Armor. What's the point?

Today I decided to trade in my Ornstein's armor for the Wanderer's set. I upgraded all the pieces to +9 and now I can do the fastest roll without needing to use the Dark Wood Grain ring. My defense is a little less, but it really doesn't seem to matter. I invaded about sixteen or so people today and won eleven of those fights (Better than I've done in quite a while as an invader). During one of them that I won the person backstabbed me with some katana that had Crystal Magic Weapon on it. The backstab only took down about half of my health.

On another person they managed to hit me with a Dragon Greatsword twice and each hit only took down like 1/3rd of my health.

Now, I only have 1304 vitality, so I'm wondering what's point of having powerful armor if there is seemingly no difference to how much damage I take and the lighter armor let's me roll better?

Poise.

Getting stunlocked sucks.

Ecko wrote:Today I decided to trade in my Ornstein's armor for the Wanderer's set. I upgraded all the pieces to +9 and now I can do the fastest roll without needing to use the Dark Wood Grain ring. My defense is a little less, but it really doesn't seem to matter. I invaded about sixteen or so people today and won eleven of those fights (Better than I've done in quite a while as an invader). During one of them that I won the person backstabbed me with some katana that had Crystal Magic Weapon on it. The backstab only took down about half of my health.

On another person they managed to hit me with a Dragon Greatsword twice and each hit only took down like 1/3rd of my health.

Now, I only have 1304 vitality, so I'm wondering what's point of having powerful armor if there is seemingly no difference to how much damage I take and the lighter armor let's me roll better?

Welcome, bronie number 667.

Defense subtracts the amount of damage you receive, instead of decreasing it by a percentage. Armour helps with it, seeing as how weapons can do over 1000 damage if you have the right equipment set.

Poise helps to make sure that you do not get obliterated by stunlock weapons. Some poise it better than no poise.

Armour is for those who do not have enough skill or stamina to properly function VIA naked with rolls and in general maneuvering. Armour is a saving grace.

Unless you're going for troll-factor (mostly naked), then armor drastically increases your sirvivability. And the upgraded Wanderer set is actually a very good set of armor, so if you wanted to pick a set as an example that armor isn't all that important, you didn't pick a very good example! The main difference between light armor and heavy armors isn't defense, it's poise. Light armors have very good defense for their weight, but they have no poise. Heavy armors don't offer that much more defense, but for the extra weight, you get poise. (How many times can I say poise in as many sentences...) If you don't want to get stun-locked by every hit, then you need to balance light armor pieces with heavy armors, to have an optimal balance of defense, weight, and poise.

Although living without poise can make survivability even better when you decide to upgrade for medium. The best way to survive a hit is to not be there.

Yeah, I knew about poise obviously, but I felt like their was suppose to be a bigger difference in the defense that heavier armors provide. :/

And as Yarxov says, I'd rather not get hit at all. lol

I'm also done with the poise stacking with heavy gear phase. Now I just use light sets with Wolf Ring. Two favorites are Wanderer's and Dingy set. The Wanderer with Thief's mask looks so damn good with the Chaos Blade/Target shield setup.

Honestly, just having a unique looking character is worth it. I might have seen a handful of people in the Wanderer's gear in the last few months, yet inumerable Giant's/Havel's dudes.

Yeah, but sometimes lag has something to say (or a lot to say) about whether you get hit or not. I prefer to have 53 poise. I never carry a shield, so if I miss a parry vs a greatsword in PvP, at least being able to tank a hit will give me a chance to parry the second swing.

As for light vs heavy armor again, I think it would be too unbalanced if heavy armor had even more defense than light. Sure, realistically, a plate armor should have more defense than a cloth robe. But gameplay-wise, for balance, giving heavy armor all the defense and poise would just make light armor useless. I think From got a pretty good balance, as it is. I can mix and match light, medium, and heavy pieces well to get the results I want.

II'm not a fan of the reg light roll, iframes are tougher to judge because of lag with it.

They use it because it works, thats not a bad thing. Its actually a smart thing. (note, none of my characters wear giants and only 1 uses havels gauntlets/greaves. I just don't want to spare the weight for heavy chest pieces.

I know it's smart. Poise stacking IS smart. I'd just rather have a character I like to look at, and I am PERSONALLY bored with all the heavy armors, apart from maybe the Eastern chest. I understand why they're so prominent though.

I echo Damage's opinions on armor pretty much to the finest detail.

my current build uses a mix of paladin (chest) smougs (legs) giants (gantlets) and havels (head) and it actually looks good, at least on a fat character it does. most robes don't fit the martial vibe i tend to go for in my builds hence why i stick to medium and heavy armor other wise i can get all the poise i need with iron bracelets, hollow sodier pants and the wolf ring, like this:

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=2999361373654865

DamageCK wrote:I know it's smart. Poise stacking IS smart. I'd just rather have a character I like to look at, and I am PERSONALLY bored with all the heavy armors, apart from maybe the Eastern chest. I understand why they're so prominent though.

You can have poise and not look like it. Especially, which you mentioned, with the Wolf Ring. Wolf Ring + Black Iron Gauntlets and you have 58 poise. There are lighter examples with closer to 53 poise, but I picked this one because those gauntlets aren't big looking at all. So with just those gauntlets you're over the greatsword poise break-point, you can equip whatever else you want for helm, chest, and legs. It'll look great, and it won't look heavy at all.

You'll have a give away though, with the Aura the wolf ring has.

Of course the Aura is kickass!

The Big Hat does do a pretty good job at blocking out that purple aura.

Yeah, decent players will spot the aura, but I was just saying that it's possible to have poise and also pick armor purely based on looks.

Case in point: http://tinyurl.com/74lrd24 One of the toons I like to invade with. A well trained eye would be able to calculate that he's got 76 poise, but at a glance there's no way you'd guess it!

Aye - I have my medium poise armor setup - for when I dont want to be stunned and want to use my RTSr and another ring

Eastern Helm
Eastern Armor
Travelling gloves or Crimson wraps
Waistcloth of Chanellers or Crimson waistcloth

My general setup which I haven't seen anyone else use is
Shadow Mask
Black Sorcerer Chest
Black Sorcerer Gloves.
Black Tights

then there is my mixed setup
Pharis Hat or Hollow thief hood
Hollow thiefs armor
Eastern Gauntlets
Knights Leggings

and my obvious Men in Tights setup is
Pharis Hat
Naked
black iron gauntlets
shadow leggings

My char equipment previously

Hollow Warrior Armor, Havel's Gauntlet, Havel's Legging, Theif Mask..

Pretty innocent looking, but with decent poise..

Honestly the poise ring is useless.. there are better rings out there..

Pendant your name really fits onto that text! mad rambling WHATDOESTHEPENDANTDO
and as for the armour thing with 1304 heavier damage people will 2hko you :/ while it is cool and getting into using light armour gets you into good habits. mechanically it is inferior.

Agree to disagree then. Wolf ring is hardly useless.

The best ring to have, are the silver serpent rings, evil eye ring, or red tearstone ring.

Wolf ring goes into the DWGR slot if you dont want to use DWGR I would say it is useful unless you are dead set on never getting hit.
also RTR is fun, they think they have won and suddenly 2-3 hits kill them

http://tinyurl.com/7uwrkk6

RTR + Power Within + Flame Server...

Acidic_Cook wrote:The best ring to have, are the silver serpent rings, evil eye ring, or red tearstone ring.

I agree with the RTSR, but why the other two for PvP?

Why because acidic is so pro that he doesnt need benefits in the fighting but keeping his health topped up and bonus souls are the best thing for him to have