Curse

Sausaletus Rex · Feb 25, 2005, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Keramon's long-awaited (by me, anyway) opus on the armor choices available in Guild Wars and just what to make out of them is now live and you can read it by following this very link.

It's an intriguing look into just how the various ways damage work combines with the sundry armor bonuses available. It's pretty heady stuff and I'm still mulling over a lot of the theory myself. But even if, like me, you start to sweat when people break out the calculators, Keramon's also borken down the armor choices of each and every profession and come up with some recommendations. Very good stuff and hopefully I'll have something more to say once I've finished digesting it all.

Bgnome · Feb 25, 2005, 08:17 PM // 20:17

isnt "font-size: 16pt" kinda big?

THX · Feb 25, 2005, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Yeah, it's going to be fixed.

Zrave · Feb 25, 2005, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Very detailed and informative, pity that it is out of date. I look forward to an updated analysis with the current values.

Sausaletus Rex · Feb 25, 2005, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Erm, well, due to a mix-up in the home office there was a slight misplacement of files and....

Okay, actually, I just screwed up and posted the wrong version. Keramon and I have been shuffling this back and forth between us and I grabbed one of the earlier iterations this morning. So, as soon as things can be updated the armor guide should have accurate information on each and every armor set as of the BWE. I apologize to Keramon and everyone else for the mistake(s) and thanks to everyone who pointed it out.

Edited to add :

What should be the correct version is now up.

Ensign · Feb 26, 2005, 12:51 AM // 00:51

The version of the Master's Set listed there is still off - it's 60 +5 vs. Elemental now. Otherwise it all looks good.

The biggest thing that needs to be mentioned here is that people are *badly* undervaluing energy on their armor. Those energy hits, especially on the gloves/boots, are *huge*, particularly considering what you have to give up for them.

Let's put this into a bit of perspective. A good, top-notch shield should be giving you 15 AL if you meet the requirement. At the same time, a good focus will be giving you 12 Energy. Or, even worst case scenario on a caster, you're looking at trading a 12 Energy focus in for a 6 AL shield. I don't see a lot of casters *not* using the focus, so I think it's safe to say that the value of a single point of energy is higher than a point of AL, but one is never worth less than half a point of AL.

Then you take hit locations into account. +10 AL vs. physical on gloves may look nice, but what is that really? +1.125 AL vs. physical, because only one in eight attacks is going to hit it.

So the real comparison between Ascetic's Hand Tattoos and Judge's Gloves is 2 Energy vs. 1.125 AL vs. physical. That's such a brainless decision it hurts.

The same pretty much goes for all of the other glove/boot comparisons. +1 Energy vs. +1.875 AL vs Fire? Energy please.

For that reason I don't think it's a stretch to say that all of the +physical, -energy armor sets are basically unplayable. The only piece with a non-trivial energy/defense tradeoff is the chestpiece. But, on the chestpiece, we really want to be emphesizing elemental defense, not physical.

As such I think that only the Elementalist has particularly interesting armor choices. For everyone else:

Warrior: Ascalon
Ranger: Hunter's with Druid's Gloves/Boots
Monk: Silk with Tattoo Gloves/Boots
Necromancer: Blasphemers, with Bonelace and Scar Gloves/Boots in reserve
Mesmer: Regal with Enchanter's Gloves/Boots

Elementalist is choosing between a bunch of uninspiring mods, so pick according to whatever element you fear most.

Peace,
-CxE

Sausaletus Rex · Feb 26, 2005, 05:42 AM // 05:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The version of the Master's Set listed there is still off - it's 60 +5 vs. Elemental now. Otherwise it all looks good.

That should be correctly listed and analyized now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The biggest thing that needs to be mentioned here is that people are *badly* undervaluing energy on their armor. Those energy hits, especially on the gloves/boots, are *huge*, particularly considering what you have to give up for them...Then you take hit locations into account. +10 AL vs. physical on gloves may look nice, but what is that really? +1.125 AL vs. physical, because only one in eight attacks is going to hit it.

I'll agree that the new energy armors look nice. I especially like to see the change to Gladiator's armor. Granted, that armor is trash compared to the other Warrior choices but just the fact that they've opened things up and included an armor that can boost your energy pool makes me smile. It really needs to get its old +10 to Physical bonus back, though. It's just not as good as any other Warrior armor now and it needs a little boost to make it playable. I'd even settle for a +5AL or something odd like +15 vs. Piercing damage. Right now it's +20AL for a profession that's built to soak damage for others versus +1 energy for a profession that's built to avoid a lot of energy concerns with adrenal skills, it's just no contest. Gladiator's should be a rung below in protection to get that energy bonus, sure, but not that far below.

And, while I'm at it, Knight's and Platemail are still *exactly* the same. I want something other than an ascetic choice there. Make one 70AL+35AL vs. Physical or even better, I wouldn't mind a suit that's "ranger-proof" and includes some +vs. piercing. Since it's more conditional you can play around with the numbers a bit more to make it distinct and it's just a specific type of physical damage so it's not getting too far away from things. You could do 80AL+30AL vs. Piercing or better yet something like 80AL+10AL vs. Physical +15AL vs. Piercing. The same thing's possible with blunt and/or slashing damage (hammer vs. sword/axe) but I'd rather deal with the arrows rather than other wars.

That was a bit of a tangent, huh?

Anyhow, energy bonus suits are very nice. At least the hands and feet are. The chest and leggings leave somethig to be desired because unlike most other aspects of armor they don't scale according to how important they are. Keeping the AL flat across all of them makes sense but since hit locations are random and unequal, that gets reflected elsewhere, such as in the crafting cost of your armor pieces. Your chest pieces gets hit three times what your boots, gloves, and helmet are, so it costs 3x as much crafting goods to fashion. Legs take twice as much damage so they cost 2x. Believe me, I've stared at list after list of crafting costs and armor ratings and the rest and the simple fact is you can divide up the crafting cost of any 4 piece (chest, hands, legs, feet) set of armor by 7 and any 5 piece by 8. Even headgear is priced similarly. However, by introducing a bonus that's *not* straight AL to the armor there's a bit of asymetry introduced. As Charles says, you're only hit 12.5% or 1/8th the time on your hands, feet, and head. Heads get the +att. headgear so there's little reason to use anything else there and they don't really enter into things (Here's a nifty little thought experiment. Say your +1 to whatever attribute headgear was 0AL. Just how much AL would that headgear without the +1 have to be to get you to consider taking it instead of those bonus attribute points? I found the number to be shockingly large. Since +att headgear have armor near their profession's baseline and armor is exponential - it doesn't matter what you add to, just that you add - you'd have to be well above the 100AL mark to get me to protect my head. And I play a Monk or a Warrior and I loves me some better armor.). But because your hands and feet are struck less you don't need to armor them as well.

I don't understand how Chuck gets his numbers and I hope he'll explain them a bit better but I agree with the general sentiment that you're looking at a tradeoff of only a few percentages of less damage overall to get a valuable point of energy. 1 en doesn't sound like a lot but it's 1 less en you have to regen over the course of a battle. And what energy really is is a constant flow of things, it's a time-based resource. The more you have, the more time you've bought yourself. In a game that comes down to the seconds, as GW does, that's incredibly valuable.

Remember, you don't have to wear a whole set of armor. Armor can be mixed and matched. There's no bonus for wearing a full set of armor. There's no penalty for not having one. I mean, sure, they look nice, but that's it. We're not quite in the days where, for example, the best suit of Ranger armor was that 90AL Studded Leather with an 80AL+20AL vs. Elemental Drakescale/Leather chest piece but we're not far off. The best suits of armor are made by combining the best of several suits but to do that you first need to know exactly what you can get from each armor slot. Keramon's article has gone a long way toward clarrifying that for people, I think. But even if you can't follow it, the most important lesson you should walk away with is this : There are different locations for armor. Those locations act different. The value of a piece of armor depends on wher you put it. So learn to make the most of those differing values by mixing and matching for your benefit.

That's a lot clearer than "mix and match, it's good", isn't it?

Of course, the next step is having multiple armor sets to swap situationally, but one step at a time.

One thing struck me as I read Keramon's article (which is excellently written and researched, our troubles finding the proper version earlier notwithstanding) and it's this: We're, perhaps, getting a bit too finnicky and precise. I know it's weird to say but there's such a thing as too much information. Especially when that information does you no practical good. What Keramon's article is about is the laboratory, the clean room, the perfect environment where everything can be measured and dissected. Don't get me wrong, that's important, dreadfully so, to get the most out of things you first have to understand them and the sort of thing Keramon, Ensign, and the rest of the slide-ruler, number crunching squad do is incredibly valuable for furthering that understanding. but, sometimes you have to sit back and ask, "Okay, now we understand it. What are we supposed to do with it?".

We're going to play this game in the real world. The real world is dirty and imprecise. Just how is the average player supposed to know if they're suffering 8.5% more damage or 9.5% more damage from a particular attack by angling themselves according to the cardinal compass points and playing the game on a Tuesday? More importantly, just how are they supposed to *care*? At some point you have to approximate. At some point you have to simplify. At some point you have to put theory into practice. What I are about, as a player, is not figuring out whether it's 32% from Power Attack versus 35% damage from Wild Blow. What I care about is that they're both about 1/3rd as good as they should be. So, while this is all well and good, sometimes I think we should just discuss armor linearly. 5AL is 25% as effective as 20AL. Give or take a few percentage points, that's right, and those last few percentage points only matter in extremely narrow circumstances. I don't need to know much more than that to know if I'm taking physical damage and I've got on my +5AL versus physical damage armor, it's time to switch to my +20AL vs. physical damage armor, do I?

Keramon · Feb 26, 2005, 03:31 PM // 15:31

One of the things, that first got me looking at armours and effectiveness, is when I realised that many in the community
1. Didn't really understand the values and what they meant.
2. Were not "Mixing and Matching" armours.

A number of people comment to me that my armour choice for the chest last BPE 'made me less competitive' because I had 5AL less against physical on the chest whilst I was sporting and extra +5AL vs Elemental attacks.

Ensign is absolutely correct in his evaluation that the hands and feet and head are far less important than the other pieces when it comes to protection, and I am under the strong belief that +energy is considerable more valuable on arms and feet.
Note: The head in all sets has +1 attribute, and I believe this should never be ignored.

I recommend that before anyone actually chooses their final level 20 set, you should play some PvP and PvE and analyse how you play and what constrains your build. As you polish these tactics, then you can truly start to value the effect of +Physical, +Elemental and +Energy.

When you look at builds analyse them with respect to;
1. Skill Recharge
2. Energy Cost/Usage
3. Range
and most importantly how your playstyle and equipment effects it.
The same build will have different requirements when played by two different people.

e.g. - Player A Wa/Mo uses Healing Hands and Healing Breeze not only on themself, but on any team member that is taking damage. Adreneline skills are used for damage.
Player B Wa/Mo uses Healing Hands/Breeze only on him/herself, and uses mainly adreneline skills. Though energy is always available when they need it.

Now, I wish more people were like Player A and realised that you don't have to be a healer to help with healing. I digress, you can see that in this example, Player A uses 5 Energy every 25 seconds with Healing Hands and an additional 10 Energy when they/their party needs them to. This build will constantly use all of their energy reserves and would benefit greatly by +energy.
Player B will have energy constantly and would be better served with armour that provides a small bonus to energy even on places like gloves and feet.

This is an extreme example, but it highlights how two people with exactly the same build can have totally different energy requirements, this in turn effects their energy requirements and equipment choices.

For Player A, using Balthazar's Spirit and having a +1 on hit -1 energy sword can still leave him lacking for energy while for Player B these things would not benefit the player at all.

For my Elementalist, I use Armour of Earth to suppliment his AL and therefore take 1/2 damage or less from all physical and elemental attacks. So straight away, I choose the suits, delivering more energy and don't worry so much about the AL. However, many people do not use +AL skills, and this decision becomes increasingly difficult.

Furthermore, I would like to stress the great benefits that can come from switching. I recommend that warriors carry a +10-12 focus to assist when casting, when you have a DP sometimes this may be the only way you can actually cast that Firestorm due to an intense Guild Battle. This allows you to not loose any of your skills (due to cost) even, after you have suffered a few deaths.

Ensign, you will notice that I pretty much ignored the Warrior Ascalon set in my writeup due to not even imagining how anyone could've afforded it in the BPE. I think, until the material availability or cost changes, it would be futile to recommend a piece of equipment that people could not afford.

I was also very happy to see the changes to the Gladiator's set. Even if it was nowhere near as good as the other sets in terms of protection, it opens up new options for warriors in terms of skill choices.

Sausaletus Rex is 100% correct also in his diagnosis, that my guide is exactly that, a guide. It is something I was trying to stress. Any damage numbers are ultimately effected and skewed by what you are facing. Your requirements are entirely different when facing a group of El/Me vs a group of Wa/Mo. As soon as you walk out of the "lab testing" environment, you can see how the numbers fluctuate wildly, still if we are armed with this information, we can be better prepared for whatever we are faced with.

Ensign · Feb 27, 2005, 02:07 AM // 02:07

Your choice of armor fundamentally comes down to what damage profile you expect to be taking. When choosing between different defensive bonuses, your real goal is to minimize the amount of damage taken overall. What this means is that you just want the highest average AL for a given damage profile.

This is easiest to visualize with examples.

Let's compare the Master's Robes with the Hydromancer's Bikini - the former is +5 armor vs. all elemental damage, while the latter is +15 armor vs. cold. Only elemental damage matters here, so the question is 'what percentage of elemental damage has to be cold damage for me to want to use the bikini?'

Hence:

5 AL * (percentage of elemental damage) <=> 15 AL * (percentage of elemental damage) * (percentage of elemental cold damage)

or

5 AL <=> 15 AL * (elemental cold percentage)

1/3 <=> (elemental cold percentage)

So the rule of thumb is that if you're getting hit by noticibly more than a third cold damage, switch to Hydromancer's. Otherwise stick to Master's.

This is just a rule of thumb, though - the *actual* break even point is 36%. Why? Because of that exponential - halving damage has a smaller net change on damage recieved than doubling damage. +40 against half the damage you take, with -40 against the other half, doesn't break even - the net result is you taking 125% normal damage. However, when dealing with just +5s and +10s, the difference isn't worth the extra work - you're just going to be eyeballing damage profiles in game and you aren't going to spot the difference between 33% and 36% there. I probably wouldn't switch until that number was closer to 40%, anyway, just because I want a meaningful advantage before hedging my bets.

Something like the Dragon vs. Platemail tradeoff is comparable:

85 + 10 (percent physical) <=> 80 + 20 (percent physical)

5 <=> 10 (percent physical)

1/2 <=> (percent physical)

So a Platemail piece is better as long as at least half the damage striking that particular armor piece is physical. So why do you mix and match Dragon and Plate? Hit locations - particularly, autohit on the chest. The chest gets hit by a disproportionate amount of elemental damage from stuff like Firestorms, Ice Spikes, and other skills of that type. So while 50% of the damage you're taking *overall* might be physical, by hit location your chest might be taking only 35% physical while your other body parts take 60% physical. The Dragon chestpiece takes advantage of this fact to maximize your overall AL - you have +physical where you take more physical, and generic +AL where you take more elemental damage.

Things start to get tricky when you add in the +energy mods. Because you get +1 energy per piece, but hit locations are hit differently, the tradeoffs vary heavily by armor piece. To account for this you have to multiply the AL bonuses by the location hit chance. I tend to ignore autohit for this, and because autohit would just serve to make the differences more extreme and reinforce my conclusions I think that's a fair thing to do.

Let's compare, say, Drakescale Gloves (70 +30 vs. Elemental + 15 vs. Fire) against Druid's Gloves (70 +30 vs. Elemental +1 Energy). Gloves, under the no auto-hit assumption, are hit 1/8 of the time under normal circumstances. Thus the real difference between the two armor pieces is 1.875 AL vs Fire compared to 1 Energy.

The only other question is how do you value energy. I tend to use 1 energy = 1.25 armor, because that's the tradeoff you get between 15 AL shields and 12 energy foci. It's not an exact number but it's good enough of a value tradeoff for our purposes. That gives us the inequality:

1.875 * (percentage of total damage that's fire) <=> 1.25

Which translates to:

(fire%) <=> 2/3

So unless you're getting hit on the hands by fire damage more than two thirds of the time, you need to be using those Druid's Gloves if you value energy. So unless you're in a Greater Conflagration build, use Druids.

Now, on the chestpiece things are different not just because of autohit, but because the chest is naturally hit more. Your inequality becomes:

15 * 3/8 * (fire%) <=> 1.25

5.625 * (fire%) <=> 1.25

(fire%) <=> 2/9

So there's actually a tradeoff there, because it's not that hard to take 22% of damage as fire - or cold, or piercing, as the case may be.

These tradeoffs show pretty conclusively that if you value energy you should be using +energy gloves and boots with Rangers, Monks, and Mesmers. They just don't get hit nearly often enough to justify giving up an energy. Necromancers have the awesome Blasphemers set and Gladiators makes you give up enough that they generally aren't worth it, even on the gloves and boots. On the flip side, the +vs physical sets are absolutely terrible now, assuming, again, that you value energy. Just as a quick comparison, here's Judge's Gloves vs. Ascetics Arm Tattoos - the gloves being, effectively, +1.25 AL vs. physical because of hit locations:

1.25 * percentage physical - 1.25 (energy) <=> 1.25 (energy)

1.25 * (physical %) <=> 2.5

physical% <=> 2

Thus Judge's Gloves are better than tattoos if 200% of the damage you're taking is physical. Guess how often that happens.

Only the chest pieces are even debatable, and even there the -energy is enough that you're probably better off just taking one of the other sets. Remember that the chest piece gets hit by a ton of elemental, so +physical isn't as valuable there anyway.

---

Overall I've liked what they've done with the armor changes - there are still a few more things that need to be done, but overall it's looking much better. The sets that still need work:

Regal: -15 vs. Earth. Right now it might as well not even have a drawback - it's +5 vs. all physical and elemental except Earth. Even at -15 it'd be good enough to be the most popular Mesmer armor by far - popular enough to make people carry Ebon weapons.

Silk: -15 vs. Cold. Or Fire. Or whatever. Same problem as Regal, -5 vs. one element type is a complete joke. I like the +5 base armor sets but they really do need a drawback - right now Silk is the de facto best torso armor for the Monk.

Judge's, Tormentor's, Rogue's: 60 AL, +5 vs. Physical. -energy kills these, and +5 physical is in line with the other bonuses. Sure, they'd be popular, but +physical is the easiest bonus to work around in the game.

Ascetic's, Scar Pattern, Enchanter's: 55 AL, +energy. The energy bonus is huge, especially on the gloves/boots. In addition, make it so that while gloves and boots are +1 energy each, the legs give +2 energy and the chest +3 energy. This makes the different pieces of armor more consistent and allows each one to be balanced, instead of having a situation where either the gloves would be automatic or the chest a joke.

Druid's: 65 AL, +30 vs. Elemental, +energy, as above. Alternatively, 70 AL, +20 vs. Elemental, +energy as above. Again this suit has abusive gloves/boots, so bring it into line with everything else.

Studded Leather: 75 AL, +25 AL vs. Elemental. Same idea as the other +physical sets, just give it a +5 vs. Physical bonus and it's in line. This isn't as automatic as you might think - Hunter's armor is outstanding and the +vs. Fire/Cold are solid under the right circumstances.

Gladiator's: 80 AL, +15 vs. Piercing, +energy, as above. This needs a minor boost to make up for losing +20 vs. physical, and +15 vs. Piercing does that while also having a ton of flavor.

Platemail: 80 AL, +10 vs. Physical, +25 vs. Piercing. This is a version that destroys archers while remaining mediocre in Warrior duels. This one is most flexible, it just needs to do something distinct from Knight's Armor.

Peace,
-CxE

kee mo saw bey · Feb 27, 2005, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Thank you for the Armour Guide. It is a very good read. I'd like to remind you and other's, though, that armour will also depend on personal aesthetics.

For example, my monk will always go with tatoo's other than legs because that is its signature look. I picked up the Judge's pants cause the tatoo legs look silly.

Keramon · Feb 27, 2005, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Glad you enjoyed the read. Hope it helped.

Yes, how your character looks is something that is very personal and out of the scope of the article

Weezer_Blue · Feb 27, 2005, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keramon

Glad you enjoyed the read. Hope it helped.

Yes, how your character looks is something that is very personal and out of the scope of the article

lol... it's almost as big a deal as the protection you get for me.

...then again, being killed by an ugly guy is always fun.

Keramon · Feb 27, 2005, 11:45 PM // 23:45

hahaha I'll be the ugly guy with good protection

Shrapnel_Magnet · Feb 28, 2005, 01:38 AM // 01:38

I kind of like the rugged and mismatched armour look... but that's just me, lol. I just wish there was more armour to mismatch with.

Ensign · Feb 28, 2005, 01:46 AM // 01:46

If you're more interested in how your armor looks than how it works, talk to Spooky. He wrote the book on color coordinating dyes to always be fashionable, regardless of season or continent.

Peace,
-CxE

Dreamsmith · Feb 28, 2005, 03:02 AM // 03:02

Has Regal Armor's torso part been brought to the same level as everything else in the set? The article makes no mention of the torso piece being 75 AL instead of 65...

Keramon · Feb 28, 2005, 03:49 AM // 03:49

actually I saw that the torso was 75 on another website and figured it was a posting mistake or game bug when I saw it. Unfortunately I can't check this ... but I can think of no set that actually changes the AF on different pieces.

Can anyone confirm this?

JoDiamonds · Aug 14, 2005, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Has any of this changed in the past six months? Just wondering, since I don't have everything open and available to me. But this seems like it's still a great resource; thanks for making it.

varyag · Aug 14, 2005, 04:11 PM // 16:11

This file looks completely wrong right now. The base numbers it lists have changed.

SJG · Aug 14, 2005, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Some of it looks out of date to me.