idea: consolidate heavy and massive armour talents

[tiger_eye]

I don't think it makes much sense to have separate heavy and massive armour talents. A fighter (or any class, really) that is currently wearing heavy armour is usually very cautious to invest more than one point in "Heavy Armour Training", because they might find better massive armour that would render the extra talent points wasted. So, I suggest to just use one talent--call it "Armour Training"--that allows wearing the following armour at the following raw talent levels (and each level should have a greater strength prerequisite):

1 - Heavy boots, helmets, and gauntlets
2 - Heavy armour and shields
3 - Massive boots, helmets, and gauntlets
4 - Massive armour and shields

Also, I do think reducing the chance to get critically hit (and maybe even reducing critical damage when hit) is a very useful effect for this talent, because those are the hits that can unexpectedly kill a character. Currently, "Heavy Armour Training" increases armour by 1.4 per talent level and decreases critical hit chance by 1.9% per talent level. "Massive Armour Training" is 1.6 and 1.5%, respectively. Do you think this is enough? How do you think a consolidated "Armour Training" talent should behave?

[Grey]

There are no "massive" boots/gauntlets/helms/shields, only main body suits, making the ultra-heavy talent extra redundant. I agree that there should simply be a heavy armour talent, with massive allowed at talent level 2 (any higher and it's impossible to wear massive armour early in the game).

I'd personally say the crit defence should be much higher - about 3% per talent level.

[Final Master]

If the armor talents were to merge [and the crit difference I think is the main reason why they haven't been yet] - I would say that your allowance hierarchy is fine - and would say add a 10% bonus to armor and a 1.8% crit null chance/tlvl - if they are to remain at 5 points.

The only thing though - remove that shields portion as no shield has a talent requirement. Now, unless we get something like Tower shields or what not ['ello there Titanic] then perhaps, but I find it doubtful.

Anyway, that's my thought on it for now.

Ninja-ed - Grey, there is a Massive Helmet actually, I think it's the Dragon Helm. That just means we need more axillary massive armors really.

[faustgeist]

I also agree the Heavy and massive should be merged. A shield tree could and should be opened up.

~R

[Grey]

A shield tree would affect very few classes.

[edge2054]

Merging them sounds like a nice idea.

As to the crit reduction I think it's fine where it's at. I did a bit of testing when it was first introduced and *most* creatures have very very low crit chances. The amount you get from these talents is enough to push crits off the board in most cases. The exceptions of course are weapon using creatures (especially now with egos being more abundant) and stuff that's specifically built to crit.

[madmonk]

If you are going to consolidate the two talents would you create a new talent to go in Massive armour's place or just do the consolidation and leave it at that?

[faustgeist]

True, potentially:

Fighter
Arcane Blade
Wyrmic
Sun Paladin
Cursed
+?

Finding so many shields, I thought it might deserve some attention

Cheers,
~R

A shield tree would affect very few classes.

[Hedrachi]

There are no "massive" boots/gauntlets/helms/shields, only main body suits, making the ultra-heavy talent extra redundant. I agree that there should simply be a heavy armour talent, with massive allowed at talent level 2 (any higher and it's impossible to wear massive armour early in the game).

Not quite true. There's one (and only one) massive artifact helm. I got it once a few betas back, on a ghoul berserker.

But in the spirit of this discussion, yeah. Probably should consolidate armour talents, no real reason to put points in heavy if you're going massive beyond the one you need to unlock massive.

[Grey]

True, potentially:

Fighter
Arcane Blade
Wyrmic
Sun Paladin
Cursed
+?

Finding so many shields, I thought it might deserve some attention :)

Strip out Arcane Blade and Cursed - there's zero reason for them to use shields, and plenty of reasons for them not to. The only classes that use shields are the 3 that have the shields talent trees, which is far more important than the heavy armour skill for shield usage.

[Nagyhal]

Your talent that grants gradual armour access is a good idea.

It might be nice to keep two separate armour skills after the merge, to allow for still a little bit of differentiation in builds.

For example:

Armour Training-
Improves both heavy and massive armour as usual.

Armour Mastery-
Reduces fatigue cost by a proportion of total body armour value (so massive armour wearers benefit the most). You'd go into this point by point as you started to wear more "massive" pieces of armour.

Of course, fatigue reduction by itself wouldn't be very good. Maybe the effect of fatigue should be looked at. It's quite possible to imagine an "Exhaustion" mechanic, at least for stamina users...

I should stop here.

[lukep]

To go a bit off topic, make fatigue affect global speed? Perhaps at the rate 3 fatigue = 1% speed reduction? This would make it have a much greater game-play effect for all classes.