Lets talk armor (the stat)

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Fruz a écrit :

But tbh, I feel way less safe on my high evasion + dodge and spell dodge ( QotF and Dreamfeather, with a shield ) than on a armour + block build.

That would be in line with my experiences too.


Heres the way I look at those 2 setups, I feel like armour + block is what id call a complete defense where as the evasion + dodge to me isnt, thats like half a defense in my book.

On a life build I want physical damage reduction + attack avoidance. Thats the combo, obviously you want all the lifes too, goes without saying.

the evasion build has avoidance (ev) + avoidance (dodge) = avoidance. It doesnt have damage reduction, its got 2 parts but they do the same thing, theres a big hole.

evasion and block, they dont work quite the same obviously but theyre roughly the same thing, % chance to avoid an attack. I think given 50% of both evasion is better because it cant randomly fail 5 times in a row and let you die, but close enough.

thats why I always use a coil with evasion, because a coil is roughly armour. Its not, but in the same way its close enough, similar effect. So for me I would play any of these combos...

armour + block

armour + evasion

coil + evasion

coil + block


I wouldnt play coil + armour and then not have any attack avoidance, I wouldnt play evasion + dodge/block and not have damage reduction. Always both aspects together. Even 2h builds, my 2h axe jugger for example has the double body armour node, has a hybrid hat (devotos), has armour on belt. Just that alone gives him about 22k armour and he has something like 8 endurance charges, fortify, a basalt and a taste of hate. But he has evasion gloves and boots with grace and cwdt enfeeble so 12k evasion, about 50% chance to evade highest levels of mobs, add in enfeeble making that even higher chance to evade, kind of performs like a 65% block + 22k armour build. My frostblades raider, all evasion gear, enfeeble, 46/40 dodge, bit of block, but then has lightning coil + toh + basalt + 3 edurance charges + arctic armour + fortify, the end result feels roughly the same, little lighter on the reduction and heavier on the avoid but essentially the same.

Ive never been impressed with damage reduction or attack avoidance on their own in all honesty, certainly not since I tried them both together. Personally i think armour + ev is the best of the bunch cause of entropic avoiding and the way armour scales so ridiculously against small to mid hits in a way a coil doesnt, I think its the best of both words defensively but Ive yet to manage a full crit build with it, where ar+block or coil+ev its easy to do those and still be full on crit. I have an armour + evasion 1h sword jug with 29k armour, 12k ev, 42% block, 7 endurance, basalt, toh, fortify, about 7k life, loads of regen and leech, it just feels monstrous. Its died once since its been using that setup and that was to vol blood, I remember it clear as day, pack of zombies coming up from the ground, cycloned in, oh theres a rare coming up with sub phy... BANG. rip. It appeared under my feet mid cyclone and i was aware it existed for about half a second before I was dead. I think that was about 2 years ago, certainly before ascendancy. He used to have 15k armour but jugger class, dear god, that armour boost + you get unwavering but can still stack evasion. I love that node.

Just an additional note on why you should not compare AR and ES directly on gear.

Increased energy shield is the main preferred mod on ES gear.
But in armour gear the main preferred mod is Life.



Getting 10k armour is nothing. You usually gain that automatically on armour based build unless you deliberately have not selected a single armour node.

Having 20k armour takes a little bit of work, but certainly doesn't require much. It's the golden standard for my melee char. Shield characters basically get that amount just from the "increased defenses on shields", marauders cant avoid taking increased armour nodes unless going full YOLO mode.

Getting good enough armour value requires just a one or two small wheel contribution. And once you have +150% to +200% granite flasks gets really powerful. Lion's Roar is a god-item for armour / melee builds. Not only does it give a lot of damage, it gives that +3000 armour and knockback that works as a form of defense. Rumi's is still okay, but usually I'd just take rare granite with +% armour mod over it.



Oh, and Soul of Steel armour wheel was great even before the buff.
Now it is borderline OP.

how do you get 20K (without flasks i suppose) 'easily, with one or two wheels'?

i have a juggernaut, obviously use armour (and cleave, so it is DoA experimental character..) and



combined with 130% from the tree (mostly from Jugg ascendancy + double AR from chest) gives me barely 10K


i cannot take any extra 'armour only' clusters because otherwise my already bad dps gets irrelevant in maps. i do not have mirrored weapon that can carry me, nor i can afford Steel Rings of Bonkers that would grant me necessary oomph to carry me further, nor i can afford 2K+/100+Life chest (cheap ones are corrupted with mismatched colors, first passable one is 2.5ex atm and ex is 110c..)

can anyone show me how do they get 20K armour 'easily'? possibly with passives and gear used?

because my gripe with armour (less so with evasion) is scaling. the nodes are miniscule! 6 or 10% there and there with few strong clusters that only people with bonkers gear can afford to take. it really is very difficult to scale. and AR needs these numbers as - unlike evasion - the effect scales linearly while damage input scales sharper.

with evasion it is very easy to reach 'good enough' levels and there is little point in investing further. with AR - you should try and reach these good numbers but that is a case when only guys with good dps can afford to do so (meta skill, good weapon, expensive jewelry). as a poor/ssf player it is really really difficult to spend these points on AR clusters when one barely slogs trough maps

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Snorkle_uk a écrit :

"

Fruz a écrit :

But tbh, I feel way less safe on my high evasion + dodge and spell dodge ( QotF and Dreamfeather, with a shield ) than on a armour + block build.

That would be in line with my experiences too.


Heres the way I look at those 2 setups, I feel like armour + block is what id call a complete defense where as the evasion + dodge to me isnt, thats like half a defense in my book.

I reached the conclusion that just evasion is not supposed to be used to tank many monsters at the same time.

Nugi reached lvl 95 in the top 20 ladder BHC or so, but he was not tanking, he as blowing up everything with blade flurry and moving very fast to manually dodge most of the dangers ( QotF + Dream Feather there ).
The chest being taken ( he switched to the perfect form later on ) does not allow for coil, so it really is pure evasion & dodge.

So now, to me, pure evasion fits ranged playstyle, whereas armour can tank stuff more easily, usually.
Combining both => ideal.
Evasion and doge are amazing to protect from a few hits, big or small, but many monsters ? Entropy will screw up eventually, at least I guess that's why it feels bad to try to tank with pure evasion + dodge.

I must be at 30k+ evasion without flasks on my frostblade ranger, + as much dodge and spell dodge as I could get.
I don't tank with it, Uber Izaro scares me also for example, I uber ascended but I won't go back in there with this character I think.

Evasion will stay at its "cheap defence" status. I mean, you really dont need much of an investment to reach 13k Eva (50% Evade, good chest, atziris step, 350 Base and solid helmet) and 44/46 dodge. Essentially, you can reach those values with the ranger start section and the Life/Eva combo wheel and the 5 Point investment into Phase Acro.

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how do you get 20K (without flasks i suppose) 'easily, with one or two wheels'?

Not without grace + IR or top tier shield and armor.

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I must be at 30k+ evasion without flasks on my frostblade ranger, + as much dodge and spell dodge as I could get.

Its a waste its either 50% or 75% (either 13k Eva or 34k+). The 2nd investment is too high, imo.

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Oh, and Soul of Steel armour wheel was great even before the buff.
Now it is borderline OP.

I agree, but at very high level, i swapped soul of steel for indomitable (crit reduction), since those hits are more harmfull. But at that stage, i was already at 23k Armor.

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I don't know if that's all tbh, entropy makes it so that the potential incoming damage can be higher in some cases making it more dangerous, that is true.

If you building a crit build, and choose to build around reflect with arrow dancing, avoiding is a lot better than reducing. The reason for this is essentially, that armor doesnt reduce the crit spikes enough. Evasion is better here, imo, especially if you finetune your accuracy in accordance to your evasion.

I wasn't talking about reflect.
On an attack build, with high dps ( potentially crit ), evasion will be much better than armour because of that, but you will still have the drawbacks that were mentioned earlier.

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sidtherat a écrit :

how do you get 20K (without flasks i suppose) 'easily, with one or two wheels'?

i have a juggernaut, obviously use armour (and cleave, so it is DoA experimental character..) and

combined with 130% from the tree (mostly from Jugg ascendancy + double AR from chest) gives me barely 10K

whats the tree and the rest of the gear?

I feel like you want multistrike in there tbh.

I agree I find armour a little too harsh to scale.

"

sidtherat a écrit :

how do you get 20K (without flasks i suppose) 'easily, with one or two wheels'?

(...)

combined with 130% from the tree (mostly from Jugg ascendancy + double AR from chest) gives me barely 10K

I usually have about 200% armour in my juggernaut trees. My current Jugger has 210%, with the only armor nodes that are "luxury" being "cloth and chain" (taken for ele weakness cap).

Just put on this stuff for a quick test, the highest AR pieces I own in SSF:


That's 14k armor.
Without the "double chest piece" node on the tree.
Without Grace + IR.
With only 50% increased shield defenses.

So yes, I'd say 20k is easily achievable, if I were to shop and gear for it.

this all i have that affects my AR. my shield is 1300EV shield that grants my entire evasion. there are no AR/EV shields with life that are avilable (as in - online and reasonably priced) and i couldnt use grace because my damage already sucks

multistrike with cleave.. i tried really tried but it sucked hard esp in breaches. single target maybe but.. yeah it sucked mechanicaly

weapon is 310pdsp varunastra (i went RT due to being very poor at the start of the league and couldnt afford jewelry to fully utilize crit)

character somewhat works and ofc i can pick 450AR gloves and boots but that still wont make me have 20K. i also can pick lioneyes shield, drop hatred and run grace but - and this is a big but - with my budget setup that means my dps drops to abysmal levels despite using 6Link

and i know i can find a 700+ helmet for 1c. however finding a helmet that fixes resists etc isnt all that cheap. sold one nice 600AR helmet for ~ex and buyer did not ask any questions

so i can get 200+ AR per piece. but at the cost of several ex OR loosing crucial stats


on the other hand 10K AR without flasks plus 8end charges is pretty close to 'facetank stuff afk' so not that i care that much

but id really like to see that 20K AR done easily with 2 clusters..

"

sidtherat a écrit :

but id really like to see that 20K AR done easily with 2 clusters..

700 helmet
2000 torso (doubled)
1400 shield
400 gloves, boots and belt
=7.300
+210% armor
-> 22.600 AR

Tree (same as above, just changed the ascendancy to double chest piece)
Armor clusters in the tree:
*Marauder start (life)
*Juggernaut (life)
*Cloth and chain (resists)
*Sanctity (travel through to amplify)
*Bravery (travel through to Duelist attackspeed)
*Jugg Ascendancy

...doesn't look like an unreasonable amount of investment into AR to me.