Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (Full Version)

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Wingman -> Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (5/14/2022 6:08:43)

Been playing around w/ a few armors sets lately and I'm asking myself: what's the point of armor leans? More specifically, what's the point of any lean besides Fully Offensive?

To start, FO's 25% boost to player & enemy damage, & FD's 20% reduction to the same, are statistically equivalent w.r.t. regular attacks. The only difference is that FO shortens fights by 20% while FD lengthens them by 25%. Since 95% of fights put the player at no risk (so defense is irrelevant), an FD armor is objectively better in that it lets you deal more damage & win faster.

What about using spells or relying on pets/guests in defensive armor? Well, first of all, offensive/defensive leans aren't marketed as build-specific. There are some underused build-specific leans, such as Spellcaster Lean for mages, but offensive/defensive aren't presented that way. And in practical terms, mages can only cast a few spells before running out of mana and are expected to resort to magic weapons. As for beastmasters, few builds rely on pet/guest damage exclusively; usually some player attacks are involved, often w/ the pet/guest serving to buff/nerf the player/monster.

In the 5% of fights (bosses etc.) where you actually need to watch what you're doing, you'd expect defensive armors to provide better elemental resistances and blocking; yet, that's not the case. Haunted Dragonlord's Armour, a fully-offensive Wind armor, has 39% Wind resistance. Lost Talon Guardian, a fully-defensive Wind armor, has the same 39%. They also each have 46% secondary resistances, and HDA's 45/45/52 is even arguably better than LTG's 45/49/42.

The mid-lean armors, meanwhile, deviate so little from neutral armor as to be irrelevant. They have no identity and no reason to exist.

In conclusion, FD is nearly always better than everything else. We see this in player preference and in the fact that elite items (Z-Token & GGB) are nearly all fully-offensive.

If an armor is truly "defensive", it should offer better elemental resistances and/or MRM than offensive armors. To give the two types distinct identities FD should result in at least 50% damage reduction compared to FO. An FO armor combined w/ shields & items shouldn't be able to bring you down to 3% resistance, more like 6%. Right now I can take on bosses w/ 0 END (the uselessness of END is a separate topic) and an FO set w/out any fear. That gives me absolutely no reason to even consider an FD set.

Another way to make defensive armors useful is to give them better multi-element resistance. This would currently not be very useful due to the lack of multi-element enemies (another separate topic of discussion), but would actually let them see some play in a tightly constrained inventory.



CH4OT1C! -> RE: Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (5/14/2022 11:22:18)

Before reading this response, it would be worth reading through my post on the Overpowered Items thread to understand the importance of balance.

Firstly, it's really important for you to know that, no, Armour Leans are not equivalent. Armour leans affect Direct player damage and Monster damage. Direct player damage is worth 100% Melee per turn, whereas Monster damage is worth 140% Melee. In other words, you have an inherent imbalance that implicitly favours the monster in Offensive leans (and the player in defensive ones). You're right to say that most fights don't challenge the player - there are a ton of reasons for this, but that's not the fault of Armour Leans.

Secondly, Defensive Armours for that reason DO provide better resistances for those reasons. Let's imagine a scenario where the player is using either an FO/FD armour with 39% resistances vs a monster dealing a base 100 damage:
quote:

100 * 1.25 = 125 Damage
100 * 0.8 = 80 Damage


Both have 39% resistances, but one is going to take far less damage because of the lean. Just because the lean's effect isn't visible doesn't mean it lacks an impact. You're conflating this with how armours are designed, where they have a set amount of points to spend in resistances and blocking. An armour can sacrifice resistances for higher blocking, or put more resistance into Secondaries rather than elements the armour is naturally weak to. Some armours even have 39/42/42 spread because of this e.g. Necragon's Guise.

Mid-lean armours are absolutely a problem and need a reason to exist. I agree.

Thirdly, by design these armours cannot offer any better elemental resistances. This is to prevent the player from having any negative elemental resistances and being immune to damage from some monsters (everything needs to have a chance to win, no matter how small!).



Wingman -> RE: Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (5/14/2022 23:34:10)

quote:

Armour Leans are not equivalent. Armour leans affect Direct player damage and Monster damage. Direct player damage is worth 100% Melee per turn, whereas Monster damage is worth 140% Melee.


The relative damage player/monster do don't matter.

Suppose the player and monster would each require 10 turns to beat each other in neutral. In FO, they'd each require 10/1.25 = 8 turns. In FD, they'd each require 10/.8 = 12.5 turns. The only thing offensive/defensive armors do is shorten/lengthen fights w/ no change to expected outcome.

Now let's make the ratio more extreme. Suppose a player requires 10 turns to beat a monster in neutral but a monster requires 100. Then in FO the player would need 8 turns while the monster needs 80. Thus the monster benefits by 20 turns while the player gains only 2. But since the fight is over in 8 turns the monster's greater gain is irrelevant, and only the player benefits by shortening the battle.

In FD, on the other hand, the player would need 12.5 -> 13 turns while the monster needs 125; so the monster loses more turns, but it's again irrelevant since the battle is over after player's 13th turn. The only difference is that it took the player 13 turns instead of 8 to finish, dragging out the fight >50% longer in FD compared to FO.

quote:

by design these armours cannot offer any better elemental resistances. This is to prevent the player from having any negative elemental resistances and being immune to damage from some monsters


I didn't say defensive armors needed smaller elemental %. I explicitly suggested offensive armors needed bigger %. Right now we can already bring certain elements down to 2%. There's no room to go lower.




Legendary Ash -> RE: Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (5/15/2022 7:04:41)

I recommend reading up on Quest Lists: Alnaphar Golden/Overlord/Twilight Set's original and current versions of the Armors, both Pre-Sweep and Pre-Status Armor lean standards had points pooled among Damage/BtH/resistances/blocking that can be exchanged with each other.

In modern balance standards, Damage and BtH are standardized across all equipment types, resistances and blocking are the only aspects allowed to be shifted around through points in a pool, however one of these four aspects or any other combat statuses can participate in a balanced exchange for flavor effects with imposed limits, have little to no impact on changing the circumstances/countering the player's/enemies' moderately powerful effects applied on their target.

Your proposal is the past state of AQ's balance standards, at Lv 150G, Offensive lean had 40% and Defensive lean had 38% for their primary resistance, with a -25% shield it is lowered to 15% and 13%, with a -26% shield it is lowered to 14% and 12%, none of these resistances fit the standardized ratio intended by their Leans 15/13 = 1.1538 and 14/12 = 1.1666, which does not equate to 1.25/.8 = 1.5625 makes Offensive leans objectively overpowered in having less intake damage than intended.

The fact that -10% resist miscs being popular at the time lowered resist to 5%/3% = 1.6666 or 4%/2% = 2, reversing the above situation makes Defensive leans objectively overpowered relative to Offensive leans who now have a higher intake than intended when paired with such miscs placed even greater emphasis on the imbalance between the expected and actual numbers.

Elemental Compensation is based on Armor/Shield resistances and blocking, having separate identities, within a range or manually determined primary resistances for different Armor leans does not permit a Shield's Elecomp assumption of the resistances/blocking of one of five different identities to hold true for the same Lean.

With the given explanation, one should be able to acknowledge that there is definitely no going back to those old standards since they were inherently flawed and presented balance issues where an equipment's power is unstable and experience complete reversal in objective standings when paired with another type of equipment of a specific yet common design mechanic, and that assumptions of mechanics based on current balance standards are not compatible with old standards.



CH4OT1C! -> RE: Better distinguish offensive & defensive armor (5/15/2022 8:47:07)

@Wingman
You're correct to say that armour leans can shorten / lengthen the battle. However, your math is slightly wrong. To clarify, the 20-turn model assumes the player is able to kill 2 standard enemies in 20 turns from player side damage (so Player Damage, Pets and SP).

quote:

100% Player damage + 20% Pet Damage + 20% SP = 140% Melee
140% Melee * 20 Turns = 2800% Melee


This is why monster turns are worth 140% Melee in comparison, because the scales must balance. I explain that in detail here. Armour leans solely apply to the player damage component in this formula, not the rest (hence my last post). The damage threshold we're dealing with is 2800% melee for the reasons above. The real question we're asking is how much sooner/longer does the player take to reach 2800% Melee with modified player damage:

quote:

20 * ((100 * 1.25) + 20 + 20) = 3300% Melee
17 * ((100 * 1.25) + 20 + 20) = 2805% Melee

For FO, you need 17 turns or 8.5 turns per monster to reach that magic number. This assumes all player damage is affected by Armour lean, but not skill damage (which isn't necessarily correct - it affects weapon based skills). It's also assumed to affect spells for mages, which we know isn't true so they're at a disadvantage outside of spellcaster lean for FO.

quote:

20 * ((100 * 0.8) + 20 + 20) = 2400% Melee
24 * ((100 * 1.25) + 20 + 20) = 2880% Melee

For FD, you need 24 turns to pass the threshold. Same assumptions as above (so mages could do it in a shorter time since Spells aren't affected by standard armour leans.

Now for the comparison. Incoming damage isn't discriminatory; all monster damage is boosted:
quote:

20 * 140 * 1.25 = 3500% Melee
16 * 140 * 1.25 = 2800% Melee
20 * 140 * 0.8 = 2240% Melee
25 * 140 * 0.8 = 2800% Melee

As you can see, to do the same damage, the monster would need 16 or 25 turns respectively, which is fundamentally different to the player.

There are, of course, additional complications and a lot of assumptions I haven't accounted for. My main point here is to highlight that all is not equal. I'm happy to explain in more detail about those caveats if you want/need me to.

Regarding your other comment: I misinterpreted your point, but the answer remains the same. Armour leans have absolutely no bearing on the displayed elemental resistance number. Those are balanced according to a different set of specifications. There have been armours in the past where armour lean has been directly coded into the armour itself (for example, Eternal Twilight's Mantle has an in-built defensive lean that means it has 38% to Darkness). However, this is an old and very outdated precedent.



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