Solo melee - light, medium or Heavy armor?

[kamagi]

Ive read a few bits about it and some were contradictory.
What exactly do the penalties do?

[mordred3]

Ive read a few bits about it and some were contradictory.
What exactly do the penalties do?

They do diferent things for different actions, but in general they affect the usage of your stats.

For melee, the heavier the armor, the more stamina your combat skills take. You can see the effect by simply right clicking the stanza and hitting info - it should tell you the base cost and then the modifier cost with armor.

For harvesting - you use more focus with more penalty.

For casting, you use more sap, have longer casting time, and have worse range (thus its the biggest penality for mages).

So since you asked for melee, it will simply make your skills (increased damage, etc) take more stamina. I think it also lowers the range of taunt (but Im not sure).

[kamagi]

thanks mordred - so unless stamina is a problem then heavy is fine

[ayne31]

Stamina WILL be a problem even with medium armor.

A mob that gives about 1500XP will probably use up your complete stamina pool during a fight if your combat stanzas include at least the usual (improved damage+1 special according to your weapon).

You can of course use self-heal stamina but because of the timer you can only heal STA or HP during a single fight. So in case you have to use a self heal on HP you need an alternate attack stanza that either drains less sap than you can regenerate or uses HP credits.

Its not just the question which armor (simply regarding the penalty) but the character development and balance on a whole. HP and STA pool as well as regen rate, combat/self-heal stanzas and how armor and weaponry enhances parry/dodge make no two fighters -even of the exactly same lvl- alike.

it wont be a problem to use heavy armor if you like, you will just have to adjust your weaponry, stanzas and attributes accordingly. Thats one of the things I like about the system - if I want a certain type of fighter I can build it over time and the more I fight the better I get at creating the most economic/effective stanzas for his particular mix of equipment and attributes

[larsa]

... You can of course use self-heal stamina but because of the timer you can only heal STA or HP during a single fight. ...

It seems that many people don't know that you can make custom power actions, i.e. create an action that combines (for example) Self heal 2, Self Stamina 2 and balance it with a timer 4 credit brick.

There you have your action that heals both stamina and hp in one fight.

[ayne31]

bugger....didnt think of that so far

Thanks for the hint! Guess I have an appointment with some baying gingos tonight

[miths999]

I have actually been under the impression that it is complete and utter suicide for a melee fighter (especially solo of course) to wear light and possibly even medium armor. My own melee experiences only goes to level 45 - and wearing heavy armor, but this is the general impression I have gotten from people in-game and reading these boards.

Is it actually possible to survive and even do well (also after level 50 of course) with the roughly 10 and 25 percent protection you can get from light and medium, versus the ~50 percent from heavy?
Insane dogde modifiers?

[ayne31]

As far as my limited expiriences go med armor+shield+fast 1H weapon is no problem against mobs of equal or slightly above lvl.

Whereas slow 2H weapon calls for heavy armor rather - but my fighting expiriences dont go beyond lvl 50 so far

[korin77]

I am level 79 in 2h melee. I use mostly a pike. In my experiences, light armor was perfectly ok up to lvl 50 melee, after that everything started to hit harder and I moved up to medium armor. That helped for a while but now after level 70+ Even my heavy armor is not enough. I have no easy access to armor above ql 50 so my experiences may be biased. Generally I think if you're not a main tank its perfectly ok to wear even light armor. Just make sure the main tank can taunt off the mobs. Soloing however, would require you to balance your armor with what you're fighting. Study which body parts the monster usually hits and put heavy armor there. Use light or medium in the other parts to save yourself some stamina usage.

[tleilaxu]

When soloing most of our fighters choose to wear heavy armour, this is simply because of the fact that as the SOLE member, you must tank the mob in order to kill it. Special attacks like increased damage do not have to be powered by STA at higher levels, they can be powered by other credits such as attack after feint, HP credit, etc. And since most heavy armourers including myself, add HP bonuses to their armors, fighters who wear heavy tend to try to reduce STA usage and increase the other credits in their action stanzas when fighting solo. Basically they switch HP credits in lieu of STA credits in their action stanzas. In return they get increased protection and coverage of the heavy armor.

In group this is a different matter and sometimes up to personal preference & fashion. It is totally up to you, by balancing your stanzas to optimise the armor that you like to wear it is quit possible to be effective in anything from light armor to heavy armor.

Cieran
High Officer of the Minyatur

The strength of many, forged into one