Heavy Armor - Durability Lost

Hey everyone,

Heavy armor people fight with mobs directly and durability loss is greater than the ones who attack from distance. My suggestion is to lower durability loss on heavy armor to balance durability management for heavy armor people.

 

So me as a melee light armor do not? I agree that minimum durability hit is a bit to high for us who are up close. I get more repair kits than I use (other problem) but its the constant repairing thats annoying

 

yes, melee go through more repair kits, but we don't go through arrows or regs. it's supposed to balance out.

 

Who says I dont use reags? I use as much reags as my full mage friend, all my attacks are melee but buffs/heals and he has 2 wands whereas I use a two handed ...and warlock chain but cant count that.

Archers being the cheapest, I could ofc use cheaper spells but my grievance is with repairing often, not the cost of anything

 

I use lots of regs, potions and repairs as well.

 

Join the heavy armor people so from far they will not think that you are a mage

 

I am just curious what everyone's armor preservation passive is at. I recently raised it from 40 to 80 which seemed to make a big difference but still seems a bit high.

 

Short term it may do just that. The problem is the long term armor replacement.

Combined with the 100% dura hit that body slam incurs (which realistically is something any heavy armor melee is going to use since the bonus for being behind the mob is that good) ... I really think this needs to be re-looked at. It's not balanced in the slightest.

Further, melee weapons need to be looked at too. Wands incur basically no durability damage at all for casting. As a melee I'm going to use auto attack because it's bordering on self-mutilation as far as DPS is concerned not to and my weapons are basically trashed every trip I take. People will make 1 wand in the time I would burn through numerous swords.

In no way, shape, or form do reagent costs break even with the added cost of replacing weapons/armor that much more often. The durability hit of heavy armor/weapons I think are actually in line with "realistic" durability hits. The problem is that alternate styles are immune to this issue and in a game where we're supposed to be recycling gear relatively fairly often this seems bogus that heavy armor melee are really the only ones subject to this vision.

This is yet another issue the game will face when going towards a more "group-centric" vision where tanks are required. They'd be the only ones in the group constantly needing to replace their armor if they're the only ones getting whacked. Seems pretty discouraging to an already minimally touched group position across all MMO's.

As an aside, I never go out to do a damn thing w/o the Obsidian potion of Preservation (25%) and both weapon/armor preservation are at 90.

The solution to "even" it out is to decay armor/weapons based on combat time. Everyone in combat performing actions is losing durability somewhat evenly across the board. Keep it to actual ability usage and incorporate the auto attack decay rate (or whatever feels reasonable) into that so there's no extra penalty for being melee. Extra penalties need to be kept to a minimum if we're going to care about group based play. The "cost" for playing a particular thing needs to definitely not be outlandishly different than something else and we're currently facing exactly that problem.

 

Comparing reagent and arrow cost to armor replacement cost is like comparing apples to oranges.

First of all armor consists of 5 separate pieces all of which take damage at the same time in combat. If you just take the base cost of a basic unenchanted in masterworked epic copper set you are looking at 150 or so copper ore plus coal and miscellaneous cost.

Unfortunately in a group hunting setting you probably want tier 2 armor now since they upgraded that and so now double those original costs plus whatever catalyst you are adding.

This is all before you even talk about enchanting and masterworking, which likely will increase that cost by a factor of 10 or more for a few reasons. Firstly because you are going to break many items in the process because cheap happens. Secondly the ludicrous way that the higher your skill in those areas increases your chance to not get a useful enchant or masterwork because everything must remain random.

The biggest problem here is not really that armor decays, I actually enjoy the fact that I have to replace my stuff on occasion. However the fact that the crafting system itself is broken when it comes to masterworking and enchanting and leaves so much up to chance and happenstance, along with punishing the player for getting better, makes the cost of armor skyrocket.

In conclusion the cost of armor versus reagents in the long term is not close currently and I agree with the op that we need an adjustment, but not necessarily to armor decay but more so on fixing a ludicrous and broken enchanting and masterwork system.

 

Doesn't it just make sense for heavy armor folks to raise Armor Preservation more? That is what the skill is meant for right? I wear cloth and am frequently in melee for using my Ice Fist and Dazzling Ray abilities. As historically accurate for a lightly armored front-liner, I use a shield to augment my defense. Even though I am in cloth, my armor durability is going to drop faster than an archer in leather or chain, so it has made sense to invest more into Armor Preserve than a more ranged/kiting oriented player would be.

 

There’s a reason why people are wearing heavy armour... but, for some reason, they omit that detail from the discussion while talking about balance.

Apparently, the only factors are repair cost and crafting...

 

Honestly most people wear light armor. Bone armor doesn't lose any 2ndary durability at all so most people gravitate towards that. Don't get me wrong, heavy armor is really good, but the trade-off to it being that good is that it just breaks vs not breaking is a shitty trade-off is my point.

 

Actually the discussion is more about melee being punished because we are taking more armor damage vs ranged and mages who stay out of the fray. I would love to see them make a viable light armor melee build akin to dex based swashbucklers or sworddancers from d&d.

The crafting problem is not exclusive to heavy armor either I just used that as I am personally more familiar with it. Also repair cost is not a problem, the fact that replacement cost is high and happens at a much faster rate for a particular playstyle is.

 

My armour cost is above 350k.

 

Wow. Thanks for the suggestion. This might solve all the issue.

 

@Chris - Is something like a combat time based armor/weapon decay even a possibility? I know nothing about this engine.

Edit: The more I think about it, the more I like it. As it stands any melee artifact is basically laughable unless you can toss it in your offhand as a stat stick of sorts. It will just break far too quickly to be realistic to use. Mage based weapons are the opposite extreme of basically never taking durability damage. Combat time based durability damage seems like it would do wonders to correct many inconsistencies across the board with regards to item durability hits.