The armor balance juggling act

tinythinker

Balance is a moving target in MMOs. For a while there has been a concern about the function and value of different armor types. Back when light armor was seen as best, some wanted it nerfed. Eventually its basic damage mitigation was significantly reduced. Then people were worried about heavy armor, and while not everyone has been happy with the changes made it's stronger now. There are concerns about light armor, particular in PvP. So the cycle starts again.

An idea to consider for LA: Remove impen (reduces damage from critical hits) as a craftable trait. Add its function to the 5 pc LA bonus. That gives useful mitigation to each type, which can be expanded (new items in bold) as follows:

HA: focused on direct mitigation through raw numbers of armor values for physical and spell resistance, blocking, and higher health.
MA: focused on indirect mitigation through greater physical resistance, dodging, and sneaking.
LA: focused on indirect mitigation though greater spell resistance and reducing critical damage.

Those who want something like impen can be given a 5 pc set that offers something similar to the old impen function: 25% chance to avoid critical damage.

This isn't intended to be a complete fix for armor or builds. But it does help. In PvE and PvP, a lot of balancing has to do with damage. In PvP, there is also a major focus on mitigation. The proposed changes don't increase base LA values for mitigation, yet, they do offer a real benefit to damage mitigation for LA that sets it apart. MA gets a bit of a buff as well.

Lest someone complain about damage shields for magicka builds, keep in mind:
-there is a Shield-Breaker set which lets your weapon attacks ignore damage shields
-there is a Shattering Blows star in the Champion System that increases damage against damage shields
-all damage shields are limited to 6 seconds so they can't easily be kept up all of the time
-stamina burst damage can much more easily and quickly take down shields of the average player than when shield-stacking was its zenith
-shields don't crit so if someone does keep big shields up having a high crit chance when fighting them is moot anyway
-only Sorcs have truly viable damage shields for PvP unless a Templar is a high-health tank (unless you count ultimates for DK which can't be spammed anyway)
-both HA and MA have three things (overall resistance/blocking/higher health and physical resistance/dodging/sneaking) for mitigation, LA has two listed; damage shields which aren't of equal strength/use among classes unofficially count as LA's third thing

These changes will still let people run crit mitigation builds with any armor type(s), but LA will have the advantage. You can run base damage mitigation builds and HA will have the advantage. You can run damage/conflict avoidance builds and MA will have the advantage.