Armor and Toughness - an explanation | Forums

[UbiSusie]

Hi guys!

By now, most of you have added inserts into your armor and have hovered over both Armor and Toughness and noticed a tooltip bug where they both say the exact same thing. Obviously since one is a percentage and one is points, they are not the exact same. I have been asked about this MANY times and have gotten an in-depth explanation of the two from one of the devs (Thanks again Chris!!). I wanted to share this info with you so you can completely understand what your inserts are helping you with and where you can improve your gear.

Armor is a multiplier. Example: if you do 50 dmg and have 50% armor reduction the net dmg is 25.

Toughness is a subtraction. Example: if you do 20 points of dmg and have 3 toughness the dmg will be 17.

The good news there is no choice between armor and toughness since you always have armor and toughness is added.

But the choice becomes interesting when you are thinking if you should add health or toughness.
Think of it this way, if you take a sniper head shot for a 120 dmg, a -3 dmg (toughness) probably isn't going to help you but an added 20 health would.

However think about things like SMG and SG…
SG fires 8 pellets -just assume 10 dmg each, -3 (toughness) off each makes them 7 but the net health savings is 24 so if you added 20 health that would help against a sniper but wouldn't save you against a shotgun but 3 toughness would.

Toughness is good against low dmg/high rof (rate of fire) and health is better against high dmg/low rof.

Then you have the other 2 factors, health regen and crit mitigation.
So even if you survive a shot, regen lets you get back into the fight faster. So it’s an interesting choice to make: health, regen or toughness.
Critical mitigation, it’s only now starting to become a real factor in the gameplay because we are seeing players getting up to proficiency level 8, maybe a 25 to 30% crit chance.
Crit mitigation inserts are designed to counter that luck factor,

Assault class health regen passive vs armor works on this theory as well
If you are constantly regening your health while in combat, very quickly you can get back 30 hp over 10 seconds. Enough to survive another bullet but that’s over time and not instant.
What’s more important depends on who you are fighting and the situation so you'll find it handy later to have multiple armors in your inventory stacked with variety of insert combinations.
On a death, this gives you a chance to change your strategy.


Hopefully this will clear up a lot of questions without creating many more! :P

[Mykinius]

Oh my goodness Friday thank you for sharing that. This should be stickied until that's fixed.

I love regeneration, so I might start taking toughness because it would go very well with my regeneration passive (each point of health regained is worth more when bullets do less damage to you).

Speaking of which, does going into cover actually speed up hp regen, or is it just suggested because it's safer there? If so, does it decrease delay before it kicks in, increase the actual regen rate, or both?

[Freelancer852]

Thank you for this GirlFriday! I've been having people bug me about the stats and what they do on YouTube from my "Let's Play" videos. I'll make a new one explaining all of this there as well!

[JoshHardenburg]

Great to know! I was wondering about that.

[dmallon589]

lol now I might actually use the sapis, never cared to even look at what they really change and usually just sell them for the extra 28RP they tend to be worth.

[LiquidX74]

This is solid info - I have been asking these questions since the F&F invites to no avail.

I have typically decided upon just stacking health and armor as an assault (as those were the prime strengths of the class), and it has worked well to this point. Given the new info, I may reevaluate these choices somewhat.

Like Mykinius though, I have more questions about regeneration.

It seems to me that when I take cover behind an object, it often takes 5 or 6 seconds before the regenerative effect begins to take place. My questions are thus:

Does the assault regeneration device addon (as opposed to the armor addon) decrease this time before regeneration kicks in? By the wording, I would assume that it is 'always on' and that taking cover is not necessary to engage regeneration.

Secondly, how much health per second does 1 regeneration do. Your post suggests that 30 health should easily be regenerated in 10 seconds - at what level of regeneration is this possible? IE: what is the breakdown between a point of regeneration, and the health gained per second. Is it 1 regen = 1 health per second?

and last, taking cover (after the 5-6 second activation time) does seem to increase regeneration significantly - so then if you have the assault regeneration ability, and have socketted regeneration inserts, does your regeneration ability increase when you take cover (as opposed to when you are not in cover)?

[Bugattiboy91]

Armor is a multiplier. Example: if you do 50 dmg and have 50% armor reduction the net dmg is 25.

Toughness is a subtraction. Example: if you do 20 points of dmg and have 3 toughness the dmg will be 17.

I think I sees some typos. The way your sentences are worded makes it sound if YOU have armour and toughness then YOUR shots are reduced

Does the assault regeneration device addon (as opposed to the armor addon) decrease this time before regeneration kicks in? By the wording, I would assume that it is 'always on' and that taking cover is not necessary to engage regeneration.

Yes, if you are affect by the assault regen then you don't need to be in cover to start regen.

and last, taking cover (after the 5-6 second activation time) does seem to increase regeneration significantly - so then if you have the assault regeneration ability, and have socketted regeneration inserts, does your regeneration ability increase when you take cover (as opposed to when you are not in cover)?

I'm not a dev so I can't say for sure, but in my experience cover can only make it better. I was once in in cover, had regen mods, and assault regen. I had 1 HP and went back to full HP in seconds.