Difference between revisions of "Armor"

Latest revision as of 01:45, 11 July 2018

In Diablo III, "Armor" has two meanings.

It's a common term used to refer to any sort of equipment other than a weapon or shield.
It's a specific statistic that means what "defense" does in most ARPGs. Higher Armor means that characters take less damage from all attacks, through the damage mitigation effect.

Armor's Function in Diablo 3[edit | edit source]

The armor stat works much like a resistance in Diablo 3. Higher Armor means that more of the damage from attacks is absorbed or mitigated. This is not how armor (defense) worked in Diablo 2; in that game higher armor worked against monster to/hit and made it less likely that they would strike your character with an attack. This design choice forced the developers to make monsters hit for very high damage since they so seldom connected, which lead to a boom or bust sort of combat.

Diablo 3 uses the resistance-like form of Armor to create a steady flow of damage that players can learn to mitigate with more Armor, higher hit points, blocking, life regeneration, life on hit/life leech, or other options.

Armor Damage Mitigation[edit | edit source]

Armor tooltip shows damage reduction.

Every piece of armor (equipment) has an Armor value in Diablo III. These add up with Strength and may be modified by various skills and passives to arrive at a total Armor value which grants a substantial damage reduction. This figure is a key source of damage mitigation in Diablo 3 and has a major effect on a character's survival ability.

Higher Armor values make a clear difference in the damage taken. Some stats, all for a level 60 character vs. level 60 monsters:

1987 Armor = 39.84% Damage Reduction
3059 Armor = 50.49% Damage Reduction
4024 Armor = 57.29% Damage Reduction
4512 Armor = 60.06% Damage Reduction
4963 Armor = 62.33% Damage Reduction
5499 Armor = 64.70% Damage Reduction

As with resistances (which function very similarly) there are diminishing returns on the benefit from higher amounts of Armor. The first thousand points of Armor effect a damage reduction of about 25%, while moving from 4500 to 5500 only yields about 4.5% damage reduction. That 4.5% might be of huge importance to a high level character taking on a dozen enemies at once, but it's clearly a lot less of a total change than the first couple of thousand points of Armor provide.

The formula for calculating damage reduction against equal level enemies is: 100 * armor / ( armor + 50 * character level ).

In terms of effective HP for a lvl 60 character, every 3000 armor you have increase your EHP by 100%. For lvl 70 characters, 3500 armor does the same.

Strength[edit | edit source]

The Strength attribute adds directly to the Armor total, in simple arithmetic fashion. More strength = higher Armor = more damage reduction. This is very handy for Barbarians and makes them take much less damage from melee combat. Other characters get less benefit from it; the screenshot below shows a Paragon 49 Monk who has virtually no Strength on her equipment and thus gains very little additional armor that way.

Equipment[edit | edit source]

The items (armor) worn by characters in Diablo 3 are hugely-varied and individually-designed. All pieces of equipment look different on all classes, and often vary between the genders of each class as well. This required a huge amount of artwork and animation, but is part of the fine polish Blizzard puts on all the components of their video games.

Various pieces of armor, by a master blacksmith.

There are more types of armor to be worn in Diablo III. All the item slots return from Diablo II, plus several new ones; shoulders, pants, and bracers.

Helms:
- Spirit Stones (Monk only)
- Voodoo Masks (Witch Doctor only)
- Wizard Hats (Wizard only)
Chest Armor:
- Cloaks (Demon Hunter only)
Off-Hand items:
- Shields
- Mojos (Witch Doctor only)
- Orbs (Wizard only)
- Quivers (Demon Hunter only)
Shoulders -- New in Diablo III.
Bracers -- New in in Diablo III.
Pants -- New in Diablo III.
Gloves
Belts -- These do not hold potions as in Diablo II. They're purely another piece of armor.
- Mighty Belts (Barbarian only)
Boots
Rings
Amulets

Class-Specific Armor[edit | edit source]

While the developers initially planned not to include class-specific armor types, that changed during game design.[1] By the beta test there were numerous pieces of armor that could only be equipped by one class.

Weapons are much the same, with a few types that are class-specific, and others that can only be used by some, but more than one, class.

Individual Armor Appearance[edit | edit source]

The same piece of Armor in Diablo III looks very different depending on which class is wearing it, and often by the gender as well. This system expands on the basic component looks in Diablo 2, with radically more variety and design depth.

Another major change to Armor in Diablo 3 is the removal of repeating armor types on each difficulty level. Gone are Diablo 2's Exceptional and Elite armor/weapon classes, each of which repeated all the same item graphics, but with bigger stats. This means that every piece of armor and weapon in Diablo 3 is unique (by level and appearance) but also means there are fewer total items, since everything doesn't repeat 2 or 3 times.

Gear Sets[edit | edit source]

Gear sets are the term the D3 Team uses for the 18 different armor sets. See the gear sets article for full details. A few sample sets, revealed by Blizzard prior to Blizzcon 2010, can be seen below.

Two Barbarian gear sets.

Two Wizard gear sets.

Two Witch Doctor gear sets.

Archive: The Defense Attribute[edit | edit source]

The following was applicable during development, when the attributes were (briefly) changed from Vit/Str/Dex/Int. The information does not apply to the final game, and is preserved here purely for curiosity/posterity.

Armor is a value on all types of armor items. More armor = more damage reduction, but a lot of Armor is required to see significant improvements.
Defense is one of the four core character attributes/stats. It grows as your character levels up, and can be added as a bonus from items, gems, skills, and more.

Both Armor and Defense increase your character's damage reduction, but Defense offers much larger gains, per point. (But since high level armor items can have many hundreds of points of Armor, both values must be cultivated for long term success.)

Armor vs. Defense compared with item bonuses. Shot from the Diablo III beta.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[Image:Paper doll jan 12.jpg|left|thumb|250px|[[Paper doll]], Jan 2012.]]
+In Diablo III, "Armor" has two meanings.
-In Diablo III, "Armor" has two meanings. It can be a general term that refers to any type of non-weapon equipment worn by a player.  It is also a specific term, a number found on every piece of armor. Heavier armor has a much higher Armor number, which translates to less damage taken by the character wearing it. The benefits of Armor are similar to the benefits of higher [[Defense]], the attribute.
-As for armor in general, the equipment is quite changed from Diablo III. There are more types of armor and more slots on the [[paper doll]], but fewer individual kinds of armor; D3 offers just 18 pieces of torso armor, compared to 45 in D2X. [[Armor dyes]], [[crafting]], [[socketing]], [[enchanting]], and many other features have also been added to extend the armor finding game.
+# It's a common term used to refer to any sort of equipment other than a weapon or shield.
+# It's a specific statistic that means what "defense" does in most ARPGs. Higher Armor means that characters take less damage from all attacks, through the [[damage mitigation]] effect.
-Almost every piece of armor looks very different when worn by each class, and some offer visual differences between male and female as well.
-{{Clear|left}}
-==Armor Types==
+==Armor's Function in Diablo 3==
+The armor stat works much like a resistance in Diablo 3. Higher Armor means that more of the damage from attacks is absorbed or mitigated. This is not how armor (defense) worked in Diablo 2; in that game higher armor worked against monster to/hit and made it less likely that they would strike your character with an attack. This design choice forced the developers to make monsters hit for very high damage since they so seldom connected, which lead to a boom or bust sort of combat.
+Diablo 3 uses the resistance-like form of Armor to create a steady flow of damage that players can learn to mitigate with more Armor, higher hit points, blocking, life regeneration, life on hit/life leech, or other options.
+==Armor Damage Mitigation==
+[[File:Armor-tooltip.jpg|thumb|400px|Armor tooltip shows damage reduction.]]
+Every piece of armor (equipment) has an Armor value in Diablo III. These add up with Strength and may be modified by various skills and passives to arrive at a total Armor value which grants a substantial damage reduction. This figure is a key source of damage mitigation in Diablo 3 and has a major effect on a character's survival ability.
+Higher Armor values make a clear difference in the damage taken. Some stats, all for a level 60 character vs. level 60 monsters:
+* 1987 Armor = 39.84% Damage Reduction
+* 3059 Armor = 50.49% Damage Reduction
+* 4024 Armor = 57.29% Damage Reduction
+* 4512 Armor = 60.06% Damage Reduction
+* 4963 Armor = 62.33% Damage Reduction
+* 5499 Armor = 64.70% Damage Reduction
+As with [[resistances]] (which function very similarly) there are diminishing returns on the benefit from higher amounts of Armor. The first thousand points of Armor effect a damage reduction of about 25%, while moving from 4500 to 5500 only yields about 4.5% damage reduction. That 4.5% might be of huge importance to a high level character taking on a dozen enemies at once, but it's clearly a lot less of a total change than the first couple of thousand points of Armor provide.
+The formula for calculating damage reduction against equal level enemies is: 100 * armor / ( armor + 50 * character level ).
+In terms of effective HP for a lvl 60 character, every 3000 armor you have increase your EHP by 100%. For lvl 70 characters, 3500 armor does the same.
+==Strength==
+The [[Strength]] attribute adds directly to the Armor total, in simple arithmetic fashion.  More strength = higher Armor = more damage reduction. This is very handy for Barbarians and makes them take much less damage from melee combat. Other characters get less benefit from it; the screenshot below shows a [[Paragon]] 49 Monk who has virtually no Strength on her equipment and thus gains very little additional armor that way.
+[[File:Str-tooltip.jpg|center|frame]]
+==Equipment==
+The items (armor) worn by characters in Diablo 3 are hugely-varied and individually-designed. All pieces of equipment look different on all classes, and often vary between the genders of each class as well. This required a huge amount of artwork and animation, but is part of the fine polish Blizzard puts on all the components of their video games.
 [[File:Blacksmith-armor1.jpg|thumb|200px|Various pieces of armor, by a master [[blacksmith]].]]
 There are more types of armor to be worn in Diablo III. All the item slots return from Diablo II, plus several new ones; shoulders, pants, and bracers.
-Click the following links to learn more about each type of armor. Full listings of all the items in the game will be added once the information becomes available.
+* [[Helms]]:
-* [[Helms]]
 ** [[Spirit Stones]] (Monk only)
 ** [[Voodoo Masks]] (Witch Doctor only)
 ** [[Wizard Hats]] (Wizard only)
-* [[Chest Armor]]
+* [[Chest Armor]]:
 ** [[Cloaks]] (Demon Hunter only)
-* [[Shields]]
+* Off-Hand items:
+** [[Shields]]
 ** [[Mojos]] (Witch Doctor only)
 ** [[Orbs]] (Wizard only)
 ** [[Quivers]] (Demon Hunter only)
-* [[Pauldrons (item type)|Shoulder Armor]] -- New in Diablo III.
+* [[Shoulders]] -- New in Diablo III.
 * [[Bracers|Bracers]] -- New in in Diablo III.
+* [[Pants]] -- New in Diablo III.
 * [[Hands|Gloves]]
 * [[Belts]] -- These do not hold potions as in Diablo II. They're purely another piece of armor.
 ** [[Mighty Belts]] (Barbarian only)
-* [[Pants]] -- New in Diablo III.
 * [[Boots|Boots]]
 * [[Rings]]
@@ Line 37: / Line 73: @@
 ==Class-Specific Armor==
-While the developers initially planned not to include class-specific armor types, that changed during game design.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/bashiok-on-class-specific-items-part-two/] As of the beta test, there are numerous types of armor that can only be equipped by one of the character classes.  The same goes for [[weapons]].
+While the developers initially planned not to include class-specific armor types, that changed during game design.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/bashiok-on-class-specific-items-part-two/] By the beta test there were numerous pieces of armor that could only be equipped by one class.
+[[Weapons]] are much the same, with a few types that are class-specific, and others that can only be used by some, but more than one, class.
 ==Individual Armor Appearance==
-The same piece of Armor in Diablo III will look very different depending on which class is wearing it. This was also true in Diablo II, in most cases, but the designs have been made radically more varied in Diablo III.
+The same piece of Armor in Diablo III looks very different depending on which class is wearing it, and often by the gender as well. This system expands on the basic component looks in Diablo 2, with radically more variety and design depth.
-Another change is that there are no normal/exceptional/elite item types in Diablo III. In Diablo II the same piece of equipment existed in two different types, with a third (elite) added in the expansion. This meant that characters could find elite armor in Hell difficulty, and armor that looked like cloth would have far more defense than the normal or exceptional version of full plate mail. The Diablo III team didn't like this, and now there are 18 levels of armor to be found, stretching throughout all three difficulty levels. Each of these levels looks quite a bit different from the others.
-Though there's alot of variety, there are consistent appearance themes.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/wds-wont-just-wear-leaves-after-all/]
-::The Witchdoctor’s thematic palette is proving to be very broad. He can wear a lot of cool armor and still look like a Witchdoctor.
+Another major change to Armor in Diablo 3 is the removal of repeating armor types on each difficulty level. Gone are Diablo 2's Exceptional and Elite armor/weapon classes, each of which repeated all the same item graphics, but with bigger stats. This means that every piece of armor and weapon in Diablo 3 is unique (by level and appearance) but also means there are fewer total items, since everything doesn't repeat 2 or 3 times.
 ===Gear Sets===
-[[Gear sets]] are the term the [[D3 Team]] uses for the 18 different armor sets. See the gear sets page for full details. A few sample sets, revealed by Blizzard prior to Blizzcon 2010, can be seen below.
+[[Gear sets]] are the term the [[D3 Team]] uses for the 18 different armor sets. See the gear sets article for full details. A few sample sets, revealed by Blizzard prior to Blizzcon 2010, can be seen below.
 <center>
@@ Line 64: / Line 98: @@
-==Armor Ratings and Stats==
-The function of Armor is one of the bigger changes in Diablo III's [[combat]] engine. In Diablo II, higher armor/defense (the terms were interchangeable) meant a character was less likely to be hit by a physical attack. A D2 character with very high defense could stand in the midst of swinging enemies and hardly be struck at all. As a result of this design feature, the developers had to make monster hits do very high damage, so when one did land, it hurt enough to matter. This resulted in characters taking no damage most of the time, with occasional spikes of very high damage.
-In Diablo III, Armor does not reduce enemy to/hit. It reduces damage taken. Thus a D3 character with high armor will still get hit as often as a character with no armor; but each hit will cause much less damage. This, in theory, means that combat will result in a steady drain of hit points, which players must find ways to manage.
+==Archive: The Defense Attribute==
-Raising your character's [[defense]], the attribute, does much the same thing as higher Armor.
+<u>The following was applicable during development, when the [[attributes]] were (briefly) changed from Vit/Str/Dex/Int.  The information does not apply to the final game, and is preserved here purely for curiosity/posterity. </u>
-===Defense vs. Armor===
-A key distinction to make, as these are very different values/functions/numbers in Diablo III.
 * Armor is a value on all types of armor items. More armor = more damage reduction, but a lot of Armor is required to see significant improvements.
@@ Line 82: / Line 109: @@
 Both Armor and Defense increase your character's damage reduction, but Defense offers much larger gains, per point. (But since high level armor items can have many hundreds of points of Armor, both values must be cultivated for long term success.)
-[[File:Defense-vs-armor-beta1.jpg|center|thumb|800px|Armor vs. Defense compared with item bonuses. Shot from the Diablo III beta.]]
+[[File:Defense-vs-armor-beta1.jpg|center|thumb|600px|Armor vs. Defense compared with item bonuses. Shot from the [[Diablo III beta]].]]
-===Blocking===
-Blocking is granted by [[shields]] and it works much like [[resistances]] and Armor do in Diablo III. A shield provides another form of damage mitigation, rather than a way to decrease enemy to/hit. All shields have a % chance to block, and an amount of damage they will absorb upon a successful block. A character's actual blocking % is determined by the shield's number, factored in with attributes, Clvl, and other values.
-For example, here are the stats for a Buckler, the lowest level shield in the game:
-{{template:buckler}}
-Note that many characters may choose not to use shields, preferring two-handed weapons, dual-wielding weapons, or off hand offensive-boosting items like [[orbs]] and [[mojos]].
-===Resistances===
-Characters have resistances to [[fire]], [[cold]], [[arcane]], [[poison]], and [[lightning]] in Diablo III. There are other types of damage that can not be so directly resisted.
-Resistances provide another form of damage mitigation, one tailored to individual types of magical damage. The biggest change to resistances in Diablo III is that they are no longer percentage-based. They are instead like Armor; a number that increases with item and skill bonuses. The higher the number, the more damage they absorb.
-This means that characters can always benefit from more resistance, rather than the value capping off at 75%. (Items that add to maximum possible resistance are not found in Diablo III.)
-There is no global resistance penalty on the higher difficulty levels in Diablo III, a feature change that allows for more consistent, gradual difficulty changes. No more will characters enter [[Hell]] and find their resistances dropped to negative values. Characters will just find that they need more and more resistance to survive against more difficult enemies, in a more linear difficulty increase.
-It is not known if any monsters have the ability to lower character resistances, but it seems likely. Nothing equivalent to Diablo 2's Conviction Aura has been seen as a [[boss modifier]] in Diablo 3, but such effects might appear at higher difficulty levels.
-Various class passive skills can directly increase or decrease character resistances. For instance, the Wizard's passive skill [[Glass Cannon]] lowers her resistances and Armor in exchange for greater offensive might.
-{{Template:Wizard_Passive_Glass_Cannon}}
@@ Line 119: / Line 118: @@
 [[Category:Items]]
 [[category:Armor]]
+[[category:statistics]]