Armor is a 'trap' stat

[February]

I've just done a run on Hazard 4 where I've picked up like a total of ~30 Armor, yet at the end of Stage 4 of said Hazard 4 run, a single enemy purple blob hit me for 68 damage.

Now, I don't know which is less balanced here - the Armor value by itself or how the scaling with swarm waves grows, but either the Armor could be buffed to prevent more damage or the scaling itself could be toned down.

Why? Well, we keep working towards upgrading all of the "Upgrade" stats but when you learn at least 1 of them is nearly completely useles. We can upgrade Armor to a total of 24 yet, in a single run, you can get double that and it doesn't feel like it reduces the damage you take in any noticable way.

The game is more difficult than other survivor-type games but please, tone down the swarm scaling a little bit, improve how much stats give (particularly Armor) or release a new batch of balance changes, because we all know that they're all far from being desired picks at the moment - their damage ranges vary too greatly right now.

Anyway, jus' throwing the idea out there.

[Mitsu/Inervo]

yeah already talked about this in another post myself. you can have 56 armor or 112 armor. and the difference is like 3 damage taken so yeah. they really need to fix armor stat

[Yasahi]

It could be bugged since it seems to not really have much of an effect. Or it could be that the damage formula uses armor as a part of the calculations but its impact is so small that it seems to have no effect.

Either way the devs should address the issue. Currently there's very little reason to pick armour over anything else.

[RichtigKlasse]

i'd suggest to introduce an alternative upgrade path to armor like "damage reduction" which clearly states the reduction in percent instead of absolute "armor" values which don't mean jack.

[REVombre]

scaling is trash, beeing hit for 30 hp by a simple bug feels so bad

[xMario]

it has to be a % damage reduction like you know in any other normal game. Otherwise its pointless.

[Lunacy]

Definitely, had 100+ armor in one run and was still getting hit for at least 50% or 66% of an enemy's default damage. Little grunt still hitting me for at least 12 on the lower difficulties despite having 3x more armor than their maximum damage.

[Confector426]

Originally posted by xMario:

it has to be a % damage reduction like you know in any other normal game. Otherwise its pointless.

Also fits well seeing as how that's how a lot of the other bonuses work.
I agree, armor mitigation feels mediocre/bad investment, a straight %dmgrdx would be much better

[BROLY 32]

Armor and bonus XP are both traps. Game kinda soft caps around level 60, you can get up to 63 and maybe slightly more if you're really lucky with your build (doesn't damage bosses but kill swarms easily) but one or two extra levels is never worth wasting a full level on this stat.

[Weird Grim]

Armor feels like the more you get of it the less damage it blocks, like the first 10 armor blocks like 5 damage, but then the 10 armor you get after that blocks like 3 damage and so on.
They should make it so each point of armor reduces the damage by 0.5% and it caps at 75%, so you need 150 armor to get to the cap and ones you reach that cap you no longer will see armor in the selection.

[Urza]

Armor afaik does have diminishing returns, but think about how broken it would be if it didnt. Its fine for what it does.

every 20 armor is ~100% additional ehp from what I understand, seems fine

[Bug Guy]

Originally posted by Urza:

Armor afaik does have diminishing returns, but think about how broken it would be if it didnt. Its fine for what it does.

every 20 armor is ~100% additional ehp from what I understand, seems fine

I think the issue though is that the diminishing returns start harshly at where you can get your base armor to. Gunner starts with 10 extra armor which is mostly useless past when you unlock him. It falls off so quickly that it really doesnt matter. Yes, lots of games have diminishing returns on blocked damage with armor. But this games armor curve is really bad. When you start a game with 20 armor, getting even 8 will do jack. youd think they would have the value scale up to triple that before you start seeing that level of dropoff. Lunacy made a good point earlier how having over 100 Armor was nothing. That sounds like it feels pretty bad

[Urza]

Originally posted by Bug Guy:

Lunacy made a good point earlier how having over 100 Armor was nothing. That sounds like it feels pretty bad

im not sure their numbers are at all accurate. 100 armor should be like 83% DR afaik, according to the testing weirdos on the official discord

[Mitsu/Inervo]

Originally posted by Urza:

Originally posted by Bug Guy:

Lunacy made a good point earlier how having over 100 Armor was nothing. That sounds like it feels pretty bad

im not sure their numbers are at all accurate. 100 armor should be like 83% DR afaik, according to the testing weirdos on the official discord

does not change the matter that it is actually accurate going by what we here on the steam forums have found

[Dr. Badnews]

so does anyone know what the current armor formula is?

[Wheredoyoukeepthechocolate?]

It gets complicated and there are different damage reduction curves depending on what hazard level you're playing on. The TLDR is that on haz 5, each 10 armor is equivalent to getting 10-15% more health. Since I haven't heard of there being any updates to how armor works, I think the tip/observations/mechanics document in the pinned posts has correct information. Check there for more details.