Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why armor is a failure and how to fix it

It is pretty simple:


Mass Effect.


Yeah, they actually did this "armor" thing right (they had still some flaws but overall is better than what we have here).

1-You have to deal with 3 health bars: That is the main problem of the tedious chore this game becomes in Tactician.

If you have 2 magic damage dealers and 2 physical damage dealers it is terrible. It is way better for your whole group to just do either magic or physical damage but not both, that way you only have to deal with 2 health bars instead of 3.

SOLUTION:
All skill damages both magic armor and physical armor BUT magical damage does bonus damage to magic armor while physical damage does bonus damage to physical armor.

Now, either you have to deplete first Magic armor and then Physical armor like you needed to in Mass Effect (firs shield/barriers then armor then health) or you make it so health damage is only taken when both armors are depleted no matter the order.


2-Status effects and CC: This is another big one... so in ME they handled this kinda poorly because they basically made adepts kinda useless but CC still had some sort of effect when enemies had shields or armor on them.

SOLUTION:
So what you could do is what someone else suggested, the amount of armor a character has it is directly how much they will resist any kind of CC.

If they have 100% of their physical armor they will resist 100% any kind of physical CC same with magic armor, the more they lose this armor the more likely they become suceptible to CC effects from abilities.

About status effects i think they are ok to be only applied when the proper armor is depleted, like burning will only apply if there is no magic armor or bleeding will not happen if there is still physical armor.

I think this will balance the game and stop making it a chore in Tactician or in general because seriously this whole armor thing while it could be a neat thing if done right it is a bore in it's current state.

Changing armor in anyway will be only problematic.
This is main concept of battle in Divinity OS 2, first you have to drop armor, then perma CC your enemies. This stops enemy from CCing you in first turn and you from stoping enemies for taking any action.
In my opinion this armor system is great and I wouldn't like any change to it, as I get use to how it works.

If you got problems on Tactician, it's good. Isn't that why you picked tactician mode to be more challenging?

The whole ldea of armor was to get rid of chance CC from first game, where you were savescumming to counter or apply CC rolls.

This helps with is massively and introducing partial armor partial CC chance would ruin that.

One thing is that maybe it could be just "armor" and not split to types, but generally I'm ok with this system especially because different NPC types have different armor weighs, like little magic and ton physical like many fighter types or reverse for mages.

We are playing Tactician coop and we love the armor system.

I think it's a great addition to the game and makes fights more tactical and challenging.

Wouldn't change a thing!


Edit: Btw if you don't like the armor system, there are mods out there that change the way it works.

jesus fing christ...

Yeah and now you save scum to get every fight to play perfect since CC is garbage and everything must play in an exact way or the enemies end up murdering you because they have retarded amounts of armor.

That or you cheese the AI with any of the non fun stupidly broken cheesy BS everyone does.

SO FUCKING FUN!

hahahahahahahahahahaha



Oh we have one of those people that can't see pass their prejudices, i don't give a damn of what you think about Mass Effect, the fact is the armor system is a rip-off of a ME system and not even a good rip-off, it is a half assed one.

Amount of savescumming done in this game is significantly lower than in first game, simply because RNG CC is mostly removed thanks to armor.

I have no idea what you are raging about, it's a lot better than what it was where it was a constant RNG rollercoaster.

I dont really like this armor system, not because it is harder or less challenging, but because is binary.
Armor -> 0% cc, no armor -> 100% cc.
There's no cc mitigation, and for this reason there are far fewer interesting (defensive) skill and traits. Furthermore, the entire game feels too binary, not only for the armor system. The stat choiche is basically straightforward, and almost the same for traits.
Maybe it's balanced, and challenging, but feels, to me, too "simple", without the (sometimes unbalanced) complex of a classic rpg.

How about instead of fully split armors, each armor takes a percent damage based on whatever the armor was hit took.

For example, say an enemy has 100 physical armor, 200 magical armor, and you do 50 physical damage. You hit the Physical armor for 50% of its maximum, so the Magic armor ALSO takes 50% of its maximum, or 100 damage.

In this system no damage is ever fully wasted. Throwing some Magic damage in with your Physical will deplete the physical armor faster. Additionally, hitting the weaker of the two armors is still preferred because it will clear the larger armor quicker. When either armor is broken, both are.

Think about it as both armors coming from the same thing. It doesn't matter if you use a lightning bolt or a warhammer to break a shield, once that shield's broken it isn't going to block either one, and if it doesn't break the lightning bolt is going to weaken it for the warhammer to finish.

This might require a bit of a revamp on armor restoring/buffing abilities as well as an overall increase to all armor numbers to balance it out.

I play with friend on tactician.
We have not problems. Really not problems - game is so easy. I install mod for more difficulty. Act 5.

But armor system - stupid. With this system impossible to play physic+mage.
Need really rework it.
The best way, i think - add armor+magicarmor amounts to HP, and make skills damage through armors types, damaging both of hp and armor.
It will be the best system.

Your solution would only make things more convoluted. Phys gets a bonus against phys armor and does less to magic armor? So you're telling me that my mace is more effective against that guy stacking plate than the one in robes? No, the problem with armor isn't that it failed to accomplish what it was trying to do, it's that it accomplished way more than what it should of done.

The point of armor was to prevent hard CC being king. The way they fixed it however does two things that don't make a whole lot of sense.

1. The armor system replaced the old one in it's entirety: The shield armor system makes sense when you talk about it from the standpoint of removing CC, but when you start applying it to all attacks at the expense of the old system, it feels one dimensional and boring. Having the shields be reduced exclusively by attacks with hard CC effects in combination with the old system from D1 OS would make much more sense. As of now you save your knockdowns for after you standard attack the enemy's armor off, leading to a hilarious amount of back to back stuns. Having to actually use multiple knockdown skills before you could get one would better balance the amount of effort needed to obtain the powerful effect of skipping an enemy's entire turn. It wouldn't even be hard to do, just keep D1 os's system and just make the willpower and bodybuilding skills grant the CC armors, which would only be reduced by the means stated above.

2. Non turn skipping effects are also blocked by armor: Many effects in divinity are very interesting to use and can provide interesting ways to fight a battle. They are rarely, if ever used. An ability that makes the enemy bleed fire or unable to move sounds nice, but it's decision between those skills and skills that simply skip the enemies turn in it's entirety. Because the armor system blocks these attacks evenly, the lesser effects see little use. I find it strange that the armor applies to them in this way, as I don't really recall anyone saying that shackles of pain or burn DOTs were overpowered in Divinity 1 OS. Just let these abilities go through armors, them being actually useful would add immeasurably to the variety of the game.

Overall, the idea of these armors is a good one, it was just applied with way to broad of a brush and needs to be tightened in scope. As of now it suffocates many other systems in it's current bloated form.

I haven't got much to contribute about the OP's idea, but...



So you have a weapon which deals fifty (50) damage, and you are attacking an enemy which has one hundred (100) Physical Armor, and two hundred (200) Magical armor, and your attack with your 50 damage weapon deals a total of one hundred and fifty (150) damage. ... Ummm... that's not how math works.

There is no skill or weapon in the game which deals 50% of the target's armor in damage. It's nonsensical.

Try explaining your idea again without using percentage-based numbers which don't apply.




This idea does seem better than the one in the OP. I have increasingly started to use my hard CC skills to damage armor faster because by the time I get it off, the cooldowns are almost refreshed.

Nonsense, I play mixed team on Tactician just fine.

Yeah, saying that it's impossible is nonsense, but it's still much, much easier if you actually go for a fully physical or fully magical team, and go primarily for damage rather than CC.

Mixed teams absolutely suffer due to the armor system, because it's simply easier to prioritize taking down a single form of armor, rather than splitting your effort.

Similarly, CC suffers because the armor system is there at all and because CC usually has long cooldowns and short durations. You're better off going for straight-up pure damage, rarely or never using CC.

It's a boring way to play, but try it and you'll see it's true. The game rewards you for massive over-specialization as a group, rather than going for an asymmetric multi-pronged or mixed assault.

That is yes, can't help but feel that pure physical or pure magic is the answer (and in this case physical seems to be better).

I think some encouragement for mixed parties needs to be introduced. They do have it a bit with some enemies have hysterical one type of armor while close to nothing of the other, but maybe more is needed.

How can one of the most fun combat systems i have played went to one of the worst... this is why you shouldn't "fix" what doesn't need to be fixed.

The mediocrity of other games does not mean DoS II can't be better.

What?