Light Armour Useless Late Game?

[ChairborneRanger]

I'm currently running a rank 10 Merc warband and it seems that any dude that isn't equipped with heavy armour and a shield just gets carved up by the cheating extra damage AI. Only my marksmen wear light armour or clothing. Anyone else find at the late stage of the game you simply *must* wear heavy armour to offset the ridiculous damage coming in at your melee fighters? Interested to hear from skaven players how they handle late game damage in particular. Never managed to have a skaven warband survive long enough to see for myself.

[That Drunk Fellow]

Dodge, lots of dodge!...
125%+ dodge for heroes, 100-110%+ dodge for henchmen.
Dodge is the friend of light armor..
Though to be honest Merc warbands feels ill suited for dodge builds in my experience, parry and melee resist builds all the way for mercs.

[ChairborneRanger]

See, in my experience the problem with any strategy that relies heavily on dodge or parry is that you only get one (unless you manage to somehow get web of steel etc), yet the AI will happily surround you and whittle your HP away.The only reliable defense I have found is having a warband with high melee resistance and good damage absorption, at least for the mercs anyway, just like you mentioned.

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Maybe you need to adjust your strategy so that you can't be surrounded. More indoor fighting etc. Rushing in with mercs almost always equals some kind of losses.

[Game kNight Plays]

I have a warband with only 2 heavy armor warrirors, rest is cloth. The warband only does deadly missions and I rarely loose anyone.

Tactics play a huge part here, maybe time for some research?

[tyr2180]

Both my Witch Hunter and Merc warbands are split about in even thirds - cloth/light/heavy. And by rank 6 or so, all but henchmen have either Web of Steel or Sidestep.

[Dave]

Light armour has it's place at rank 10. I don't use it on my Mercs, but I do use it on my Sister heroes because I want their passives slots for skills that are not armour proficient and knowlege:mordheim and i don't want them to move slower than 6.

In terms of what you do without it? I don't really notice it. Defensive skills, melee resist, and kill the enemy before they kill you.

[chaosguy]

To give a gist to my own advice as well as summing what's above-- it has it's place, but primarily on specific characters who have specific roles (ie. a sniper who's job it is to climb and leap his way into to rafters, a spellcaster who needs to be less squishy without incurring the penalties of heavy armor, a character who's main job is to break away and gather wyrdstone before the match ends, a start-of-game scout, etc.).

Heavy armor is superior if you plan on getting hit (ie. your tanks), cloth armor is better if you're going to try not to. That said, I have units that are fulfilling at least one of the varied roles I listed above in all my high level warbands, so to reiterate- it has it's place, it's just not what most of your units will be wearing. The exception may be Zealots in the new WH warband since they max-out at light armor and shield, but again, depends on the role you assign them (or they get thrust into).

[Kernest]

Light armour is obviously the way to go with the Impressives that can use it, but not heavy armour, such as Ogre and Executioner.

The other people that might want it are ranged units, since they rarely have the SP to take stances, at least the advanced ones. Also, some specific melee heroes could maybe use light over heavy, depending on how they're built.

A melee resist tank might as well wear purple light armour as opposed to heavy armour, especially if they could use the passive slot for something better, because they also plan on not getting hit, but there's no benefit to wearing cloth over light in that case.

A dodge tank could use light too, if they can get their dodge high enough without the cloth bonus.

[Papa Yash]

Most of my mans on my R10 merc use light and I play brutal and deadly no problem.

[董]

Light is the standard armour. Contrary to popular beliefs, unless u want to waste/specialise points on heavy armour theres no reason to wanna wear one.

Slow, heavy, easily left behind on split deployment, normally I would only use heavy armour if im using sisters. All my units in mercs r light. I mean theres so many ways to survive, all the skills, perks, dodge parry etc. To seriously rely on heavy armour to reduce dmg is already a failure strategy by itself.

I avoided heavy armour on my merc warband. Mass light is the way to go, only a solid reason will I abandon 1 passive slot and 6 skill points just so I can squeeze out a bit of survival wearing a plate.

[ChairborneRanger]

Interesting replies, thanks for your feedback people. :)

[Paranoia]

My Parry Characters tend to Light Armour, because the extra Dodge does nothing and I don't want to restrict my mobility and Initiative with Heavy Armour (Armour Proficiency only fixes the Movement issue). Whatever little damage is reduced is by default more useful than what Cloth gives them.

[crimsonsun]

Originally posted by ljlinna:

My Parry Characters tend to Light Armour, because the extra Dodge does nothing and I don't want to restrict my mobility and Initiative with Heavy Armour (Armour Proficiency only fixes the Movement issue). Whatever little damage is reduced is by default more useful than what Cloth gives them.

This!

My Warp Guard Heroes which are some of the best tanks in the game wear light armour, because its only there if I get hit, its still substantial and doesn't cause me movement issues! Heavy Armour is great but its great at the cost of 6 skill points and even more critically a passive slot - the choice between mastered heavy armour prof and mastered counter attack mastery for a 130% parry chance and a 60% starting melee resistance doesn't leave any questions for me especially after counter attack got boosted so much, as this guy ♥♥♥♥♥ peoples ♥♥♥♥ up in PvP let alone the way he annialhates the AI.

I tend to run two guys in heavy armour in my Skaven, 2 heroes and 2 henchman in my Mercenaries and I've got two Heavy Armoured guys in my Witch hunters so its hardly an all or nothing affair. My rats don't take much light armour thinking about it, a few heroes but my mercs have loads.

[Aedwynn]

You look at character's stats. Based on this you choose what you want him to do. Then you decide how he does it and thus, how he defends. All armors have their uses, but to make it work you need to properly supplement it with perks, skills, enchantments and even attribute points. For example, I've got Merc Captain that relies on Armor to defend himself. For that reason he has great toughness to give him more hitpoints and toughness enchanted armor, he got shield with Iron enchantment to boost his armor even more. As a result, with just mastered heavy armor perk he absorbs 70% damage from ANY attack. Melee attacks, ranged attacks, counter-attacks. Web and Sidestep are cool, but they work only when you are in stance and only against melee attacks. Not to mention there is a ton of enemies with attacks that can't be parried at all. But my Cap can charge/ambush enemies and can exchange blows with them no problem, something that parry/dodge tanks can't do. And unlike MR tank he is well protected against range attacks as well. Just think of it like this: you are against enemy that can throw 4 attacks at you. Let's say he deals 40 unmitigated damage per hit. Then with Web/Step you''l get just one hit, that with light armor will deal ~28 damage to you. With armor even if you don't use Armor stance you will get just ~12 per hit. But 4 hits, which means ~48 damage. Not good? But that's only if enemy can't hit you when you are out of stance AND can't throw more hits at you. Throw in charge/ambush exchanges, ranged attacks and suddenly parry/dodge tank is falling behind MR/armor tanks. Because each additional blow adds 16 points in favor of armor.
What does that all mean? Strategy matters. Without it you won't be able to use any gear/perk/build to full extent, and as such heavy/light armor may look useless.

[ChairborneRanger]

Originally posted by Aedwynn:

You look at character's stats. Based on this you choose what you want him to do. Then you decide how he does it and thus, how he defends. All armors have their uses, but to make it work you need to properly supplement it with perks, skills, enchantments and even attribute points. For example, I've got Merc Captain that relies on Armor to defend himself. For that reason he has great toughness to give him more hitpoints and toughness enchanted armor, he got shield with Iron enchantment to boost his armor even more. As a result, with just mastered heavy armor perk he absorbs 70% damage from ANY attack. Melee attacks, ranged attacks, counter-attacks. Web and Sidestep are cool, but they work only when you are in stance and only against melee attacks. Not to mention there is a ton of enemies with attacks that can't be parried at all. But my Cap can charge/ambush enemies and can exchange blows with them no problem, something that parry/dodge tanks can't do. And unlike MR tank he is well protected against range attacks as well. Just think of it like this: you are against enemy that can throw 4 attacks at you. Let's say he deals 40 unmitigated damage per hit. Then with Web/Step you''l get just one hit, that with light armor will deal ~28 damage to you. With armor even if you don't use Armor stance you will get just ~12 per hit. But 4 hits, which means ~48 damage. Not good? But that's only if enemy can't hit you when you are out of stance AND can't throw more hits at you. Throw in charge/ambush exchanges, ranged attacks and suddenly parry/dodge tank is falling behind MR/armor tanks. Because each additional blow adds 16 points in favor of armor.
What does that all mean? Strategy matters. Without it you won't be able to use any gear/perk/build to full extent, and as such heavy/light armor may look useless.

This is also my opinion. In my experience it just seems good sense to stack damage resist and damage absorb over any other defensive stat, hence why I started this thread to see if there's any use to Merc melee combatants wearing light armour - especially in the late game.