Chance to disregard armour, armour piercing

[chattius 2,536]

 

The graph above shows how incoming damage is reduced by armour. Tests were done by people from the german sacred forum, allowing a wolf to hit the player in niob, and varying the player armour. The wolf was doing 244 physical damage shown in last kill. It turned out that you need at least 1750 armour to suffer no penalty.

Yes penalty! Below 1750 armour the character received more damage than the wolf was doing, above 1750 armour the damage was reduced. I managed to do a formula and plot a damage vs armour function.

The graph depends on damage, level and difficulty. Its curve is always the same, but the scales on the axis differ.

 

So seeing that the player receives more than 3 times the dealt damage if he has no armour versus the incoming damage-type, the question jumps up if this graph could be turned against the enemy.

 

So some research has to be done to answer following questions:

 

Are NPC vs Player, Player vs NPC and Player vs Player using the same graph/formula?

If yes:

Will disregard armour put the enemy armour to 0 and then use the damage formula, allowing the big damage boost from hitting an unprotected target

or

Will disregard just jump the damage reduction from armour, so it will just allways do the weapon damage.

 

Obviously if the second case would apply, you would do more damage versus lightly armoured targets if you don't put disregard armour on.

 

In case 1 the mitigation graph would be a line parallel to the x-axis hitting the y-axis were the normal graph hits the y-axis.

In case 2 the mitigation graph would be the x-axis.

 

Seeing that a just for fun Kungfu-Dryad played quite nicely, doing way more than the tooltipp damage, I think that the disregard armour formula would be close to case 1. The Kungfu-dryad modified her main combat art for armour piercing.

 

Will o Wisps (fen fire?) seem to have physical damage mitigation which can't be broken by disregard armour. I watched way less damage versus this type of enemy.

 

So perhaps you can post your own discoveries to bring some light into disregard armour.

 

Thanks in advance, chattius

 

Resistance in the Wiki

The formula in the wiki is wrong. I never play bronce, so it may be true in this case, but at higher difficulties you receive more damage than the enemy is dealing if you have no armour. The formula in the wiki would be just full damage in this case, but not more than the dealt damage. Also life leech damage is not mentioned. If we don't understand damage and armour how we will ever understand desregard armour

Edited July 26, 2010 by chattius

[Furian67 15]

Very interesting. And does disregard armor work for melée only or will it work for castable spells also. And will disregard armor help/stack with ancient magic?

[Dragon Brother 619]

In my experiences, disregard behaves as you suggested in your first scenario, acting as if the enemy has 0 armour for that hit, the spikes in damage I've seen with it are larger than those stated in the tooltip.

[gogoblender 3,073]

HI Chattius. Would you have any suggestions for what we should replace it with. Or should we just take it out?

 

And also... is that formulae good for "most" instances in the game...if so... would all we have to add to that page be the exclusions?

 

 

gogo

[chattius 2,536]

I think I know how to win the general formula, but only for a fixed monster, level, difficulty.

 

(af-1)/(af-1/b)

 

NeutralDamageArmour nda: would be the armour needed to have neutral damage reduction

ArmourFactor af: af = armour/nda

Boostfactor b: damage-received_at_0_armour = damage_dealt * (1+b)

 

How to win the graph for a fixed difficulty, fixed enemy damage and fixed character and monster levels

You have to be hit by same monster and same damage for 2 different armour values. One time with 0 armour and one time with some armour on. Being hit with 0 armour gives you the point where the function hits the y-axis and you can calculate b because af would be 0. The second hit allows you to calculate af and if you have af you know which armour is needed to receive neutral damage reduction.

 

So perhaps we should organize a testing done by volunteers. Agreeing on a fixed character level, fixed enemy level and then calculate which armour is needed at which damage to have neutral reduction and could perhaps win another graph: showing armour needed to have no penalty at a given damage (would still depend on difficulty and character level, but would be a start).

 

Changes needed for wiki:

Life leech should be added as a 6th, but special, damage type.

I do not know an easy way to describe it except doing a graph and perhaps how to win the formula for mathematical interested people.

 

Then perhaps interpret the graph:

How dangerous it is to run with no resistance into a hit in niob (forget to adapt relicts) and that an artamark might be a good idea to prevent this case.

Could be used to explain armour piercing (once I understand it fully). The wiki formula wouldn't explain the way higher damage I saw at armour piercing kungfu dryads. It should have resulkted in just doing the damage shown I nthe tooltipp, but not that much more.

Edited July 27, 2010 by chattius

[Llama8 8]

I think it would be useful to test this in Silver/Gold/Plat as well as Niobium to try & work out an "in-between" formulae. Ideally you'd choose some mono-elemental damage monsters to make things simpler.

[chattius 2,536]

Tests show also that the ratio character_level/enemy_level may be important. If the player-level starts to climb way above the enemy_level then the character starts to receive less than the dealt damage. The graph hits the y-axis above the x-axis in these cases.

 

The formula (af-1)/(af-b) seems to be still correct in these cases, but we will have a negative b.

 

Conclusion (hope I got it right):

If the survival bonus is higher it will result in higher enemy-levels. So the resulting graph would hit the y-axis at a higher point. It results in doing less damage to a high level monster than to a low level monster - given that both have same armour values.

Edited July 27, 2010 by chattius

[essjayehm 58]

Interesting stuff...got me to actually test something on console, after being totally piffed off at the weird shenanigans that testing on consoles seems to be....

 

Gold difficulty test numbers:

Char level 46. Wolf(Sloeford) level 53. Damage 89-89. Sometimes he hits with a "combat art" which gives larger numbers, but those were disregarded. Only the regular attacks were used.

 

Armour---Damage

---0--------161

---11------150

---21------142

---57------118

---72------111

---120-----92

---127-----90

---129-----89 NDA

---147-----84

---178-----75

---250-----63

---366-----49

 

 

Interesting to see that in Gold, the damage is only doubled at 0 armour. I went back to Silver and tested the same enemy type (wolf in Sloeford area)

 

Wolf level 37, Damage 65-65

 

A----D

0----68

6----64 NDA Whoa... I wasn't expecting it to be that low.... hehehe I don't have any armour with less that 5 resistance (which is actually 6 because of Armour Lore skill)

8----62

11---60

27---51

60---39 Another weird test... I used the exact same equipment which gave 57 armour value in Gold, but in Silver, the displayed armour was 60! Did I mention I hate testing on console?

127--27

204--19 Again, in Gold this setup was armour = 178! Got piffed and stopped testing further in Silver.

 

 

OK... I understand NDA, pretty easy concept, but now I have no clue what b is supposed to be. Yes, I can calculate it, but what does it MEAN? Is it a constant, that would vary by difficulty (random guess)? I will put some real work into this stuff over the weekend, testing further in Gold, but I am not going to die to get the enemy level closer to my own. That test will have to be done by someone else, I apoligise but I *need* my survival bonus.

 

RECRUITING CALL for Silver, Platinum and Niob difficulties!

 

PS - Having Atamark star is only one way of ensuring you never have 0 armour vs. any particuar element. Of course, there is the 5-channel set pieces, but do not forget about Toughness skill! And there are shoulder pads with elemental resistances for the PC users who only can have 3 relics (consolers can have 6, so one of each type, plus extra for the damages dealt for the area you are in).