Is there a point to the Light Armor Use skill?

[MilesMk1]

Seems like the armor use skills only reduce encumbrance, and light armor (so far) has minimal encumbrance to begin with. Are there "light" sets you get later that actually have significant encumbrance, making it worthwhile? Or can you make your encumbrance negative, and compensate for other items, like headgear?

On a related note, I'm assuming there's zero point in investing points into light and medium on a character you plan on using heavy armor with, other than the minimum to unlock the tree, right?

[Yaldabaoth]

-2 is the most I've seen on encumberance for ANY kind of armor. And yes, if you want to use Heavy, no need to put anything but minimum into light&med.

[MilesMk1]

Originally posted by Yaldabaoth:

-2 is the most I've seen on encumberance for ANY kind of armor. And yes, if you want to use Heavy, no need to put anything but minimum into light&med.

I've seen poor-quality full plate and half plate that IIRC had -5? (ended up selling it because it was heavy, expensive, and would have made Roland useless at Athletics, all for on extra point of soak, on average) But all the medium or lighter so far were 2 or below.

[slartifer]

There are non-poor quality medium and heavy armors with 3 encumbrance by default. Light armor only gets there if it's poor quality, so that last point in light armor skill is definitely a waste.

Dodge is far more impactful than soak, so it's definitely worth getting enough skill to use whichever armor type you have without encumbrance.

[PastLow]

Originally posted by slartifer:

There are non-poor quality medium and heavy armors with 3 encumbrance by default. Light armor only gets there if it's poor quality, so that last point in light armor skill is definitely a waste.

Dodge is far more impactful than soak, so it's definitely worth getting enough skill to use whichever armor type you have without encumbrance.

Soak has diminishing returns, but the first 10-15 points of soak are super strong. Soak can be approximated as flat damage reduction, which means it counters enemies with multiple low damage attacks or large swarms of trash mobs.

Dodge is basically the opposite, the first couple of points of dodge are basically useless because all enemies have an innate accuracy bonus, some bosses have crazy numbers like +13 to hit. So if you have a heavy weapon Armsmaster for example, with 1 agility and no shield slot, getting another 2-3 points of agility isn't going to make a difference, just slap a heavy armor on that bad boy and use him as a flanker. Heavy Armsmaster is actually the best class for trash clearing, so flat damage reduction fits the role perfectly.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by PastLow:

Soak has diminishing returns, but the first 10-15 points of soak are super strong.

Personally, I don't find Soak to be reliable at any value, as you can still receive 0, 1, or 2, while rolling for its effects, making it feel useless on a number of occasions. In the course of many battles, you will inevitably receive these low rolls and wonder how armor is helping you.

Originally posted by PastLow:

Heavy Armsmaster is actually the best class for trash clearing, so flat damage reduction fits the role perfectly.

Sadly, the damage reduction is not flat, but a variable number between 0 to your maximum Soak value, which means that if you are unlucky, you may get little to no damage mitigation at all, from hits. If your enemy rolls high on their damage roll, and you roll zero on your Soak roll, you are just as vulnerable as if you were naked.

Even if you don't roll zero, there is a 50% chance that Soak will give you only half protection or less. Armor doesn't feel good or dependable in this game, no matter what you wear.

[MilesMk1]

Originally posted by Ninth Hour:

Originally posted by PastLow:

Soak has diminishing returns, but the first 10-15 points of soak are super strong.

Personally, I don't find Soak to be reliable at any value, as you can still receive 0, 1, or 2, while rolling for its effects, making it feel useless on a number of occasions. In the course of many battles, you will inevitably receive these low rolls and wonder how armor is helping you.

It's hardly useless, over the course of the game it's very predictable, because of how many combat encounters there are, and because it usually takes several hits (at least) to drop a character.

Every hit, on average, is reduced by Max Soak/2, which makes a pretty big impact over time.

It might not be possible to make a Soak-based tank that is impossible to hurt, but the difference between low and high Soak characters is quite noticeable.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by MilesMk1:

Every hit, on average, is reduced by Max Soak/2, which makes a pretty big impact over time.

It might not be possible to make a Soak-based tank that is impossible to hurt, but the difference between low and high Soak characters is quite noticeable.

With the law of averages, you are correct. A Soak Range of 0-15 is roughly equivalent to having a damage reduction of 7.5 in the course of the game. But the subjective experience in the moment, when you get hit for 15 damage because you rolled zero on Soak (despite being clad in heavy armor and shield) isn't very gratifying.

I would have much preferred a consistent flat damage reduction of 7 rather than the wild swings you can experience on a 0-15 roll. I assume the inconsistent protection is meant to heighten the tension of combat, as you never know for sure when armor may fail you at the wrong time. Arguably, there are other ways to achieve that even with consistent damage reduction- e.g. high damage rolls and critical hits by enemies (as it is in most RPG's).

In this game, you can have the worst of all 3 factors: low roll on your armor, high damage roll by enemy, and critical hit by enemy. The net effect is to always make you feel vulnerable, regardless of gear, which I guess was the intention.

Fortunately, easy healing offsets this danger to some degree. Reserving Level Ups for full healing in combat is a viable strategy, especially early in the game.

[Rufert]

Also bear in mind that specializations only influence chest armour. You get full encumbrance from anything going into any other slot. (for the relevant skills that is)

[Apoc]

I found that Light armor Feat to be useful because you want all the dodge you can for those character, the light armor soak is pretty useless but you want the stat bonus from magical armor. While Encumbrance on my heavy armor users is not that much of a problem, they probably have low dodge already while a very high soak often block most of the damage.

Armor seemed pretty balanced to me. My light armor wearers dodge more but when they don't they get wounded in 2 or 3 hits, medium is average, dodge some and die in a couple more hits while my heavy armor wearers dodge nothing but usually lose very little HP with a big hit here and there but battle usually end before they get low Vitality.

[Rufert]

Originally posted by Apoc:

I found that Light armor Feat to be useful because you want all the dodge you can for those character, the light armor soak is pretty useless but you want the stat bonus from magical armor. While Encumbrance on my heavy armor users is not that much of a problem, they probably have low dodge already while a very high soak often block most of the damage.

Armor seemed pretty balanced to me. My light armor wearers dodge more but when they don't they get wounded in 2 or 3 hits, medium is average, dodge some and die in a couple more hits while my heavy armor wearers dodge nothing but usually lose very little HP with a big hit here and there but battle usually end before they get low Vitality.

It's more important for heavy users as their armours have bigger bonus' and dodge is generally very good to have, plus you're basically cancelling out your shield if you ignore the armour skill.