Carbineer Archive

The Devs don't seem to know how the Armor/AP system works in this game, and if they have their way, they're going to implement a serious, severe nerf for every AP weapon in the game. But Medium and Heavy AP weapons will be hit the most, which means you folks, us Rifle types, and the Swordsmen will take the biggest end of the nerf stick.

If you don't know how Armor/AP works in this game, read this thread.

Those results are from testing I did in the game, on the live servers. Compare it to the Advanced Guide: Armor Fundamentals and you will see that the testing reveals that the Armor Guide is (mostly) accurate. There are some issues (in PvP, and in the way vulnerabilities work), but for PvE and for PvP against armored opponents, Armor and AP work just like the Armor Guide says it will.

The problem is, the Devs don't seem to believe these figures and testing. They claim that Armor Piercing does NOT provide a damage bonus. They claim that Armor Piercing simply reduces any applicable resistances. According to them, if you shoot a no-armor critter with a Laser Carbine, you DO NOT get a damage bonus of (1.25)^2 before the resistances are figured in. They claim that, instead, if you shoot a no-armor critter that's resistant to energy, the AP of the Laser Carbine will reduce the resistance by 50% for every level of difference. So shooting a Bageraset (AR0, 15% Resistance to Energy) with a Laser Rifle would reduce the effective resistance to 3.75%.

And if it doesn't work that way (which it doesn't), they're going to change it so that it does.

This will be a huge nerf for any class which relies on AP weapons, and will hit classes with AP2 and AP3 weapons disproportionately, i.e. Riflemen, Swordsmen, and Carbineers. To understand why, read this message.

Now's the time to make your voices heard.

Is there a recent post on this by the Devs?

I played with this a few months ago and it seems the Devs are half right....or I am reading your post wrong.

For me, whenever I fired my laser carbine at a creature with zero energy protection, my combat spam = floaty. This is the same issue pistoleers have been very vocal about for some time; that their DX2 provides no bonus damage vs acid vulnerable targets.

However, if I find a creature with slight energy resist, like 10-15% and I hit them, combat spam was always less thanthen floaty. This indicated a damage bonus as described in their armor guide. For this reason, I always use my laser carbine until the mob is Ar1 25% energy or higher or AR2 anything and then I switch to my EE3 or DXR6 depending on vulnerabilites.

These are the same conclusions reached by most other people I have read. Has something changed that we should be re-examining things?

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novamarine wrote:

Is there a recent post on this by the Devs?

I played with this a few months ago and it seems the Devs are half right....or I am reading your post wrong.

For me, whenever I fired my laser carbine at a creature with zero energy protection, my combat spam = floaty. This is the same issue pistoleers have been very vocal about for some time; that their DX2 provides no bonus damage vs acid vulnerable targets.

However, if I find a creature with slight energy resist, like 10-15% and I hit them, combat spam was always less thanthen floaty. This indicated a damage bonus as described in their armor guide. For this reason, I always use my laser carbine until the mob is Ar1 25% energy or higher or AR2 anything and then I switch to my EE3 or DXR6 depending on vulnerabilites.

These are the same conclusions reached by most other people I have read. Has something changed that we should be re-examining things?

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You are correct - this is how it works in game. However the Rifle correspondant quoted Kheldarin from the correspondant boards saying that this is not how it's supposed to work (and apparently he believes it isnot working in the way that we describe now).

As VG said - AP is only ever supposed to reduce resistances. So in actuallity, the way that AP weapons work vs vulnerabilities is not a bug in a working system, it's the only working element in a bugged system.

Once they figure it out - the most damage you'll ever do is vs a vulnerability. Higher AP weapons will reduce the amount of damage that is resisted but there will no longer be a way to get bonus damage. Therefore those nice 1000+ shots will be history.

The other problem is that they are re-balancing the combat and creature systems based on this understanding. Meaning we'll be doing more damage than they expect and may act to reduce that damage by nerfing all weapons with AP in a similar fashion as the T21 was de-powered.

The whole thing make my head hurt.

boy I sure do love working harder, to get less results. lol

Maybe the devs should just leave working systems alone, and fix the bugs, like... I dunno, white BH marks, carbine HAM costs, and dissappearing navpoints and mounts storing their players when they use the store command after crossing a server boundery. I dunno... like make the game more playable before breaking things more?

I guess I'd have to be a SOE dev to understand the reasoning behind breaking things, instead of fixing things.

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novamarine wrote:

For me, whenever I fired my laser carbine at a creature with zero energy protection, my combat spam = floaty. This is the same issue pistoleers have been very vocal about for some time; that their DX2 provides no bonus damage vs acid vulnerable targets.

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Novamarine - you seem to understand the AP/AR/Dmg system for the most part. However, there *may* be some flaws in your understanding or at least missing information in your example which may lead you to beleive that the DX2 has something do to with this problem. AP works on most weapons right now, the DX2's AP is not working. As a former pistoleer, I'll try to layout the difference and clear up how the Armor/Dmg system works.

First off when fighting a mob, you need to just ignore fancy words like "Special Protection" and for the most part "Vulnerability". What you need to focus on is the Armor Rating (AR), Armor Piercing (AP) and Protection %.

I am not going to do the math since I don't have real numbers, but I will explain what happens in each example.

Example 1:

Creature: AR 0, 0% protection vs weapon dmg

Weapon: AP 0

Result: No additional dmg.

Example 2:

Creature: AR 0, 10% protection vs weapon dmg

Weapon: AP 0

Result: A 10% reduction in dmg done.

Example 3:

Creature: AR 1, 10% protection vs weapon dmg

Weapon: AP 0

Result: This results in a 50% reduction due to the difference in armor rating and another 10% from that for the protection %.

Example 4:

Creature: AR 1, 0% protection vs weapon dmg

Weapon: AP