasion builds to be able to reach the highest levels of physical mitigation on top of their existing defenses.

Here are some of the changes we are considering.

Physical Resist Rating
The first change is to prepare Physical Resist Rating for use in the armor changes. The formula for the rating will change to the following formula, with the resulting multiplier applied to all physical damage.

150 / (150 + PRR)

This progression follows the current formula very closely out to 300 and then this formula is more generous at those higher end values.

As examples, a PRR of 50 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.75, a PRR of 100 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.6, and a PRR of 200 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.4285.

Magical Resist Rating
In addition, we are adding a new value called Magical Resist Rating. The formula for the rating will be the same as for PRR, with the resulting multiplier applied to all magical damage.

150 / (150 + PRR)

This new rating will apply to most non-physical damage sources including spells, elemental damage, poisons, lingering damage, and similar effects.

It is our intention that existing magical items that provide PRR would also provide MRR.



Armor and Ratings
Armor now has a base level of mitigation through these ratings. Unenchanted armor has Physical Resist Rating as part of its mitigation, and once armor has an enchantment of at least +1 value it also gains Magical Resist Rating.

The value armor depends on the class of the armor.

Robes or Outfits: No PRR, no MRR
Light Armor: 15 PRR, 15 MRR if armor has enchantments.
Medium Armor: 30 PRR, 30 MRR if armor has enchantments.
Heavy Armor: 45 PRR, 45 MRR if armor has enchantments.

Shields will give additional PRR and, if enchanted, MRR.

Buckler: None
Light Shield: 5 PRR, 5 MRR if shield has enchantments.
Heavy Shield: 10 PRR, 10 MRR if shield has enchantments.
Tower Shield: 15 PRR, 15 MRR if shield has enchantments.

In addition, characters who are proficient with shields can also use the larger shields for defense against magical attacks that would normally require a Reflex saving throw. Instead of (or in addition to) using your Reflex saving throw to mitigate the damage you can deflect the damage off your shield. This is represented by increasing your Physical and Magical Resist Ratings against those types of attacks when using a shield. Note that you gain this additional mitigation whether you make your Reflex saving throw or not.

Physical and Magical Resist Rating multiplier against magical attacks that normally allow a Reflex saving throw.

Buckler: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Light Shield: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Heavy Shield: 2.0
Tower Shield: 2.0

This means that characters with heavier armor and/or heavy or tower shields have an alternate mitigation against large area of effect attacks to help them compete in high level content with characters who use Evasion.

As an example, let’s take the case of a character built today to use heavy armor and tower shield and maximize PRR. Assuming a character had a PPR rating of 200 previously they would have a damage multiplier of ~ .4370 to physical damage.

While this mitigation is decent, characters built this way tend to die quickly once effects like Fireballs and dragon’s breath are flying around the battlefield.

Under the new system they would have a PRR and MRR of 260 which would translate to a damage multiplier of .4285 for both physical and magical damage. Against area of effect attacks (magic requiring a Reflex saving throw) this would be increased to 520, which translates to .2238.

In this example, when the heavily armored and shielded character is hit by dragon’s breath for 500 damage it would be reduced by his/her enchanted armor and shield down to 112. Meanwhile characters in light or no armor could use Evasion to attempt to negate the damage entirely.

Resist Rating Caps and Evasion
In addition, there are new or changed caps on certain scores based on the armor you are wearing.

Note that Medium and Heavy armor will continue to negate the Evasion feat.

In addition, some shields will negate the Evasion feat.

Buckler: None
Light Shield: None
Heavy Shield: No Evasion feat
Tower Shield: No Evasion feat

PRR and MRR Cap for armor (tentative, work in progress)

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!

But DPS is terrible when using a shield!
We intend to give characters who use weapon and shield additional options.

~ The Stalwart Defender and the Sacred Defender will offer enhancement options as alternates to the shield based enhancements. The enhancements that current require shields will be changed into a multi-selector, with an additional option that requires medium or heavy armor.

~ The Paladin class has fallen behind beyond the second level so we plan to look at some more compelling reasons to advance in that class.

~ We plan to introduce two new trees for shield use. The Vanguard tree will be focused on DPS while using a weapon and shield. This DPS will come from a combination of weapon damage and shield bashes. The Shieldbearer tree will be a mitigation tree that will focus on heavy armor and shield. This will also offer ways to counter enemies with active mitigation such as stuns, knock downs, and the like. These trees would be available to Fighter, Paladin and perhaps even a new class that supported heavy armor and martial abilities.

What other changes do you plan?

~ The to hit values of creatures in Epic Elite content would be rebalanced so high Armor Class builds will have some mitigation.

Sev~

The DDO systems are already bloated with unnecessary complexity.

Why are you trying to fix content balance vs character builds by adding in more layers? Thats the problem with todays software, everyone wants to apply a system fix, when the obvious problems just keep expanding.

People will find their ways to workaround the new layers to maximize the benefits of each defense. I think the obvious source of balance problems is scaling, yet you are adding in more stuff that will affect scaling content into puzzling depths.

An example of broken scaling is spellpoints pools, and high level casting, high level spells were never designed to be spammed thru dungeons, they were designed as momentum abilities, to save the day once in a while.

As a means to provide more challange you also decided to give monsters infinite pool of resources, that means they will spam-cast-rotate between their top spells. There is no twich skill around evading mass spam aoe, only progression/gear granted defenses.

If i were a designer on DDO team, i would suggest to tweak the dungeons, and combat encounters. I consider this the only fix necessary. Maybe not as exciting a job as inventing new systems but would be very effective to balance characters.

Good Luck with your plans.

[Nascoe]

im just trying to understand what you mean by SR. I know how it works. fortunately in this game we don't have to worry about friendly fire too much or DDO would be a very different game.

taken from 3.5

Spell Resistance (Ex)[edit]

Spell resistance is the extraordinary ability to avoid being affected by spells. (Some spells also grant spell resistance.) To determine if a spell or spell-like ability works against a creature with spell resistance, the caster must make a caster level check (1d20 + caster level). If the result equals or exceeds the creature’s spell resistance, the spell works normally, although the creature is still allowed a saving throw. (The defender’s spell resistance is like an Armor Class against magical attacks.) If the caster fails the check, the spell doesn’t affect the creature. The possessor does not have to do anything special to use spell resistance. The creature need not even be aware of the threat for its spell resistance to operate.

Only spells and spell-like abilities are subject to spell resistance. Extraordinary and supernatural abilities (including enhancement bonuses on magic weapons) are not. A creature can have some abilities that are subject to spell resistance and some that are not. Even some spells ignore spell resistance; see When Spell Resistance Applies, below.

A creature can voluntarily lower its spell resistance. Doing so is a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. Once a creature lowers its resistance, it remains down until the creature’s next turn. At the beginning of the creature’s next turn, the creature’s spell resistance automatically returns unless the creature intentionally keeps it down (also a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity).

A creature’s spell resistance never interferes with its own spells, items, or abilities.

A creature with spell resistance cannot impart this power to others by touching them or standing in their midst. Only the rarest of creatures and a few magic items have the ability to bestow spell resistance upon another.

Spell resistance does not stack. It overlaps.

as you can see it says its like an Armor Class against magical attacks. sounds awfully like this brand new thing Sev is implementing with MRR, except he/she is tying it to actual armor. im not 100% on board with MRR myself and I could actually be more behind SR working as described above instead. I cant speak why Sev or whoever would be the dev would be to make SR work as it really should. it does seem to make more sense.

not all spells would work though. I don't know what is considered extraordinary or supernatural in DDO.

Interesting. But actually I can see a good argument to boost the Drow race a bit with giving them enhancements boosting their MRR :-)

[Vellrad]

As an aside, we have to consider the entire leveling experience as well as end game. Especially since many players end up cycling through the heroic levels quite a bit. Not every comment I make applies to end game.

Sev~

You can buy +10 jump 5 minute duration pots in marketplace to offset armor check penatly.
Heavy armored characters usually pump lots into STR, and if you want to get higher jump you can simply equip item.
But OK, in some cases heavy armor can lower jump score.

But swim?

No way.

There is no place where you are beign hit while swimming, so you can simply take off armor and put it again as you're going to emerge.
It takes time?
Yes, but swimming long lenghts naked and putting armor back on is faster than swimming armored.

[lyrecono]

Well placed answer

Sev~

i'm interested to see what these p/mrr changes will bring (and when)
I really hope the agro management will grow alongside of the changes.
A tank should't be a rez scroll dispenser (nigh useless last man standing issues)
Makes me curious what kind of "tank " a (triple) completionist could build with a pali(or fighter)5 and 15 levels of fvs(or cleric), using dots&aoe spells to maintain agro alongside it's melee attacks.



Thanks for the update Sev

[LightBear]

Marching order, thread, reach and attacks of opportunities.

[Bingobong]

Here's why that's an issue, 300PRR/MRR is probably around where players will be able to get which will be 33% damage taken

How are players getting 300 PRR?

[Desonde]

Heavy armor tank can use incorp, dodge at a lesster %, blind, displace and tactical movement just the same as your light armor guy. As someone that has both, the light armor takes much more of a beating due to less ac, less prr. You can't do epic elites and stand toe to to against anything in light armor now as the melee tear you up. the trade off is you have evasion for the spell damage which is getting nerf'd in our favor but mainly only for heavy armor tanks which can already today handle the melee damage with cocoon and asorb, bladeforge healing, etc. try a tempest ranger vs a starward defender. the tempest ranger gets torn up. adding double mrr with a shield negates even more to the heavy armor build. with 73% mrr damage mitigation, any toon can tank the storm reaver in heavy armor/shield on hard with no other absorb items with some self healing. what more do you need? this is with no character build sacrifices. no levels in a class that adds minimal benefit. Monks will have some competition for king tank.

light armor already doesn't always take spell damage for most reflex items with evasion. they will take a little less but I don't see any comparable prr on light armor that i see on a stawart defender or DOS.

Ok, but what's the comparability to a Light Armored Stalwart/Sacred Defender vs a Heavy Armored one (-18 PRR or >2% [at most 1 dmg for every 50 points base damage])?

Sure under the new system they'd have to drop down to a smaller shield and reduce their PRR/MRR another few points if they want to keep evasion, but once they reach a certain threshold does that sacrifice equal the gains of evasion?

The whole reason I changed my heavy armored character toon to light armor was because despite saving 95% of the reflex saves there were a few situations when the constant spam of half damage was too much.

[Desonde]

How are players getting 300 PRR?

Future tense; 45 from heavy armor, 15 from tower shield, 15 from shield feats, BaB bonus (24->30+6), Sacred Defender 75 (or 50?), 30 from items, 20 from LD Improved Expertise, 15 from Legendary Shield Mastery, 20 from Heed No Pain, 9 PDK past lives, 27 Divine past lives = 276-307. Upper limits yes, but possible especially with the rhetoric that more is better.

[Psiandron]

Heavy armor tank can use incorp, dodge at a lesster %, blind, displace and tactical movement just the same as your light armor guy. As someone that has both, the light armor takes much more of a beating due to less ac, less prr. You can't do epic elites and stand toe to to against anything in light armor now as the melee tear you up. the trade off is you have evasion for the spell damage which is getting nerf'd in our favor but mainly only for heavy armor tanks which can already today handle the melee damage with cocoon and asorb, bladeforge healing, etc. try a tempest ranger vs a starward defender. the tempest ranger gets torn up. adding double mrr with a shield negates even more to the heavy armor build. with 73% mrr damage mitigation, any toon can tank the storm reaver in heavy armor/shield on hard with no other absorb items with some self healing. what more do you need? this is with no character build sacrifices. no levels in a class that adds minimal benefit. Monks will have some competition for king tank.

light armor already doesn't always take spell damage for most reflex items with evasion. they will take a little less but I don't see any comparable prr on light armor that i see on a stawart defender or DOS.

So, am I to take it that your contention is that heavy armor wearers are better off than light armor wearers with evasion at this point in time, or did I misunderstand your post?

[mikarddo]

Interesting idea.

However, if evasion characters are to keep their "thing" and heavy armor w/ shield is to get their "thing" then where does that leave the builds with neither? If this change goes in then future contend will further assume alot of migitation/avoidance of spell damage, in particular reflex bases, making it even further unrealistic to survive with a guild without a major "thing".

Why not instead go that extra mile and start to actually use a mix of fort, will and reflex saves mixed in with no-save damage, melee damage, actual archer damage etc, so that the game relies less on not taking reflex damage and more on a balanced approach where all things matter?