Armor is completely useless

[Captain Kacknoob]

I doesn't matter if I wear Drangleic or Brigand Armor,

The protection difference is pathetic and so marginal that it doesn't justify spending skillpoints on VIT.

I run around as a Bell Keeper in my transparent Aurous Armor and I kill someone wearing full Havel's in 4 hits.

It's ridiculous.

Poise is broken as well.

If a weapon does 20 poise damage then how can it stun me if I have 105 poise?

[Fr!sol!n0]

Poise (to my knowledge) only works if you attack. It doesn't prevent staggering if you're standing around. + some weapons (at least all "Great" weapons get hyper poise). And armor makes the most difference in this game, actually. Sure, the effect isn't too great for some armor but it is there.

EDIT: Every attack also has poise frames where the poise starts working. So, if you get hit before those frames start, you'll get stunlocked.

[Captain Kacknoob]

Originally posted by Fr!sol!n0:

Poise (to my knowledge) only works if you attack. It doesn't prevent staggering if you're standing around. + some weapons (at least all "Great" weapons get hyper poise). And armor makes the most difference in this game, actually. Sure, the effect isn't too great for some armor but it is there.

EDIT: Every attack also has poise frames where the poise starts working. So, if you get hit before those frames start, you'll get stunlocked.

That is simply not true.

Armor was way more powerful in Dark Souls 1

[JellyPuff]

Every 10 points of elemental defense is a 1% reduction in DMG. Every 5 points of physical defense is about 1 point less damage per hit taken. That's anything but useless.

Poise damage vs player poise doesn't work the way you think. You don't need 106 poise damage on your weapon to break 105 poise. If you want to know the exact poise breakpoints of different weapons and attacks, go look 'em up.

Since you can't stunlock people with everything in this game, poise in PvP hardly plays a role anymore. It's a "nice to have" against some builds, but two-handing a weapon usually counters any poise your opponent might have. Poise is still amazing for PvE, though.

[herishpalani]

Originally posted by Fr!sol!n0:

Poise (to my knowledge) only works if you attack. It doesn't prevent staggering if you're standing around. + some weapons (at least all "Great" weapons get hyper poise). And armor makes the most difference in this game, actually. Sure, the effect isn't too great for some armor but it is there.

EDIT: Every attack also has poise frames where the poise starts working. So, if you get hit before those frames start, you'll get stunlocked.

You're thinking of ds3. Poise works as op described in DS2.

As for protection, yeah, Im starting to agree, the protection armor gives you is just incredibly off. I'll be wearing vengarl armor and it barely gives more protection than Brigand armor despite it having quite literally 10x better stats. It just makes no sense.

[Doc Vivor]

Iirc:
Physicayl armor stat devided by 50 equals percentage in demage reduction.
elemental stat devided by 10 equals percentage in demage reduction
100% demage reduction is never possible you will get at least 1 dmg
Poise is usefull, but usualy broken by 2 handing, stone ring and/or counter hits
You get a poise buff by attacking with some weapons like great hammers or the bone fist
poise demage depends on how many body parts you hit (not sure about that)
poise needs to regenerate after beeing broken
armor grants other bonuses like backstab immunity

[King Robert Baratheon]

ADP also gives you poise so unfortunately just wearing heavy armor (and the ring of giants) isn't enough. In the late game with a good amount of adp plus the ring of giants +1 or +2 you have almost dark souls 1 level poise.

Also like Vivor mentioned some armor pieces have buffs. The best imo is the anti backstab armor chest pieces (the ironclad chest piece and the jester chest piece). I've invaded people who were pretty bad at pvp and if I saw that they were backstab fishing I threw the jester's chest piece on and they were so lost as what to do.

[TrueArchery]

The "20 Poise damage" is just, like, a class. It's like classifying sportscars - F1, F2, Group B etc.

The actual attacks have different Poisebreak. List of them:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-iCrOdAGp3uQ9I0VgQYU2Ug2d4w2PbQZhBnobLakaMs/pubhtml

From leveling Adp you can only get 18 Poise so it by far not mandatory. btw, your End has to be at the same level or higher, otherwise you won't get the Poise. Like, at 10 End and 10 Adp you've 3.0 Poise. At 15 End 10 Adp you've still 3.0 Poise. At 10 End 15 Adp you've STILL 3.0 Poise. At 15 End 15 Adp you've 4.5 Poise.
You'll never reach Dark Souls 1 like Poise anyway.

It doesn't matter how the Poise is distributed on your armor.

(Visible elemental defense + 100) divided by 10 is the % reduction. It maxes out at 890 visible def which translates to 99% reduction.

Physical def is flat. It's ~0.2 less dmg per point of phys def. It's by far not as good as elemental def, but you WILL notice whether you fight a dude with no armor or a dude in Havel's.

Poise only "works" when you do something, like rolling, attacking, using items... It isn't limited to certain weapon-classes or -attacks and just a few of their frames though, like in DaS3. But if you stand still, you will get staggered. Tho - there are different kind of staggers, like getting staggered while running, it's shorter and doesn't leave you vulnerable to the usual 2 input stunlock.

[Gigolo]

No, not really. you would have to experiment more, the mentioned armor is not good at all

[Patty]

Armour seems to get progressively worse throughout DS1, 2 ,3.

By 3 it is pretty much for fashion only.

[Tigrovica]

Only dark souls game where i found armor useful was dark souls 1 :D

[supersand]

I like that armor doesn't do a lot in DS2, it means you can play Fashion Souls a lot easier.

[Captain Kacknoob]

Originally posted by Tigrovica:

Only dark souls game where i found armor useful was dark souls 1 :D

It's also the best Dark Souls

[supersand]

Originally posted by GAYLORD ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by Tigrovica:

Only dark souls game where i found armor useful was dark souls 1 :D

It's also the best Dark Souls

debatable

[Captain Kacknoob]

Originally posted by suika:

Originally posted by GAYLORD ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

It's also the best Dark Souls

debatable

not really

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Originally posted by GAYLORD ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by suika:

debatable

not really

Clearly debatable, because people won't stop debating over it, and everyone makes good points

You'll also find people who insist that Dark Souls 2 is the best Dark Souls, Bloodborne is the best, Dark Souls 3 is the best...

And even people who insist that this is the best PVP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOh5vyBvffw

There's no one objective viewpoint on this and that's how it should be.