Armor Value Does Not Increase Physical Resistance?

Wicked General
1

I figured that the more armor gear has, the more physical resistance it has. I have a plate chest piece with 200 more armor than a leather chest piece. When I swap between them, my physical resistance stays the same. What exactly does the armor value do then?

2

Are you taking enchants into account?

3

I thought about that originally. The pieces had nearly the same enchants though. I tried to reproduce with common items and couldn’t, so maybe it’s a fluke.

4

There are diminishing returns to armour. It only increases resistances up to a cap (possibly 70%). Reaching that scaling cap is possible, for instance, by being at a low level with upgraded armour.[1]

Example: At level 1, some reasonably upgraded plate pieces can get you to the cap. I have a plate helmet at 12, legs at 9, gauntlets at 4. That’s 400 armour and 70% to all resistances. Putting on a 400-armour (lv. 16) plate chestpiece doubles my armour and changes no resistances. They remain at 70%.[2]

Enchantments interact with this in an intransparent fashion. Let’s add a physical resistance enchantment to the mix: first at 6%, then at 12%.

  • With 6% from the enchantment, total physical resistance rises to 72%.
  • With 12% from the enchantment, total physical resistance rises to 74%.

This is because the enchantment reduces the remaining 30% by 6 or 12%, respectively, giving us calculations like this:

  • 0.7+(0.3*0.06) = 0.718
  • 0.7+(0.3*0.12) = 0.736

Round these and receive the real values. The same goes for the elemental resistance enchantment, but not for rings, which stack purely additively (before enchantments at least). I consider this way of stacking resistances very far from optimal. Since Moon is nerfing durability enchants, perhaps they can revisit this behaviour.

  1. And impossible at level 30 without shields. Maximum armour, before shields, is 1275, or 63% to all resistances. Shields scale separately and can reduce damage to nothing with trivial ease. ↩︎

  2. Incidentally, it is easy to get plate with no level requirements by forging it at level 1. Armour with arbitrary facets and no level requirement can be gotten as a result of low-level bounties, but requires more luck. ↩︎

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