It's not the same, though.
I disagree. It is effectively the same because it's still a dice roll. An enemy has 45% PA left and you use Knockdown (assuming you won't do enough damage to clear the armor). Can you say, with certainty whether the skill will land or not? The answer is no.
That is true, but remember, since such situations will happen many hundred times throughout the game, the law of statistics will, over time, result in expected values.
[quote=Cavemandiary]There is no effective difference between a skill with a 45% chance to land a status in a system with no status-blocking armor, and a skill with 100% chance to hit in a system where an enemy with 55% armor left has a 45% chance of being hit with the status. Either way, it comes down to a virtual dice roll.
Right, but the point is that the player has partial control over the armor system with the original suggestion implemented.
So, while it is true that in situations where the enemy brings you down from 100% PA to 45% PA in 1 hit is effectively the same (I never claimed that my suggestion ubiquitously superior btw), next round you have the option to cast fortify and heart of steel. The enemy that does a follow up is only able to bring you down to 80% physical armor, reducing the risk of getting CC'ed from your direct actions. Sure, it still sucks when those 20% kicks in, but over time you will get expected values.
But perhaps the issue at hand is save-scumming when those (un)lucky CC's occur. If a player is incentivized to reload every time an important CC misses or hits, then perhaps the effect of hard CC's that cause you to skip a turn or lose control of a characters actions (this is especially true for Lone Wolf players) such as knock down, frozen, chicken, terrified etc are just simply too powerful. (regardless of whatever armor system is in place)
Perhaps fitting soft-cc substitutes should be implemented, so that when those 20% DO occur, the players reaction is "darn you!" instead of "Fuck-this-shit-F8"...
Of course, that final idea is so extensive that it would require it's own thread perhaps, since it would require global rebalancing of items, skills and enemies, but nonetheless an idea worthy of consideration...
I would note though, that DOS:2 has way more skills that allow you to counter hard CC's compared to DOS:EE (as far as I remember, correct me if I'm wrong), and since hard CC is to detrimental, I've equipped both my Lone Wolf companions with Fortify, Armor of frost, Chameleon Cloak, Soul Mate, Peace of Mind and First Aid. Probably a bit excessive, but you know...
