Armor Update, heavy worth it now ?

[Aramid]

Tested rapidly an heavy armor on Lv3 terminid, with green acid sack guys.
Is it me, or it's still not worth it ?

I tested with friends using the Sniper armor, you actually tank more, hunter kill light in like 3 hit, but remove only like 1/4HP to a 150 rating. A pistol shot in the leg does like 1/3 damage, while in the head it almost kill you. (but you survive which is good) Acid guys does not seem to care about armor though. Or not enough for it to be important.

BUT... Is it really worth the speed and stamina malus ?
Did a race with a light armor, he forgot to sprint for like 1-2 seconds, catch up to me like a second or two before my stamina runned out, and he still had 3/4 of his stamina.

We sincerely doubt about the armor efficiency right now. Need to test in automaton and also medium armor, but I don't have much hope...

What's the feedback from other players ?

P.S : At least the 120mm barrage looks promising now ! (Most of the others nerf/buff seems inconsequential. Breaker still look like the best primary, railgun still look like a must have in high difficulty)

EDIT : Just read that railgun stable can't penetrate charger leg (didn't test that, because I didn't expect that change)
That was the only reason the railgun was a must have to me. Now I just don't care about that gun. Maybe it will be still worth it against automaton ?

EDIT after bot test : Heavy (sniper) tank around 8 shot from basic soldier. If you sprint, you can outrun a Colossal. It just take you 10 minutes. Tested medium too ! Got wrecked by like 3-4 shot from a heavy devastator. I don't see the point of going medium either.
Light armor is still WAY BETTER than the others.

[Error_41]

nope, just tested Heavy Armor, one more Stalker hit to survive (yayyy....)versus a HUGE Stamina/ Speed Penalty. Not worth it at all, still crap, back to Light Armor.
Plus, in Heavy Armor you are easily swarmed by Huinters= Deathsentence.

Thought of making Heavy/ Tank Build with MG something like that..... a shame.

[Treuwu]

Originally posted by Aramid:

Acid guys does not seem to care about armor though. Or not enough for it to be important.

Correct. Acid tends to be the "Anti-Armour" mechanic in 90% of games. Dont expect your armour to protect you. NPCs need counters to us too to make us gain higher skill levels not just better gear.

[Nyah]

i think light armor should be used for bugs and the heavy armor for robots.
as bugs generally needs to come close combat (so mobility is good) while robots can shoot you (so shielding is good)

[Myth Alric]

The stamina and speed penalty isn't that bad. While running fast is nice, it isn't very important. If you die in this game it is usually form jumping bugs, jumping at your face, not you being slow.

[Aramid]

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

The stamina and speed penalty isn't that bad. While running fast is nice, it isn't very important. If you die in this game it is usually form jumping bugs, jumping at your face, not you being slow.

To be frank, I kinda feel like in higher difficulty you NEED the mobility to get away from enemy reinforcement since they just spawn... And spawn... And spawn... Until you just die from the 108617520 bugs that jump on you.
If the armor was either WAY MORE tanky or the speed/stamina penalty was less harsh, maybe to would be worth, but right now, it just feels like i'm running like a 5 year old while the others are athlete.
That's also a problem in the team movement to me, if you got one guy that can't keep up at all...

[Nobody watches your TTV]

armor still not worth it

for how slow it makes players it better shrug off hits from all small enemies(as in you can be surrounded and take 10+s to die), since even heavy armor doesn't seem to block any stagger or slow down effect

[Aldain]

Honestly once vehicles are a thing Heavy Armor will probably be more practical, but as it is now having to hoof it everywhere I'd say it's nice but not fully realized.

[Vespertellino]

I'd say light and medium armors with armor perk should be good now

Originally posted by Aldain:

Honestly once vehicles are a thing Heavy Armor will probably be more practical, but as it is now having to hoof it everywhere I'd say it's nice but not fully realized.

Good point!

Originally posted by Nyah:

i think light armor should be used for bugs and the heavy armor for robots.
as bugs generally needs to come close combat (so mobility is good) while robots can shoot you (so shielding is good)

Also well said, I agree

[Aramid]

Originally posted by Aldain:

Honestly once vehicles are a thing Heavy Armor will probably be more practical, but as it is now having to hoof it everywhere I'd say it's nice but not fully realized.

A player from my group also thought the same.
But I kinda feel like the need for a vehicle (since vehicle might not be free) to use a heavy is a problem. The armor shouldn't NEED a stratagem to be usable in my opinion. Especially since high level map are pretty big. Otherwise, you're just saying "You don't have a vehicle stratagem ? Well, don't use heavy armor because it's gonna be a pain in your ass to move around !"

[Rhiawhyn Zerinth]

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

The stamina and speed penalty isn't that bad. While running fast is nice, it isn't very important. If you die in this game it is usually form jumping bugs, jumping at your face, not you being slow.

The penalty is in fact that bad. You can just casually moonwalk backwards while shooting things out of the air in light armor, all while keeping most things out of melee range just from you having a higher speed than them. You can dance around chargers up close and negate their threat, you can run up to bile spitters and punch them to death with how fast you are.

In heavy armor, you can barely outrun things without going into a full, very limited duration sprint. Things that weren't even a footnote of a threat to you, are now a major problem. At anything beyond difficulty 1-3, you start running into actual threats. At difficulty 7+, you run into things that make wearing heavy armor utterly pointless. If it actually let you 'bounce' rounds or just take minimal damage from it, sure ok. But even that won't offset the fact that at higher levels you are going to get mobbed.

In the first game they knew this and made heavy armor able to outright ignore melee attacks from one or two bugs that weren't larger hunters/big bugs. When I say ignore I mean, it took four scavs chewing on your shins to make you take damage. All the borg light infantry had a hard time doing damage to you, but the HMG ones could still hurt you.

This, wearing heavy armor gives you two, maybe three more hits from something that dumps 20 rounds in a couple of seconds. Big deal, wooooooo I take a fraction of a second more time to kill while not being able to move.

Want to know what's better than 15-20% more defense? Having the speed to be able to dive behind a rock and take 0 damage. That's what heavy armor is competing with and it gives nothing worth it. I've just stopped bothering with armor and wear it for the drip.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Aramid:

Originally posted by Aldain:

Honestly once vehicles are a thing Heavy Armor will probably be more practical, but as it is now having to hoof it everywhere I'd say it's nice but not fully realized.

A player from my group also thought the same.
But I kinda feel like the need for a vehicle (since vehicle might not be free) to use a heavy is a problem. The armor shouldn't NEED a stratagem to be usable in my opinion. Especially since high level map are pretty big. Otherwise, you're just saying "You don't have a vehicle stratagem ? Well, don't use heavy armor because it's gonna be a pain in your ass to move around !"

The thing is that it depends on how much you're going to have to move around in the mission zone.

Smaller maps could probably get away with just slow hoofing, but if the map is large then a vehicle won't be a bad idea to bring, and if you're bringing one yourself then you can probably evaluate heavy armor as a viable loadout choice.

Any mission that doesn't require map traversal would also probably make heavy armor better as well, so it's a bit more of a situational thing or part of a build rather than a simple Yes/No choice in my eyes.

I'm probably gonna stick with Medium now that the armor actually does something, but I can see the validity of heavy armor with proper planning and/or mission parameters.

[Aramid]

Originally posted by Rhiawhyn Zerinth:

In the first game they knew this and made heavy armor able to outright ignore melee attacks from one or two bugs that weren't larger hunters/big bugs. When I say ignore I mean, it took four scavs chewing on your shins to make you take damage. All the borg light infantry had a hard time doing damage to you, but the HMG ones could still hurt you.

THAT is what armor should be !
Let us use armor like the enemy ! Not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage reduction !

[Death a Barbar]

heavy armor might be good at lower diff, and against bugs, but the general idea is that you don't get into a situation where you ca be hit, so armor doesn't matter
if you are getting hit, you are probably in a situation where being able to take a bit more dmg wouldn't help at all
for armor to be useful, it needs the same level as enemies, medium and heavy should only take 1 dmg from the small enemies, and heavy should actually defend against medium enemies
acid should debuff armor, but not ignore it, or it should do less damage

[BaconX]

While the value is probably fixed to where they want it, the balance is probably not there yet.

In the meantime, I'm gonna take my chance with the light armor. Being able to run from things for 0 damage is still better than taking a couple more hits, while being surrounded by a bunch of enemies that you dish out way more than a couple of hits.

[TemplarGFX]

Overall Im let down by the heavy armor, but I do like it when Im using the arc thrower against bots.