F it good luck
Armour definitely took a hit with the latest patch, but so did most other defenses.
The latest patch really did go into the direction, of players needing to specialize into one defense, to really make it impactfull.
IMO the only thing that needs to be buffed slightly is the penalty for non-physical damage reduction.
Make the penalty 25% less and not 50% less.
Other than that, if you specialize into armour, itâs still pretty good.
PS: May i suggest you post your threads in written text and not copying a image from discord? I saw you did this with this and your other Belt, Glove and Boot Affix Thread aswell.
It makes this thread very bad in terms of visiblity through searching.
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It is a damage reduction stat, itâs just (sadly) less effective against non-physical damage. Itâs effectively free DR since every class & build gets some armour. Iâd certainly agree that itâs in a worse place this patch than before they nerfed it.
Theyâre also trying to have some different methods of scaling the DR rather than resistâs 2 affixes = cap, dodgeâs RNG-based DR & wardâs decay. But changing all resist & armour to a single stat would be a complete snoozefest (nothwithstanding the balance changes that would need to be done to make sure every player wasnât suddenly significantly tankier).
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When I started playing LE I found it a bit odd that armor works against all damage types. It reminded me of an old joke.
âThere stood the ironclad warrior, in the heavy storm and rain, on top of the hill. He raised his sword to the heavens and yelled: âAll gods are bastards!ââ
The pun being that metal conducts so well. Thereâs also the Heat Metal spell in DND, which brings a downside to wearing heavy metal armor. The heavier, the harder it is to take off. Some armors are so heavy, equipping it requires the help of others. Not to mention the trouble to get on a mount.
And often the weight of heavy armor comes at a cost of mobility, resulting in less agility and chance to dodge. The balance in this has heavily influenced how armors were designed in the medieval. Along with the cost, of course.
Thereâs already some emphasis on pros and cons in the implicits of armor types. Iâm hoping the future will bring us even more of this emphasis. Mages rely on their spell shields, rogues have their dodge and glancing blows, primalists have a bigger life soak-pool and the paladins walk around in enough plate to construct a small building (Wizardry fans may recognize). The strength/weakness balance in this is important to me.
As a mage I would first take care of whatever can dispel or circumvent my shields, as rogue Iâd be very careful with highly accurate opponents, and so on. It would make a difference to how every class takes on a group of enemies.
I also would not mind having to save up gear sets for different types of battles or areas that are heavy on a certain type of damage (as I have a bit, already - the design of the monolith areas is well in line with this thought).
And the more fun it is (for me) to go off-meta and make silly stuff work (like my rogue with a 2H mace wearing Titanâs Heart)
Not easy to make happen, because in the ARPG scene battles are fast and diverse. But the faster and more generic the stats - the more an ARPG starts to feel like a better-go-fast-spamfest. And at the same time devs canât push people too hard in class specifics because it will feel like the whole path is predetermined.
Itâs a tacky and challenging balance to design. I guess my 2ct. here is that Iâm for diversifying the DR and that armor imo gives a whole lot of the good stuff. (Iâm not comparing it with its previous value from last patch, I wasnât here back then).
Cheers
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Or just pick either âArmourâ or âPhysical resâ⌠Pick one stat and ditch the other.
Tbh, I hate both of these stats, as much as I hate Stun chance.
I donât like the reduction in effectiveness for non-physical damage. I get what they are trying to do. Armor shouldnât protect against spell hits well at all, but it should protect against all melee/ranged hits. Maybe instead it should be;
âReduces damage taken from all hits, but not damage over time. Armour is only a quarter as effective against âspellâ hitsâ
The 25% absorbed spell hit damage is basically just to represent the armour taking some of the impact damage of the spell, but not the magical damage itself.
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I think the armor should completely replace the physical resistance.
â Thus, it would be clearest that heavily armored characters such as a paladin can withstand much more purely physical damage (i.e. non-magical damage) than mages in their cloth shirts.
In return, the armor should not be able to withstand any more magic hits.
(However, there might be unique items that say something completely different).
For spell hits there are still resistances (which still work for damage over time).
EDIT: Maybe Armor need to be effective against bleeding then.
Yea, and with the introduction of Endurance to cover the âtoughnessâ aspect of taking less damage.
I donât know though. As is, armour is just something that is okay to have incidentally. Resists and Endurance are much better to spec into because they work against both hits and dots. The classes that WOULD build armour just happen to be the classes with best access to Endurance. 
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Hereâs a visual history of Armour over the last few patches â for those that may not have experienced them. Hopefully this will give people a better understanding of what Armour used to be in the game, and where it stands now so as to promote better discussion about it.
If you never played the game prior to patch 0.7.10, Armour used to be Physical Protection (which was basically physical resistance). The Protections system was swapped for a more standard Resistances-based system which brought in the Physical Resistance stat to replace Armour, and Armour was changed into its own defensive mechanic.
Since patch 0.7.10 Armour has certainly taken some hits. The endurance-like mechanic was stripped from it and expanded upon to form the Endurance defensive mechanic we have now. Armour also became half as effective against non-physical damage at the same time, though it did have its maximum mitigation potential increased.
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On the build planner I canât get over 83% armor mitigation on level 100 (without the stacking Battle Hardened). I even toggled on max rolls. I tried to take every item with the most armor possible. All armor nodes I could take. All possible strength I could get.
I was just curious if I could get there. Probably easy to get over that cap with Battle Hardened.
Which is exactly why it should be changed again
I think damage stats should just be separated by type physical non-physical and dot. you should have a damage reduction for each type that rolls up and frankly endurance kind of complicates things significantly. I know what theyâre trying to do theyâre trying to prevent one shots but itâs just gotten really confusing even coming from something that only had 4 resistances going to void poison necro Jesus it is way too complicated and needs to be simplified to three and a total damage reduction against each type and we got to somehow do something with both armor and resistances itâs just not in a good place Iâm afraid
Thatâs how it used to work before they changed from protections to resists but it was a bit odd that physical resistance had a different name since it implied it worked differently. It also meant that armour reduced the damage taken from bleed which didnât make sense at all.
But you get that from the values on their armour. A cloth shirt has a lower armour value than plate mail.
The Primalist is the only class that has access to endurance and they have better access to dodge than armour.
That would be so boring though, just imagine the Mage skills:
Lightning Blast - does non-physical damage, can be converted to non-physical damage with non-physical ailment (freeze) rate
Fireball - does non-physical damage
Ele Nova - does non-physical damage, non-physical damage & non-physical damage, has nodes to select only to non-physical damage.
Mana Strike - does non-physical damage
Disintegrate - does non-physical damage, can be converted to fully non-physical damage or non-physical damage
Glacier - does non-physical damage
Volcanic Orb - does non-physical damage, can be converted to non-physical damage with non-physical ailment (freeze) rate
And thatâs just the base class skills but Iâm bored nowâŚ
Iâm not suer which game that was, D1 had 3 resists (magic, fire, lightning) but I think the majority of aRPGs since have had more than 3.
Maybe not for a phone game, no, but itâs not that.
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I do appreciate different damage types as long as each type brings something specific. Ignite, chill/freeze and shock are nice related diversifiers. Void and necrotic seem to be just there now. Maybe void could be harder to build resistances against and necrotic could perhaps have an in built stat drain effect? Maybe reduced mana regenerationâŚpaired with lower base damage.
Poison with the automatic shredding is nice and specific. Some armor or accessories could have reduced poison duration.
Physical resistance surprised me when I started because it seems (to me) like thereâs so much overlap with armor. Both are primarily effective versus ⌠well, physical.
I appreciate some complexity in the building of defenses as long as all damage types make me think about specific dangers. Some dangers would be bigger than others further depending on my class. For example, if I have high health regeneration, I could live with some ignite, but not with necrotic. If I would have reduced DoT-duration and would not depend on mana, necrotic wouldnât be as bad for me.
Just throwing some random ideas that I didnât think through much. My point is if the damage types do not bring anything specific, theyâre not as interesting. And if there are too many generic DRs it becomes ⌠boring.
On the other hand, more complexity kind of calls for more affixes on items and more diverse ones. And I think LE doesnât want to compete in complexity over QoL. Perhaps the complexity could manifest more in the end-end game. The older Blizzard mentioned this wonderful mantra: Easy to learn, hard to master. For LE this could be near and on level 100, where the gloves are taken off and just achievements remain (because if thereâs too much unique content in that range, players will consider it part of he norm).
I wonder what 11th has in store for us - throughout patches it is obvious they continuously evaluate :).
PS. just throwing some things out there freely - not any gripe of any kind.
While you are technically correct based only on nodes on the skill tress, I specifically build resists and endurance on both Primalist and Sentinel. Sentinel seems to have more nodes that cover resists so I have room for all the endurance on the gear.
Dodge is too spikey and because of that I have never actually used it.
Try: Anchor of Oblivion - Unique Lost Anchor - Relic - Last Epoch Item Database (as Sentinel)
Why doesnât that make sense?
I agree with youâŚ
I would even like to see simple (single?) immunities (like in Diablo 2) against individual damage classes/types (could be great for MP). But it doesnât necessarily have to be. 
Yeah, I should have clarified that I was referring to the passive tree.
From my point of view armour would protect against the initial hit (that makes the hole in your body that then starts bleeding) but once that hole has been made itâs not going to reduce the bloodflow.
I disagree with immunities as the game/âmetaâ is at the moment since itâs more efficient to build for a single damage element. Adding an immunity would force people to build characters differently because theyâd need to focus on two or more damage elements in a single build & Iâm not entirely sure how I feel about that. 'Cause change is bad.
Wouldnât that prevent or partially disable some of the incredible damage spikes?
â Which would then be better for the game in general than 10,000,000 damage hits.
In addition, this would be a whole new complexity, which would have to be complied with.
â If everyone tries to build at least 2 damage types (because max 1 immunity per opponent can occur) halfway usable, the general âbuild diversityâ increases, I guess strongly.
But as I said, do not have to here at all, is just a suggestion. (could be tested)
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Sorry, I read your post as suggesting immunities for mobs, not immunities for the player. Now Iâm even less sure what I think about the player being able to get an immunity to a single damage element. Maybe if the damage from mobs was reasonably evenly spread over the 7 elements.
Yes, that was intended, single immunities for them, NOT for us. (we donât need it if we play correctly i think ).