Some time after Armor Up: where do we stand?

[BigErkyKid]

Hello forumites,


Some time ago the devs came up with an update named Armor Up! where they made big sweeping changes to how armors work. We had a rework of PRR, MRR, and the values contributed by each of them (scaling function, base value by armor). Everyone moved to heavy armor after the update. Rogues, wizards/sorcs, barbs, you name it. Heavy armor was incredibly attractive and one might argue OP. After that, several nerfs have occurred (armor no longer providing MRR, for example). In addition, we have seen big changes in the ways one can stack PRR (we have insight and quality PRR, new feats). But importantly we have also seen unprecedented power creep in dodge via itemization, with a single item providing 17% dodge as we speak (legendary animated rope).

So the question that begs is: where do we stand? Has armor been nerfed to pre buff situations in the pecking order or does it hold its ground well?

Usually I would present a little analysis here, but I'll leave that for later and open the room for other people. Please feel free to pitch in your own thoughts and numbers.

EDIT: Some numbers on defensive differences. The breakdown can be found in the full post in page 2.

THF Paladin build: 244 PRR (29% taken)/ 11 Dodge To be hit: 38%Edamage: 11%
THF Paladin build med armor max dodge: 229 PRR (30% taken)/ 19 Dodge To be hit: 34%Edamage: 10%
TWF ranger 228 PRR (30% taken)/ 23 Dodge To be hit: 31%Edamage: 9%
THF barbarian 228 PRR (32% taken)/ 10 Dodge To be hit: 38%Edamage: 12%
S&B Paladin build: 289 PRR (25% taken)/ 6 Dodge To be hit: 40%Edamage: 7.7%

[Eth]

I'd say the armors are better balanced than ever, in the sense, that they all get used.
There are good reasons to wear light armor, heavy armor and even robes/cloth. Medium armor is probably the least used, but also has some uses (barbs, some warlocks).

That being said, while making all armors kind of viable is cool, the armor up update was ridiculous in terms of power creep. Quests that were difficult due to incoming damage became trivialized once U23 was launched. Still one of the worst updates in terms of player vs content balance.

I remember testing a paladin on lammania back then in quests that I knew from live servers from my (squishier) tempest ranger.
Standing in a quest like Breaking the Ranks thinking "What the **** is this?".

[JOTMON]

Still waiting for them to 'Fix' Mithril and Adamantine, and the PRR/MRR for the forged classes..

back in 2014....

Currently Mithril is screwed and adamantine is worthless..
They know about it and they did say somewhere that they were going to look at it at some future unknown unspecified date.
I trashed all my mithril.. for me its robes and max dodge/evasion or heavy armor & PRR, everything in between is meh... pointless.

Warforged/Bladeforged get screwed with this cap.

MRR Cap- Different armor types can apply a cap for Magical Resistance Rating (U23):
Robes, Outfit, or empty armor slot: 50
Light Armor: 100
Medium Armor: No cap
Heavy Armor: No cap

WF/BF have to use a feat to take a body type beyond Composite (composite should be treated as light armor for PRR/MRR )
Mithral is treated as light armor even though it should be recognized as Mithral Medium Armor.

1. Composite Body should be giving the armor cap equivalent of light armor, it is base plating that has the properties of padded armor and treated in a similar way to how mithral moves the armor from medium to light, Composite plating moves the armor from light to none(effectively heavy robes).

Composite Body:
This plating is not natural armor and does not stack with other effects that give an armor bonus (other than natural armor).
This composite plating occupies the same space on the body as a suit of armor or a robe, and thus a warforged cannot wear armor or magic robes.
Composite plating also provides a warforged with a 5% arcane spell failure chance, similar to the penalty for wearing light armor.


2. WF/BF Mithral body is medium body plating made of MIthral wich moves it into the light category. This is why there is no actual selectable medium body armor option.

Mithral Body:
Docents you equip provide armor equivalent to Chainmail. This is treated as metallic light armor
(because it is Mithral, otherwise it would be medium armor, which is why WF/BF don't have a Medium Armor choice)

3. Adamantine Body:
Docents you equip provide armor equivalent to Full Plate.
This is treated as metallic heavy armor. You have damage reduction 2/adamantine, a 35% arcane spell failure chance, -5 armor check penalty to certain skills, and a +1 maximum dexterity bonus.
Note: Evasion doesn't work for Warforged with Adamantine Body since it is considered a heavy armor.



.. but of course the whole Mithral issue has been left unresolved for a while...
Cordovan posted earlier this year


No matter which way the WF/BF goes they are getting a disproportionate PRR/MRR recognition for the Composite/Mithral Body types.

I would like to see Docents/Composite Body removed from the game and have WF/BF just wear armor like everyone else.
They did it in the 4e rules for DnD..

~Mithral is a metal that resembles silver but is stronger than steel, and much lighter in weight than either.~

Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one weight category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armor is treated as medium, and medium armor is treated as light, but light armor is still treated as light. Arcane Spell Failure chances for armor and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum dexterity bonus is increased by 2, and armor check penalties are lessened by 3 (to a minimum of 0).

Mithral is not a magical material, it is an extremely rare ore.

~so I would not expect to see any benefit to mithral other than it being able to attain the properties of a higher tier armor and reduced ASF.



~Adamantine~
Adamantine is a jet-black alloy of adamantium and other metals. Usually black in colour, adamantine had a green sheen when viewed by candlelight or a purple-white sheen when viewed by magical light
It was found only in veins of ore near earth nodes and areas of faerzress in the Underdark. Occasionally, small meteorites consisting of some adamantine would fall to Abeir-Toril as well.
Adamantine, when smelted, was ultra-hard but this was a costly procedure. Adamantine weapons were useful for damaging the weapons and armor of opponents. A set of adamantine armor or a shield was nearly impenetrable to normal weapons.
Adamantine was often used by drow elves of the Underdark, and their adamantine weapons were usually swords that were magically enhanced. Their magical strength and sharpness faded if brought into contact with direct sunlight.

Found in rare Ores and some Meteorites has traces of inate magical properties (has a purple/white sheen in magical light) but is itself not magical (well..not magic we currently know of).
Adamantine can be infused into other materials to make them harder and more durable..
Adamantine Golems in traditional D&D are immune to magic. This would lead me to speculate that Adamantine should carry a higher MRR.

We understand that there are folks that would like us to give some attention to mithril (and adamantine, and random-gen armor in general.) So far our schedule has not permitted it, but hopefully this is something we can carve out time for when the time is right.

back in 2014..
Severlin
~ We will be looking into Mithril and other armor materials and how they interact with this system. We don't want these to make an armor worse by changing the PRR and MRR bonuses.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Changes/page11

[SiliconScout]

Honestly anyone expecting that they will ever fix Mithril or Adamantine at this point is just plain delusional.

They have had AMPLE time do to so, they have made multiple adjustments to the system and yet to look into fixing it. With the Armor system being relatively stable now I can't see them tinkering with it just to fix this at this point.

[Enoach]

While I like the changes they did and the correction made later where more of the benefit from proficency helped balance out some of the mass usage on non-traditional classes.

Things that still concern me...

MRR works on more than Reflex based spells. Because of this it makes it more useful than Evasion even with it being a reduced amount of damage vs no damage from evasion. I think a few more adjustments may still be needed to balance that out. One thought I had was that the shield should have a higher MRR rating than Armor.

The Too-Hit calculation and more notably the need to keep glancing blow (the almost hit). Part of why AC is not seen as being as an even balance in the new defense group is that mobs can still hit with glancing blows. I think when the new system was added this needed to be removed. I think doing this will also change the face of PC melee/range attacks possibly bringing more focus back to make a hit vs puttin all focus on the amount of damage being done. I think we hit/semi hit to often on builds that shouldn't have that high of success. Doing this would even out the High Levels where DC casters are seen as less successful. This would als bring back tactics like using sunder to help party members hit more often.

[dunklezhan]

I just about was able to cope with armour when they changed from pnp rules to the bizarre percentage system. I could work out that if you were wearing your class' armour type and the minimum level was close to your character level, you were probably going to be in the 50% miss bracket, and that at least I could get my head around.

However, I completely lost track and interest in how to do defense in DDO as soon as they introduced PRR and MRR. It's just way, way too obscure for me and I have no way to compare avoidance with absorption vs a non-defensive effect I'm probably already wearing without breaking out a spreadsheet and guessing at what incoming damage I'm likely to encounter. Its non-linear, and how useful it is depends on how much PRR/MRR you already have and being able to somehow calculate what the sliding scale of diminishing returns actaully is.

In pre-MMR/PRR world the maths was very straightforward. Now... there's no way I can do this kind of maths in my head, and the game tells you nothing useful until after you equip something. Even worse than that, there's no way to mitigate PRR/MRR- resulting in monsters who have effectively a non-predictable amount of non-bypassable DR. And if we/monsters did have something to mitigate, then I'd be even more stuck because that would be yet another thing I'd have to try to gear for without being able to understand precisely how it works at a glance.

Ugh. The whole thing is just... ugh.

My L23 warlock is wearing L10 GH armour, and I daresay after she's got a few more epic relics I'll be picking up the epic version and wearing that to cap. I can't find anything else with such useful effects, and the defensive side of the stats is now so meaningless to me that I may as well just ignore it because its faster to hit a rez shrine than do the maths.

So I stick with what I know instead, which happens to be about 2 or 3 years out of date. Most frustrating.

Game stats need to be intuitive or they need incredibly good tool tips to show you the before/after before you equip. DDO has neither of these things at the moment for defensive stats.

[nokowi]

If players are choosing all types of armor, then we have a pretty good system.

Pre-Armor Up, you simply maxed AC and couldn't be touched. You can't do this now, so what we have is an improvement in terms of choices.

Where armor up when wrong is in the amount of mitigation. EE became easier than EH with this one update, and devs haven't found a way to reintroduce challenge in a way that is fun for players.

As usual, devs give players too much and the game suffers because of their fear of nerfs, and we wait 2-3 years for them to fix something (ramping up challenge) that could have been fixed with little work by the next update by simply not making damage reduction so powerful.

[KoobTheProud]

Honestly anyone expecting that they will ever fix Mithril or Adamantine at this point is just plain delusional.

They have had AMPLE time do to so, they have made multiple adjustments to the system and yet to look into fixing it. With the Armor system being relatively stable now I can't see them tinkering with it just to fix this at this point.

They could fix it as part of the crafting pass when they do that. They're going to have to put in extra time and effort there anyway and the armor types, DR, skill checks, etc are all peripherally related to what they're going to be doing there anyway.

The armor system is not stable at this point. Heavy Armor is the default choice if you can get it because all the other mitigation choices pale before PRR particularly in epic levels.

We've flipped 180 degrees from where we were when AC/Dodge and Evasion were clearly the best way to go. The system needs to get back in balance or the best plates are still going to be where everybody goes.

This is one of the biggest issues that needs to be resolved before the Monk pass in my opinion. Very few people are going to care what they do with Monk DPS as long as it's tied to the need to stay centered.

[nokowi]

They could fix it as part of the crafting pass when they do that. They're going to have to put in extra time and effort there anyway and the armor types, DR, skill checks, etc are all peripherally related to what they're going to be doing there anyway.

The armor system is not stable at this point. Heavy Armor is the default choice if you can get it because all the other mitigation choices pale before PRR particularly in epic levels.

We've flipped 180 degrees from where we were when AC/Dodge and Evasion were clearly the best way to go. The system needs to get back in balance or the best plates are still going to be where everybody goes.

This is one of the biggest issues that needs to be resolved before the Monk pass in my opinion. Very few people are going to care what they do with Monk DPS as long as it's tied to the need to stay centered.

I have no issues on a dodge/evasion build right now, and I play a squishier build than a monk. Are you sure you understand the present state of the game?

I see a trend on the forums where players live at least 1 year in the past, and still complain about things that are no longer problems.

[Qhualor]

MRR works on more than Reflex based spells. Because of this it makes it more useful than Evasion even with it being a reduced amount of damage vs no damage from evasion. I think a few more adjustments may still be needed to balance that out. One thought I had was that the shield should have a higher MRR rating than Armor.

I disagree with this. my characters take more damage from reflex save spells without evasion than my evasion characters do and all of them have nearly the max amount you can get in the game via gear, past lives and enhancements. however, my Vanguard pure Fighter in heavy armor with absorption items, enhancements, nearly max MRR and using Divine Energy Resistance doesn't take a lot of reflex save spell damage. shield blocking with increased absorption helps too.

[KoobTheProud]

I have no issues on a dodge/evasion build right now, and I play a squishier build than a monk. Are you sure you understand the present state of the game?

I see a trend on the forums where players live at least 1 year in the past, and still complain about things that are no longer problems.

It's not a question of issues on a dodge/evasion build as much as plate and PRR being better. People min-max a lot and right now PRR and plate is just better.

The comment on Monks is based on people largely using them as a ranged class right now as opposed to the melee aspects. Melee Monks need to get in tight and live and then they need to do really good DPS and it's tough to do both of those things in a dodge/evasion based build.

Casters on the other hand are still trying to get into Heavy Armor because the benefits of being in Heavy Armor far outweigh the downsides even for classes that are supposedly hindered by wearing it. The exception being classes that can't evade or get significant save penalties from wearing anything above Light Armor.

This is at least partly because pure classes have become so powerful compared to all but a few multi-class builds. Getting to pure for raw power makes it less likely that a splash for something like evasion/improved evasion is part of the calculation.

I ran my main for years as a Paladin/Monk because the benefits of a Monk splash were substantial. Then the Paladin capstones surpassed the Monk splash and finally Warlock in Medium Armor and then Plate just blew everything else out of the picture.

[Qhualor]

The armor system is not stable at this point. Heavy Armor is the default choice if you can get it because all the other mitigation choices pale before PRR particularly in epic levels.

heavy armor used to be default, but not anymore. my pure ranger in light armor by level 30 can get 25% dodge, has very good evasion and 125 PRR without trying and not even close to being twinked out. I was able to do nearly the same thing when I did rogue past lives. I still have Deep Gnome left for useful heroic past lives and only have done Arcane past lives so far, so I can still get a much higher defense eventually especially when I eventually get better gear.

[KoobTheProud]

I disagree with this. my characters take more damage from reflex save spells without evasion than my evasion characters do and all of them have nearly the max amount you can get in the game via gear, past lives and enhancements. however, my Vanguard pure Fighter in heavy armor with absorption items, enhancements, nearly max MRR and using Divine Energy Resistance doesn't take a lot of reflex save spell damage. shield blocking with increased absorption helps too.

Yes, this is the issue in a nutshell. It used to be that you had a huge difference between evasion and non-evasion builds in terms of spell damage taken. Now you have a difference but it isn't large enough to keep PRR from being the King of combat damage preventers.

Once you get to the point where other things are blocking incoming spell damage, as they are today, most of the benefit of high reflex saves goes away. Running over traps with high PRR and elemental resistances is nearly as effective as avoiding them with high reflex saves. It comes down to Spell Wards as the only traps that are really dangerous to a plate wearer and 99% of those are in fixed locations that you can at least partly avoid exposure too in whatever quest you're running once you know where they are.

[dunklezhan]

Pre-Armor Up, you simply maxed AC and couldn't be touched. You can't do this now, so what we have is an improvement in terms of choices.

That's not really an accurate description of the problem. Firstly because there was no "simply" about it except in terms of understanding what you needed to achieve. Actually achieving those number was near impossible once you hit mid teens without major DPS and other sacrifices. The people who could had worked for it, and it was an asset to the game because it was a goal that was hard to reach.

The issue was not the 5% where you could not be hit, it was that after L10 you either sacrificed everything and reached that magic 5% or... well, for the vast majority of the time you may as well not have been wearing any armour whatsoever. You wouldn't even get close to the numbers required to make mobs even miss on a roll of a 2.

So you either built for max armour and no DPS, or you built for evasion and dodge and more or less kept your DPS except for extreme cases.

In terms of dealing with those problems, the first AC revamp certainly nailed it. As I recall it overnight more or less destroyed tank builds and led to a ton of people exiting the game because that incredible sacrifice was now (in their eyes) totally worthless. i think they were overreacting personally - they'd gone from 95% miss to 80% miss for the most part which was still out of reach for a lot of folk even with the changes. Nevertheless, that's how they felt.

All the other armour tweaks since then are basically I think supposed to have made tanking viable again, and I think that's probably worked, for those who understand all the tweaks. I certainly see a lot of tanky builds these days at least in terms of taking the punishment in EE.

[Enoach]

I disagree with this. my characters take more damage from reflex save spells without evasion than my evasion characters do and all of them have nearly the max amount you can get in the game via gear, past lives and enhancements. however, my Vanguard pure Fighter in heavy armor with absorption items, enhancements, nearly max MRR and using Divine Energy Resistance doesn't take a lot of reflex save spell damage. shield blocking with increased absorption helps too.

I think you misunderstood. What I meant by more useful is that MRR works for more than just the Reflex based spells. A character with Evasion and a Reflex save to back this up will take very little to no damage, but as soon as that spell is Fortitude or Will based they will be taking the full load and will not have the MRR of the Armor/Shield as they are geared to allow for Evasion.

As for moving the advantage of MRR more towards shields this has more to do with the idea that a shield can "block". Much like the iconic pictures of warriors verse dragons breathing their breath weapons.

Much like many of the universal abilities such as universal spell power vs a specific type (Fire, Acid, Electric, Cold, Force, Light) I think it is better that the universal version does not become so powerful that it is the best option for all situations. This is what happened as players made a mass move towards heavy armor even on builds that had access to evasion.

I like to tank with my paladin and at one point with Epic Destinies I found that switching to shadow dancer allowed me to be more effective as a tank in Fall of Truth than any other and this was because Evasion Tanking was more survivable. However, MRR has made this less of an issue allowing me to stay in a Destiny that benefits from wearing heavy armor.

[Marshal_Lannes]

In all honesty the math is getting too complicated to worry about at this point. Once you move away from THACO or if you prefer it's reverse in 3rd Edition, the game gets so bogged down in math it's not worth pondering. If I wanted a complex game system I would have played Harnmaster not D&D. I played D&D cause I rolled a d20 and you either hit or miss. You know what number you have to shoot for. Power Creep has been the reason all these band aids and duct tape have had to be stuck all over to the AC system.

[Axeyu]

I do not understand why they made the PRR/MRR stats so prelevant in enhancements, abilities and gear. The purpose of PRR/MRR was to balance robes and heavy armor, it should have stayed that way.

[Marshal_Lannes]

I think it is because on the forums it became standard to claim everyone can get 100 PRR (now its 150) so content started being developed with that benchmark in mind. They then had to include a variety of ways to get to 100 (now 150) and there u go, power creep is off and running. So instead of allowing benefits and trade offs for choosing PRR, it no longer became a choice but just something you had to build for. Getting 100 PRR (now 150) became as needed as equiping your main hand weapon.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

high prr is still the best defensive statistic imo, even if you have to sacrifice dodge and the math tells you that you are going to take more damage.

despite apparent popular misconception the game isnt a spreadsheet or a calculator. the whole point of having defenses is to keep your character alive. if you have moderately high prr and moderately high dodge, you might need less resources to complete a quest where the incoming damage isnt extremely high. however, in the current scenario of le, that moderately high prr isnt going to be enough for most characters hit points to be able to stay alive consistently, and anything less than...99, 100%? dodge is going to ultimately be fairly meaningless if you are still dying in one hit.

i know people think that the current implementation of "challenge" is "idiotic", but honestly, the people *****ing about it are the idiots. what are the main two complaints about armor up? just slapping on heavy armor gives you too much defense, and heavy armor prr is too high (thus trivializing content by trivializing incoming damage). so, without searching the forums and comparing names, the same general group of ppl (ddo players), that complain about incoming damage being too small are now complaining its too big. imagine that. first of all, sorjek was very survivable and tankable on le the day he came out. secondly, your squishy characters should be dying and should be getting one shot. otherwise what is the actual point of heavy armor? better resource efficiency? on characters which historically are already comparatively the most resource efficient? ugh. if you want to play melee as easily as you can in le, play a high prr and high hp character, which is more than doable between fighter and barbarian and kinda paladin at the least. if you or your build arent capable of achieving the necessary defensive stats to not get one shot by sorjek (what i consider the benchmark of making le easy mode) then there are *gasp* things you can DO instead of fkin ACQUIRE to not die. its really nice to see people besides myself advocating losing, attacking from behind, using tactical abilities (the amount of people who apparently...dont know?...that they always have trip and are str builds is amazing) and aggro management. i really like that group tactics and squish and not squishy is a real and distinct thing right now. wont lie though, they absolutely must fix this stupid ai **** where divines automatically generate so much aggro.

heavy armor no longer automatically is the king of defense or provides enough defense on its own. its more beneficial for various classes to wear different kinds of armor. so, seems to me like the two main issues with armor up have been dealt with.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Still waiting for them to 'Fix' Mithril and Adamantine, and the PRR/MRR for the forged classes..

back in 2014....











back in 2014..
Severlin
~ We will be looking into Mithril and other armor materials and how they interact with this system. We don't want these to make an armor worse by changing the PRR and MRR bonuses.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...Changes/page11

I agree.


And since several newer named items are Mithral, it needs to be changed.
This is not just an issue with out of date armors.

And those "war" forged.... should not be inferior warriors.