Armor and Resistance: Changes required

[Bluddy]

I'd be wary of completely changing the absorption calculation, as it really is a big change and could unbalance many other things. It seems like the current formula assumes a certain armor to monster damage ratio, and from the OP's description it sounds like the ratio doesn't hold in the higher levels. Maybe the armor rating should just be buffed at the higher levels.

[Nobear]

The thing is, the current armor formula is already so unbalanced. Since it absorbs a set number within a range, it works well vs the weakest monsters, but does next to nothing vs bosses, at any level. It's just that the monsters' damage scales faster than player health through the levels, and that's why you're more likely to get one-shot at high level.

I think trying to tweak individual armor values to put a bandaid on the current formula would actually be harder than making a new formula similar to that of most other RPGs. Also, with the current formula, to make armor effective vs bosses, you'd have to have so much armor that you'd be immune to almost every normal monster, which takes too much out of the game. Normal monsters in large packs should always present a bit of a challenge.

A more traditional formula would make things easier to tweak, if anything, because a tweak would affect the % absorbed by the same relative % vs any monster at any level.

[Bluddy]

OK makes sense. It's just a change that needs a lot of work to figure out the right formula, plus other defensive spells might need adjustments to match the changes made here.

[Nobear]

Of course. Now's the perfect time to introduce a change like that, since we're still in beta, so I'm looking forward to patch 1.015 so we can start fine-tuning .

[Shadow]

Well I changed it today, we'll see if it stays or not. At this exact moment this is the new formula:

% absorbed = armor / ( armor + (30 x attacker Level + 60) )

[abomination5]

Originally Posted by Shadow

Well I changed it today, we'll see if it stays or not. At this exact moment this is the new formula:

% absorbed = armor / ( armor + (30 x attacker Level + 60) )

I'm looking forward to this change very much. Thanks Shadow!

[Nobear]

That sounds good. That would give my warrior with 4600 armor 60% DR, and Abom's super-geared warrior with 6000 armor 66% DR. A 75% hard cap doesn't even seem necessary with current items, since that would take an absurd amount of armor to reach.

Now how much armor do regular monsters have per level again? And is it any higher for champions/elites/bosses/super bosses/overlords?

[Bluddy]

Quick excel sheet to help with analyzing the new absorption formula.

[Baki]

Looks great! Would similar changes to the resistance -> absorption formula make sense?

soemthing like

% absorbed = resistance / ( resistance + attacker Level )?

[Bluddy]

Isn't resistance also used for environmental sources like fire, traps and acid pools? In that case there's no attacker level...