So, no more armor penetration?

kuero21 · October 2016

@mimicking#6533 @asterdahl @strumslinger

Xbox player here, I'm submitting this thread here in the PC section because you devs never ever show up in our forums (except for andy but hes not a dev). I have a question regarding the armor sets and I really hope you will answer it.
As it seems the two versions of the relic armor have no armor penetration to offer. The problem I have is that the main source of my arpen comes from my armor. Now with a new armor set that has no arpen, I'll be forced to adapt, which will be expensive. Especially, if you are going to keep switching the stat distribution with each new armor tier. So, my question is: Do you have any plans to remove armor penetration from future armor sets entirely?

I actually want to go for the relic armor but the problem is that I have to adapt to this change. I have 1 artifact that provides me 1K arpen and I get another 700 of boons (SH excluded). So thats about 17% and I still need roughly another 43%. There are several ways to do it, most of them cost AD and all of them are inefficient (in one way or another.)

1) Mounts- The easiest and probably most efficient way would probably be a legendary axe beak but that one is listed for ~20Million. Its going to take a year until I have saved up enough and actually I'm looking for a black ice war horse and a tensers disk, not an axe beak mount. Opening lockboxes once per day with my granted free daily key I'm not going to count on a lucky drop. So this option is out of my range. (the epic version with 2K arpen also costs a few million).

2) Insignias- with 5 mounts of rare quality or better we can slot up to 15 insignias. Now, if I filled all 15 slots with epic insignias of aggression, each one providing 200 arpen, I would get a total of ~30% Resistance ignored and I still need to get another 15% somehow. The problems here are that epic insignias aren't cheap and because the full assortment of insignias has not been released yet, I would need to get 5 mounts that only have slots with the insignias that are currently available. So this option is not only expensive but also highly inefficient.

3) Stronghold boons- the stronghold boon offers up to 8K arpen. Its all free but you need to be in an advanced guild. Thing is, I am in such a guild but with 8k additional armor penetration, I will have too much arpen, ending up with at least 80% RI (if I swap out my artifact and buy a reskill token). So, this option is probably one of the cheapest but quite inefficient.

4) Enchantments- currently I have equipped brutals in all my offense slots. I would need to swap them out for vicious. This won't be a fast process. I will either be forced to upgrade them myself or trade my brutals for those. If I sell and buy them via the auction house I'm going to lose Ad each time and finding other players to trade with is most likely also going to take a while. Beside, depending on the future armor sets, I would need to repeat this whole process every time a new set gets released with different stat distribution. Not gonna happen. Nope.

5) Companion + bondings- I have 3 rank 12 bondings and also a decent companion but going this way my RI would not be a fixed stat but totally rely on my companion's gift... and estimated 90% of combat time its just lying dead at the ground giving me no companion gift. Meh.

6) Artifacts- I would be forced to upgrade another 3 artifacts to mythic and replace them for those that I currently use. I don't want to do this, the ones that I currently use are either having nice stats or its effects are contributing to my overall dps output. So this option won't do it either.

I could still get some RI with certain rings and other "miscellaneous" items but it definitely not enough and that way I will lose the benefit of +4 and +5 rings, as well as set bonus and BIS artifact gear.

Taking all these options into consideration, it would probably be the best choice for me to just skip the relic armor. On the other hand, if future armor sets won't have any armor penetration either I would be forced to adapt anyway. So I would really appreciate an answer to this. Your possible answer is definitely going to change my gameplay. So please respond to this. Thanks.

aulduron · October 2016

Refine everything to max, and wear Elven. I have 2 toons (CW and GWF) over 3.1K with R8-11 enchants and maxed artifacts/gear. I have 60% RI and around 100% crit (with self buffs) while wearing Elven.

arcanjo86 · October 2016

what class are u?

kuero21 · October 2016

arcanjo86 said:
what class are u?

I have a dc, a gwf and a sw but I'm talking about my sw. My gwf is retired and my dc has exactly 0 arpen and I will keep it that way.

aulduron said:
Refine everything to max, and wear Elven. I have 2 toons (CW and GWF) over 3.1K with R8-11 enchants and maxed artifacts/gear. I have 60% RI and around 100% crit (with self buffs) while wearing Elven.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Elven-what? armor enchant or elven armor?
Anyway, I don't get the point of it. The problem is not my current gear or RI. It's all fine. The problem is the missing arpen of relic armor (it should be an upgrade but due to missing arpen, its not) and if future armor sets will be the same way.

kitkathd · October 2016

The whole problem with the relic set is actually embarassing. it follows a very bad failed setup from Icewind Dale. Nobody likes armor that you have to recharge. Then to make matters worse, the red tape you go through to get the armor is way more than the benefits gained. THEN on top off that, for some classes, it has exactly the WRONG stats so you end up not wanting it in favor of other sets. Its plain as day clear that the people writing the code and picking the content for this game don't actually play the game. I mean look at the community stream coordinator/PR guy, every time theres a stream he has to use god mode, and walks around as an Oath of Devotion pally, the least useful class in game, as the groups healer, and fails horribly at healing every step of the way.

lirithiel · October 2016

Yeah sadly Cryptic has been all over the place with stats on gear since they removed the old sets and set bonuses. They seem to have been pushing Recovery for a long time now but stats on gear lack variety. They just seem to be very short-sighted as @magenubbie said. I for one skipped the Relic gear as the design is terrible and will likely be trash when Mod 11 is released. Like @aulduron I am using a mix of Elven and Dusk gear on all my toons. Even Dragonflight gear is lackluster compared with Dusk (IL notwithstanding).

I have seen players with zero ArP on any of their gear and relying on ArP solely through their companions with Bondings.

kuero21 · October 2016

etelgrin said:
Many things you wrote there are bad and not true ex. companion gift still persists even if companion is down, even then is no problem to put him up and even if you do not use liira bell he will res faster than the gift expires, I sugest dear xbox player to do some research, most of the things you mentioned are not even issues nor problems.

Many things you wrote there are bad and not true. At that companion point I actually exaggerated but that's not the point. I considered 6 ways of how to obtain arpen and how they are either expensive or inefficient.
But yeah, let's contradict just for the sake of it, right? You're basically calling me out a lier and/or a newbie.
I suggest dear pc player to do some research.

lirithiel · October 2016

You see, Cryptic do these sort of things to encourage players to spend more money. They bring out new BiS gear with different stats on them which force players to switch out artifacts and enchants to compensate, hence spending more $$$.

kuero21 · October 2016

lirithiel said:
You see, Cryptic do these sort of things to encourage players to spend more money. They bring out new BiS gear with different stats on them which force players to switch out artifacts and enchants to compensate, hence spending more $$$.

Yea, most likely. I'm checking the preview shard reguarly and I remember back when they asked for relic gear feedback, someone stated if a piece of gear doesn't have the stats to support your build its far worse than what you already have on. A dev quoted and agreed to that and said they would make some changes on the stats but as it seems its still no arpen.

I actually hoped for a reply of a dev but I think magenubbie is right and they won't reply. Well, then lets see what the next tier of gear has to offer.

ajlir · October 2016

kitkathd said:
Oath of Devotion pally, the least useful class in game, as the groups healer, and fails horribly at healing every step of the way.

Go find a good Oath of Devotion pally and say it again.

aulduron · October 2016

kuero21 said:

arcanjo86 said:
what class are u?
I have a dc, a gwf and a sw but I'm talking about my sw. My gwf is retired and my dc has exactly 0 arpen and I will keep it that way.
aulduron said:
Refine everything to max, and wear Elven. I have 2 toons (CW and GWF) over 3.1K with R8-11 enchants and maxed artifacts/gear. I have 60% RI and around 100% crit (with self buffs) while wearing Elven.
I'm not sure what you are talking about. Elven-what? armor enchant or elven armor?
Anyway, I don't get the point of it. The problem is not my current gear or RI. It's all fine. The problem is the missing arpen of relic armor (it should be an upgrade but due to missing arpen, its not) and if future armor sets will be the same way.

I meant Elven gear set. It's very easy to get, and, IMO, has the best stats for my characters. If you need to do FBI, then get the HAMSTER relic gear and switch it out for good gear once you're inside. Or, be like me and just skip FBI altogether, since I'm told that there is nothing worthwhile inside anyway.

kuero21 · October 2016

I already have the full dragonflight set on my 3k warlock. Actually I wanted to grind for the relic armor but since it has no arpen I'm most likely not going to do that.
My 4k dc could go for it because I don't need arpen on that char but she already has the full IL 142 DF gear and its even further enhanced with 4 big kits (200 each). If I went for the relic armor on that character I would need to invest another 800K Ad for kits and we are talking about gear that will probably be obsolete in mod 11... so, yeah. I don't see a point in relic gear.

sorce · October 2016

You said you already have the Bondings - it would actually be the cheapest way to go. A large proportion of the player base on PC use ArmPen from companion stats through bondings to make up the difference (it's why you see so many Fire Archons, they attack at range so Companions Gift is up almost immediately).

By having your ArmPen through those means, it now allows you to boost your Pow/Crit via the relic armor - which in turn then makes you more powerful.

Also, the devs said a while back that new armor and gear isnt every Mod. We had DF with mod 7. Masterwork was the special category with Relic in Mod 10. Since 10.5 is making Relic even better I would pitch that the next major gear update would be Mod 13 - so a year away.

kuero21 · October 2016

I prefer to have arpen as a fixed stat and not rely on a companions gift. Devs on preview shard said there won't be new gear with mod 10.5 but they couldn't say the same thing about mod 11, so its possible mod 11 brings new gear.

And how exactly do you get more powerful if you have more power/ crit on your gear and arpen on your companion? Aren't you just as powerful as the other way around?

arcanjo86 · October 2016

if i were u i would be worried about armpen so much, try see the balance of it with the resistance ignore stat, one boon gives some and sw hb have price of hell class feature, values of armpen sometimes are lees than other classes

sundance777 · October 2016

Some of the other classes's Relic gear such as TR, GWF and HR look like they have pieces with an Armor Pen option.

armadeonx · October 2016

It depends on which class you're playing - my GWF has too much RI and my CW has had to use mount insignias so I could remove his rings of piercing which he's had forever. I do have 2k from a white tiger mount (which is a hell of a lot cheaper than anything with 4k) so I can add almost 20% RI that way where needed.

I won't be going for the STK armor for one simple fact - I'm not going to grind like that for anything. I'll do the boons but yeah, that'll do for me with this mod.

mahburg · November 2016

armadeonx said:
It depends on which class you're playing - my GWF has too much RI and my CW has had to use mount insignias so I could remove his rings of piercing which he's had forever. I do have 2k from a white tiger mount (which is a hell of a lot cheaper than anything with 4k) so I can add almost 20% RI that way where needed.

I won't be going for the STK armor for one simple fact - I'm not going to grind like that for anything. I'll do the boons but yeah, that'll do for me with this mod.

Snap, will get the achievement and boons (which are pretty poor btw) and then am done with it.

muckingfuppet · November 2016

not a chance will I be changing my armor, my masterworks armor set it cost me a fortune and has only been out one mod

now I understand with updates things have to move forward but my masterworks armor set cost me 10 million ad so I'd like it to last more than one mod

this having to charge your armor up is just utter rubbish and is only being used to try slow us down and time gate content and it's killing the game,

we all know every mmo is a grind but it has to be fun as well and with mod ten this game turned from fun to a full time hard working job

constantmule · November 2016

yup, im not interested in the HAMSTER armor, recharging it, or the junk boons.

ltsmithneko · November 2016

The main issue for xbox player with making up armor pen, is yes we would go through comp to do it, since well im going to be sitting at like 1k armor pen as well, but we have such crappy gear for the companions or its just insanely expensive, still once again not providing armor pen, so we have to depend on the enchants on comp for it... :P

So, no more armor penetration?

Answers