Phase 1
The first phase deals with armor and resists in a more general view. It is essentially
- Keeping the current cap of 80% to special resists
- Changing the max to the base resists to 70%
- Capping the max slice to 80% on base resists
Game Balance
Making new content easier to balance, since instead of having to balance around 90% armor it can be balanced around the 80% cap. This will then not result in either being way too hard for anyone without 90% armor, or way too easy for those with. In other words, you do not have to shell out millions to be able to survive new content and those that do won’t have it so easy that it bores them
Increased Player Interaction
Armor Smith’s don’t need to slice their armor before putting it on the vendor and makes unsliced armor more common. This means that instead of the Armor and Weaponsmiths monopolizing a Smuggler’s time, you can choose if you want to slice your armor and would then need to seek one out.
Better Slicing Game
Any AS who has made 90% armor knows that ANY encumbrance slice is essentially a broken piece of armor, which can only be sold at a severe (like 5% of the original price). This change makes both encumbrance and effectiveness slices somewhat useful. Encumbrance is still the least desired, similar to a speed slice, but it doesn't make the armor useless.
Armor Layers Make Sense
This change makes it so you have to put kinetic resistance into the armor for it to be most effective versus kinetic resistance, truly making it the special resistance. It's the other way around if you want 90% kinetic right now.
Limited High Resists
With this change you're limited to 4 resistances at 80% (3 if you plug a resistance hole, such as if stun is removed from the base resistance). What this does is helps with variety by giving people options for armors that might have better resists based on how and where they play.
Less Dependency on Looted Components
Looted Components will still play a role in truly high end armor, such as PvP armor, but AS will no longer need 1-2 houses full of components just to make 10-20 90% mini suits (seriously, so many components for so little). And players who want 4 resistances at 80% would want to supply looted components too.
RIS makes sense
With this change, RIS armor becomes objectively better than composite because it has kinetic resistance as a special resistance. Right now it's objectively worse because it can't reach 90% kinetic. Making RIS the better armor makes sense, as it is a quest armor and requires specific looted components to make.
The same arguements re:kinetic applies to Wookiee armor, Wooks will finally have high-end armor.
Slightly More Armor Variance
This change has the possibility of creating armor variance even with the limited amount of high end armors currently available. This is due to the fact that RIS is finally made better than Composite, so people have a reason to wear it. People can also play a Wookiee if they want high-end armor, something they never could before.
Phase 2
Make all new high end armors have varied special resists and vulnerabilities. Composite have electric res and stun vuln, Wookiee has kinetic res and stun vuln. RIS has kinetic res and stun + acid vuln.
The change will mean all high-end armors only have 1 special resist and 1 vulnerability (besides LS). So the current armors keep their specials and vulnerabilities, except for RIS which gets stun in the base effectiveness.
Future armor would get different special resists and vulnerabilities than what we have currently. Which will allow for adaptation depending on the challenges you face.
Example: Say there's a new dungeon out with a lot of cold and stun damage, but no heat damage. You could use the Snowtrooper armor which has special resistance to cold, but vulnerability to heat to be the most effective. Composite wouldn't be a good choice since it has a vulnerability to stun (which you could plug, but that makes it a pretty low resist). In PvP you'd change weapons depending on the armor the opponent is wearing.
The end result of these changes is purely for game balance on high end armors. This doesn't change any armor, it only affects what can be achieved in terms of resists. None of this is set in stone and we are open to suggestions. We do feel that there needs to be a change in the way armor is done today and we don't think making everything just a clone of composite with a different look is the way to go.
