Just me, or is armor not worth it?

[Dufflebags]

Seems to me any armor that isn't a leather jacket really negatively impacts your combat. I tried giving combat armor to my brawler and instead of running up and punching my enemies lights out he could barely swing once a turn.

So far I'm loving the game, don't get me wrong. But the AP that armor takes away makes it seem like it isn't even worth wearing.

Opinions? Am I doing something wrong here?

[Kinakin]

Armor doesnt take away AP directly. It reduces your movement pr AP.
A melee charachter is VERY dependant on his movement stat in order to close the distance. Doesnt matter if you can do a 1000 dmg pr hit if you can only move 1 square pr 2 AP.

Armors come in 2 variants, light & heavy. where Light armor usually have 0 movement penalties and heavy has -0.4 to -1.0. While light usually has an armor value 2 points below heavy armor of the same tier.

So solution is to have a higher SPEED value to increase your movement pr AP and keep using light armor on melee charachters.

[Dufflebags]

So armor wont affect AP when it comes to attacking, it only restricts your movement?

[Gregorovitch]

Yes. There are a number of pretty decent armours that become available that do not affect movement. They are not of the "heavy" variety and are usually the most expensive. Power armour, steel armour, combat armour, all the readily available stuff severely restricts movement and as you say it just sucks for melee. Another point of note is that energy weapons do very high damage against high level armour but virtually none against no or low armour. Later when you start meeting mobs using EW you will find heavy armour sucks even more.

"Tanking" is not a massively effective strategy in WL2. Mobility + lethality rules. As the game progresses you will encounter the "capital" enemy units that can shred your party from range if not countered, lobbers (grenades etc, very nasty) and heavy MG (which unlike the player's heavy weapons have a cone AoE effect, nasty). Getting a melee in their face prevents them from unleashing their devastating attacks if you can't kill them outright from range. This adds further value to mobility.

[DankDankerson]

Armor is pretty broken right now. Most weapons you run into after highpool/agcenter have atleast 4 armor peircing and armors over 4 ap get you vaped by energy weapons, so your correct basicly anything better than the tactical vest in arizona is worthless. It gets worse in california when you get there, oddly enough it makes the game a bit more realisitic, the best way to avoid damage is to to kill the other guy before he can even shoot at you. Making assult rifles, and sniper rifles that much more important. I'm going to try a build with 2 ars and 2 sniper rifles next time instead of the mixed bag, combat wasnt hard this time but i think it'll get even easier with that.
agreed on the ap not making it worth it, getting to cover swiftly is a far better choice than wareing heavy armor.

[ogreballerina]

I was level 10 before I even thought about getting any armor for any of my squad.
Ranger difficulty.
Have not really seen a use for it yet...spend my money on guns instead.

[Eevee.exe]

(i know this is a old thread but thought idd awnser) you may have too low of strength for that armor all heavy armors and i believe atleast 1 endgame light armor have a strength requirement with the propor strength a heavy armor should only give around a 0.2 speed debuff which is apsolutly miniscule i have my melee troops all boasting Moble infentry armor hitting 2-4 times a turn and can sprint accross most of the maps with ease but that is due to a propor balance in strength and speed (also will mention my charactors are around lvl 30 so im pritty endgame

[Ominous187]

Originally posted by A Pile Of Eevees:

(i know this is a old thread but thought idd awnser) you may have too low of strength for that armor all heavy armors and i believe atleast 1 endgame light armor have a strength requirement with the propor strength a heavy armor should only give around a 0.2 speed debuff which is apsolutly miniscule i have my melee troops all boasting Moble infentry armor hitting 2-4 times a turn and can sprint accross most of the maps with ease but that is due to a propor balance in strength and speed (also will mention my charactors are around lvl 30 so im pritty endgame

well combat speed means how far you can move per ap. so seeing as he put on the armor - combat speed its taking more ap per step as instead of getting 2 or3 sq per ap he's getting 1. try putting on some air jordans or look for better vendors. some have armor with same armor value but no negitive combat speed..

[Stuurminator]

I'm not sure if this information is useful or not, but the Director's Cut goes a long way towards fixing this. Everyone starts with waaaay more combat speed, so even someone with a penalty can usually close in on their enemies within a turn, and the various perks make it easier to raise your armour class to the point where you can outright ignore attacks.

[red255]

Armor is... garbage if you don't have several points more armor than the enemy weapon penetration.

and pretty broken if you have like 6 points more

Director's cut allows for a starting trait of +2 armor and a perk for +1 armor and a second perk for +1 armor with heavy armor.

so you could take some heavy armor and push it 4 beyond that. which makes you very durable against anything except energy and explosives.

Without that though, using the heaviest light armor? its usually going to be a couple points within the enemy weapon penetration especially in the LA region and just not a noticable damage reduction over the basic leather jacket so its not worth upgrading your armor (tinkerer gives +1 AP with light armor so I generally wear a leather jacket and take that perk)