New Dev-Update Question, Please assist.

Hello, I have a problem with an change featered in the new Dev-Update.

"General

We added a cap of +25 to the armor buff when stacking skills. A single skill can still bring the bonus over +25, but multiple skills with smaller bonuses will not do so. Armor bonuses from shields, weapons, insignias and inscriptions are not affected and still stack. "

This is a quote from the official guildwars wikipedia.

Does this not majorly clash with the existance of high defence builds?
Does this mean that for an earth elementalist the combination of earth armor and kinetic armor is useless since one of them will bring your armor above +25, so the other one will not give an armor boost anymore. Ofcourse the paragon skill, Stand Your Ground, which gives an armor boost of +24 while not moving means that any other armor boosting skill would only boost it by +1!

I just don't get it! Could anyone explain it to me if I have missunderstood this.

No, that's not how it works.

Let's say there are 8 skills being used to boost armor:
1 - 25 armor (watch yourself,stand your ground are examples of this range)
2- 40 armor (Physical/Elemental resistance are in this range)
3 - 50 armor (Ward against harm is in this range, but it isn't that great)
4 - 80 armor (Feigned neutrality is in this range)
5- 60 armor
6- 55 armor
7- 45 armor

let's say all 8 skills stack on you (low chance that you will have 8 skills that stack even before the update).

Then the highest armor will count. In this case it would be skill 4. Anything else is disregarded.

If there are different ones:

skill 1- 15
skill 2- 10
skill 3- 12
skill 4- 11

Then they can only add up to 25, no matter how you stack them.

================================================== =========================
To summarize, in your example of armor of earth + kinetic armor: the kinetic armor takes precedence since it gives a bigger bonus.

BTW this thread should be in Q&A.

So what you just said, is exactly what I said!

It also confirms that you can only have so much of an armor boost.
I think nobody complain of any nerf and not complain about this!

It's not exactly what you said.
If it is Stand Your Ground + Kinetic armor + Armor of earth, there is no +1 from Stand your ground as both Armor of earth and Kinetic armor give more than 25.

Ofcourse alot of people do not notice this because they do not care untill they seem to die faster.

Then again, this update is only for this week, so hopefully they will change it back!

The elementalist example and SYG example were seperate.
Also the +1 would come from some other small armor boosting skill, not from SYG itself.

what he is saying is if you have kinetic maxed its +85 armor, so you would get +85 armor and nothing else, is that simple enough

I know this!
I created this thread to make sure that this is actually happening, because this whole update is kind of drastic.

well we'll see exactly how it works tomorrow when the update goes live. until then its mostly speculation based on how its worded eh?

The other thread got Locked so I will post it here.The Dev. update won't do the Mesmer a world of good.Rangers can Interrupt at father ranges than they can and who can degen the best the Necromancer.The only thing is is hex removal with expel for Mesmers in PvE.I really wouldn't worry to much about the armour stacking just apply one after the other.

I would say that hexes are really over powered in general.

Welcome to the club. I dont think we need to wait to see how this will work. Anyone that plays HM will realise how badly its going to affect the game.

Gaile has already explained the wording that the highest armor enchant only will affect you, e.g. if you have bladeturn and wath yourself on you, watch yourself would trigger from anything that isnt slashing damage, but if you get hit by a sword, Bladeturn will be used instead as it has a higher AR bonus.

except the question is, will mobs suffer from the same cap? it could just turn into a fix for the long drawn out battles that go on forever when both sides have 200+ armor...

What is bladeturn?

[skill]Bladeturn Refrain[/skill]

???

Ive never really had that problem I can kill things fine in HM as long as my henchway is cladded in SYG/WYS + ToF with SF (lol for abreviations).

Now were just gonna die really fast

Mobs don't use multiple +armor skills IIRC. Hence the cap is only for us.

This armor cap will probaly make monks way more important, protection then being the best choice for reducing dmg, a lot of tanks will probaly get replaced but in the mean time we have to think of something decent :|

I think kale is right, i don't recall seeing a single creature in cantha HM having armor boost skills they had build in armor boosts it would seem!
I want it to go away after this week ..

This may be overcomplicating things, but perhaps they could modify armor boosting skills to either stack or not stack above 25.

They're on fire, for example, should stack because it's conditional.

So non-stacking bonuses can stack up to 25. From that point, only stacking skills can take you higher. Of course you can still use skills that take you over 25 but from then only stacking bonuses apply.

Take damage from a non-burning foe, +25 is applied, or if you have AoE, +53.
Take damage from a burning foe with ToF and you get that bonus too.

Edit: Oops, bad example. How about stances stack, shouts, enchants, etc. don't?

24 from defensive stance + 21 from "Watch Yourself!"
If you have, say, Defy Pain (+20) up at the same time only the higher one applies.

Otherwise what's the point of defensive stances? 1 person in each party just brings WY cos there's no way to improve your armor bonus beyond that anyway.

"They're on Fire!" is flat %damage reduction, so it isn't part of the update...

I think a lot of mob natural effects are actually caused by permanent skill things... like, the way lightbringer title works on players... could be wrong, but I think thats how a lot of stuff works, and probably how hardmode bonuses work, since you can use muddy terrain in hardmode to remove the runspeed bonuses...