Am I missing something? armors

[nukularpower]

So, I have played this game a lot. I haven't beaten it yet, but I have gotten pretty far. And yet, I haven't found a SINGLE heavy armor that has more armor than one of the many artifact robes. For example, there is a Reaver artifact, Blood-soaked Mail, or some such. It has 4 armor, 2 defense. In contrast, the artifact robes like the Spider Skin of Spyder, Robe of Force, and so on typically run around 10 armor/10 defense, if not more than that. So, what is up with these mega-armor robes? Isn't that a bit off-theme? Where are all the good heavy armors? My tank characters almost always end up in a robe...

[Frumple]

Robe of Force and Spydre robe are kinda' anomalies

There's plenty of high armor/defense set art heavy and massive armors, they just tend to be a bit later game than force/spydre -- borfast's cage (10/15 def/armor) is one of the ones I've been running into early-ish nowadays. Thronesman, plate of the kings, and (naturally) crystal heart improved voratun plate or mail also get up there. Th'heavy armor you're talking about (Iron Mail of Bloodletting) is a berserker armor more than a reaver one, by th'by Which is why it's not got a very high armor/defense, though the resistances are pretty solid and the bloodthirst mastery boost is delightful, as is the healmod and regen. The bloodcasting bit just got added fairly recently, as versions go.

Also, armor training does precisely nothing if you're wearing robes (well, besides qualify for stuff; metal boots, shields, whatever.). It's one of the reasons some of the set art cloth (and leather, incidentally) stuff gets a bit of a high base armor rating; even the iron mail of bloodletting can get you more armor on the net than pretty much any robe with a little bit of armor training investment.

[SageAcrin]

You don't gain armor hardiness from wearing a robe from the standard Armor Training skill, nor do you get the Armor bonus from it. So this means that, in general, characters that invest at all into Armor Training end up ahead very rapidly, since the light armors won't be boosted for them.

There's a much rarer skill that boosts your armor hardiness and Defense(not Armor) while wearing light armor, but most characters require extra investment to get it if they can at all.

The way armor works, you block up to your Armor Hardiness' % of an attack, or reduce it by your armor, one. Armor Hardiness is very hard to get outside of skills, so it's a very important stat.

For an example: If you have 50 armor and 30% armor hardiness, and an enemy deals 10 damage, you will block 3 damage(30% of the attack), but if an enemy hit for 200, you'd block the full 50(since that's less than 30% of the attack). So, you'd obviously want a lot of Hardiness, so you can block more of an attack.

(Spydre of course is a perfectly valid exception, thanks to its high Armor Hardiness, but it's a midgame armor that still doesn't outclass lategame heavy armors.)

[nukularpower]

Hmm, I forgot that the armor talent doesn't boost robes. Nevertheless, seeing them with such high armor values is a bit offputting.

[bricks]

The Iron Mail of Bloodletting has always been a crappy artifact. I guess it's good for berserkers but I think a berserker could wear banana peels as armor and still do OK. Otherwise, it's just not very interesting. Bloodcasting is a situational effect at best; if you're running out of Vim often enough that you want to routinely dip into your own health, you are probably playing reaver wrong. Perhaps the activation should be something more like Blood Boil or Blood Grasp. Both have awesome utility for any class.

[SageAcrin]

I quite like Bloodletting for earlygame armored mages as well as the target audience-it has relatively good resists and a lot of healmod for its point in the game.

Not that I'm per se against it losing Bloodcasting, though. That really does do nearly nothing in practice. I'm inclined to say Blood Spray works the best on it, though, since Blood Grasp is already on at least one other Artifact off the top of my head, and Blood Boil tends to be iffy at lower levels(low radius). Spray at L2 or 3 is pretty useful still, though. Big area effect spell on mail is kinda oddball and neat.

[Grey]

Perhaps we need to suggest new early/mid game heavy armours for the game?

[King Gainer]

Perhaps we need to suggest new early/mid game heavy armours for the game?

I think we could use some.

[Hunter]

The Iron Mail of Bloodletting has always been a crappy artifact. I guess it's good for berserkers but I think a berserker could wear banana peels as armor and still do OK. Otherwise, it's just not very interesting. Bloodcasting is a situational effect at best; if you're running out of Vim often enough that you want to routinely dip into your own health, you are probably playing reaver wrong. Perhaps the activation should be something more like Blood Boil or Blood Grasp. Both have awesome utility for any class.

I'm a little befuddled by the Iron Mail of Bloodletting. As an artifact, it is...serviceable for melee characters. But the talent mastery it grants -- Bloodthirst, a warrior tree that, afaik, can't be acquired in-game from other sources like escorts -- isn't really in keeping with the activation, Bloodcasting, which is only useful for classes that cast corruption spells (Reavers and Corrupters.) Thematically, I'm not sure how that fits together other than both having the word "Blood" in their names. Wouldn't it make more sense for the Iron Mail to be a Reaver/Corrupter artifact or a Berserker/Bulwark artifact rather than an underwhelming combination of the two?

[bricks]

It originally didn't have any defiler ties at all. It was really, really bad.

[Frumple]

It originally didn't have any defiler ties at all. It was really, really bad.

So bad one of my 'zerker winners took down the last fight wearing it

Though I think it was a non-vault character. Hrm. And it was one of the older style bloodbaths, which were considerably stronger. Even after the whole healing thing was fixed. Which... makes a difference

Still, like I said earlier in this thread. Nice-ish resists, good healmod, bloodthirst mastery. For a bloodbath 'zerker, it's fairly solid, and it's still heavy armor so you can get the boost from armor training and get some extra armor from other kit. It's far from impossible to find something better, but it's still, actually, pretty good armor for certain builds (specifically anything that benefits notably from healmod stacking, hint hint.).