Okay, Let's Get Serious About Armor

bellanca6561n

...and constructively serious if we can.

Was thinking on this because, long before this game, magic creep has led to armor no longer making sense to a lot of people. It's not just this game that has lots of folks "in a dress waving a stick."

So let's look at the rock, paper, scissors of it. Let's open the box.

Let's say certain armor traits were properties of materials. Impenetrable, for example, would be a property of metal and only metal. Infused a property of cloth. Reinforced a property of leather but only certain leathers refined by master crafters.

You see where this goes. Wearers of light are vulnerable to damage but have a large pool for either movement or spells. Wearers of of heavy are...well...nearly impervious to critical hits but are not quick on their feet. Roll/dodge costs them but blocking does not, and so on.

Play as you want would instead you are what you wear. That's largely true now. There's simply little incentive to wear medium or heavy. Folks look at the passives in the light armor line and see an offer they can't refuse. And that's what many passives are, after all: material properties.

There is solid logic behind them now. It just hasn't worked out as intended due to the combination of crafting traits with passive skill traits. Impenetrable cloth? Kevlar in Nirn perhaps?

PBpsy

Go in a trial without a heavy armor tank. Good luck .

AshySamurai

Interesting thoughts. But it's a really huge buff for heavy in PvP and a huge nerf of others armor. IMO it's better to rework impenetrable trait. Why just to not reduce damage from crit (for now it's imposible to crit to person, who wears 7/7 impenetrable)? So, you can crit, and sorcs have critical surge works. But they crit for a little damage and get a little heal in PvP. IMO it's more balanced than what we have now.

KhajiitiLizard

You can reinforce metal armor, just like you can reinforce leather and cloth. All it takes is more material.

Little incentive to wear medium? I'll let my 70%+ weapon critical speak for itself.

Med armor, 2000 magicka, 73.5% weapon crit, 32% spell crit, 84 magicka regen, 90 stamina regen, 1300 spell resist, 2100 armor (I'm using jewelry that adds armor around1600 without rings, still good for medium).

Yeah, no incentive to use medium at all.

Rodario

Good, because up until now we were just fooling around about armor.

Muizer

ThatArgonianGuy wrote: »

You can reinforce metal armor, just like you can reinforce leather and cloth. All it takes is more material.

Little incentive to wear medium? I'll let my 70%+ weapon critical speak for itself.

Med armor, 2000 magicka, 73.5% weapon crit, 32% spell crit, 84 magicka regen, 90 stamina regen, 1300 spell resist, 2100 armor (I'm using jewelry that adds armor around1600 without rings, still good for medium).

Yeah, no incentive to use medium at all.

Yup, my heavy armour alone gives me 2100 armor.......but that's the soft-cap. That means that despite being a DK I cannot really make a significant difference with your build, because the spell shields come with serious diminishing returns. Needless to say all my other stats are worse and I don't expect leveling to V14 will close the gap.

EDIT: actually, my spell resist is around 2000, so that at least is a bit higher.

bellanca6561n

Rodario wrote: »

Good, because up until now we were just fooling around about armor.

What I meant was, of course, that there were many loud complaints but you can't take them seriously if they're just diffuse claims such as heavy armor being a disadvantage.

Obviously people are serious about armor, if the responses are any indication.

My interest is better balance and systems that have more conceptual consistency.

KenjiJU

That seems more chipping at the problem than addressing the overall issue.

You mention the passives in light that players see an offer they can't refuse. That's where you start. Talking about the game's heavy leaning on mana skills/ranged/light armor vs melee/non-light.

We have things in this game and other games like 'Bound Armor' to compensate for a mage-type class that's overall expectedly 'mage'. Should they not have decided instead that to encourage some mage builds to just aim for heavy armor? *shrug* The whole concept of the 'glass cannon' in these games always ends up being risk/reward instead of just a playstyle choice. Players always find ways to take out or minimize the 'risk' developers balanced around. Just as you mention in that first paragraph, I'm not surprised by the situation in this game at all. I remember watching Force's beta stream, prettymuch shelving his Nightblade after playing a caster-y DK.

As a side note, I've never felt the whole assassin-type leather armor melee dps worked well thematically in a game where you're side by side with all the other classes, fighting massive rock monsters and the like. The whole martial-arts and stealthiness just falls off at that point. You'd want other heavy armored guys (besides the main guy with a shield) to be smacking around the boss.

bellanca6561n

Agreed. You look back at all these attempts over the years to create engaging balance that makes sense to most people, fighters and crafters alike, but the decision to make a leveling game is the one that dictates so many others.

You've segregated your players right out of the gate. This limits how multiplayer the game is. The less multiplayer the game is the more versatile its players must be. That's how you get those oddities you mention: min-maxer combinations that feel more like gangs than combat units in the field.

And, yes, I don't take PvE seriously enough as the fellow doing the trials gently pointed out up-topic. I do respect it, though. Takes skill and leadership to handle tough, raid based scenarios well.

Another way to complicate it won't fix it. It's a core design issue that will be improved or not over time.

Hell, I remember when someone first proposed PvE in online games. Everyone in my shop thought him daft (queue the Monty Python swamp castle builder). What possible incentive would people have to fight an AI? Who would play such a game?

Sorry...I tend to digress...

Thrymbauld

PBpsy wrote: »

Go in a trial without a heavy armor tank. Good luck .

Because high end tanking should be the sole province of an entire armor type. I disagree. The vast majority of the game heavily favors ignoring heavy armor completely.

Making the armors "role centric", in my opinion, guts them in its entirety. Magicka use for anything but tanking means light armor. You ARE gutting yourself to go any other way. Same with medium armor and physical damage. If you want to use heavy armor, you ARE heavily removing yourself from advantages that an identical build, except with a resource dependent tilt, can offer.

Gear and level creep in no way nullifies this, even though it can "gloss over" the problem by allowing people to reach a point in which that particular choice is trivial(being able to "cap" a variety of things in heavy armor is caused by this alone).

I would suggest a few things.

1. Make all armor "usable" buttons only usable with a majority, preferable five or more, of that item on. Immovable is easily the best example, and if heavy armor was its sole user it may be enough right there to see its usage.

2. "Hybridize" it. If we really must have role/resource specific armor types, I would submit that we're badly lacking in a hybrid type to combine weapon and magicka skills on the same bar.

Instead of the trivial+cooldown "on hit" resource gain from heavy armor, give it half the bonus the other types get, for EACH resource. That is to say, instead of constitution giving a small percentage on hit, give it an "always on" percentage of 2% per piece or armor, or something of that nature. Actual numbers adjusted for balance, of course.

Make Juggernaut give a percentage to both spells and weapons, in lieu of the critical hit gains from the other armors. Keep in mind that "spells" in this game are really just class abilities, it isn't really a disparity between finger wagglers and sword swingers so much as it's blue bar versus green bar.

3. Get rid of the caps already, or at least raise them to something logical. Soft capping armor rating just by putting on heavy armor is ridiculous. Easy to use, high uptime skills easily keep the other armors just as soft capped as the guy in heavy, which means that the heavy armor user armor encounters drastic diminishing returns immediately, trivializing his mitigation advantage in all but the most "end game" PvE scenarios---the ones mentioned above. Currently, a heavy armor users TTK and TTL levels are badly askew--you can survive longer, but your reduced output means that your functionality doesn't bring that survivability a proper usage.

eliisra

Loads of incentive to wear medium armor in PvP. It comes with the highest burst in the game, cheapest dodge roll and the best crit passive.

In PvE, not so much. You need sustained over a few seconds of burst, making light superior.

Heavy armor performance is bad in both PvE and PvP. You might wear 2 pieces for a set bonus, that's it. Really hope 1.5 offer some updates and improvements for heavy armor, it's about time. Only taken them what.. 7 months or so?

There's also the fact that armor rating does very little for ones defences. Having 1k armour instead 2k, isn't a huge deal when receiving a physical attack. Also a dozen of cheap skills or one enchant, will get you overcharged on armor rating while wearing light. No incentive to use heavy at all, other than some block reduction.

Forestd16b14_ESO

OR and follow me on this... we fix there skills cause in case you haven't seen yet alot of clothed players are using immoveable the heavy armor skill. This reason right here is why armor is weird like need 1 or more armor to use the passive skill so why can you use the skill with out even wearing one piece of the armor. Me personal i find this wrong and need fixed cause i worked my ass off getting 50 heavy armor and used so many skill point into heavy armor and worked my ass off again leveling up immoveable to get it maxed morphed and with all that blood sweat and tears to get 10 or 11 secs of boosted armor and spell res and immune to stuns was worth it. But to see light armor wearers using it just to be immune to stuns is basicly a middle finger to use heavy armor users. It's like them saying "hey we can use your skill too without training or wearing heavy armor". A way to fix it? Make the skill need 5 pieces of said armor to use said armor skill. It will also be step in the right direction of fixing pvp to. Stopping all the gank-piers spamming it to grant immunity from silver blots and dawnbreaker. Fixing this will be fixing PvP too 2 guards knees with one arrow as they would say.

Samadhi

AshySamurai wrote: »

...IMO it's better to rework impenetrable trait. Why just to not reduce damage from crit (for now it's imposible to crit to person, who wears 7/7 impenetrable)? So, you can crit, and sorcs have critical surge works. But they crit for a little damage and get a little heal in PvP. IMO it's more balanced than what we have now.

Buffing Impenetrable like this would be a significant nerf to Sneak Attacks, as well as Crit Build Nightblades.

Prefer how Impenetrable works now. It certainly does not need to be buffed to reduce crit damage instead.

PBpsy

Thrymbauld wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Go in a trial without a heavy armor tank. Good luck .

Because high end tanking should be the sole province of an entire armor type. I disagree. The vast majority of the game heavily favors ignoring heavy armor completely.

Making the armors "role centric", in my opinion, guts them in its entirety. Magicka use for anything but tanking means light armor. You ARE gutting yourself to go any other way. Same with medium armor and physical damage. If you want to use heavy armor, you ARE heavily removing yourself from advantages that an identical build, except with a resource dependent tilt, can offer.

Gear and level creep in no way nullifies this, even though it can "gloss over" the problem by allowing people to reach a point in which that particular choice is trivial(being able to "cap" a variety of things in heavy armor is caused by this alone).

I would suggest a few things.

1. Make all armor "usable" buttons only usable with a majority, preferable five or more, of that item on. Immovable is easily the best example, and if heavy armor was its sole user it may be enough right there to see its usage.

2. "Hybridize" it. If we really must have role/resource specific armor types, I would submit that we're badly lacking in a hybrid type to combine weapon and magicka skills on the same bar.

Instead of the trivial+cooldown "on hit" resource gain from heavy armor, give it half the bonus the other types get, for EACH resource. That is to say, instead of constitution giving a small percentage on hit, give it an "always on" percentage of 2% per piece or armor, or something of that nature. Actual numbers adjusted for balance, of course.

Make Juggernaut give a percentage to both spells and weapons, in lieu of the critical hit gains from the other armors. Keep in mind that "spells" in this game are really just class abilities, it isn't really a disparity between finger wagglers and sword swingers so much as it's blue bar versus green bar.

3. Get rid of the caps already, or at least raise them to something logical. Soft capping armor rating just by putting on heavy armor is ridiculous. Easy to use, high uptime skills easily keep the other armors just as soft capped as the guy in heavy, which means that the heavy armor user armor encounters drastic diminishing returns immediately, trivializing his mitigation advantage in all but the most "end game" PvE scenarios---the ones mentioned above. Currently, a heavy armor users TTK and TTL levels are badly askew--you can survive longer, but your reduced output means that your functionality doesn't bring that survivability a proper usage.

My point was that there is a an actual incentive to use heavy armor in this game. For end game heavy armor tanks are more or less a must.

I agree with the idea of giving passive reduced cost to all armor types.I actually suggested in some older thread. 1.5% Magicka/1.5% Stamina for heavy,1%magicka /2% stamina for medium. However heavy should never be close in magicka based damage to a light armor build. You can't have the cake and eat it to. Why would anyone stay in 1k armor at V14 if he could be at 2.2k and still do the same damage with magicka skills.



The idea of making active armor skills on 5 piece is terrible though. It would actually be a pretty bad nerf for non light armor users who wouldn't be able to use annulment anymore. That skill is much more useful then Immovable in end game pve and probably even pvp. The usefulness of immovable for non zerg magicka based pvp builds always seemed exaggerated to me.

I would even like them to remove the restriction on 5 slot passives and make them per piece. With some cost reduction on everything you could go for any combo not just 7, 5/2, 5/1/1 and encourage true hybrid builds.Unfortunately from what I have seen recently they will soon move even more into a pure build direction than now. Glass cannon with a nerfed canon and stamina tank seem to be the choices of the future.

Thrymbauld

I really agree with most of what you're stating there---Heavy Armor SHOULD be needed for end game tanking, the way it is. Every mitigation percentage point and second added to your TTL should matter.

I really agree on the resource thing. I also agree, that it should not eclipse or even equal the light/medium armor types for their chosen resource. Rather, it should have a functionality that dictates that a person would have a more diverse skill set by being able to use both magicka and stamina based abilities to a degree greater than the other two armors handle, since they are heavily skewed toward one or the other.

I still believe that the usables should be armor specific, though. If it nerfs anything, that's ok. A heavy armor user should be making the choice, in part, because of immovable and a light armor user should be considering annulment. In this same vein, a medium armor user should get their ability completely reworked because it just plain sucks:P It is somewhat moot, though, since everyone can do it no one really gets to be more overpowered than someone else because of it.

The only thing that really gets the short end of the stick here is the heavy armor line itself because at 22 heavy armor you can now more or less soft cap armor and resists, as well as gain some CC immunities. It does seem somewhat ironic to me, though, that a push button from a tree largely removes the functionality of its entire line simply by giving it to everyone else.

Though I would say, that in the end, the only thing I'd really like to see is true functionality throughout the game with all three lines, through all play venues(meaning raid level PvE, normal PvE, and PvP, as opposed to suggesting a viability for all roles). If a great solution could come along that would make everyone happy, I'd be all for it.

Heck, just removing caps could even be enough---I'd have to think Heavy Armor would be the juggernaut of choice if you could suddenly go around with 20% more mitigation than a guy in a t-shirt.

Sord

Thrymbauld wrote: »

3. Get rid of the caps already, or at least raise them to something logical. Soft capping armor rating just by putting on heavy armor is ridiculous. Easy to use, high uptime skills easily keep the other armors just as soft capped as the guy in heavy, which means that the heavy armor user armor encounters drastic diminishing returns immediately, trivializing his mitigation advantage in all but the most "end game" PvE scenarios---the ones mentioned above. Currently, a heavy armor users TTK and TTL levels are badly askew--you can survive longer, but your reduced output means that your functionality doesn't bring that survivability a proper usage.

I totally agree with the above point and would say that LA even with spells shouldn't be able to soft cap, ever (or each armor type has it's own softcap number)! MA should be midrange and almost reach softcap with spells and enhancements, while HA shouldn't have too much trouble and with one spell or some enhancements to the HA should reach softcap with no problem.

I don't think spells should add to armor but damage shields are great. Why should a spell add armor, a spell should be a shield. I mean my lvl 23 sorc with a sword/board is at 416 armor of 790 softcap and I am wearing half white and half green items that are lvl 20 with 2 pieces lvl 23 and 1 lvl 17. How can I possibly be at just above half way with LA to the softcap and crappy armor? This just doesn't make sense AT ALL! Plus if I had Bound Armor turned on it would add 253 that would put me above 80% max armor with *** armor. Time to redo some numbers ZOS please. I personally think my armor should be down in the 200 range with that type of armor then toss up BA and get me to the half way mark. Just my .02 cents.

Maulkin

In one sentence, the biggest issue I have with heavy (for PvP) is the lack of sustain via cost reductions.

Both light and medium offer not only greater damage via crit % and penetration but they also offer huge cost reduction to their respective lines. So long as armor doesn't offer at least 1% reduction per item to one of the two (ideally either) not many are going to wear it in PvP.

MercyKilling

SCREW THE NUMBERS!!! I just want to have cosmetic modding on armor so I can run around wearing this:




Or maybe this:

Nihil

Any major changes Zenimax will probably do to any armor will probably happen after they remove the soft caps and complete the rebalancing they are working on for the champion system. Notes from the guild summit said that with the champion system soft caps were going away (this will make the difference in armor rating more noticable) and that a dev said that they were planning on not allowing armor buffs stack (also another plus to heavy armor survivability).

As seen in the quakecon video for the champion system, the spell resistance from the champion system passive increases spell resistance by a %, if they do the same with armor, then heavy armor will increase more drastically then light or medium armor will.

The game is going to be changing drastically when the Champion system comes out. It is good to give advice, but keep in mind that one armor type shouldn't do everything. I see to often people want resource management and damage for high defense armor to be on par with the lower defense armor. This shouldn't happen as it will make heavy armor the only way to go.

Forestd16b14_ESO

MercyKilling wrote: »

SCREW THE NUMBERS!!! I just want to have cosmetic modding on armor so I can run around wearing this:




Or maybe this:

Is there a fabulos or sexy button we can hit instead of awesome ?

jelliedsoup

I hope they dont make one type of armour dominant like they have with la, following the changes of course.

If it stays as it is, or shifts to a new armour some people may bail.

Artis

PBpsy wrote: »

Go in a trial without a heavy armor tank. Good luck .

It's not about wearing heavy, it's about having certain amount of armor. You can wear light and use Bone Shield, for example, to raise your armor over the soft cap.

Varicite

Samadhi wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

...IMO it's better to rework impenetrable trait. Why just to not reduce damage from crit (for now it's imposible to crit to person, who wears 7/7 impenetrable)? So, you can crit, and sorcs have critical surge works. But they crit for a little damage and get a little heal in PvP. IMO it's more balanced than what we have now.

Buffing Impenetrable like this would be a significant nerf to Sneak Attacks, as well as Crit Build Nightblades.

Prefer how Impenetrable works now. It certainly does not need to be buffed to reduce crit damage instead.

How on earth is this a nerf to crit build NBs who already aren't critting anybody at all in Impenetrable?

Some extra damage seems like it would be better than the 0 extra damage they are getting right now in PvP.

It would be a nerf to sneak attack openers, which is literally 1 attack in the entire fight, and let's just be completely honest: there's 0 skill involved in stacking a big opener from stealth, and even less skill involved in hitting players who can't react.

Samadhi

Varicite wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

...IMO it's better to rework impenetrable trait. Why just to not reduce damage from crit (for now it's imposible to crit to person, who wears 7/7 impenetrable)? So, you can crit, and sorcs have critical surge works. But they crit for a little damage and get a little heal in PvP. IMO it's more balanced than what we have now.

Buffing Impenetrable like this would be a significant nerf to Sneak Attacks, as well as Crit Build Nightblades.

Prefer how Impenetrable works now. It certainly does not need to be buffed to reduce crit damage instead.

How on earth is this a nerf to crit build NBs who already aren't critting anybody at all in Impenetrable?

Some extra damage seems like it would be better than the 0 extra damage they are getting right now in PvP.

It would be a nerf to sneak attack openers, which is literally 1 attack in the entire fight, and let's just be completely honest: there's 0 skill involved in stacking a big opener from stealth, and even less skill involved in hitting players who can't react.

Nightblades that aren't critting on anybody at all in Impenetrable are simply unable to properly time their skill usage, or are not built for crit to begin with.

Nightblade buffs 100% Spell and Weapon Crit which stacks on top of passive stats; Crit rating has no stat cap, 150%+ buffed Crit rate is easily viable.

PlagueMonk

The biggest problem with armor is, each type has been hardwired to a stat.

Light - magicka
Medium - stamina
Heavy - health

The issue with this is...........class skills/abilities ALL require magicka (and class abilities are far superior to weapon abilities (aka stamina)). Add bone shield from Undaunted and *bam", hit the soft cap when needed. Little reason to wear anything else since med armor works with stamina (= inferior to magicka and those crits are negated by Imp too damn easily). And heavy armor synergizes with what skills? Oh that's right only the health stat and nothing else.

Also doesn't help that ALL skill lines are magicka based. This means the even Undaunted and Fighters guild are all magicka based. It's all about magicka, magicka magicka. It's no wonder that 80% of the population is wandering around in skirts.

IMHO the armor types need to be completely detached from stats. Armor should be about functionality. Period. Strip off all those nonsensical "stat" enhancers.

Heavy armor should be able to resist critical/physical attacks at the cost of speed and maneuverability (would drain your stamina quickly)

Light Armor should offer you the highest maneuverability at the cost of physical protection (least stamina use)

Medium is the compromise between the two.

You could even go so far as to make light have the best base spell resist and heavy the worst, with Med again being in the middle.

You THEN put all those stat enhancers in a separate combined passive line that you can only invest a certain amount of points in (and that number will increase with your level) THIS is one of the many ways of how we should be given ways to expand our characters w/o continually bumping the exp cap.

A system like this would allow that Sorc. to outfit themselves in full plate and STILL be able to have magicka cost cutters BUT they would be moving like slugs if they didn't invest in stamina.

ExiledKhallisi

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

OR and follow me on this... we fix there skills cause in case you haven't seen yet alot of clothed players are using immoveable the heavy armor skill. This reason right here is why armor is weird like need 1 or more armor to use the passive skill so why can you use the skill with out even wearing one piece of the armor. Me personal i find this wrong and need fixed cause i worked my ass off getting 50 heavy armor and used so many skill point into heavy armor and worked my ass off again leveling up immoveable to get it maxed morphed and with all that blood sweat and tears to get 10 or 11 secs of boosted armor and spell res and immune to stuns was worth it. But to see light armor wearers using it just to be immune to stuns is basicly a middle finger to use heavy armor users. It's like them saying "hey we can use your skill too without training or wearing heavy armor". A way to fix it? Make the skill need 5 pieces of said armor to use said armor skill. It will also be step in the right direction of fixing pvp to. Stopping all the gank-piers spamming it to grant immunity from silver blots and dawnbreaker. Fixing this will be fixing PvP too 2 guards knees with one arrow as they would say.

You can lvl Heavy armor 1-50 and immovable morphed and rank IV in 1 day.

Hortator Indoril Nerevar

MercyKilling wrote: »

SCREW THE NUMBERS!!! I just want to have cosmetic modding on armor so I can run around wearing this:




Or maybe this:

I wish armor like that represented how much protection it would actually give. Aka none and people who wear nothing should be one hit....

KhajiitiLizard

Hortator Indoril Nerevar wrote: »

MercyKilling wrote: »

SCREW THE NUMBERS!!! I just want to have cosmetic modding on armor so I can run around wearing this:




Or maybe this:

I wish armor like that represented how much protection it would actually give. Aka none and people who wear nothing should be one hit....

They could just wear armor rings and go naked. You can get like 1500+ armor from jewelry alone.

bellanca6561n

Oh, I got your point PB when you first made it.

PBpsy wrote: »

Go in a trial without a heavy armor tank. Good luck .

Of course you can't make a point just once on a game forum

But as the flow indicates, and underlying issue is what is good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. We likely need armor swaps the way we have weapon swaps....which we actually do using mods.

If it wasn't so damned expensive to make high end armor it wouldn't be so aggravating for many people to have a suit for every occasion.

Some aren't so picky though, like the naked guy with the rings

dodgehopper_ESO

One thing that occurs to me as obviously imbalanced is the fact that Light Armor always benefits spell resistance. Heavy Armor degrades. Spell resistance does not degrade. Has anyone else found this to be a little bit unfair, I certainly have. Additionally, the tank being the one who takes the brunt of the assault also often has a lot of damage done on his chassis. The irony here is that he degrades fast, despite not dying (it depends on the enemies of course). If Heavy Armor afforded damage reduction like the Nord Trait does, I think this would go a long way toward balancing this inequity.

As it stands, why not spam Lightning armor, toggle bound armor and go Lightning. As it stands why not wear light armor and spam Blazing Shield, Rune Focus, etc. As it stands why not wear light armor, stone fist, spike armor, reflective scales. You get the idea. If its all about spamming magicka to get the best of all worlds, why not go that road? Making armor degrade so rapidly on the tank certainly doesn't help the issue.

dodgehopper_ESO

PlagueMonk wrote: »

A system like this would allow that Sorc. to outfit themselves in full plate and STILL be able to have magicka cost cutters BUT they would be moving like slugs if they didn't invest in stamina.

To play devils advocate, they still have bolt escape. Everyone has Shield Charge or Stampede. Nightblades have Lotus Fan. Templar has Explosive Charge. Dragon Knight has Take Flight. I suppose these have a cost associated with them though, but bolt escape has the freest utility I think. I'm not sure how much of a limitation that would be. Anyway, overall I generally agree with the sentiment behind what you said.