Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Armor vs Resists
A pet with 50% kinetic and light armour would have a 50% damage reduction for the armour then 50% again for the kinetic resists.
NancyJ wrote:
Armoured shirts do have protection... of sorts, they give a 50% damage reduction vs non-armour piercing weapons.
I think armoured shirts, bandoliers and belts were a kind of temporary 'fix' for the armour hole bug.
IIRC the problem was that you couldnt wear armour in all your slots (belt, back, shirt, etc) so when you got hit in any of these areas it cut through you like butter.
As far as I'm aware, under normal circumstances you should be hit in your shirt slot if you're wearing an armoured jacket. Mabari belts are great, they dont decay and you can put your armour attachments in them.
All things being function correctly a melee defense shirt is preferred because it gives you a chance to avoid being hit altogther.
That is exactly how the devs have said armor works. 50% reduction due to the armor (unless its AP), then an additional reduction based on the resist.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Nancy, are you sure about that? That seems inconceivable to me. 50% damage reduction and no incomberance? Why wouldn't everyone be running around in those?
NancyJ wrote:
Armoured shirts do have protection... of sorts, they give a 50% damage reduction vs non-armour piercing weapons.
Armor reduces any damage taken from any non-armor piercing type of weapon by 50% for Light armor, 75% for medium armor.
Any pet with armor takes half damage, even to types of damage they are vulnerable to in resists, from any normal weapon.
AFTER the armor damage reduction is done, the resist is applied to the damage, further reducing the damage if it is applicable. A creature with light armor and 60% resists to kinetic, meeting a 500 damage kinetic hit takes effectively 100 damage, in that the armor first reduces the damage delivered by half, or 250 damage, then the resist is applied, reducing the damage to 40% of the hit, or 100 out of the 250.
A quick way to approximate the effectiveness of light armor and 50% or higher resist to a damage type is to roughly triple the health stat of the pet, which is the total damage of the type being inflicted that it will take to disable the pet. a 9K health pet with AR1 and 60% kinetic stands up to kinetic damage as if it had roughly 28.8K health, (the kinetic at 60% being a little more than another 9K worth of effective resistance.).
Armor differs from resists in that it is a fixed response to any damage not specificly armor piercing, which makes it a great gneral benefit in most situations. Add a resist to the type of damage you are expecting to meet and you will have a very effective pet.
PvP is a unique situation, as there are a number of armor piercing weapons available which can deliver their damage through armor, so only the resist is figured against the damage. With many of the pets made for high Kinetic resists and vulnerable to energy, the pet can take 100% of the damage from the attack and drop quite quickly, so many pets are not as popular in PvP.
If you are making higher level pets, even a 0 resist is better than a vulnerability. 0% resist means the pet will have the same random chance of "saving" vs the damage, so it may not take the full damage, where a vulnerability means the pet will take the full damage from the type of attack to which it is vulnerable. Energy vulnerabilities are particularly devastating in PvP or PvE with humanoid opponents, as the damage encountered is most likely to fall in that category.
Pets are a very complex trade-off between vulnerabilities and strengths, and extremes in one or another direction are possible, but they have tightly limited ranges of usefullness. The 10K health, 60% resist non-CH pet will be disabled with ease by an opponent using energy weapons or a mind-pool attack, as it will undoubtedly have little mind and be vulnerable to energy, while that same pet can tank mutant rancors quite effectively. Making a pet with the special characteristics suited to your customer's needs is the art in the process, and at least a good bit of the challenge, and the fun.
LLan