Leveled from beginning to almost V1 now without using "armor". Is this intended?

Paladin_echo1

So in my quest for learning why everyone keeps saying "Nightblade sucks" I chose to level a Nightblade. The estimated time is roughly 5 days of playing to do so. In this quest I decided to test the ability of armor and found some interesting information.

Over 90% of the time my armor was at 0. There was as many repairs that I could count on ONE hand. So after I understood this, I said forget the armor and just wear a nice weapon and the char is roughly bout 3 hours from 50.


The reason for doing this is because Armor needs to be seriously reconsidered in this game. I take only a little bit more damage without armor vs with armor so I wondered what would happen if I used no armor.

Seems like armor was only built around dps and less around tanking. If you want to be a super pvper, it seems like repaired armor is the way to go, but for tanks, you will take just as much damage as everyone else a lot of times. Yes, there are support armors, but the fact remains that armor needs a lot more help. A light armor mage shouldn't outperform a Heavy Armored tank. Especially not a 0 armored player...

Side Note:

In brighter news, I learned that tanking with a 2 handed sword is actually awesome. Using that "Brawler" move, you can take on a lot of mobs at once with what resembles what a tank should look like for a few seconds. Its not so good against really hard hitting targets so don't go overboard. Stamina still needs help, but it got the job done.

badmojo

Yeah, armor is just a vehicle for your enchantments, set bonuses, & armor passives.

morashtakb16_ESO

Level caps for each of the armors types (light, medium, heavy) would have given them much better diversity. Add in the suggestions from other posts and each armor could have been very specific to each class type (i.e. staff and skirt, melee, and tank) with enchantments being used to make such armor types as magic based heavy, etc.

Instead we have light armor being used for everything from range dps to tanking quite effectively. Very little if any need for medium or heavy unless the player wants to play that way. But trial times are the rebuttal to those arguments.

NakedSnake

An interesting experiment. While I do believe that armors do need to be adjusted a bit I would hate to see this game become more dependent on it.

Tabbycat

You aren't the first to do it and probably won't be the last. But yeah, lots of people have run dungeons and all sorts of stuff without armor in order to avoid paying repair costs. They did just fine. Probably died more often, but with no repair costs, who cares?

SFBryan18

And here I thought a tank had more health because they spend all their attributes on that.

In fact, health gets 50% more than magic and stamina for each attribute point.

Magic +10
Health +15
Stamina +10

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Armor as such is pretty pointless in the game at the moment. The damage mitigation from armor is quite low. The soft cap for heavy armor sets in already around 25% mitigation, I think. Compare this to single player ES games where armor maxed out somewhere around 85% mitigation. As stated above, in ESO you wear armor mostly for the enchants and passives, and not even in maxed-out heavy armor can you afford to get hit a whole lot when you get to VR levels. At least not now. The imminent patch might change the stats of VR mobs. Right now they hit stupid hard and often use attacks that seem to more or less ignore your armor.

Sihnfahl

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Right now they hit stupid hard and often use attacks that seem to more or less ignore your armor.

Testing I've done has shown they don't ignore armor - they just reduce the damage so little that the damage incoming has the appearance of the armor doing little in the way of mitigation.

Case! Testing with heavy armor versus no armor in The Rift, V10 saber cats. 'Simple' attacks for 500 on unarmored, 350 or so on 2k heavy armor with a spec for full passive mitigation possible (DK).

When you have a 2.5k health pool, that changes a 20% health per attack to a 15% health per attack. Most folks won't even notice that 5% on their health bar...

david271749

Great. Now go to Cyrodil with that build.

Paladin_echo1

NakedSnake wrote: »

An interesting experiment. While I do believe that armors do need to be adjusted a bit I would hate to see this game become more dependent on it.

I would like to see the game be a little more armor dependent, but not TOO armor dependent. I think you could agree with me that theres too many knee-jerk reactions on ZOS side of things. I think that the armor needs to make sense. A tank ought to be THE TANK, not a glass tank. Tanks take damage and have low output on damage most of the time. I really want the tanks to come alive. Its comical that a medium armor tank is starting surpass the Heavy Armor tank in dungeons because of that evasion skill bonus. Slap on some defense traits to medium armor and you have your new heavy armor.

They need to up the amount of damage that armor blocks. 50% Is incredibly too low. 80% seems to be a reasonable armor cap. Anything higher is too good. Its extremely reasonable with how hard some of the bosses hit. They one shot you in some cases in full armor and traits...

Paladin_echo1

david271749 wrote: »

Great. Now go to Cyrodil with that build.

Strangely with my armor at 0, it just goes back to normal in Cyrodill. It is kind of weird. I dare to go naked though sometime and see how many kills I get though.

Elad13

I have to say I never thought about this much, but you are so right...in all other games i like to just run in and start killing...all heavy armor to take some extra abuse...but this experiment clearly shows that armor just does not matter...and that could be a bigger eye opener then anything else i have read these days....it makes no sense that a cloth mage with 1800 HP can take more abuse then a 2400 hp Heavy armor player. There is definitely something wrong there.

hk11

the passives are the only reason you really HAVE to have it. there was a thread going there for a while where the tester took marginally less dmg without armor when compared to armored.

SFBryan18

Elad13 wrote: »

a cloth mage with 1800 HP can take more abuse then a 2400 hp Heavy armor player

When did this happen and can we see some proof please?

philip.ploegerb16_ESO

Stupid thread.

Ofc, it's possible to level from 1-50 without armor, if one i. e. only grinds mobs that are 5 levels below and only makes small pulls.

That doesn't change though, that 7 pieces of light-armor i. e. reduce the Magicka-costs of spells by 21% while increasing the damage significantly too, because of the armors ability to reduce enemies resistances, allowing for much greater pulls = much higher leveling speed or easier grinding.

People need to count onwards after 3 mobs, and tell themselves "next time I'll pull 5" and then "next time I'll pull 10" and at some point they'll notice, that even the difference between armor being freshly repaired and armor being low but still working, is more than noticeable.

Paladin_echo1

My answer to the previous comment I was with 0 armor pulling 9 mobs at level 48, almost 49 atm using a 2 handed sword that is level 42. I can do the same thing with heavy armor or anything, but the fact remains that armor meant nothing. Same thing at level 30 in the Rift. Found a nice grind spot and same thing happened. 9 mobs using skills and nothing really big by wearing no armor vs wearing armor...

A dead mob is one that doesn't effect your armor. I kill fast enough for the monsters after on average 8 seconds perishes. 8 seconds of tanking a mob of 9 should definitely get some attention. I almost dare to say that when the VR content comes out, that it will be the same thing.

Soloeus

Paladin_echo1 wrote: »

So in my quest for learning why everyone keeps saying "Nightblade sucks" I chose to level a Nightblade. The estimated time is roughly 5 days of playing to do so. In this quest I decided to test the ability of armor and found some interesting information.

Over 90% of the time my armor was at 0. There was as many repairs that I could count on ONE hand. So after I understood this, I said forget the armor and just wear a nice weapon and the char is roughly bout 3 hours from 50.


The reason for doing this is because Armor needs to be seriously reconsidered in this game. I take only a little bit more damage without armor vs with armor so I wondered what would happen if I used no armor.

Seems like armor was only built around dps and less around tanking. If you want to be a super pvper, it seems like repaired armor is the way to go, but for tanks, you will take just as much damage as everyone else a lot of times. Yes, there are support armors, but the fact remains that armor needs a lot more help. A light armor mage shouldn't outperform a Heavy Armored tank. Especially not a 0 armored player...

Side Note:

In brighter news, I learned that tanking with a 2 handed sword is actually awesome. Using that "Brawler" move, you can take on a lot of mobs at once with what resembles what a tank should look like for a few seconds. Its not so good against really hard hitting targets so don't go overboard. Stamina still needs help, but it got the job done.

Same here. But I would rather 0% armor than be bankrupt at all times from item repair.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

As a compulsive repecer (is that a word?) I agree. I have tried all the armors, sometimes all three different kinds on the same level, and I can tell no difference in damage received. All I can say is pick the armor Passives you like and Use that type, because it doesn't matter other then that.

MonkeyAssassin24

philip.ploegerb16_ESO wrote: »

Stupid thread.

Ofc, it's possible to level from 1-50 without armor, if one i. e. only grinds mobs that are 5 levels below and only makes small pulls.

That doesn't change though, that 7 pieces of light-armor i. e. reduce the Magicka-costs of spells by 21% while increasing the damage significantly too, because of the armors ability to reduce enemies resistances, allowing for much greater pulls = much higher leveling speed or easier grinding.

People need to count onwards after 3 mobs, and tell themselves "next time I'll pull 5" and then "next time I'll pull 10" and at some point they'll notice, that even the difference between armor being freshly repaired and armor being low but still working, is more than noticeable.

I think you read the title and not a word of the post. The point is that armor is only useful for the offensive passives, which is why so many people use light armor.

I agree damage mitigation from armor needs to be seriously tweaked. The only reason to where heavy armor right now is because you like the look of it, and it somewhat helps tanking in dungeons, but 1h/s can basically be all you need to tank anyway so why bother? If armor value actually mattered, then I think you would have a lot more diversity in this game (actual battle mage's and warriors) especially if they fix the problems with stamina builds.

I stopped repairing gear 1-50 and realized that I really only needed to craft new armor when I reached a new tier of mats or enchantments.

Paladin_echo1

I fought for the dps side of things and so far it looks like they listened on stamina a bit, however I hope they listen to this one on armor. I hope they make this game more interesting for the tanks. So this is a fight for you out there if you want to be THE TANK. I hope more people look into this and share their experience.

shiva7663

Here's a thought: if you level up the three armor skills a bit, you can run unmorphed Annulment, Evasion and Immovable at the same time without wearing any armor, leaving two extra slots and an Ultimate for everything else. heh.

Paladin_echo1

shiva7663 wrote: »

Here's a thought: if you level up the three armor skills a bit, you can run unmorphed Annulment, Evasion and Immovable at the same time without wearing any armor, leaving two extra slots and an Ultimate for everything else. heh.

This is highly impressive. I am highly considering maxing out a set of medium armor to show the difference in between the two. A regular DK with 0 armor is well into 2k armor in two seconds using its skills alone. So what is the purpose of the armor stat ?

Redlag

When I level below 50 I always have 0 armor value. I'm not spending that much to repair something I want to replace and will within 2 hours of game time.

It makes veins in my head burst when I log in to a character to put something in the bank and damage my armor doing it. Armor decays way to fast.

reggielee

interesting experiment, it is more than sad that this was the case. I presume that you are pretty skilled in combat so perhaps you did better than the average joe coming into the game as far as avoiding damage but still.. that is depressing. I agree that some tweaks to armor is needed

Leovolao

david271749 wrote: »

Great. Now go to Cyrodil with that build.

I've actually seen a dude running around naked on Cyrodiil. He didn't seem to do bad, less stats for sure, but who cares when you are part of a big group.

SirAndy

One of my characters is a Naked Nord and he's leveling just fine going through PvE and has had no problems in PvP either.

It seems armor isn't at all necessary to play this game.

shiva7663

Some MMOs have a tradition of the Bun Run event, where you go through a series of timed checkpoints in dangerous areas all over the map, with no weapons or armor.

SFBryan18

Maximis_ESO

A huge issue for me is that the soft cap seems to be so dang low on every stat is this game. On my 2 hand DK I hit the soft cap using momentum as soon as I pop the ability using a blue named sword. Armor is soft capped in a full set of heavy armor with the trait that increases armor value. My sorc is soft capped in full cloth when he pops his defensive lightning form ability..... armor needs to be more effective.

NerZhulen89

Nightblade doesn't need armor for leveling, if you play him as "nightblade".
If you play him as paladin, then of course you will be *** and cry that he's weak.

Thing is, you need to go cloth armor and resto(single target)/destro (aoe) staff to do proper dps in dungeons/raids. And that is kinda disappointing since most people who rolled NB wanted to swing weapons.

So the NB is weak is more directed to NB is weak in medium armor, using weapon abilities.
In pvp it is no problem, medium NB with bow is the real deal. But in pve you can't do any serious dps like that.

Guppet

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Armor as such is pretty pointless in the game at the moment. The damage mitigation from armor is quite low. The soft cap for heavy armor sets in already around 25% mitigation, I think. Compare this to single player ES games where armor maxed out somewhere around 85% mitigation. As stated above, in ESO you wear armor mostly for the enchants and passives, and not even in maxed-out heavy armor can you afford to get hit a whole lot when you get to VR levels. At least not now. The imminent patch might change the stats of VR mobs. Right now they hit stupid hard and often use attacks that seem to more or less ignore your armor.

VR1-10 mobs have 90% armor penetration on all attacks. They seem to ignore your armor, they do ignore it.