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Hailene

Replace iron plate with "thick chain armor"

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So there's a few problems with iron plate armor. It has too high effectiveness relative to harder to get and much more expensive armor (plate, scale, drake, and moonmetal armor), reduces the importance of metallurgy, and makes plate armor smithing much easier to level (which leaves high level platesmiths a bit betrayed) So how does "thick chain" armor fix these problems?

First we'd reduce the effective DR from 62.5% (a bare 2.5% difference from the much harder to obtain steel plate) to 59%. It straddles the line between steel plate and regular chain (65% and 55% respectively).  Apparently the DR of plate is 65% on Epic but 70% on freedom. If that's the case, 62.5% DR is perfectly fine.

 

Metallurgy would still be valuable because steel plate is (for some) worth the extra trouble for the extra protection.

Lastly, it'd use chain armor smithing to create and improve. This gives more viability to chain armor smiths as the gap between heavy chain and plate is much less pronounced than regular chain and plate.

 

Here are some preliminary off the wall stats for heavy chain. It'd basically be somewhere between regular chain and plate.

 

Comparison is for chain, heavy chain, and steel plate:

 

Overall weight: 8,2, 14.6, 20.5

 

Unencumbered movement speed: 13.9kmph, 12.1kmph, 10.9kmph

 

Casting/archery debuff 15%, 20%, 30%

 

On a side note, heavy chain helms will protect the face and eyes. Heavy chain can be made with all the materials regular chain can be made of.

 

The armor would also be relatively hard to make. I'd suggest, with a 70QL large iron, requiring 55-65 CAS to make it (for gauntlets to jacket).

I think overall it adds what the devs wanted (another viable armor to spice things up), but this adds life to chain smithing and still makes plate armor important. Additionally it doesn't step on the toes of any plate or chain smiths, too.

Edited by Hailene
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easier for new people to catch up on plate smithing with iron plate 

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51 minutes ago, elroth said:

easier for new people to catch up on plate smithing with iron plate 

-1

 

That's one of the key the points of thick chain mail.

 

42 minutes ago, Alexgopen said:

I think people are overestimating iron plates effectiveness. 

 

Ironplate's effectiveness is just one part of the equation.

 

Though it's strong enough to basically eliminate chain at the moment.

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I like iron plate. I'd love to see gold/silver/copper plate, to be honest. (And tin plate for the tinman? :P )

 

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[Top secret info deleted]

Edited by Alexgopen

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IMO Iron Plate should just be the same as Steel Plate (in regards to speed, DR, glance, etc) but damage quicker in combat.... like twice as much as Steel.

Edited by Xallo
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3 hours ago, Alexgopen said:

That's funny. I'd take iron chain over steel plate.


I was talking about iron plate taking out iron chain. Steel plate has the added difficulty (or cost) of using steel.

 

1 hour ago, Xallo said:

IMO Iron Plate should just be the same as Steel Plate

 

Does eliminate the primary use of metallurgy and the cheapness of leveling plate armor smithing as compared to before.

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steel is still better armor and because of damage reduction and making leveling easier is not bad imho. gives new bro's a chance to catch up

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10 hours ago, elroth said:

steel is still better armor and because of damage reduction and making leveling easier is not bad imho. gives new bro's a chance to catch up

 

No one is debating whether or not steel plate is better than iron plate. It is.

 

But is it too easy relative to how good it is? I think so.

 

Also by giving "new bro's a chance to catch up" we alienate and devalue the work of people who had leveled up plate armor smithing before. Some of us play because we are proud of our skills.

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Really it was never hard to grind plate armor smithing before, so all this is lost in the wash anyways.

 

Steel making is a tough skill to grind, but steel still has its usefulness enough that its not going away or anyone who has put time into steel making has wasted anything at all.

 

Why all this drama over iron plate is beyond me.

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They need to remove the limits of metals and make them behave as wood types and give them specific bonuses. If they would do it for everything there ad hoc changes would make some sense.

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5 hours ago, JakeRivers said:

Really it was never hard to grind plate armor smithing before, so all this is lost in the wash anyways.

 

Steel making is a tough skill to grind, but steel still has its usefulness enough that its not going away or anyone who has put time into steel making has wasted anything at all.

 

Why all this drama over iron plate is beyond me.

Steel is easy. I have like low 30s metallurgy and can mix up some pretty decent ql lumps on average. Coal is super easy to obtain too. I sit on thousands of lumps and none of it came from coalpiles. Most of it came from the abundant amount of hellhounds that spawn on every map. The rest from lava creatures.

Metallurgy itself is a slow grind, sure... but as I stated above, you don't need much skill as long as you are working with good ql mats. And  people don't grind metallurgy using steel because that'd be a poor way of using your stockpiled resources. They grind with materials more easily obtained, like copper, tin, and/or zinc.

All this talk of how PAS is/was something hard to raise, like it was something as grueling as weaponsmithing.... it's just about as easy as leatherworking (in terms of both mats and skill gains). 

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6 hours ago, JakeRivers said:

Steel making is a tough skill to grind, but steel still has its usefulness enough that its not going away or anyone who has put time into steel making has wasted anything at all.

 

What use does steel have?

No sane person would bother imping their steel tools to 95+. The only useful purpose for steel is for skillers since they take so much damage because of their low QL.

 

49 minutes ago, As_I_Decay said:

Steel is easy. I have like low 30s metallurgy and can mix up some pretty decent ql lumps on average.

 

Steel is awful. I have 90+ coalmaking (so I get like 85QL average coal with walnut piles), 63 metallurgy, and using 99 QL iron I get an average of like 60-65ish steel.

 

The 90+ QL lumps are relatively rare and far between.

 

49 minutes ago, As_I_Decay said:

All this talk of how PAS is/was something hard to raise, like it was something as grueling as weaponsmithing.... it's just about as easy as leatherworking (in terms of both mats and skill gains). 

 

As someone with 99+ PAS, 94+ WAS, and 95+ LW, LW is far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far easier. You can use 75QL leather to imp 90QL stuff.

 

75QL steel is junk steel that isn't worth sorting.

Edited by Hailene

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[Top secret info deleted]

Edited by Alexgopen

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23 minutes ago, Alexgopen said:

iron plate is the second worst armor, the worst one being cloth.  idk why u guys care so much

 

Care to explain?

 

If you're out hunting, you're on a horse, cart, or wagon. Walk speed is basically irrelevant.

 

Chain was useful that newbies (or very cheap people) could get their hands on decent armor pretty easily.

 

With iron plate, there's armor that's for all intents and purposes superior to chain and just as easily obtained (just needs iron). The niche for chain is gone.

 

It also makes plate armor smithing considerably easier--assuming a person doesn't have access to easy pieces of scale to imp (and we all know those are piss easy for noobs to get, right?)

 

In short, iron plate nearly wipes out the  viability of 2 entire skills (metallurgy and chain armor smithing...though I guess there's chain barding) and makes a hard(er) skill to skill up a lot easier--thereby cheapening the work of many plate smiths out there.

 

Yup. Totally harmless.

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44 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

I always need steel lumps 90+ and I sure don't use it for plate.

 

Are you a masochist that uses steel tools for some odd reason?

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There is lots of items that require steel, tools for one, mine doors, and there is still demand for steel plate armor that is not going away

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Just now, JakeRivers said:

There is lots of items that require steel, tools for one, mine doors, and there is still demand for steel plate armor that is not going away

 

High QL (95+ QL) tools are a nightmare to imp with steel.

 

Mine doors typically use bulk steel, anyway.

 

And steel plate armor's demand is going to go down. In all likelihood the price and demand for plate is going to drop. Both because iron plate is a cheaper and easier alternative and more people will be able to skill up PAS with iron instead of steel.

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1 minute ago, JakeRivers said:

Time to learn a new skill then

 

Meh. I've got a ton of high level crafting skills. I generally CBA to do much crafting work lately, anyway, so it doesn't affect me directly much.

I'm just trying to look at it from a wider game perspective. I'm sure people will appreciate being able to skill up PAS easier, but it's going to leave many of the people who ground up metallurgy for PAS and the people who leveled PAS a bit bitter.

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2 hours ago, Hailene said:

Care to explain?

Trolls don't care about your plate so you're going to want studded leather for them, and every other mob in pve is so laughably weak you can just wear whatever you want so studded leather again. There's 0 reason to wear plate in pve it's just garbage there compared to studded leather.

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