Cloth & Leather Don't Work Mathematically Speaking

Wicked Feedback
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I know there’s already a post on this but I wanted to bring straight numbers into this for why plate is so OP but leather never will be. A normal scenario in game that occurs all the time by the time you reach T3/endgame/the crucible:

leather chest - (40 weight, 100 defense)
plate chest - (100 weight, 270 defense)

The problem is you’re trying to make a smaller number(light armor defense) go UP using only % values of what it currently is when you’re making do with light armor.

BUT with plate armor you get to subtract fractions out of its current weight meaning each number you take off of plate is far more significant than each fraction of defense you try and add to light armor

Even if you got the most perfect armor value up by % enchantment + infusion on leather armor you’d get:
(100 + (100 x 30%) + (100 x 30%)) = 160

this number is easily attainable just wearing mesh which is I believe how it works. If it stacks doesn’t matter:
(100 + (100 x 30%) + (130 x 30%)) = 169barely a difference

But Plate on the other hand is nearly 3x the defense and if you get one lucky infusion and it can go down to only 75 weight(mesh weight class). If you get 2 lucky enchantments + infusion it can be as low as 45 weight which is literally at leather’s weight class. If we took the midrange of weight decrease affixes this still occurs

( 100 weight - (100 x .20) - (100 x .20) ) = 60 weight for 270 armor that gets you mesh weight class but with still over a 25% increase in defense over mesh. And obviously your entire build is vying for attention but the legs + chest pieces of armor on plate alone can out-defense an entire leather set & equal mesh so it’s a shoe in.

So fundamentally I don’t think this issue can be fixed just with math alone unless you gave cloth + leather armor different modifiers on affixes + infusions because as I showed above Plate can too easily go down in weight, leather can not too easily go up in defense.

I’m weeellll aware we don’t want leather to be as high defense as Plate it obviously should have its own role. What I’m illustrating here is that the 2 classes of armor are equal, but not equitable. You cannot achieve a satisfying result between the 2 sets with the same amount of effort, in fact the gaps between satisfaction floor & ceiling is ludicrously small on everything except Plate & some mesh pieces. The luckiest roll possible in history MIGHT make leather on par with mesh, but the luckiest roll in history can also make Plate unstoppable(weight reduction, armor up, weight reduction) could lead to as low as 40 - 50 weight, as high as 350 armor

So on top of poise defense & a shove we need to balance out the playstyle of the heavy class in general because right now it’s a steamroller

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Agreed, using plate should come with a lot of investment in equip load, thats the trade off. Maybe the devs can mitigate this but taking out the less weight affix from plates, only the feather would work.

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There is a pretty long discussion on the topic here :

I think you might enjoy the read and can add some of your thoughts as well.

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My topic doesn’t cover enchantments outside of feathers though. So, I am glad to see more evidence for why there is too much favoritism towards plate.

Like the stats: armor and poise are skewed towards plate. This leads to enchantments being skewed in favor of plate as well as a side effect; or mediating variable. So I 100% agree with you that this can’t be fixed by tweaking numbers.

There just really is little incentive to wear cloth/leather over plate/mesh. The only arguments I have seen are either roleplay fantasy. Or people who are good at the combat and just don’t get hit at all. So they save some points on equip load and can invest them elsewhere.

Personally I am in favor of adding more stats to armor and then skewing those stats in favor of cloth. The enchantments relative to those stats will then also favor cloth. Which then creates a decision for players.

Plate and Mesh are skewed towards defense with armor and poise.

Therefore, I think Cloth and Leather should be skewed towards offense with stat X and Y.

Example:

  • Cloth, 100% effective focus regen

  • Leather, 80% effective focus regen

  • Mesh, 60% effective focus regen

  • Plate, 40% effective focus regen

You now have a trade off between being tanky and being able to use runes more frequently.

They could also add flat affixes such as +X armor so it works better for Cloth and Leather.

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I think Leather/Cloth should have exclusive rights to backstab, and Plate not allow stealth or something along those lines.

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When taking into account focus logicaly speaking wearing a plate and be slow in general you have better and calm conditions to be focused in comparison to rolling/sidestepping everywhere like crazy.

Equip load should be hard to bring down if even possible down from heavy tho, which is fine by me.

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@BrasilBorba1 @Lacky I think that luckily we have possible solutions already in the form of newly introduced affixes. There’s a new affix gain % focus on dodge what you should do is have distinct “cloth, leather, mesh, plate” modifiers to the same affixes that dramatically boost its effectiveness relative to what it’s supposed to be good at from a playstyle persepctive.

Cloth & leather are obviously meant to be light so instead of only having gain 1-3% focus on dodge what if cloth gets gain 6-9% focus on dodge & leather gets gain 3-6% focus on dodge. What running light should let you do is become a glass cannon in exchange for potentially insane power output, obviously don’t make it this extreme balance it out but that’s what it SHOULD do.

Plate should be allowed to be very high defense with the possibility of being lower in weight because that’s what a god roll for a good set of plate armor should be. Light’s god roll should be high damage with a possibility for not being 2-shottable

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I think that there is a lot of ways in which this can be addressed. For example having Plate not rolling overall speed stat, Cloth having better Focus regen/gain and so on.
Only problem would be if it stays as it is right now.

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I could also see some cool rings or passives that benefit from low equip weight. For example a dmg buff when you are lightweight. There is a ring in Dark souls 3 that does that. That ring gives you more dmg buff the lighter you are.

Or give a speed boost to lighter builds. Right now i just sell everything “below” mesh and plate, without even looking at it.

EDIT: i also wished lighter armor would have some more “fashion souls” aspects. So that they at least would look cool.
I love running glass-cannon builds, especially when the armor looks cool.

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I think one needs to differenciate the weight class light-medium-heavy, and the armor item types cloth-leather-mesh-plate.

The weight class and the impact on the gameplay style are nice in principle… i think the light side need some additional slight advantage, like heavy has the shoulder barge… Maybe something like projectile deflect/reflect (see witcher), or less fall dmg. Otherwise the weight class is fine.

The item types though… I think weight should not be seen as a disadvantage but more like a gameplay decision. In that sense, the light side needs some equivalent advantage, that compensates for the less armour. And since less armour is a massive disadvantage right now, i think it should be a second, different defensive mechanism. The main reason is that the devs would only need to balance two defensive mechanisms, and not have interconnections to other mechanics. And that means… less horrible balancing.

Cloth should also not be exclusively bound to caster types too. Think of a “assassin” with double dagger. This would be a fast, dodgy playstyle with little armour, but not with much magic. And since the armour is a passive element, i dont think that all the evasion to get that working can be done actively by the player to make up for the missing armour.

What i could see working is a passive evasion stat. However (knowing how it works in PoE) a rng based evasion would be a mess in this game (rng oneshot death). It should be something deterministic, what can be actively used by the player. Something that would also go well with the fightstyle we have here. Something like “evade the first hit in 1000/X seconds.” With that one can play much more agressive, however when miscalculated, it can go downhill very quickly.

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I like the idea of armor that is lower in terms of defense, offer more in the vein of offense. It gives them some sort of identity. Thats something that I think is really lacking in all the weapons and armor in the game; a sense of identity. As with most ARPGs, every single stats in all the items in this game seem to be completely randomized.

I could have 3 copies of the same sword and the only thing thats the same between all 3 of them is the name and weight. The damage, stamina cost, focus gain, and effects are all completely different untampered with. Enchanting as of right now offers the same pool of effects across the board. Outside of unique items, which have mostly fixed effects on them to represent their weapon, everything else seems to lack some sort of identity other than the way it looks, and the accompanying moveset.

Other ARPGS, or looter games seem to have a better grasp on this, but thats also because those games have dedicated classes, so the items, even if everything is randomized, will still slot into something that meets the needs of a class. ARPGs like Diablo, or looters like Borderlands, despite having many combinations for the same item, pull from a specific pool because its to give that item an identity. Even the souls game like Elden Ring that are technically classless, the items stats are mostly fixed, and then can be altered in some way, but everything remains consistent between them to give each one something unique about them, even at the lowest tier.

Outside of stat requirements, it feels like every item wants to be playable across every possible version of each character. All effects are possible across all items. And nothing seems worthwhile because of it until you get that godroll RNG effect or a Unique loot drop.

Even with armor, I have some leather that retains the leather typical weight stats, but is better than most mesh armor, and it makes everything underneath of it feel kinda feel pointless. Then plate is so OP, you can survive at least 3 indirect hits from the Echo Knight. Plates armor stat far exceeds everything else and that feels like its unique identity. Cloth feels practically like nothing, and leather and mesh are having a battle of the mids, but at the same time, not worth it if you can get enough weight reduction on the plate.

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3 steps to rebalance armor:

1. Focus generation scales with armor type (as Romolo lists above)

2. Stamina regeneration and speed scale with weight. So every pound of weight from zero to encumbered FEELS heavier. This would let an extremely skilled player with 2 daggers speed run naked…until they get hit. I love the equipment load system, but the light/med/heavy/encumbered classifications feel like they’re holding it back.

3. Skew armor drop rates slightly toward the armor the character is wearing. So instead of 25%/25%/25%/25% it would be closer to 40%/20%/20%/20% (with 40 being the type of armor you are wearing). The armor would correlate to what you’re wearing on each body part and would lead to the player more frequently acquiring drops they would use. (posted a similar idea for weapons/shields where a player can grey out stats if they don’t want stat specific drops)

If the above were to be implemented, then I think +equipment load% enchantments and feathers would have to be nerfed a bit.

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  1. That would divide characters into two catergorys exclusively. Caster (focus), or full knight (no focus).
    → reduced build diversity
  2. That would mean that the best meelee build would still be a full plate with maximum weight reduction.
    → reduced build diversity
  3. That could easily end you in an eccho chamber of items, where you will hardly be able to evolve your build in another direction later.
    → reduced build diversity

I dont think that is a good solution.

until the offscreen lance poke oneshots you without warning.

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Yea… the problem here, is that what makes glasscannons work in other games is that one has to do crowd control, active evasion and positioning.

This is already highly necessary here for high armour tanks… without a second layer of defense, a glasscannon cannot work in this game.

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I’ll do my best to clarify for any confusion:

1. ‘No focus’ for plate users hasn’t been suggested, but the current issue (as discussed above) is that the strength of plate leading most players into similar/identical builds regardless of desired playstyle. There should be several builds, and hybrid builds, as a result of the change which would greatly increase build diversity. Significant balancing both of armor type and armor piece would be required in order to avoid a path like you suggest, but even that would be more diverse than what currently exists. I suggest referencing RomoloHero’s previous posts for more detail (there is a high level of detail in another thread).

2. If there is no change, like you’re claiming here, it clearly won’t make things ‘less diverse’. In reality, this would lead a ‘heavy’ (not the same as full plate) hero being slower with slower stamina recharge, so they could still play the same style (not trying to change that) but at the cost of evading as easily as they can now - pushing the player into builds where they have to make choices between damage prevention and damage avoidance (without an RNG evade-like stat), as is typical for most similar games. This would also require testing/balancing - I would foresee a player with zero weight moving faster than what is currently allowed.

3. If players only 100% received similar types of armor then it could lead to an echo chamber, but as the player would be 50% more likely to receive items unlike what they are wearing, it seems unlikely this would create an echo chamber. It’s important to reduce player frustration from receiving item’s they automatically won’t use as many players will choose to only play the single character rather than multiple characters (where this issue dissipates), but if there’s a way to provide the player even greater control (as I suggested previously with weapons) then I’d be all or it. As is, the game is setup to push a player into a given path/playstyle, so suggesting this would do what the game already does, doesn’t seem relevant.

It’s frustrating to be hit/killed from offscreen (which is rare, but does happen) however that’s a game design flaw which should be fixed. Preventing increased play variability due to a single design flaw which isn’t directly correlated would be a mistake. To go further, with the increase stamina regen/speed, in the example above the player would be MORE able to avoid an offscreen attack and therefore slightly mitigate the design flaw in question.

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I still think the best way to level the difference between the armour types would be a second defense mechanism, and not messing with resources and drop rates.

I am not convinced. But I have the impression for you its the same. So I think continuing this discussion will lead to nothing. :wink:

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I have no strong feeling one way or another and would be happy to have a discussion to discover better ideas, but that hasn’t happened yet from your side. In your previous post you used disinformation and hyperbole in order to shout-down the ideas of others, which prevents any discussion from happening (I’ve had discussions with you in other threads so I’m hopeful that can happen here).

Above you presented an ‘evasion% stat’ but quickly denounced it for reasons you already stated (and I completely agree with). But then you added the idea of a 100% evasion for X time (or hits) mechanic. A whole new mechanic can be difficult, but I do like this idea as an ability either as a gear enchant or used as focus. There’s very little to go-on from your above post, but if you would like to expand on the idea (specifically how it would relate to the thread’s discussion) I would be happy to read and provide feedback.

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Now that is a very hard accusation. Either you elaborate explicitly (with quotes) what you mean or i will not discuss with you at all.

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I always think it is common courtesy to read someone’s talking points and actively think about them before responding. And when you respond, you do so in a similar fashion as a show of cordiality and good faith. If people don’t do this I call them out as well, tit for tat :upside_down_face:

Personally I do prefer incentives for Cloth > Plate over penalties on top of Plate. Plate is taxed through weight which requires attribute points into equip load and generally eats 1/4 affix slots on armor. Adding more penalties will become too taxing. I would like to see some armor specific affixes or stats after the Cloth > Plate incentive though.

As for your points:

1. Yeah 10/10 suggestion, that @RomoloHero guy seems pretty smart :joy: The main idea is to skew some people back to Cloth from Plate so we get a more uniform distribution of the armor that people wear. The comment that this leads to 2 categories is just blatently false. If you wear 3 leather items and a plate helmet you would have 70% effective focus gain (80+80+80+40/4=70). It creates a dynamic scale from 100 to 40; not 2 categories… I do think after the Cloth > Plate incentive we can start to look at Plate Hands exclusive affixes maybe. Would be cool if there was an incentive to wear certain types of armor in certain slots besides the base stats.

→ increased build diversity.

2. So a dynamic scale instead of the 4 categories or relative to where you are in the category? I’m not sure if I like that, if it is what I think it is. The 4 categories give some guidance to players, you can determine what weight load works for you. If it were to be dynamic it would require testing to find your ideal weight point. And then you have to match your equipment to that specific point or range. Rather than aiming for the edge of a weight category.

It does add another penalty to plate which I don’t like since it is a penalty. However, stamina regen reduction for plate would make thematic sense. I think I can get behind a stamina reduction or stamina regen penalty that becomes harsher for heavier armor types. Depends on the numbers though, I wouldn’t want them to be too high.

→ It would increase build variety, but, I am on the fence with this.

3. I quite like this suggestion. When I was playing as my knight farming the crestfallen knight helmet it would take several hours to find a couple of them. I do think being able to craft all items would be a welcome QoL change; especially with the enchantment lottery. It would be nice for finding gear you wanted as you progress through the game. A wizard will most likely wear cloth and then have a 15% increased chance of finding cloth armor. Nothing too crazy but a welcome change.

In my first playthrough I wanted a polearm. Took my several hours to find one. Would like to see it extended to weapons as well. And maybe ensure that vendors sell a T1 or T2 of each type of weapon so players can skew the drop rates. I think most people have a build idea before they make a character. You get a better chance at finding the gear you want whilst progressing through the game. So technically you will be upgrading your gear quicker if you know the proposed system.

Still wanna see extended crafting though :joy:

→ You find your ideal weapons and armor faster which, by extension, leads to quicker build diversity.

Closing words

Having 1 or 2 stats that skew like this: ‘‘Cloth > Leather > Mesh > Plate’’ is required. I think a lot of other stuff has to come from enchanting. Affixes that add flat bonuses, +flat armor for cloth users; more value than +% armor since their base number is low. Affixes skewed or exclusive to certain armor types. I’ll stop here before I start talking too much about enchanting, I already have a post about that :sweat_smile:

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i agree, therefore the use of the cloth shop is power crept for equip load rings and weight reduction passives. i think cloth armors need much more defense