Heavy VS light Armor Balance + dual weilding suggestions

Disclaimer: I understand that the game is still in pre alpha and that there are going to be many balance change to come, this post in not to rag on the devs, I think they are doing a great job. this post is just about what my suggestions are to help balance the game.

I think its pretty well understood that heavy armor is OP at the moment, big advantages with out much of a down side. Sure you get more slugs and an increase to your fizzle chance, but by locking your hand and taking a few focus skills the slugs are not much of an issue(especially since you don't need to take multiple glyphs when you are using a locked deck which leaves lots of extra points to put into focus and passive skills). As for the fizzle chance I have found that even in full plate and a shield i still get my spells of more often then not. You also gain so much damage reduction that unless you are going up against something with very high burst damage you are not going to be hurt at all. This has made it so the only viable build to be heavy armor, unless you are a heavy magic user.

Over all I am actually ok with the high damage reduction and fizzle chance and think that with a few small changes we can keep that tankiness of heavy armor with out being OP and make light armor melee fighters effective and have some exclusive advantages.

1. Make all passive skills in the magic trees not effective when wearing heavy armor, the down side to using Heavy armor is suppose to be that you can not use magic as effectively while this is true for active spells, passive spells still have there full effect. the cost of wearing heavy armor should be a reduction on how effective your magic is, not to mention adding to an already very high damage reduction by adding magic damage reduction form the earth school and such. I think this would still allow heavy armor users to us magic, just at reduced effectiveness and high fizzle chance, giving light armor users an greater advantage when it comes to magic.

2. Now i am not sure if this is already implemented, but I'll suggest it anyway. Critical hits should bypass damage reduction. This would allow low burst damage attacks to actually do damage form time to time, which brings me to 3.

3. There should be a why for melee fighters to increase there chance of critical hits, ether through the light armor tree(light armor allows for more freedom of movement and make it easier to land those criticals) or through the tactics tree under dual wielding. Magic seems to have enough burst damage to overwhelm damage reduction so, my focus is melee light armor users. On that note I find dual wielding to be vastly under powered compared to using a shield that has its own tree or the burst damage of two handed weapon. I think an increase in the critical hit chance while dual wielding(adding another passive skill on the dual wielding branch) would kill two birds with one stone. If crits bypass damage reduction, this increased critical hit chance would even the playing field heavy and light armor users a far bit. I have two notes on this:
1. This critical hit chance could ether be done on by greatly increasing the chance when striking with the off hand weapon were more often then not an off hand strike would crit or by generally increasing critical while dual wielding so they happen much more frequently then with just one weapon.
2. Damage for crits may have to be reduced if crits are just currently over powering damage reduction as not to unbalance dual wielders against light armor users, so it will even the playing field against heavy armor users it would not overly increase damage against light armor users like mage types to were they would be at a huge disadvantage against dual wielders. It would give a similarly high DPS to two handed weapon users, but instead of burst it would be more like a steady DPS. The idea behind this would be that the dual wielder is finding and striking against against the weak points in their opponents armor.
Think these changes would be the best way to balance light armor users and dual wielders with out putting heavy armor users and heavy magic users at to much of a disadvantage.

 

First off, welcome to the forums.

When you lock your glyph bar, you still need to buy multiple versions of a glyph to reduce focus cost. If you only buy it once, that skill will be very expensive from a focus cost to use and then you won't have focus for magic.

 

Leather armor with leather straps doubles your ATP.

 

didn't the patch address this?

 

Schwat

 

Armor bonuses were reduced, but they weren't removed. So wearing light armor will still give you a damage boost.
One handed weapons have higher crit chances.

 

thanks, didn't have time to fully re-test my buildouts...

 

thanks didn't know that but it makes sense.

Yes I know that, what I am saying is that small damage boost is not going to compensate for the lost damage reduction and there for lost survivability for not going heavy armor. Nether does the higher crit chance and faster attack speed of one handed weapons hold a candle the pure damage output of 2 handed weapons, the only reason to go one handed weapons is to use a shield to up that survivability just that little bit more. What I am saying is that the damage reduction of heavy armor is so great and its draw backs are so few, its foolish to use anything else because its crippling yourself to do so, if you are making a melee focused character. The suggestions I am making are to add another draw back to wearing heavy armor, with out it interfering with its primary purpose. then increasing the the crit chance for wearing light armor or upping crit when forgoing a shield by dual wielding, which would help make light armor dual wielders more viable both in pve and pvp. I think these changes would be a better way then just nurfing the damage reduction on heavy armor to get it more balanced.

 

They will be balanced eventually and one of those balances will be encumbrance.