Armor Comparison - Very surprised at the results.

Elementon · July 2014

Hey everyone,

At level 42 I made a purple set of Willow's 3 piece and 5 piece Night Mother. I wore it until today when I reached VR5. I made the exact same VR5 set, all Magicka Glyphs, 4 Infused / 3 Divines. It is incredible how little the stats changed even thought this is armor is 14 levels higher.

I switched to Brittle food from Fishy so 19 of these points are food! Upgrade did almost nothing.

BOTH SETS PURPLE - SAME GLYPHS

Max Magicka LVL 42 1975 - VR5 2013
Max Health LVL 42 2007 - VR5 2028
Max Stamina LVL 42 1408 - VR5 1427

Spell Damage LVL 42 84 - VR5 84
Spell Crit (Magelight not on) LVL 42 31.8% - VR5 31.8%
Spell Resist LVL 42 1805 - VR5 1805

Magicka Recovery LVL 42 71 - VR5 71
Health Recovery LVL 42 32 - VR5 32
Stam Recovery LVL 42 56 - VR5 56

Weapon Damage LVL 42 115 - VR5 115
Weapon Crit LVL 42 11.8% - VR5 11.8%

Armor LVL42 650 - VR5 785

This seems really low for improvement. I know they don't want huge gaps, but there is almost no difference and shows making new armor hardly does anything as you level. Just thought this should be discussed.

KariTR · July 2014

VR9 and I have never made myself a piece of purple armour yet

I like that we aren't gear dependent though.

moxiesauce · July 2014

Seems skills make more of a difference than gear.

TeraAngelos · July 2014

The armor itself doesn't grant anything in terms of attributes (there may be changes based on set bonuses, but not all sets even change by level). The differences in attributes come primarily from glyphs. There is little change in glyphs as you increase in level, especially with white glyphs. You should be using the v5-v7 glyphs at this point, if you're in v5 gear (they are better at least than the v3-v5 glyphs).

The small difference in glyph effectiveness is a debated issue at the moment.

Elementon · July 2014

Yep, using the V5-V7 Glyphs. Just amazing to me that there is very little difference. There is no reason to craft or waste money on armor at all. It really does nothing. Doesn't really change anything, just very odd. First game I have seen where so many levels higher and very little changes in terms of gear. There is no reason to hunt down materials or even upgrade at all.

TeraAngelos · July 2014

Elementon wrote: »

Yep, using the V5-V7 Glyphs. Just amazing to me that there is very little difference. There is no reason to craft or waste money on armor at all. It really does nothing. Doesn't really change anything, just very odd. First game I have seen where so many levels higher and very little changes in terms of gear. There is no reason to hunt down materials or even upgrade at all.

I see your point. There are pretty big differences, though, in gear quality. It may be that you're not noticing the differences now because you got purple gear relatively early - few people use purple gear until way at the end of veteran ranks.

Personally, I noticed way more of a difference with my weapons than with armor. Armor didn't do much (if you can kite and dodge so nothing hits you, who needs armor

), but upgrading my weapons helped a LOT. Based on the stats you posted and the fact that weapon and spell stats didn't change at all, I assume you are only comparing lvl 42 armor to v5 armor, and not the lvl 42 weapons to v5 weapons. I believe there's a much bigger difference there.

Elementon · July 2014

That's right. I upgraded the weapon which of course made a nice dent. Same VR5 weapon for both sets. The weapon is worth it, the armor not so much. Especially since you are using 7 X the mats versus a weapon upgrade.

Just thought it was interesting. Not good or bad, just surprised a little.

kieso · July 2014

V6 using v1 armor; I figure Ill worry about good armor at V12.

LunaRae · July 2014

I don't think they've found the right balance yet. I appreciate not requiring players to have THE BEST gear to be meaningful, but on the flip side the fact that I can completely strip down my gear and go naked against VR12 mobs and not die in one hit is stupid imo. I want meaningful gear that I can continue to work towards that matters, in some way or another. Maybe it's meaningful PvP or PvE gear, or even purely cosmetic gear that's rare to find/craft. But right now it really means nothing, especially once you hit v12. V12, legendary it, add your glyphs and that's it. Nothing to work towards. The Quakecon definitely looks like they're addressing some of my concerns, but I'll wait to see it in action.

MeowGinger · July 2014

If you don't upgrade armor as you level, though, your damage mitigation will keep decreasing. A VR10 wearing standard VR10 heavy armor (white, player-made, no traits, not softcapped, and assuming that things such as armor penetration are working properly) should have ~26% mitigation, whereas a VR10 wearing standard VR1 heavy armor should have ~18% mitigation... so as you level but keep the old gear, you will take more damage than you would without upgrading. This should be intuitive, since the softcap continues to increase with each rank, and the softcap is always at 33% damage mitigation (it might be 30%, I don't quite remember -- the same is true for spell resistance).

I haven't checked anything pre-50, but a VR1 player should have ~22% armor mitigation with a standard white VR1 set, while a VR10 should have ~26% with a VR10 set. This is assuming the armor ratings are correct; I used other sites for reference since I haven't recorded the ratings myself.

I don't remember who discovered the formula, and I remember there was a post with the formula on these forums, but I can't find it. For reference, the formula is mitigation = (effective armor - 100) / rank, where rank = 49 + # of veteran rank.

I remember reading that the softcaps will be increased in the next major patch, so I'm curious how this will work for armor. If the armor rating softcap is increased but the mitigation at softcap is still only 33% (instead of something like 40%), this would effectively be a nerf.

MeowGinger · July 2014

What I find really strange, though, is that your level 42 set is actually better than your VR5 set...

I just put the numbers into the formula I mentioned above (which has been confirmed as correct, at least a few weeks ago), and got this for mitigation:
(650 - 100) / (42) = 13.095... % (Level 42)
(785 - 100) / (49+5) = 12.685... % (VR5)

Can this be right? Based on armor rating alone, you're better off with your level 42 gear.

crislevin · July 2014

Never mind

Aeratus · July 2014

@MeowGinger,

The "level" variable in the damage formula is not your own level, but the level of the mob attacking you. Your own level is irrelevant in the mitigation formula (although your level affects the onset of the softcap, which affects the amount of total effective armor).

So obviously, v5 is better than lv 42 when fighting level 42 mobs.

However, your lv 42 armor is better against lv 42 mobs than your v5 armor is against v5.

UrQuan · July 2014

Wow, maybe it's because I'm a tank, but I find those armour numbers to be extremely low. My lvl 46 gear gives me an armour rating of 1626.

poodlemasterb16_ESO · July 2014

I dunno, I can hang 990 armor on 3 bits of jewelery. That's level 35 - 45 purple glyphs. If the VR level enchanting scales as it has been, naked with jewelery, will be softcapped.

MeowGinger · July 2014

Aeratus wrote: »

@MeowGinger,

The "level" variable in the damage formula is not your own level, but the level of the mob attacking you. Your own level is irrelevant in the mitigation formula (although your level affects the onset of the softcap, which affects the amount of total effective armor).

So obviously, v5 is better than lv 42 when fighting level 42 mobs.

However, your lv 42 armor is better against lv 42 mobs than your v5 armor is against v5.

I don't think that's true, or if it is, then there's another part to armor mechanics that we haven't discovered yet. If it were strictly true, my own armor set (rating 1871) would give me 100% mitigation from any mob level 17/18 or below. Specifically, against level 4 enemies, I would have 442.75% mitigation (either 100%, or the hardcap of 50%), against level 39 enemies I would have 45.41% mitigation, and against enemies at my level I would have 30.02% mitigation. I am just above the softcap, so ~30% mitigation seems correct. I did a quick test of damage with and without armor:

Level 4 skeevers:
No armor -- 18 dmg light attack, 31 dmg heavy attack
Armor -- 13 dmg light attack, 22 dmg heavy attack

Level 39 senche-tigers:
No armor -- 158 dmg light attack, 316 dmg heavy attack
Armor -- 111 dmg light attack, 223 dmg heavy attack

Using the percent change formula, in each case there is a ~30% decrease in damage when I'm armored (compared to damage I take when I'm naked), give or take one or two percent. Of course, this is a small sample size, and I might misunderstand armor mitigation, but it looks like ~30% mitigation is what I'll get, regardless of the level of the mob.

I'll test it with more mobs and a different armor set; a week or two ago I was asked to do this for veteran mobs, since there looks like something is strange regarding the armor penetration of mobs in VR alliances (but not of the mobs in Cyrodiil or Craglorn). I figured I'd get around and do it now, since I wanted to test your statement.

phaneub17_ESO · July 2014

The only point to using armor is mainly for the traits, as a Templar I feel resource reliant heavy as the class doesn't have any class tree passives that feed into Magicka or Stamina recovery as the other classes do. So I upgrade my gear to purple so I have 4 major items with 17% Infused and 4 minor items with Divines. If I were playing any of the other 3 classes, it would be different as they all have some way of recovering Stamina, Magicka, or both somewhere in their Passive and reactive Class Skills.

At most I have is Radiant Aura and Channeled Focus, but they don't compare to anything the other 3 classes have which grants returns based on actions they do or are just there.

Aeratus · July 2014

MeowGinger wrote: »

Aeratus wrote: »

@MeowGinger,

The "level" variable in the damage formula is not your own level, but the level of the mob attacking you. Your own level is irrelevant in the mitigation formula (although your level affects the onset of the softcap, which affects the amount of total effective armor).

So obviously, v5 is better than lv 42 when fighting level 42 mobs.

However, your lv 42 armor is better against lv 42 mobs than your v5 armor is against v5.

I don't think that's true, or if it is, then there's another part to armor mechanics that we haven't discovered yet. If it were strictly true, my own armor set (rating 1871) would give me 100% mitigation from any mob level 17/18 or below. Specifically, against level 4 enemies, I would have 442.75% mitigation (either 100%, or the hardcap of 50%), against level 39 enemies I would have 45.41% mitigation, and against enemies at my level I would have 30.02% mitigation. I am just above the softcap, so ~30% mitigation seems correct. I did a quick test of damage with and without armor:

Level 4 skeevers:
No armor -- 18 dmg light attack, 31 dmg heavy attack
Armor -- 13 dmg light attack, 22 dmg heavy attack

Level 39 senche-tigers:
No armor -- 158 dmg light attack, 316 dmg heavy attack
Armor -- 111 dmg light attack, 223 dmg heavy attack

Using the percent change formula, in each case there is a ~30% decrease in damage when I'm armored (compared to damage I take when I'm naked), give or take one or two percent. Of course, this is a small sample size, and I might misunderstand armor mitigation, but it looks like ~30% mitigation is what I'll get, regardless of the level of the mob.

I'll test it with more mobs and a different armor set; a week or two ago I was asked to do this for veteran mobs, since there looks like something is strange regarding the armor penetration of mobs in VR alliances (but not of the mobs in Cyrodiil or Craglorn). I figured I'd get around and do it now, since I wanted to test your statement.

You might be right. In that case, armor is pretty dumb in that the higher your level the worse it is. lol

It looks like people have been confused by this in the past. See the third to last post on the first page in this thread: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/112047/actual-mitigation-of-armour-spell-resists