Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Reworking Armor Idea (Lets keep it simple!)

So while it seems that alot of people have issues with the current armor system, I'd like to chip in my 2 cents and how logistically speaking, it should be done to complement the current game mechanics available.

Firstly, here's a few ideas that are bad

1) anything that gives cc a chance to bypass armor. This is what made cc a pain in the ass in the first game. body building/willpower could become meaningless if you roll snake eyes on the saving throw (you could have 4 in both and still get cc'd because of this). Lets not ask for rng bullshit to dictate how game mechanics should work. Lets instead give players a way to control when and how cc is applied.

2)hybrid damage. There is little reason why a physical attack should do magic damage and vice versa. Besides, calculating an additional formula over base damage and crit multiplier will only make things more confusing.

Here are some good ideas (followed by an explanation why)

1) 1 armor type. The biggest gripe with 2 different armor types is it discourages characters that do both physical and magic damage as it is inefficient to spread your damage in such a way (basically, your giving your opponent more effective health). With this one might ask "What about the armor your equipment gives? How will mages armor be any different that a warriors armor aside from overall quality and amount of armor given?" Here's the next idea that ties into this one:

2) armor scaling with primary attribute. Now before anyone says this is a bad idea, a similar idea was already done in the beta and wasn't changed until final release so not only was this a viable option that can be balanced accordingly but this was already done by the team themselves. Basically armor scales with intelingence/finesse/strength based on who the armor was meant for. This also solves the fundimental issue of having to replace you armor every 2 levels due to the power creep of leveling up as your armor becomes a little more effective every level, but not enough to where you keep the same armor thoughout the whole game.

3) make defense skills stronger but cap effectiveness at certain amount. The biggest issue with armor is the game incentivizes aggressive play over defensive play. basically the faster you remove your opponents, the more likely you will win, the more you invest in offensive skills to do this faster than your opponent,etc. Players already have plenty of ways to chain together massive combos to obliterate enemy teams so there's little incentive to invest in defense when that is the easiest win condition. anything to slow down combat would help prioritize survivability and thus give defensive skills the opportunity to be on par with offensive skills. This, however, is not easy to execute and would require extensive balance changes to apply to the game. That leads me to the final suggestion:

4) Increase vitality for everyone. This is great for a whole number of reasons besides encouraging more defensive play. First off, potions are more important as not only the buff duration will be more relevant, but healing will actually matter without having to affect armor. This also means you cannot chain cc someone to death and have to consider how you must keep your party alive as well. Finally, this makes physical and magic damage more effective as there is a greater pool of total health (both armor and vitality) that can be affected by both. If worst comes to worst and no other solution works, this along with reducing armor values is a surefire way to give hybrid damage more effectiveness and thus encourage more varied team compositions.

All of these solutions have 2 big benefits. First one being that there is no rng to determine the outcome of your cc and second being that no new mechanics are being introduced to the game (and no, armor scaling is not a new mechanic, it is something the player doesn't even have to be aware of and can still be effective).

Honestly I think the real issue is simply how players can snowball into ridiculousness damage-wise thanks to numerous scaling factors

We literally start being walking nuclear warheads at level 15+ already and it becomes progressively more ridiculous there with physical damage simply outscaling alternatives to the point where you can pretty much decide a fight at first turn, before NPCs even have chance to play their game.

That needs to be tamed, because that is the issue. A lot of stuff that could make magic and less direct approach (which are also usually more interesting things there) simply goes out of the window because in time it takes to set it up, you can already obliterate everything with basic attacks and physical attack abilities.

I really hope Larian will figure something out and fix the curve, because this is similar to first game, we ended up in the same situation where at the beginning you fight tooth and nail for your dear life and by the end you are steamrolling pretty much everything in a matter of turn or two

1 armor type is good, but having enemies that are strong vs one type and weak to another is a good thing that I think the new systems should maintain in some way.

Instead of rolling all armor into one type, they could instead have damage strip both armors based on the ratio of armors. If something has 100 phys, 300 magic armor and takes 50 physical damage, that damage would strip 50 physical and 150 magical armor. 60 Magic damage would strip 60 magic armor and only 20 physical armor, because the enemy is strong against magic (three times stronger, so they take 1/3rd of the damage to armor).

This is functionally identical to having a single 100-armor pool for both types, but with a weakness/resistance modifier making the character three times as strong against magic because he has three times the magic armor. The end result is that you would still rather use magic damage against magic-weak foes, but any magic damage you contribute to a phys-weak foe still helps take down their armor pool.

The logic of this is that all armor comes from the same source. It doesn't matter if you are using fireballs or swords, you are going to be damaging that breastplate either way. Once the armor piece is broken it won't be protecting you from either kind of attack. The only difference is that it might be harder to damage it with a sword than with fire.

Also, non-CC debuffs really should ignore armor. Things like Burning, Disease, and even Shackles of Pain need to be easier to land than hard-CC no matter the system. Once you can perma-CC an enemy it no longer really matters how quickly you can damage them or how much damage they can do, so these abilities need to come before that point.