Heavy Armor or Medium Scaled Armor with +Shield?

[Halfgeek]

What do you guys go with late-game?

A Mithril Heavy Plate has 36 armor + perception.

Dragon Leather armor has 26 + 4 leech.

Mix with Scaled Leather, it can get 24 + 2 leech + 2 shield.

Scaled Male gets 20 armor with Dragon Leather, and 4 shields and 1 leech.

Seems the shield and leech is too small to be useful?

[Pentalis]

I grab what I need. Sometimes I need a stealthy character so I get a Silver Plate Mail instead. Other times when you need to maximize damage, it's better to get a Dragon Leather Armor. You can mix match for magic or other stats that you need too. Armor is important but not every character needs maxed armor.

[Icemind]

My experience over several games on the higher difficulties is simply: heavy armor is not worth it! Never!
If you find some, sure use it if you havent got anything better yet. But dont produce it yourself, that research point is too valuable to waste it on heavy armor.
In the vast majority of battles you want to rely on your shielding rather than on your base armor and unfortunately, there is not a single setup of heavy armor that gives any shielding bonus. Furthermore if you want a higher armor value than provided by scale or dragon leather you need to use A LOT of high quality resources.
The only piece that is really worth considering is a suit of heavy armour completely made out of mithril, but usually if you can waste almost 30 mithril on a single armor piece (that while good is still not overwhelming) you could probably just go and finish the game anyway. (Especially if you uesd that mithril to make shields, trinkets, or even artifacts, which usually is a much better use of this rare resource)
Because shielding is so much more vaulable in battle, scale leather armor is the way to go most of the time with dragon scale running second. (both still provide a good amount of base armor value) Pure leather is also worth considering since the dex bonus is nice for first action moves, which is pretty much a must have on the highest difficulty. (Most of the time you will just try to avoid fight challenges altogether and rather use hunt or sneak, but sometimes this is not an option)

The problem really is that heavy armour provides NOTHING that you could not get better and cheaper with medium armor. You need survivabilty in fight challenges? Go with scaled leather. Need damage too? Go with dragon scale/bone or a mix of those with scaled leather. You need stealth? Go with leather which is easy to get and effective. You need magic? Go with enchanted bone.

The lack of usefullness of heavy armor is one of the few points in this game that i feel really still needs to be improved.

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Icemind:

My experience over several games on the higher difficulties is simply: heavy armor is not worth it! Never!

The lack of usefullness of heavy armor is one of the few points in this game that i feel really still needs to be improved.

Agreed. In my opinion, heavy armor should come with a lot of shielding to make it worth the research point and the quantity of high-end materials required.

[Pentalis]

Originally posted by ilikemadeupnames:

Originally posted by Icemind:

My experience over several games on the higher difficulties is simply: heavy armor is not worth it! Never!

The lack of usefullness of heavy armor is one of the few points in this game that i feel really still needs to be improved.

Agreed. In my opinion, heavy armor should come with a lot of shielding to make it worth the research point and the quantity of high-end materials required.

Well, heavy armor uses different materials than the other armors; it's the only armor you can make out of wood. Sometimes, if you have a lot of high quality wood resources nearby in safe spots, but the leathers are far away, you could potentially make armor containing mostly wood and get both research points and acceptable gear, as opposed to making nothing because you don't have the materials or can't get them

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Pentalis:

Originally posted by ilikemadeupnames:

Agreed. In my opinion, heavy armor should come with a lot of shielding to make it worth the research point and the quantity of high-end materials required.

Well, heavy armor uses different materials than the other armors; it's the only armor you can make out of wood. Sometimes, if you have a lot of high quality wood resources nearby in safe spots, but the leathers are far away, you could potentially make armor containing mostly wood and get both research points and acceptable gear, as opposed to making nothing because you don't have the materials or can't get them

True, although that requires a specific resource layout, and the research return vs material and crafting points cost doesn't make heavy armor ideal to produce in my opinion.

[Halfgeek]

Shielding seems too strong compared to raw armor, since it re-applies on the next turn, which happens often in bigger battles. While a damaged guy in thick armor, remains damaged.

Best combo would seem to be shielding and leech.

Leech is basically shielding but very effective since it applies twice per fight if your characters get in 2 attacks. So 6 leech = 12 HP, vs 6 shields = 6 HP for the fight.

However, having both Leech and Shielding is counter-productive since the leech won't work if your character's shields absorb the damage, it's a waste of stat.

I guess it makes sense to have Heavy Armor + Leech combo, it would be very effective as a tank + lifesteal setup.

Thoughts?

[Icemind]

You are even still underestimating the usefullness of shielding ;)
Leech only works twice IF that character gets to attack twice, which is far from guaranteed (not just he himself could be dead, but all opponents could be dead as well)
But more importantly shielding can be used as a tactics action as well and if used right can often be a gamechanger saving the lives of villagers (situations where you will definitely win the fight but one villager might still take a big hit are not that rare after all)
Still if there was some heavy armor with leech it would definelty be way more usefull than any of the available ones

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Icemind:

You are even still underestimating the usefullness of shielding ;)
Leech only works twice IF that character gets to attack twice, which is far from guaranteed (not just he himself could be dead, but all opponents could be dead as well)
But more importantly shielding can be used as a tactics action as well and if used right can often be a gamechanger saving the lives of villagers (situations where you will definitely win the fight but one villager might still take a big hit are not that rare after all)
Still if there was some heavy armor with leech it would definelty be way more usefull than any of the available ones

I agree. When you know a character is going to get hammered (pardon the pun), throw 2 +16 Shield Ally on him/her, and it makes a world of difference. I use this tactic when outnumbered and/or all my tanky peeps ended up in the tactics deck.

[Halfgeek]

I setup my brutes with 20 leech 2handed weapons and heavy armor. I setup 1h sword/shield tanks with scaled armor, they can either tank on the field or +shield people in the tactics hand.

It works well since 2handers + scaled armor is pretty useless as the 17 armor + 6 shield doesn't do as well as 32-36 armor straight up along with other stat bonuses on the heavy armor.

Basically, I've found shielding to work well when you stack it up very high, shielding armor, 1h sword, a strong shield.

But 2h also is very good for taking down strong enemies in one hit to prevent them damaging your allies. At the start, I thought sword/shield was OP, but I quickly found that a mob HP goes up a lot and the s/s fighters can't kill them quick enough, leading to more damage taken.

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Halfgeek:

I setup my brutes with 20 leech 2handed weapons and heavy armor. I setup 1h sword/shield tanks with scaled armor, they can either tank on the field or +shield people in the tactics hand.

It works well since 2handers + scaled armor is pretty useless as the 17 armor + 6 shield doesn't do as well as 32-36 armor straight up along with other stat bonuses on the heavy armor.

Basically, I've found shielding to work well when you stack it up very high, shielding armor, 1h sword, a strong shield.

But 2h also is very good for taking down strong enemies in one hit to prevent them damaging your allies. At the start, I thought sword/shield was OP, but I quickly found that a mob HP goes up a lot and the s/s fighters can't kill them quick enough, leading to more damage taken.

That's a very good point. Mixing 2H Hammers with sword-n-board makes for good flexibility in a fighting group. Shield up that 2H and let him/her lay waste. :)

[76561188078797539]

Coming from "Hammer them all!" approach on lower difficulties, I'm having hard time surviving "True Thea/Insane/Deity/Furious/7" difficulty. Basically have yet to keep my villagers alive and operating well enough to get decent hammers.

Experimenting with sword-and-board now, since very early survivability seems to be the major issue (basically getting ganked by those turn-50 3-star groups).

Still, I'd say late-game if you can get hammers, that's probably the best bet, mixed with some tanks. I doubt critter stats change too much, and I found hammers to be bloody fantastic against both large filler groups and high-HP enemies.

[Greep]

Well, super late game armour considerations sound kind of trivial, not to mention a single research point that late with the resources you're describing doesn't sound like a big deal.

I haven't succesfully tried it, but if you restart scummed steel instead of wicker, you can build 26 armour chainmail right off the bat. Unfortunately nobody would be able to wear it probably ;)

[Kriminaal]

The best armor is savescum armor.

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Kriminaal:

The best armor is savescum armor.

LOL

[Kriminaal]

At late game I was using Heavy Armor made of Mithril and Enchanted Bones. It was 31 armor, 4 perception and 5 magic I believe. Then use Hammers made of all Moonstone for 5 Magic too. At late game, actual melee fighting doesn't even really come into play if you can Social/Hex/Poison/Sneak battle everything, all that Leach/Shielding goes right out the window. The real winner in late game is Magic and Perception.