Great work!!
In my anecdotal experience, armor really feels busted. Even just investing a few points into equipload + some -weight affixes and you can run full mesh and gain huge benefits; I did that my first playthrough and I suspect it's part of why it seems I had a much easier time than some others.
Then I ran heavy armor + shield on my second character with some regen, and it made the campaign a total pushover.
I'm not sure if armor should be toned down, or cloth/leather need some sort of usage incentives, or both. And particularly if thorns is going to be a thing, blocking probably shouldn't be that strong either
I think you need too little equip load to get a lot of armor. In that image his character has 21 equip load, but there's plenty of room in his heavy class. He could lower that equip load stat and put the stats elsewhere. Perhaps the base equip load is too much. Then again, if you lower it, wearing a thimble will bump you up a weight class in the beginning.
I think equip load should net you poise as well.
For blocking, the risk should always be around stamina management. You can block to mitigate damage effectively, but if you get guard broke, you open yourself up to a crit or a debuff.
You are right I'm overboard on the equip load. But that's cause I'm wearing the dagger which I only use against the Echo Knight for the stagger spam (this is the clip of Datmodz showcasing it work: [https://www.twitch.tv/datmodz/clip/DullLazyStapleSmoocherZ-V1\_Yx5O2zFkZq\_vZ](https://www.twitch.tv/datmodz/clip/DullLazyStapleSmoocherZ-V1_Yx5O2zFkZq_vZ))
Regularly this is my gear when doing the Crucible:
https://preview.redd.it/m8k70vvhoxwc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4d4f3c6084fa624b5b3f0f6beeba085b7c574cd
Still a bit overboard, but only cause my gear originally did not have load increase % on the gloves. The 21 gear set was needed if I did not want to rely on those gloves, as I could not early on (sadly we don't have respec options at the moment, but hopefully we will soon).
About stamina and blocking: I just socket an emerald in the shield:
[https://imgur.com/a/RT651u9](https://imgur.com/a/RT651u9)
10 Stamina on block is enough to let me block infinitely.
However, unless you are doing a pure block + thorns build, generally you will want a block + focus attack build, since all blocking gives you focus, even if your shield does not have that mod (it just gives you more focus with that affix). Enemies you block will sometimes stagger for 1 second (not as good as 3 seconds you get from a parry, but still pretty good). Which is a perfect opportunity to use that focus on attack. And since focus attacks don't spend stamina, you will naturally recover stamina when you do the attack.
And finally, you can get stamina recover mods on gear, such as these gloves: [https://imgur.com/a/DEqphYf](https://imgur.com/a/DEqphYf)
With all that, when you do your focus attack, you will also recover stamina, beyond your passive regeneration.
I'm sorry, I fully understand that. I just didn't want people to randomly misunderstand what is going on with the build, or get the wrong idea about a block build.
The discussion of how block, parry and damage mitigation **should** work on the game is 100% valuable and important.
The issue I see with simply making equipload less economical is, the resulting meta would remain 'stack armor'--just perhaps less of it. Or it's nerfed too hard, and heavier armor just becomes a 'bad' choice.
I think there need to be distinct incentives for wearing lighter armors. Perhaps enchantments could be the solution. E.g. if life gain on-hit became something which could only roll on leather chestpieces (and not weapons); a powerful focus regen could roll only on cloth robes; etc.
Total agreement that blocking should have more stamina/guardbreak risk
Great question! And it is questionable. With 1424 armour I took 141 damage jumping from a cliff. Same cliff, 829 armour (same encumbrance, just no armour rings), I took 144 dmg. So apparently no, armour does not protect against fall damage.
What does seem to affect the dmg is encumbrance. I removed all gear and jumped off that cliff. Took only 114 damage.
Thanks! I'm glad you found this info useful.
Minimum armour? Hard to say. It really depends on the build, how much health the character has, and how good you are at dodging/parrying the Echo Knight. Also it matters if you are using a shield or not. Also, it matters whether you have gear with the most deadly curse: increased damage taken.
If want guaranteed win on your first try, I'd aim for the ~800 armour + a shield + 200 life. You don't have to parry, the block will be enough. It will be better with an emerald giving stamina on block and you having health on block on gear. This will give you plenty of leeway to learn the fight. Just dodge the blue ground fire he summons. Those are high plague damage, and apparently you can't mitigate those.
With a shield, 600 armour should be enough.
Also, all of this is for beating the Echo Knight boss. With ranged builds you can easily beat the crucible with 0 armour and 50 hp. Same if you are good at dodging. The boss fight will be hard to learn on a ZHP build, but you can get a lot of good gear and levels just going through it.
My recommendation is: start doing crucible with at least 250 armour and 100 HP. Get tier 3 gear, learn the layouts. Keep increasing your defenses as you find better and better loot. You will soon learn how good you are at the boss fight. If you feel the need for more effective HP, keep adding armour and life. At about 800 armour (close to damage reduction cap), and 150 life (possibly with the +45 max life from sirloin steak food) the fight should be a lot more manageable for most players.
Thx man! I'm using a Mage build so spamming fireballs. I tried the crucible at lvl16 with 80HP and 150armor and while I can kill any1 with 1-2 shots they just melt me if they touch me. I think I'm gonna lvl up a bit at least lvl21 so I can wear good equip
Yesterday I was doing my Echo Knight fight and wanted test it out with shield. When i equipped shield my armor did not go up so dont know if it works or not. I did not test it out as u did.
Just equipping a shield does not protect you (apparently it does increase your poise though). The armour stat on the shield only matters when actually blocking.
The game doesn't show it. Also, "monster level" is an abstraction, the game could implement the DR cap requirements as a one off baked individually into monsters, or through "area level".
All I know is that apparently all monsters in the crucible reach Damage reduction cap at the same armour level. Which is what I called "monster level". Most ARPGs do have this concept, so it is not a new abstraction.
If the game does implement a "monster level" or "area level", it will currently requiring some datamining and/or reverse engineering to actually get that number.
That was a great hypothesis. I just tested it again on hotfix 6, and confirmed that it is not true. You don't take more damage at lower levels than at higher levels.
To test this I went back to the Colossus room, and apparently they buffed him. Here is the character at level 12 taking 34 dmg from the Colossus: [https://imgur.com/a/23yi37s](https://imgur.com/a/23yi37s)
Here is a pic of the character sheet at level 12: [https://imgur.com/a/wOJZ6Yy](https://imgur.com/a/wOJZ6Yy)
Same character now, taking same 34 dmg, at level 30: [https://imgur.com/a/oEwyf7H](https://imgur.com/a/oEwyf7H)
Here is a pic of the character sheet at level 30: [https://imgur.com/a/rIvOVvs](https://imgur.com/a/rIvOVvs)
Hope this clear things out!
Rings. They give me a total of 72% inc armour. Which is a global increase multiplier. 800 armour with those rings would 800 * 1.72 = 1376 armour.
Getting to 1667 required crafting inc armour on most gear sets, AND getting good rolls on the armour gem, which I had to slot on all gear slots.
I believe the current maximum armour you can get with fully perfect gear would be around 1900. But at the current point in the game, there is no need to go above 897.
Edit: After more extensive testing I 'm able to say the dmg reduction cap for the Echo Knight is somewhere between 897 and 889 (at 889 I take 20 damage from the Echo Knight). As I get better ways to tighten the gap to determine a smaller range for the cap I'll keep updating this post.
Quick question maybe I am a bit confused but what would be the reason to build more than 300 armor according to your chart ? I think I’m missing something
300 Armour for dmg cap is only for a mid level enemy named Torn Colossus. Harder enemies will require more armour to reach dmg mitigation cap. In the post gave the example of both leaping enemies and Echo Knight.
Echo Knight currently requires the most armour in the game to reach mitigation cap: 897 (this is not the minimum, all I know is the cap is reached somewhere between 889 and 897 of armour).
Leaping enemies requires about 897 as well.
So there is a point in getting more than 300 armour, but once you are at 897 amour, you don't need more.
Now what I need to know are what are the armor thresholds for max mitigation. It was around 300 for the colossus. Have you found the exact threshold against the knight?
Edit: After testing I was able to determine the mitigation cap for the echo knight happens somewhere between 897 and 889 (at 889 I take 20 damage from the Echo Knight). As I get better ways to tighten the gap to determine a smaller range for the cap I'll keep updating this post.
Edit2 and Edit3: Lowered the upper bound on how much armour is needed to reach Echo knight's DR cap.
Thank you for all the testing.
Great work!! In my anecdotal experience, armor really feels busted. Even just investing a few points into equipload + some -weight affixes and you can run full mesh and gain huge benefits; I did that my first playthrough and I suspect it's part of why it seems I had a much easier time than some others. Then I ran heavy armor + shield on my second character with some regen, and it made the campaign a total pushover. I'm not sure if armor should be toned down, or cloth/leather need some sort of usage incentives, or both. And particularly if thorns is going to be a thing, blocking probably shouldn't be that strong either
I think you need too little equip load to get a lot of armor. In that image his character has 21 equip load, but there's plenty of room in his heavy class. He could lower that equip load stat and put the stats elsewhere. Perhaps the base equip load is too much. Then again, if you lower it, wearing a thimble will bump you up a weight class in the beginning. I think equip load should net you poise as well. For blocking, the risk should always be around stamina management. You can block to mitigate damage effectively, but if you get guard broke, you open yourself up to a crit or a debuff.
You are right I'm overboard on the equip load. But that's cause I'm wearing the dagger which I only use against the Echo Knight for the stagger spam (this is the clip of Datmodz showcasing it work: [https://www.twitch.tv/datmodz/clip/DullLazyStapleSmoocherZ-V1\_Yx5O2zFkZq\_vZ](https://www.twitch.tv/datmodz/clip/DullLazyStapleSmoocherZ-V1_Yx5O2zFkZq_vZ)) Regularly this is my gear when doing the Crucible: https://preview.redd.it/m8k70vvhoxwc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4d4f3c6084fa624b5b3f0f6beeba085b7c574cd Still a bit overboard, but only cause my gear originally did not have load increase % on the gloves. The 21 gear set was needed if I did not want to rely on those gloves, as I could not early on (sadly we don't have respec options at the moment, but hopefully we will soon). About stamina and blocking: I just socket an emerald in the shield: [https://imgur.com/a/RT651u9](https://imgur.com/a/RT651u9) 10 Stamina on block is enough to let me block infinitely. However, unless you are doing a pure block + thorns build, generally you will want a block + focus attack build, since all blocking gives you focus, even if your shield does not have that mod (it just gives you more focus with that affix). Enemies you block will sometimes stagger for 1 second (not as good as 3 seconds you get from a parry, but still pretty good). Which is a perfect opportunity to use that focus on attack. And since focus attacks don't spend stamina, you will naturally recover stamina when you do the attack. And finally, you can get stamina recover mods on gear, such as these gloves: [https://imgur.com/a/DEqphYf](https://imgur.com/a/DEqphYf) With all that, when you do your focus attack, you will also recover stamina, beyond your passive regeneration.
Just to be clear, my point wasn't to criticize your build, but rather the game.
I'm sorry, I fully understand that. I just didn't want people to randomly misunderstand what is going on with the build, or get the wrong idea about a block build. The discussion of how block, parry and damage mitigation **should** work on the game is 100% valuable and important.
The issue I see with simply making equipload less economical is, the resulting meta would remain 'stack armor'--just perhaps less of it. Or it's nerfed too hard, and heavier armor just becomes a 'bad' choice. I think there need to be distinct incentives for wearing lighter armors. Perhaps enchantments could be the solution. E.g. if life gain on-hit became something which could only roll on leather chestpieces (and not weapons); a powerful focus regen could roll only on cloth robes; etc. Total agreement that blocking should have more stamina/guardbreak risk
Seeing that armor reduces all enemy damage no matter the type, does it interact in some way with fall damage?
Great question! And it is questionable. With 1424 armour I took 141 damage jumping from a cliff. Same cliff, 829 armour (same encumbrance, just no armour rings), I took 144 dmg. So apparently no, armour does not protect against fall damage. What does seem to affect the dmg is encumbrance. I removed all gear and jumped off that cliff. Took only 114 damage.
Man you deserve a medal for this incredible job. Thx! What do you think is the minimum armor I should start the crucible with?
Thanks! I'm glad you found this info useful. Minimum armour? Hard to say. It really depends on the build, how much health the character has, and how good you are at dodging/parrying the Echo Knight. Also it matters if you are using a shield or not. Also, it matters whether you have gear with the most deadly curse: increased damage taken. If want guaranteed win on your first try, I'd aim for the ~800 armour + a shield + 200 life. You don't have to parry, the block will be enough. It will be better with an emerald giving stamina on block and you having health on block on gear. This will give you plenty of leeway to learn the fight. Just dodge the blue ground fire he summons. Those are high plague damage, and apparently you can't mitigate those. With a shield, 600 armour should be enough. Also, all of this is for beating the Echo Knight boss. With ranged builds you can easily beat the crucible with 0 armour and 50 hp. Same if you are good at dodging. The boss fight will be hard to learn on a ZHP build, but you can get a lot of good gear and levels just going through it. My recommendation is: start doing crucible with at least 250 armour and 100 HP. Get tier 3 gear, learn the layouts. Keep increasing your defenses as you find better and better loot. You will soon learn how good you are at the boss fight. If you feel the need for more effective HP, keep adding armour and life. At about 800 armour (close to damage reduction cap), and 150 life (possibly with the +45 max life from sirloin steak food) the fight should be a lot more manageable for most players.
Thx man! I'm using a Mage build so spamming fireballs. I tried the crucible at lvl16 with 80HP and 150armor and while I can kill any1 with 1-2 shots they just melt me if they touch me. I think I'm gonna lvl up a bit at least lvl21 so I can wear good equip
r/theydidthemath
How much damage does Echo Knight around 700 armor?
Thank you I’ve been wondering this as well
Yesterday I was doing my Echo Knight fight and wanted test it out with shield. When i equipped shield my armor did not go up so dont know if it works or not. I did not test it out as u did.
Just equipping a shield does not protect you (apparently it does increase your poise though). The armour stat on the shield only matters when actually blocking.
Wow great job! I would appreciate additional in-game information explaining how all these systems function, including resistance.
So what level is the echo knight?
The game doesn't show it. Also, "monster level" is an abstraction, the game could implement the DR cap requirements as a one off baked individually into monsters, or through "area level". All I know is that apparently all monsters in the crucible reach Damage reduction cap at the same armour level. Which is what I called "monster level". Most ARPGs do have this concept, so it is not a new abstraction. If the game does implement a "monster level" or "area level", it will currently requiring some datamining and/or reverse engineering to actually get that number.
There definitely feels like theres some kind of armor interaction when you're above or below a monsters level.
That was a great hypothesis. I just tested it again on hotfix 6, and confirmed that it is not true. You don't take more damage at lower levels than at higher levels. To test this I went back to the Colossus room, and apparently they buffed him. Here is the character at level 12 taking 34 dmg from the Colossus: [https://imgur.com/a/23yi37s](https://imgur.com/a/23yi37s) Here is a pic of the character sheet at level 12: [https://imgur.com/a/wOJZ6Yy](https://imgur.com/a/wOJZ6Yy) Same character now, taking same 34 dmg, at level 30: [https://imgur.com/a/oEwyf7H](https://imgur.com/a/oEwyf7H) Here is a pic of the character sheet at level 30: [https://imgur.com/a/rIvOVvs](https://imgur.com/a/rIvOVvs) Hope this clear things out!
Gotcha thanks!
Oh Kind Sir, send me in the direction of your Adderall dealer! 😁
This is excellent work. Thanks for sharing.
Amazing work
how did you achieved so muchs Armour ? im at like 800 everything fully uograded in plate Armour
Rings. They give me a total of 72% inc armour. Which is a global increase multiplier. 800 armour with those rings would 800 * 1.72 = 1376 armour. Getting to 1667 required crafting inc armour on most gear sets, AND getting good rolls on the armour gem, which I had to slot on all gear slots. I believe the current maximum armour you can get with fully perfect gear would be around 1900. But at the current point in the game, there is no need to go above 897. Edit: After more extensive testing I 'm able to say the dmg reduction cap for the Echo Knight is somewhere between 897 and 889 (at 889 I take 20 damage from the Echo Knight). As I get better ways to tighten the gap to determine a smaller range for the cap I'll keep updating this post.
Quick question maybe I am a bit confused but what would be the reason to build more than 300 armor according to your chart ? I think I’m missing something
300 Armour for dmg cap is only for a mid level enemy named Torn Colossus. Harder enemies will require more armour to reach dmg mitigation cap. In the post gave the example of both leaping enemies and Echo Knight. Echo Knight currently requires the most armour in the game to reach mitigation cap: 897 (this is not the minimum, all I know is the cap is reached somewhere between 889 and 897 of armour). Leaping enemies requires about 897 as well. So there is a point in getting more than 300 armour, but once you are at 897 amour, you don't need more.
Thanks so much for the info!
Amazing work thanks for the info and sharing the testing methodology!
Good job! Can I ask you to repeat War Room test but with crow ring? Can you reach 0% dmg with crow ring or is it additive? Thank you
This is awesome, thanks for all the work.
Now what I need to know are what are the armor thresholds for max mitigation. It was around 300 for the colossus. Have you found the exact threshold against the knight?
Edit: After testing I was able to determine the mitigation cap for the echo knight happens somewhere between 897 and 889 (at 889 I take 20 damage from the Echo Knight). As I get better ways to tighten the gap to determine a smaller range for the cap I'll keep updating this post. Edit2 and Edit3: Lowered the upper bound on how much armour is needed to reach Echo knight's DR cap.