Thinking about armor in D4

General Discussion
1

How do you people think armor should work on D4?

  • D1/D2: armor(defense in D2) reduced the chance of being hit.
  • D3: armor reduces all damage taken.

I don’t think armor in D4 should work in either of these systems, in D1/D2 you either had a ton of armor where no one hit you or you didn’t have enough, and in D3 having armor reduce ALL damage makes it redundant with resistances in a lot of cases.

I think that armor should work similarly to D3 but only for physical damage. A system where the player would be constantly getting damaged in smaller amounts instead of occasional big hits.

One point that I think should be considered is the types of armor for high level characters and its requirements, I don’t think that neither D2/D3 did this well, I feel like the game could really benefit from having armor types.

  • Heavy(plate): Str requirements.
  • Medium(leather): Dex requirements.
  • Light(robes): Int requirements.

Another idea would be adding base magic resistance to armor items, so the lighter armors could have better resistances to spells, heavy with better defense and medium being average in both. Then every armor modifier(defense and resistances) could operate on top of the armor base stats (like increased defense in D2). Example:

Fireproof Ancient Armor of Defense
100(150) Defense
20(30) fire resistance
20 cold resistance
20 lightning resistance
20 poison resistance
+50% increased fire resistance
+50% increased defense

Fireproof Archmage Robes of Defense
40(60) Defense
50(75) fire resistance
50 cold resistance
50 lightning resistance
50 poison resistance
+50% increased fire resistance
+50% increased defense

Numbers are completely fictional and the resistances aren’t % meaning that their reductions depends on lvls (player and attacker).

One last thought that could be used in some interesting way is having special bonuses depending on the type of armor equipped:

  • Heavy: reduced cc duration
  • Medium: chance to dodge or movement speed
  • Light: increased resource generation

Just my thoughts on the subject, but I really think this should be a heavily discussed topic.

3 Likes
2

Check this thread about armor:

2 Likes
3

This is how it works in warcraft 3: Overall, armor is reduced in % but there are no ideal armor type, no ideal situation, often pros and cons. There are different attack types and armor types.

Attack Types

Normal (most melee units)
Normal attacks do extra damage against Medium armor, and reduced damage to Fortified armor.

Piercing (most ranged attackers)
Piercing attacks do extra damage to Unarmored units and Light armor, and reduced damage to Fortified, Medium armor, and Heroes.

Siege (artillery)
Siege attacks do extra damage to Fortified armor and Unarmored units, and reduced damage to Medium armor and Heroes.

Chaos (A few Creeps, Powerful Summoned Units)
Chaos attacks do full damage to all armor types.

Magic Damage (most spellcasters, air units)
Magic attacks do extra damage against Light and Heavy armor, and reduced damage to Medium, Fortified armor, and Heroes. Magic attacks do 66% extra damage to ethereal units, and zero damage to magic-immune units.

Hero
Hero attacks do reduced damage to Fortified armor.
Weapon Types
Normal
Missile
Artillery
Instant

Armor Types

Unarmored (most spellcasters)
Unarmored takes extra damage from Piercing, and Siege attacks. Some unarmored units such as Huntress, Gargoyle, Hippogryph, and Druid of the Talon in Storm Crow form have armor for balance reasons. Most unarmored units do not have armor.

Light (most flying units)
Light armor takes extra damage from Piercing and Magic attacks.

Medium (most ranged attackers and workers)
Medium armor takes extra damage from Normal attacks, reduces damage from Piercing, Magic, and Siege attacks.

Heavy (most low and high tech melee units)
Heavy armor takes extra damage from Magic attacks.

Hero
Heroes take reduced damage from Piercing, Magic, Spell, and Siege attacks.

Fortified (buildings)
Fortified armor greatly reduces Piercing, Magic, Hero, and Normal attacks, but takes extra damage from Siege attacks.
Note
Ethereal units can only be damaged by units that have the attack type “Magic” such as spellcasters. Magic-immune units can only be damaged by units that have physical attack types.

I think it’s an interesting mechanic. Of course this is a bit too much and should be simplified.
Link
http://classic.battle.net/war3/basics/armorandweapontypes.shtml

4

Perfect. Just like this. No stat requirements needed.

1 Like
5

How do you people think armor should work on D4?

  • D1/D2: armor(defense in D2) reduced the chance of being hit.
  • D3: armor reduces all damage taken.

I don’t think armor in D4 should work in either of these systems, in D1/D2 you either had a ton of armor where no one hit you or you didn’t have enough, and in D3 having armor reduce ALL damage makes it redundant with resistances in a lot of cases.

D1 armor works perfectly. However this system is good only for simple games like D1 or different classic DND games. In complicated games like modern ARPGS with lots of stats and mechanics it works bad, as D2 already showed.

D3 armor is a redundant stat at all, I agree. It just copies what resistance stat does.

I thought a bit and two interesting armor stat realizations came to my mind. One is Divinity Original Sin II armor stat. Every enemy has either magical or physical armor or both (or none at all). To subtract a number from enemy HP pool you must destroy his armor first. Magical armor is destroyed by magic attacks, physical - by physical attacks. With different armor/hp combinations this makes combat quite interesting, however it works only for party gameplay; for solo (one character play) this will be a torture or even not possible at all.

The second type of armor mechanics is used in Xcom2, and I think it can fit well to D4 systems and combat. How it works? Lets take a monster, a goblin for example. He has 8 HP and no armor. Your sword does 4 damage. 2 hits and goblin is dead. Goblin Shaman has 8 HP too but he also has 1 armor point. Every time you hit shaman with your 4 damage, you deal only 3 damage, as another 1 point is absorbed/ignored because of his 1 armor. So you need 3 strikes to kill him: 3+3+2.

Now imagine you deal with an orc. He has 10 hp and 4 armor. If you use your old sword, you can’t penetrate his armor at all. You need at least 5 damage sword to subtract at least 1 hp from his HP pool.

What I like in this system is that it
a) feels quite realistic and
b) simple to understand
c) offers mob diversity
d) offers easy-to-understand methods to deal with the armor.

As for c): monster can have no armor; or he can have huge armor and low hp; or can have some armor but a lot of hp; or can have big numbers of both.

As for d): some skills/spells/stats/affixes can either a) ignore armor b) partly penetrate/pierce armor ignoring some points of it c) shred armor.

The last one can work this way: a sword has 4 damage and shreds X armor [or have a % chance to shred X armor]. Every time you hit an armored enemy, you destroy his armor (at once or little by little - depends on the mob/boss) so it is becomes easier to kill with every blow.

All this works very well in Xcom2 though it is a turn based, and I don’t see a reason why it won’t work in D4. However, Xcom2 attacks are mostly physical, and rare non-phys attacks simply ignore the armor. But for D4 an idea from DOS2 can be applied so that enemy can have both magical and physical armor. If you deal phys damage, you are destroying phys armor; if you are a spellcaster, you are destroying magic armor. This way this is all way doable for solo play, and in party creates interesting tactical decisions and roles.

1 Like
6

Armor reduces damage. The more armor the less damage you take. Have a soft cap with DRs so you could never be be immune, but can still add more for significantly less protection. I would say physical only. Let resistances cover non physical damage.

7

Yeah, I think absolute number dmg reduction could work fine for Armor in D4.
However, with efficiency limits in %.
Like, You got 5 armor, you reduce enemy hits by 5, BUT cant reduce a hit by more than 80%, for example. So if someone deals 5 dmg against your 5 armor, you still take 1 dmg.
100% dmg reduction should not happen.

Would make Armor very good against smaller,faster hits, and not good against larger, slower hits.
An enemy dealing 5 dmg against your 5 armor = 80% dmg reduction
An enemy dealing 20 dmg against your 5 armor = 25% dmg reduction

I dont think the Divinity OS 2 mechanism would be good. That is just Shielding. Which can be its own mechanism. And yeah, not split between physical and magical. Instead, different shielding effects could be more vulnerable to specific dmg types. Like a Frost shielding effect = takes double dmg from fire, etc.

Could work. Or instead of dmg type, make it a kinetic vs. magical split.
A normal sword or a burning sword? Both are kinetic weapon dmg. Armor works fully against both, no matter if it is fire or physical dmg.
A fireball or an Earthquake spell? Both are magical, and armor only works at maybe 50% (or 0%) efficiency, no matter if it is fire or physical dmg.

1 Like
8

This is an old problem here. Most of attacks in an ARPG are magical. And so armor becomes useless in this case (as in D2). In D3 armor works just as another resistance and reduces spell damage too, which feels both unrealistic and redundant.

9

Wouldnt be useless if it still worked at 50% efficiency. But yeah, balance issues, especially between classes, might be too much to handle here. A barb would have to care a lot more about enemy armor than a sorc. Albeit, if resistances was mirrored to work better against magical dmg, and less against kinetic, then things could be balanced that way.

I definitely agree Armor shouldn’t just be the same as Resistance, no matter if both work against physical/elemental & kinetic/magical or not. Flat dmg reduction Armor vs. % reduction Resistance would at least ensure they worked differently and had separate niches.

If we wanted to go full D&D style mechanisms, we could also have Armor-based dmg reduction for each dmg type. Like a fur armor might have 10 damage reduction against cold, but only 2 dmg reduction against fire (or heck, minus dmg reduction, since it is fur), while a plate armor might have 10 physical dmg reduction, but only 6 cold dmg reduction.
I dont particularly care about the “realism” of it (so fur could turn out to be excellent fire repellents in Sanctuary). More that different items could have different strengths and weaknesses, making them more interesting.

10

And I do in this case. I mean, I still remember how I died too much from poison clouds released by walking trees in D3 inferno. And then I was told - hey, you just need more armor. And holy cow, it worked… That was just so stupid that I remember it even after 10 years ))

Therefore the offer: every magic armor piece has 2 armor stats: phys/magic. It makes sense because, well, it is blue or higher item, that is, enchanted with magic, so why won’t it have intristic magic protection too apart from an obvious physical one? For simple basic items make those even: like, blue “leather pants”: 3 physical armor, 3 magic armor; leather armor - 10 physical armor, 10 magic armor. All incoming attacks will meet this 3/3 or 10/10 armor before subtracting from a HP pool. Only after that special item stats like phys damage reduction and elemental resistances come into play. Later on (on better or rarer items) numbers can be changed (not 10/10, but some 40/5). This makes itemization more interesting, you have more options what to equip.

11

I was thinking of something like this but couldn’t word it in a way that wasn’t a convoluted mess.

Like fireballs, meteors, some ice spells, and most earth spells have a physical component and a magical component.

So your armor could reduce 50% of the physical but only 10% of the magical. But the damage components 10% physical and 90% magical.

But what about your example? This would be primarily a physical attack with a magical buff, so flip it 90% physical and 10% magic.

But then I thought about armor penetration and went off. But straight dmg reduction through armor for all types and resistances doesn’t make total sense.

1 Like
12

It would be an interesting option that, because monsters are in families and share some traits, and because target farming for specific item types is a thing, that armor/boots/gloves/whatever has some element of the creature killed. For example, murder a cannibal and get pants that increase your life steal/life per hit/life regeneration/life per kill/whatever else.

This reinforces the in-game lore and makes the loot hunt more interesting, to a degree.

13

Yeah, I’m fine with armor working like that.

Also, armor, as well as the resistances could have an added bonus of not just reducing the damage of said elemental attack, but also reduce the chance of any status ailment and/or crowd control effect that’s based on said element.

For example:

  • Armor: Reduces Physical melee and range damage taken. Also slightly reduces the chance of being stunned, knocked back, and knock down, as well as slightly reduces the duration of said effects.
  • Fire Resistance: Reduces Fire damage. Also slightly reduces chance of being inflicted with burn status and it’s duration.
  • Cold Resistance: Reduces Cold damage. Also slightly increases the amount of chill hits needed in order to be frozen, and slightly reduces the chance of being frozen and it’s duration.
  • Lightning Resistance: Reduces Lightning damage taken. Also slightly reduces the chance of being inflicted with paralysis(?) and it’s duration.
  • Shadow Resistance: Reduces Shadow damage taken. Also slightly reduces the chance of being inflicted with cursed(?) and it’s duration.
  • Poison Resistance: Reduces Poison damage taken and gain a small chance to prevent poison ailment. Also slightly reduces the duration of poison.

Of course 100% damage reduction shouldn’t be possible, nor should a player be able to gain immunity to a crowd control or status ailment via armor/resistances alone.

1 Like
14

I’d rather cc/status chances be past of attributes. But that’s cool as long as immunities can never be reached.

1 Like
15

That’s certainly an option. With that said, I agree with you on immunities not be attainable.

16

i prefer the Diablo 2 option. higher defense means that the enemies simply will miss. resistances can work in the same way, and block chance is equal to that of the shield. so, basically, non expansion Diablo 2.

oh, and no monster immunities.

17

Whatever they do they need to correct the 30% damage reduction from certain classes because the game was incorrectly designed - They need to fix dodge vs Armor disparity that made the designers change the dodge mechanic.

I seem to like the old trope of robes for mages, since they use magical shields to protect,
then light armor to heavy armor all with the typical fortes and foibles.

The answer to armor vs damage types is: Armor protects against slashing & piercing damage very well, but protects less against crushing damage. Magic damage requires magic armor, which is no problem in a Diablo universe.

18

yeah, that was kinda sad that Armor and Resistances in D3 where basically the same thing. They should have been more unique imo.

I think it would be fine if Armor would reduce all damage, not just physical, but by different amounts.

Eg. 1000 Armor could give you 30% Physical Damage Reduction and 20% Damage Reduction to all other Elements. That is how it works in Last Epoch.

Or 1000 Armor could give you 30% Physical Damage Reduction and also 30% Damage Reduction to all other Elements, but on top of that you also gain eg. 100 Physical Damage Absorb / Flat Reduction, but no Absorb/Flat Reduction to other Elements.

I think it is better that Armor reduces all types of damage, but emphasizes Physical Damage Reduction more, because then Classes / Builds that focus more on Armor (maybe even naturally) are still not too much at a disadvantage against non-physical Attacks.

I definitely agree that different armors should be better suited for certain kinds of attacks, but imo it kinda would be weird if Cloth Armor / Robes would give ‘Armor’ as a Primary Defense Bonus.

In PoE, Light Armor gives you Energy Shield, Leather Armor gives you Dodge Rating and Heavy Armor gives you Armor. You could build onto that idea by giving each Armor Class a different Primary Defense Stat, similar to this

  • Light Armor = Energy Shield
  • Leather Armor = Dodge Rating
  • Animal Pelts = All Resistances
  • Medium Heavy Armor = Armor
  • Heavy Armor = Armor + another bonus + a detrimental effect (like reduced Movement Speed)

Maybe even one additional Armor Type that gives +x Life as a Primary Defense.

https://imgur.com/IHTu3Zp
https://imgur.com/845bKwJ

You mean something like “Inherent Bonuses” as a separate affix? I like this idea, as it gives armors a more unique identity.

But I would go further than just doing it with heavy, medium and light armor.
There are different kinds of heavy, medium and light armors, e.g. there is a difference between, Plate Mail, Chain Mail, Splint Mail, and Full Plate Mail, etc.

I though about something like this, where you could have something like D2’s Mage Plate as a Medium Heavy Armor that gives Armor as its Primary Defense + a smaller amount of Energy Shield as an Inherent Property to give it more of a unique identity:

Light
https://imgur.com/L2HtGxQ

Leather
https://imgur.com/Q8dZr4u

Medium Heavy Plate
https://imgur.com/ksWkv4x

Heavy Plate
https://imgur.com/HVt3dgg

And some Heavy Armors can have CC Resistance as you suggest.

19

This shouldn’t be the case because you fight all types of enemies and want to have efficient armor against all kinds of attacks, not only some of them.

In PoE, Light Armor gives you Energy Shield, Leather Armor gives you Dodge Rating and Heavy Armor gives you Armor.

Yes, that is an interesting concept, however, from what I know, even PoE superteam is unable to balance these three kinds of defences at once and 1 of those is always better than others (depends on the patch).

20

That is what I am saying later on in my post.

E.g. instead of Armor just providing Damage Reduction against Physical Damage, let it give Damage Reduction to all kinds of Damage, but with some more emphasis on Physical Damage Reduction.

=====================================================

Eg. 1000 Armor could give you 30% Physical Damage Reduction and 20% Damage Reduction to all other Elements. That is how it works in Last Epoch.

Or 1000 Armor could give you 30% Physical Damage Reduction and also 30% Damage Reduction to all other Elements, but on top of that you also gain eg. 100 Physical Damage Absorb / Flat Reduction, but no Absorb/Flat Reduction to other Elements.

That one things is better than the other is not really an issue, as Spike Players (*) (see link below) will just pick the best thing anyway, regardless of little the difference.

It only becomes a problem when the difference between the best and the rest is too large.
=====================================================

(*) Spike Player Type

It basically refers to players who primarily play to “be the best / most efficient” or competitive players, but not every player is like that.

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Player_type#Spike