Lets talk armor

[fojaxx]

is scale armor the best to use?

i know everyone likes to dote on plate, but plate can be taken out with a peircing weapon. scale on the other hand is vunerable to blunt and as far as i've seen, no one uses blunt weapons. so in that case, is scale the best armor to use because no one uses the weapons that are good against it?

also, general armor and weapons disscussion. what is your favorite weapon to use against plate?

[Yotad]

Yes scale is the best armor, besides only being weak against blunt it also is the lightest of the 3 types of armor, so if you use it you'll be faster then someone using plate or chainmail. For the piercing armor I would say that depends on your style, if you use two-handed the Bec de Corbin would be the best, but if you use a Partisan with the bottom attack you also deal piercing damage, if you use one-handed I recommend the Warpick, the Morning Star is also good but it consumes alot of stamina with just one attack, if you don't have the right stats it can get you killed.

[Scourge]

Chainmail is lighter...

[Darlandra]

Did a ton of testing on my alliance's server and scale and chain are irrevelevant atm against plate. Chain and Scale offer almsot no speed bonuses that actually affect character movement and attack speed in exchange for the lessoned weight. Plate simply blocks so much damage while having so little weakness and little speed impact that as it stands, there is no point in scale (which all in all is the worst of the 3) or chainmail (lighter and has higher resistance totals)

Using GM commands, characters were tested between chain, scale, and plate, and 2 identical characters equpped different armors, and found that even though the plate user has speed reduced to 88 and that chain user at speed 99, the plate wearer was only noticably slower in a foot race over a long distance (>20 cells) with speed difference being practicably unnoticable less than 10 squares. Attack speed was effectively identical. Attack speed is most affected by the weapon being used (1h, 2h, and type), if the skills support it's base use (higher skills do NOT increase speed of attacks, also tested), and if a shield is currently on the arm.

In testing we found that damage inflicted on characters and armor is ONLY affected by the quality of weapon used and the actual speed of impact (running, horse, etc) vs the quality abd type of the armor being worn. Skill had no impact on damage, and skill in an armor set did not affect resistances either.

As it stands, if you are capable of wearing plate, then there is no point in wearing anything else as ther other arrmors offer no advantages that could be found. The real advantage we decided on was that the less stat requirements needed for the lighter armors means more stat points can be allocated towards non-combat, or support stats like constitution or willpower.

Edit: To better clarify, half plate offers higher slash and pierce resistance with only a reduction in blunt, which is the least used weapon type. The problem with blunt is that one reason is is least used is there are no blunt weapons that cause significant damage amounts, unlike bladed weapons which have much higher values, so while yes plate, even full plate, has a "weakness", there are at the moment no weapons that take advantage of this weakness in the melee environment.

The major issue at the moment is full plate, which has a combined resistance across the board of 2.16 while Heavy Chain resists to 1.61 and Scale at 2.0. Compared to scale it's not a huge difference, but the main issue is the levels of resistance, Full plate tops out with slash resist at .92, meaning you're only inflicting 8% of slash damge, which is by far the most common. So that implies piercing or blunt attacks. Blunt weapons are by nature low damaging quantity-wise and as such high resistances are not needed, and piercing weapons fall into: projectiles, spears, and the chiv pierce tree. The piercers are either a) VERY slow or VERY short ranged or VERY long ranged, so in theory to use it you would need to be significantly faster or stronger than your opponent. As plate armor is equally as fast as the other armors, this doesn't apply. Spears suffer the opposite problem: Once a plate user is inside the actual tip range, the spear is effecrively worthless due to its low blunt damage, but because plate armor is no slower than other armors, a lightly armored, or even unarmoed, spear user does not have the ability to out-maneuver a plate user.

So, for the time being, go with plate. I fully suspect that plate is going to get a nerf at some point in some fashion because it holds such an obvious superiority over the other armors. It is far better to focus on your actual human skill through practice, and finding ways to lower your ping than to worry about armor.

[Aaron]

Plate is heavy, it costs a lot more stamina to sprint when you are heavy. If you want to exploit heavys then you need to lower your own weight and go for hit and run strikes, if they try to follow you they will start the heavy breathing very quickly (especially in combat mode) if that happens you can pretty much kill them.

[Darlandra]

The issue Ataaron is that a plate user can take 3-4 more hits blow for blow than the other armors if it's not piercing, and a plate user isn't going to simply stand there, there is a great deal they can do without simply running like an idiot. I fight everyday plat eusers who not once have to stop for a breath, because when you stop at stamina 1, your stamina is back to100% in less than 5 seconds, all they have to do is take half second sprint breaks every second and their stamina is regening.

Plate users are not "Heavies" in the normal sense of the word, They're no slower than the other armors and no easier to hit. The stamina drain increase is medium, maybe at most 30-40% faster. The kind of fighting Ataaron is talking about is an extended duel, the kind that rarely happens outside a ring. In an actual fight, you don't get the chance to do the actual harrying he's talking about. It's either a win/lose on the first series of exchanges, or hte plate user holds in a nice safe spot where he can't be harried.

[Khan]

with piercing damages, heavy plate won't survive longer...

[Ulf]

Originally posted by Khan:

with piercing damages, heavy plate won't survive longer...

Yeah but like Darlandra said, piercing weapons are not that simply to use.

[Khan]

without the mouse swing, they are ultra easy to use...