Armor and Mitigation Changes

[Bingobong]

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.

<skip>

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.

I think you have a good strategy for bringing heavy armor back into usefulness and balancing it against evasion light armor wearers. However, I think the difference in PRR listed here needs to increase to make it actually effective. The difference between heavy vs light is only 30, which is very minor compared to the power of evasion.

The example you gave is based around shield bearers. For a heavy armor wearer without shields, their gains is actually very minor.

Somebody did a breakdown of what it takes to get around 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.

However, the above assumes somebody with at least 6 paladin levels using shields and a ton of past lives.

For a non-paly 1st lifer wearing heavy armor and no shield, we end up with :
45 from heavy armor
BaB bonus (24->30+6) from heavy armor
30 from items
20 from LD Improved Combat Expertise <-- requires twisting from ED + combat expertise feat
20 from Sentinel core stance
-----
145-151
Damage multiplier = 150 / (150 + 151) = 0.50

An equivalent light armor evasionist will have :
15 from light armor
BaB bonus (24->30+2) from light armor
30 from items
20 from LD Improved Combat Expertise <-- requires twisting from ED + combat expertise feat
20 from Sentinel core stance
-----
111-117.
Damage multiplier = 150 / (150 + 117) = 0.56

Difference is not really that big.
When it comes to evadable damage, the heavy armor without shield will not get any bonus defense.

I would suggest increasing the armor PRR bonuses to make heavy armor truly useful without relying on a shield. A mere 30 increase in PRR (over light armor) is not enough.

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TLDR version : Difference in PRR between light armor and heavy armor is too small. For anyone not using a shield, light armor evasion build is still the way to go for survivability and heavy armor still wont make the cut. Please consider increasing difference.

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[Bingobong]

For a non-paly 1st lifer wearing heavy armor and no shield, we end up with :

Just wanted to add that the reason I left out those past lives is because very few people will have access to so many of them. If they were included in the examples, it would actually make the difference in the resulting damage multiplier between heavy and light armor even smaller (and still not hit the light armor PRR cap).

[poptolev]

The problem (if you can call it that) as far as I can tell is that most of the PRR doesn't actually come from your armor-choice.

[Kaiserkreuz]

Wow took devs very long enough to notice why the rampant number of multi class splash that got evasion and can self sustain specially in high lvl to epic dungeons. Aside from the sarcastic remark.

Wonder if this is late or not; In the PnP version AC for classes that use light or no armor at all means the attacked miss you or you we're able to dodge it while AC for classes that uses medium and heavy armor means the attack wasn't able to penetrate your armor or your armor blocked it. The problem begins on how the definition of AC transitioned from the PnP version to the Online version.

Light armor and robe users can not only gain high AC with ease but also have high dodge rating plus most of them got evasion which is very much needed on high lvl to epic content considering how much damage spells and traps do at those lvls. Plus caster mobs and bosses just spam spell due to the fact they got unlimited supply of spell points.

Medium and Heavy armor users need to sacrifice their dps just to gain high AC, PRR rating doesn't do much or anything at all specially in EE content and much more likely to take heavy amount of damage from spells.

So I thing increasing the damage and spell mitigation that medium and heavy armor does is somehow a feasible solution on the classes which use them. Light and no armor users should be like, "You can dodge damage and evade spells with ease but if ever you get damage expect them to hurt like hell." While medium or heavy armor users to be sturdy able to shrug off punishment with the mettle of their steel.

As for the improvement of sword in shield style in terms of dps should be ok. Adding another feat would be ok for a fighter that has numerous number of extra feat but how about those classes that are very much feat starved. I think they should improve the shield feats like;

Improve Shield bash: increasing the proc rate of a shield bash by 30-40% from 20% and give it a % chance to stun an enemy.
Shield Mastery and Improve Shield Mastery: increasing proc rate of a shield bash by 10-20% and increases % stun chance.

[Thar]

If anyone feels they can't continue to play a current-day Bard with the changes proposed, what are you losing that you feel you still need? The bard that you are playing today: What's going away that will break your build? We've already reversed some tentative cuts due to players asking us to keep those abilities.

From the bard discussion...

What will break my build with the armor changes? 73% spell mitigation is more beneficial than evasion so my two splash levels for evasion are for naught and preventing me from getting to the pally capstone. If I do keep my current build, then my AC/PRR/MRR will be lower due to the shield change (which are already substancially lower than a heavy armor tank) AND I highly doubt we will see adequate (ie useful) light shields in the game at all levels.

Shields increasing the modifier are going to make this overpowered and cheap for non tanks to get 73% mitigation. I might as well take my cleric, throw intim items on and tank with my healbot.

What does my tank need? (besides the heavy shield w/evasion to be left alone) I need the tanking tree to be reasonably prices in enhancement points. I need some additional dps, hategen and/or guard options to keep agro. I need a purpose in non raids besides trying to keep up with the dps and maybe intim one off them and hit a few times before they kill it. I need more named armors in the end game to have some options.

I would take a page from city of heros tanks. They were buffed after launch to do automatic hategen on hits as otherwise they couldn't hold mobs attentions after a blast or dps aoe attack. We don't need it so things never can be pulled away, but some increased hate is needed by tanks. (and not dev hate... haha)

[Bingobong]

The problem (if you can call it that) as far as I can tell is that most of the PRR doesn't actually come from your armor-choice.

That's what I was saying, that there is little benefit in going from light to heavy armor because very little additonal PRR is coming from the armor itself compared to the total achievable. However, the design itself works, it's just the number used (the increase in PRR) isn't significant enough.

Considering this was the problem they were trying to address, the fact that armor choice still have a minor overall effect is an issue :

The characters that seem to be falling behind are the heavily armored characters.

Shield bearers gain significantly, but armor choice itself has little overall impact.

[Bingobong]

Just thought of another way to make armor choice (eg. heavy vs light) matter more.

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.

Right now all additional mitigation is weighted on the shield with no additional mitigation coming from heavier armor in spite of the stated "and/or" objective. I suggest splitting it so that armor also gets part of the bonus :

Buckler: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Light Shield: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Heavy Shield: 1.5
Tower Shield: 1.5

Robes or Outfits: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Light Armor: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Medium Armor: 1.5
Heavy Armor: 1.5

[lyrecono]

The 45 prr from heavy armor is added (i assume) to the 6+bab prr already in place, why would you want to draw m/prr away from shield to armor?
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of buffing s&b tanks, the reason the OP started the thread?
assuming a lv 1 fighter in plate/tower shield, thats 51 prr from plate and 15 from shield, 102 and 30 vs reflex based damage,
Assuming a lv 1 fighter in plate% great axe thats 51 prr/mrr all the time.
At higher levels i can see these numbers change somewhat, nothing seems to warrant a shift away from the shield to the armor though.

Incidentally, are there many melee hits that require a reflex save where having double your prr would mater?

Last I checked, Arti infusions didn't suffer from ASF. So an arti can just grab the proficiency feat and enjoy the bonuses.

Not really, I'd say spending a feat slot on a body feat is equivalent to spending a feat slot on an armor proficiency. In fact, WF are already disadvantaged because (correct me if I'm wrong) taking level in a class, which auto-grants heavy armor proficiency doesn't give WF the equivalent body feat.

Thank you, its been a while since i've been on my arty.
They do suffer arcane spell failure due to armor while using arcane based scrolls.(invis, recon etc)
if you want to melee on a arty (a support /crafter/ranged toon, not designed for melee) why not multi class to a real melee class?
With these changes to help sword and board& platemail wearing toons, it looks like every non tank comes out of the woodwork in hopes of getting buffed too.

The "get proficiency with body feat" thing was wishful thinking. I still think it's a good idea, but I don't expect they will implement it. I'd sure like them to, but it wasn't my main issue. The part I was trying to focus on is that (again, unless they've changed it recently) you can't take an armor proficiency feat on a WF. At all. Adamantine body is an Arty selectable feat, but they can't get the PRR from it, because they don't have proficiency for heavy armor, nor the ability to take it.

Why can't you take heavy armor prof? shouldn't you be able to pick it as a regular feat at lv 1/3/5/9/etc if not bug report it
If you're referring to the artificer free feats list, it stands to reason: being in the thick of melee combat is not a trait usually connected with artificers, hence heavy armor prof isn't on the arty free feat list. Adam body is there for the multiclassers (normaly in PnP, boddy feats were lv 1 only, this allowed wf arties to "remold"themselves later in their career).

[Bingobong]

The 45 prr from heavy armor is added (i assume) to the 6+bab prr already in place, why would you want to draw m/prr away from shield to armor?
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of buffing s&b tanks, the reason the OP started the thread?.

I already addressed the bab+6 in my first post :
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5365849

The purpose of the thread is to reward heavily armored characters, not just S&B tanks :

The characters that seem to be falling behind are the heavily armored characters.

My proposal takes nothing away from S&B tanks, since an S&B tank will be wearing medium/heavy armor anyways and still end up with a net bonus of 2.0.

[lyrecono]

jmy bad, i quoted the wrong post, it should have been binbongs previous post.

I agree, the m/prr from armor is very little in comparison to the (lager)shields.
It is also still out of ballance

recalculation; 45 from heavy armor, 15 from tower shield, 15 from shield feats, BaB bonus 31(25 at lv 30), Sacred Defender 50(75 is most likely not wai), 30 from items, 15 from Legendary Shield Mastery, 20 from Heed No Pain, 9 PDK past lives, 27 Divine past lives = . 257 m/prr and 515
(enough problems with keeping agro, i'm staying away from Combat expertise and the ED improved combat expertise), it's a 2.5 and 5% difference.
assuming i did my math corectly:
this means i will take: 37% damage from melee magic and 23% damage from reflex based damage.
This with a heavy feat/enh ed investment.
Does this work on trap damage?
It looks better for tanks then a evasion toon or am i missing something?

the fighter is down 25 m/prr, 50 if the enhancement isn't broken.
Sev, will this be addressed too?

One of its 6th tier abilities gives 5/10/15 prr, but currently stacks with eacother.
The fighter lacks this 6th tier ability and currently falls behind 50prr.

[MangLord]

I'm not much of a defensive player. I tend to favor DPS melee classes, and I'd really like to play my dwarf greataxe kensei more. How much will a suit of plate benefit me without a shield? From the way it looks, sword and shield builds will benefit greatly from the proposed changes, but where does that leave THF styles? I think it's totally reasonable for heavily armored shield users to have the absolute best defensive capabilities, but I'm curious as to where other armored warriors, like fighters and barbarians choosing to use greatweapons will fall into the mix? I don't have evasion, and rely only on a suit of plate armor and buffs, so will that style of play become a worst case scenario for survivability?

It looks like a good deal of defensive investment in terms of gear needs to be made in order to have a good PRR, so will a heavily armored DPS melee continue to be a mana sink at high difficulties? I guess if tanking becomes a more valuable asset to the overall party, I'll get hit less overall with the tank drawing all the attention, and I can clean up around him/her without having to deal with all the aggro myself, but that's an ideal situation.

[lyrecono]

sure manglord, here goes:

assuming lv 30:
platemail kensai lv 20 with greataxe, 45 from armor, 31 from bab, 30 from item (deathwyrm bracer atm), thats a whoppin 106 m/prr, you take only 59% damage. if you switch to a shield&D-axe when things go south, you get 121 m/prr, you take 55% melee&spell damage and 38% damage from reflex based spells.

if you add in past lives (total of 36) and the SwD defensive stance(25)
remember that the stance does not require a shield at that tier but will cancel out the rage spell, lowering your "throw your weight around"dps

platemail kensai lv 20 with greataxe, 45 from armor, 31 from bab, 30 from item, 36 pastlives, 25 stance, thats a 147 m/prr, you take only 51% damage. if you switch to a shield&D-axe , you get 162 m/prr, you take 48% melee&spell damage and 32% damage from reflex based spells.

These calculations assumed that you didn't take any prr related shieldfeats.

[lyrecono]

as for barbarians:

Breastplate barbarian lv 20 with greataxe, 30 from armor,21 from bab, 30 from item, thats a 81 m/prr, you take 65% damage. if you switch to a (large)shield&D-axe , you get 91 m/prr, you take 62% melee&spell damage and 45% damage from reflex based spells.

i'm aware that 2 enhancements give 4 and 3 prr, i found them so low that i left them out.

with the 36 prr pastlives:
Breastplate barbarian lv 20 with greataxe, 30 from armor,21 from bab, 30 from item, 36 pl thats a 117 m/prr, you take 56% damage. if you switch to a (large)shield&D-axe , you get 127 m/prr, you take 54% melee&spell damage and 37% damage from reflex based spells.
with these numbers, barbarians are still stuck in limbo.

As a side note, you can see the pastlives making an effect here, adding 9% damage absorption for medium and 8% for heavy armor.
the heavy tank looses out on pastlives the more prr you add

[Ausdoerrt]

remember that the stance does not require a shield at that tier but will cancel out the rage spell, lowering your "throw your weight around"dps

Though if you invest a bit into the tree, you can get a +6 CON while in stance at T3, which more than compensates for lack of rage.

[Free2Pay]

At the end of the day, the acid test is whether a Fighter in full plate is still left standing in Elite Enter the Kobold and Elite A New Invasion (with no healing) in heroic, and the new raids (without a dedicated healer) in Epic Elite. Then we can really see if heavy armor close range melee playstyle is just as viable against a monk or some sort of blue bar Shiradi kiting playstyle that most players have gravitated to.


The heavier the armor, the more fortification bonus it should have against criticals and sneak attacks. It should have up to 7-6 mod effects on heavy, 6-5 on medium and the current 5-4 on light and clothes. Most class that has evasion tend to have a higher natural reflex saves in light armor whereas a fighter splashing for evasion not only gives up heavy armor but need to put in more effort to get working reflex save for the evasion. It's no secret that current end game favor taking no damage entirely through evasion or kiting. Even taking consistent smaller damage is unlikely to improve a fighter's predicament in raid compared to playstyle that takes none and yet still do outrageous cc and dps through Shiradi.

Some player expressed concern that buffing armor to make it a viable alternative to evasion should come with a cost. Let's just be clear that armor not providing better protection than evasion, is a result of a basic functionality the fighter class being broken for so long that no one remember why evasion has always been superior. Armor should always offer better protection, not the other way round. Fact is the current state of the game armor don't really offer any real protection, on the opposite it tends to get the player killed very fast.

[lyrecono]

Though if you invest a bit into the tree, you can get a +6 CON while in stance at T3, which more than compensates for lack of rage.

true, but he asked for a dwarven kensai great axe user, those are enhancemnt heavy
assuming all 3 tier 5's in the upper right: that's 27 dwarven enhancements, 41 kensai enhancements, leaving 12 for stalwart defender.
in order to pick up defencive stance you need to spend 11 points, leaving 1 for con.
the problem of this it that Manglord explicitly stated not wanting to wield a shield, a requirement for the constitution bonus.
From all the classes, the fighter could pull of the feat requirements to do both styles: e.g. greataxe and dwarven axe&shield, for the "oops"we're screwed moments.

[Ausdoerrt]

true, but he asked for a dwarven kensai great axe user, those are enhancemnt heavy
assuming all 3 tier 5's in the upper right: that's 27 dwarven enhancements, 41 kensai enhancements, leaving 12 for stalwart defender.
in order to pick up defencive stance you need to spend 11 points, leaving 1 for con.
the problem of this it that Manglord explicitly stated not wanting to wield a shield, a requirement for the constitution bonus.
From all the classes, the fighter could pull of the feat requirements to do both styles: e.g. greataxe and dwarven axe&shield, for the "oops"we're screwed moments.

If even my feat-starved pally could do it (to an extent), then the fighter should be able to achieve that easily (the bolded part).

I do think that the AP costs in defensive trees need to be reduced, or the enhancements consolidated. As it stands, you need almost everything from those trees, leaving very, very little for anything else - and making the splash more difficult.

The shield requirement should also be gone as it was in the old enhancement system - though I recall reading that they're thinking about this.

[lyrecono]

If even my feat-starved pally could do it (to an extent), then the fighter should be able to achieve that easily (the bolded part).

I do think that the AP costs in defensive trees need to be reduced, or the enhancements consolidated. As it stands, you need almost everything from those trees, leaving very, very little for anything else - and making the splash more difficult.

The shield requirement should also be gone as it was in the old enhancement system - though I recall reading that they're thinking about this.

aye, my biggest problem with my tank was just that, to much ap in defense to be any good.
i would love the old full plate & thf back but i get more dps out of swf and switching to sword and board when things get to though.p
With the new system i will be trying out a full plate& swf (thunderholme khopes or d-axe)& orb for repair/heal amp or buckler for dodge, then switch to pdk shield when things get though.

[Ausdoerrt]

From the bard discussion...

What will break my build with the armor changes? 73% spell mitigation is more beneficial than evasion so my two splash levels for evasion are for naught and preventing me from getting to the pally capstone. If I do keep my current build, then my AC/PRR/MRR will be lower due to the shield change (which are already substancially lower than a heavy armor tank) AND I highly doubt we will see adequate (ie useful) light shields in the game at all levels.

Shields increasing the modifier are going to make this overpowered and cheap for non tanks to get 73% mitigation. I might as well take my cleric, throw intim items on and tank with my healbot.

What does my tank need? (besides the heavy shield w/evasion to be left alone) I need the tanking tree to be reasonably prices in enhancement points. I need some additional dps, hategen and/or guard options to keep agro. I need a purpose in non raids besides trying to keep up with the dps and maybe intim one off them and hit a few times before they kill it. I need more named armors in the end game to have some options.

I would take a page from city of heros tanks. They were buffed after launch to do automatic hategen on hits as otherwise they couldn't hold mobs attentions after a blast or dps aoe attack. We don't need it so things never can be pulled away, but some increased hate is needed by tanks. (and not dev hate... haha)

I think no evasion with heavy+ shields makes perfect sense - do you know how much those things weigh? Yeah this does change some builds, but, unlike with bards, I think that's precisely the point... Evasion is already more powerful than armor, so giving evasionists a chance to reach PRR numbers similar to plate'n'shield builds is unbalanced.

To agree on the "more light shields" part, but I expect we'll see more thanks to swashbuckler

aye, my biggest problem with my tank was just that, to much ap in defense to be any good.
i would love the old full plate & thf back but i get more dps out of swf and switching to sword and board when things get to though.p
With the new system i will be trying out a full plate& swf (thunderholme khopes or d-axe)& orb for repair/heal amp or buckler for dodge, then switch to pdk shield when things get though.

A bit beyond the scope of discussion, but I've rolled up a dwarf OC barb with SWF DAxe. Anyway.

I prefer the oldschool S&B+THF build because it still has great synergy with hand-and-half weapons. Though if they boost S&B feats/enhancements, this may not be necessary - we'll see.

I do very much look forward to these and pally changes. I've had to reroll my pure pally to an odd 13 sorc (EK)/6 pally/1 fvs (for DM) build to keep him fun. Sure, the changes since MOTU made it much, much easier to get high AC (I get 99 stable, up to ~110 with buffs) plus there's PRR (working on that), but he's getting more mileage out of self-cast blur and displacement. In addition, even with all the DPS buffs I could squeeze out - the double-strike bonuses from the EK tree (22% without boosts or items), 55-ish sustainable STR (with DM), and over 50% shield bash chance, his melee DPS is still pitiful to the point that relatively un-buffed evocation spells feel more useful.

In other words, I'm really hoping that the armor pass and the paladin improvements aren't too cautious - otherwise it'd be hard to convince me to return to my old pure build.

[lyrecono]

hehe, all i meant was that the swf line gives so much dps that my tank is gone do more damage swf then 2hf on trash.
he'll switch to a real shield when in trouble.

i love the old b-sword and D-axe, they got nice dps boosts due to swf, being higher now then 2hf, something Manglord wanted to do. (dps still behind any caster :P)
They can pull of fast dps with a buckler now and switch to a real shield for more damage mitigation.

@Free2play:

the fullplate(and i assume you meant towershield?) will still make him get hurt in elite ETK, but he'll be easier to heal now that the damage spikes are lower. (Don't forget blur/displacement and the energy blocking feat for more mitigation).
Without self healing he'll die, slower then he used too but he'll go down.
A monk at that level will fail (ref)saves once in a while too.