PC Armor rating

[Sjustus548]

I'm hoping someone can help me with armor rating and determining how it effects damage taken.  I currently have an armor rating of 81 and read somewhere that it means I'm reducing damage taken by 81%.  I also have two different perks that reduce damage, 5% for wearing Firefighter's Helment, 2.5% for wearing Suit Jacket, and 2.5% for wearing Suit Pants, so how does this factor in to the damage reduction?  Also, how would the 25%  reduction to HP loss given by Rank 5 of Pain Tolerance help?  I know I can't get to 100% damage reduction but I'm trying to get as close to full damage immunity as I can.  The Armor Statics Journal entry says that 90AR is the maximum but since the damage reductions don't add on to Armor Rating can I go higher than the 90% reduction?  

 

[meganoth]

AR is simply that, 81% off of damage. Then what is left is reduced by Pain Tolerance in a second step.  That was at least how I remember Gazz explaining it.

I assume Firefighter helmet and Suit just add to the percentage of Pain Tolerance, but that is just my conjecture.

 

[Danidas]

Its armor plus all buffs to equal your true rating that is capped at 90% total to ensure that no matter what your going to take at a min 10% of all incoming damage. Which also means that anything beyond that 90% is wasted as it is a hard cap. So in your case most of the perk points that you put into Pain Tolerance are wasted a long with the benefits from the suit and fire helmet. Since your only getting the benefit of tier 2 Pain Tolerance with how much armor rating your getting from your armor. That is with out the suit and fire helmet but with them then you no longer need a single point in Pain Tolerance to hit the cap.

 

[meganoth]

Its armor plus all buffs to equal your true rating that is capped at 90% total to ensure that no matter what your going to take at a min 10% of all incoming damage. Which also means that anything beyond that 90% is wasted as it is a hard cap. So in your case most of the perk points that you put into Pain Tolerance are wasted a long with the benefits from the suit and fire helmet. Since your only getting the benefit of tier 2 Pain Tolerance with how much armor rating your getting from your armor. That is with out the suit and fire helmet but with them then you no longer need a single point in Pain Tolerance to hit the cap.

Just looked into xml and at least the perk paintolerance does not add to armor but to a value called HealthLoss. While Armor adds to a value called PhysicalDamageResist. That fits my theory better than yours.

Also if you perk into PainTolerance, do you see your total Armor value increase or not? As far as I know it does not. Which also seems to indicate that Paintolerance isn't simply added to armor

 

[theFlu]

For what it's worth, I was testing Pain Tolerance in A17 or so; it was implemented as a little "heal" after taking any damage. If you took 20 damage, with 5% PT, you healed a point afterwards. It was even visible in the health bar, often showing both numbers. And, if you took a hit of 20 points at 20 health, you died before the heal could save you.

I haven't tested A19, but at least then it wasn't armor, I doubt they'd have changed it. Assuming they didn't, you should be able to squeeze an extra 2.5% from PT at the 90 AR cap.

For the suits and others, I have no idea; the fireman's helmet is light armor, right? That might make it a poor choice, depending on the implementation; getting from 89 to 90 AR is worth about 10% reduction, the 5% (assuming it's not straight up armor rating) is obviously worse.

 

[Sjustus548]

Just looked into xml and at least the perk paintolerance does not add to armor but to a value called HealthLoss. While Armor adds to a value called PhysicalDamageResist. That fits my theory better than yours.

Also if you perk into PainTolerance, do you see your total Armor value increase or not? As far as I know it does not. Which also seems to indicate that Paintolerance isn't simply added to armor

The suit parts add to HealthLoss as well.  Since they added to a different value than armor does I assume it was this way as well.  I would reduce damage taken by 81% and then whatever is leftover would get reduced by Pain Tolerance and the others.

For what it's worth, I was testing Pain Tolerance in A17 or so; it was implemented as a little "heal" after taking any damage. If you took 20 damage, with 5% PT, you healed a point afterwards. It was even visible in the health bar, often showing both numbers. And, if you took a hit of 20 points at 20 health, you died before the heal could save you.

I haven't tested A19, but at least then it wasn't armor, I doubt they'd have changed it. Assuming they didn't, you should be able to squeeze an extra 2.5% from PT at the 90 AR cap.

For the suits and others, I have no idea; the fireman's helmet is light armor, right? That might make it a poor choice, depending on the implementation; getting from 89 to 90 AR is worth about 10% reduction, the 5% (assuming it's not straight up armor rating) is obviously worse.

The Firefighter's Helmet is heavy armor but it is iron instead of steel so it's 1-2 points less in max armor than steel.  I was thinking that those points less in armor would be fine since it added a 5% damage reduction but after looking at the numbers again I will be changing back to the steel helmet.  

 

[th3s0n1c]

About the firefighter helmet being a heavy armor equipment... I'm just here pondering... it might be worth using one under an agility tree build, right? I mean, sure you're not getting the benefits from the light armor perk, but it will give you more AR than a military helmet would, right? Plus the damage reduction.

I understand mixing up heavy and light armor is suboptimal, but it might be worth, right?

People are always talking about how light armor is too weak and the stamina/noise/weight doesnt make up for the low AR it gives.. So maybe running a light armor build (perk included) with the firefighter helmet + jacket & pants suit (book) and a bit of Pain Tolerance might make up for it and improving the survivability by a fair amount?

Post edit:

I dont know if this was ever brought up or not... but...

I've been running some tests and noticed something.. It seems the values for the military armor pieces are the same as the scrap armor (10 AR on all pieces - which is bull@%$#, if you ask me.. but thats another conversation) which would amount for a 50AR in total for both. But the military set is not really 10 per piece on the dot.. its more like 10.6 AR. So while a full scrap armor set will give you 50AR, the military set actually gets to 53AR. (These were calculated with standard average Q5 equipment.

Then I tried checking a (Standard) Q6 military set. They all have 11 AR a piece seemingly... (MAP = Military Armor Piece)

What I actually found was:

1 Q6 MAP = 11 armor

2 Q6 MAP = 22 armor

3 Q6 MAP = 34 armor

4 Q6 MAP = 45 armor

5 Q6 MAP = 57 armor

This makes the actual stats on the Q6 Military armor set = 11.4 AR per piece.

Now the really weird thing happens next:

So I've tried the build I had mentioned above, right? Firefighter helmet, and the rest as light armor set. Picture:

With this set, I have 54 AR (all Q5 equipment). Picture:



Then I decided to check my AR after switching some equipment for Q6 ones (because you know.. progression) I only kept the Firefighter Helmet as Q5 because you cant get/craft a Q6 one and decided to keep the military stealth boots over normal military boots. But here's what I've found after swaping them:



For some reason, after swaping 3 of my Q5 for Q6, instead of adding 3 points to my AR, it only added 2 AR points.

So I thought to myself: that cant be right... at first I thought it was a bug. But then I did some math and the thing is: the difference in AR from Q5 to Q6 is of 0.8 AR points per piece. 0.8 x 3 = 2.4. So it makes sense, MATHEMATICALLY, that I'd only get 2 extra AR points (2.4, to be more accurate) when swaping only 3 equipments from Q5 to Q6.

Now here's the problem:



The game fully states that I should be getting a full 1 AR point if I wear those gloves - but that's not what happens.

So I dont know what to think of that..  Is it wrong on game design to not mention that the AR points are not flat numbers while they totally make it seem like it is?

All I know is that this is bugging me. Please, halp.

 

[theFlu]

It's pretty simple.. the armor pieces have a random Armor Rating, like between 10-15. The actual value is a float, so it'll have decimals; while the UI only shows a rounded number.

The only way to figure out if you've rolled a 13.50 or a 14.49 is to equip armor pieces with the same UI numbers and see how the total changes.. not exactly great.

 

[Boidster]

Here for example is the damage resist range for the Military helmet:

<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="6.23,8.93"/>
<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="0,3.27" tier="1,6"/>


So the base AR is 6.23-8.93, plus 0-3.27 per quality tier.

If you use creative menu to pull armor (or any variable-stat item), I think you get the same value on every instance of a certain quality tier. Possibly it's an average, possibly just a single RNG check that never changes during that session; I've never tested it. If you want to see the full range of values (for up to Q5 items anyhow) you can set up some workstations and craft a bunch of them. For Q6 you'd have to either modify your XML to make them craftable, or drop a bunch of armory chests and open them all up hoping to get armor. You could edit XML in the latter case so that the armor loot group is the only group chosen when RNG-ing the chest loot.

 

[Kalen]

Here for example is the damage resist range for the Military helmet:

<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="6.23,8.93"/>
<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="0,3.27" tier="1,6"/>


So the base AR is 6.23-8.93, plus 0-3.27 per quality tier.

If you use creative menu to pull armor (or any variable-stat item), I think you get the same value on every instance of a certain quality tier. Possibly it's an average, possibly just a single RNG check that never changes during that session; I've never tested it. If you want to see the full range of values (for up to Q5 items anyhow) you can set up some workstations and craft a bunch of them. For Q6 you'd have to either modify your XML to make them craftable, or drop a bunch of armory chests and open them all up hoping to get armor. You could edit XML in the latter case so that the armor loot group is the only group chosen when RNG-ing the chest loot.

Yet another thing that annoys me.... if you're going to have fractional values then display them in the GUI.   But, better yet.... don't have fractional values. 

 

[th3s0n1c]

Yet another thing that annoys me.... if you're going to have fractional values then display them in the GUI.   But, better yet.... don't have fractional values. 

Precisely.

Here for example is the damage resist range for the Military helmet:

<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="6.23,8.93"/>
<passive_effect name="PhysicalDamageResist" operation="base_add" value="0,3.27" tier="1,6"/>


So the base AR is 6.23-8.93, plus 0-3.27 per quality tier.

If you use creative menu to pull armor (or any variable-stat item), I think you get the same value on every instance of a certain quality tier. Possibly it's an average, possibly just a single RNG check that never changes during that session; I've never tested it. If you want to see the full range of values (for up to Q5 items anyhow) you can set up some workstations and craft a bunch of them. For Q6 you'd have to either modify your XML to make them craftable, or drop a bunch of armory chests and open them all up hoping to get armor. You could edit XML in the latter case so that the armor loot group is the only group chosen when RNG-ing the chest loot.

The "problem" is not really that the numbers vary... it's that the GUI will display that using a Q6 over a Q5 will increase the AR, but when I do swap them, the number doesnt change. In that sense, if the fractional numbers arent shown and it doesnt round up as stated in the item comparison, the GUI is lying.

 

[theFlu]

It's not really "lying", just inaccurate. (Going with an example of "normal" rounding, the game may round differently)

If your gear has 53.6 armor from a full set, the UI will display that as 54.

Now if you look at two leg pieces, showing 10 and 11 AR on the comparison (and you're wearing one of them). Their actual values may be 10.4 and 10.5; the comparison will round them to 10 and 11.

Now if you swap the 10.4 to the 10.5, your total will rise to 53.7, which will still be displayed as 54. Note that in this case, the better armor could be 11.2 and the UI would still end up showing a 54.

The comparison only compares the specific armor pieces; the assumption that the character UI total armor number should change is just wrong; intuitive, sure, but wrong.

IMO it should just show the actual values on the UI, or alternatively change the actual armor value to the shown rounded value when generating the piece.