Yeah.. The main issue with armor in DaS2 is that it gives a flat damage reduction for physical defense, which means that its use is limited unless you stack lots of it, and even then it's limited. Elemental resists are different because they are a % based reduction which makes stacking them completely nutsy and trivializes a lot of shit fights, like the Ancient Dragon. I don't remember if DaS1 had a flat or % based reduction for physical defense but the scaling was far better and the enemies hits for less damage so the difference of no armor vs armor vs upgraded armor was very noticeable. A fully upgraded set of Black Iron was crazy.
I dunno man, in the base campaign I still see a big difference between a fully upgraded havel's set and no armor at all. Earlier enemies especially. Obviously a flat based reduction makes it so that as enemies do more damage it's less useful, but then a % based physical reduction was implemented with the steel ring. And if they had done it like elemental resistance, then it would be easy to exploit. As for PVP, armor still remains pretty darn useful.
Even with just basic armor stacking, it's not hard to get 1400 which is basically 100+ less damage per hit. This means that for many enemies that were weak, they're now trivial and that for bosses that were doing a quarter of your HP per hit they went from needing 4 hits to kill you to 6 hits to kill you. I imagine most people who are focusing on single player have around 2k-2.5k HP near the end. That reduction is a noticeable deal. Obviously you can stack less, but then that's the choice the player makes. Personally, I ran around in the bathrobe and surfer shorts (hollowed soldier leggings and retainer robe).
Well, technically you can have everything eventually, it just depends on how much effort you want to put into grinding. To be able to use very heavy armor and avoid fattest rolls and use big boy weapons or spells requires a lot of investments across the board, even if you use rings that increase equipment load. I'm not confusing DaS1 & 2 stats, I'm just saying that you need to invest in Equipment load at least a bit, depends on what you wanna wear. In DaS1 you can get away with less investments into Vitality than you can in DaS2 tho, if you are playing with the DLC. And I think raw HP is far more valuable than physical defense when it comes to the DLC areas in DaS2. I tend to wear heaviest armor because I like their looks (LGK armor is swag as fuck), but I found their physical defensive capabilities to be about as useful as they were in DeS.
You mentioned needing endurance for armor, that was my correction. Endurance only gives stamina and some very minor phys defense and poise in DS 2. 'Vitality' is the stat for equipment load.
Yes, DLC enemies do indeed hit harder. They also have greater resistance, poise, and some can't be backstabbed. That's just the nature of the system tho -- just cuz DLC enemies hit harder doesn't mean the armor works less, it still works fine in the base game and in PVP. The DLC enemies are made to be foils for popular player strategies, tho again (at the risk of sounding like a broken record), this is where the ring of steel protection comes in.
I also agree that having more HP is more important than having extra equip load for heavier armor, but that's also stylistic. I'm also one of those fags that will keep vit low to use flynns ring.
*snipped out stuff about BB, I didn't play it*
When I said armor is useless I meant that the physical defenses are useless. I never said that the elemental or status effects were. Physical defenses have limited usefulness in DaS2 during the base campaign with their usefulness being pretty much completely phased out in the DLC because of the ridonkulous damage everything does there. I think we both agree on this.
Sure, but I think we're going in circles at this point.
Baby throwing a hissy fit when he loses an argument over a video game that he's never played.
