Armor.

[Liz Summers]

I posted this somewhere but do not remember where and cannot see it here so I will repost it here too.

I began having a long series of battles with a player 6 levels higher than me and was actually watching the fights play out instead of skipping them.

I had better stats in every category, my average damage stat was about 9k higher than his average damage stat, and my armor count was over 100 points higher than his. I was listed at 75% for my level, and he was listed slightly over 72% for his level.

However, when I actually hit him I was hitting for a maximum of 2k damage less than his maximum hit value. If it was just one or two fights it 'could' have been that I was simply having bad luck with my strikes, but this pattern stayed around for fight after fight.

As a result of these series of fights, it is my belief at this time that the 75% rating that we see is a hard cut-off rather than soft cut-off. In other words, I believe that if we have say 4000 armor at level 75 we do not actually get credit for the full 4000 even if we fight a level 100 person. Instead we only get credit for say 3500 (throwing random numbers out here folks do not know what the exact armor count that swaps from 74.9% to 75% is), and then when you level up you get the extra level's max 75% of say 3600.

If this theory holds true based on observations in-game, this means that higher levelled players do get an advantage in terms of defense. In other words, if a lvl 75 with 4000 armor fought a lvl 100 with 3800 armor, the lvl 100 would be considered by the game computations to have more armor protection for that fight.

[Bianca]

Originally Posted by Karocet

I'm assuming that if you have high enough armour, you could potentially get a 75% reduction of an attack from a higher level opponent. This is very difficult to test of course as the damage done by weapon attacks is random and we'll just never know.

I'm also finding it quite difficult to get 75% armour for my own level, let alone a higher one.

I am starting to believe that of the two, the percentage number of armor and the actual number, the actual armor number is the most important. The percentage number is relative to the level. The armor number is the constant, and more important number. Has anyone else said this and I just didn't understand it?

Sorry what I meant by actual armor is the Total Armor.

[Burnt]

I thought everybody knew that the formula's for working out armour were common knowledge now. Well for those that don't it is no longer a debate as to how armour actually works, we have definite formula's and they have been around for quite a while. So here is how to work out how much armour you need to reach the 75% cap at your level.

Your level x 50. Complicated right?
Example: A level 40 player (40 x 50) would require 2000 armour to reach the 75% damage reduction cap against a same or lower level opponent.

This is how to work out how much of a damage reduction you will get against any specific enemy. Your armour x 1.5 then divide by the level of your opponent.
Example: A level 40 player with 2000 armour attacking a level 50 player in arena.
2000 x 1.5 = 3000
3000 / 50 = 60
So our level 40 player would get a 60% damage reduction against a level 50 opponent instead of his 75%. Now this also works the other way around.
Example: lets say our level 50 player is also armour capped for his level with 2500 armour.
2500 x 1.5 = 3750
3750 / 40 = 93.75
So our level 50 player would have a damage reduction of 93.75% but this gets reduced to 75% because of the cap.

What does all this mean in real terms? Well it depends on who you are fighting if your enemies are mostly higher level than you then armour becomes the most important statistic in the game... Armour remains important even if you are higher level than your enemies because mission enemies will always be +/-1 of your level.

P.s. Sorry if its a little math heavy I tried to keep it simple, and restrained myself from delving in to the intricacies of percentage based damage reductions.

[DominicS]

Wow, thanks for this! I have been around since the inception of BM on the US servers and active on the forums, but never knew this.

Definitely appreciate it. :az:

[Angua]

Interesting info, thanks.