Armor Penetration, hidden buff to Warriors?Follow

It's a false argument that because armor causes a linear increase in TTL (Time To Live) that it actually results in a linear increase in survivability. It's true in absolute terms, but that's not the situation you see in real group PvP (or PvE, for that matter) because of one factor... namely healing.

If World of Warcraft had a healing system like Everquests, Armor would be a linear boost; in that game, the primary healing focused around Complete Heals which would zip a tank all the way up from 1% HP to 100% HP, at least in the original incarnation. If 10,000 armor gives the tank 10 seconds to live without a CHeal, and 20,000 gives him 20 seconds to live without a CHeal, this would be the way to look at the impact of armor.

The problem, though, is that TTL isn't the most important factor in WoW, although it is important... but because of the lack of massive CHeal-style regeneration, what really matters is incoming DPS. If you have 10557 armor, you have 50% mitigation... or someone with 2000 raw DPS to you, they will instead deal 1000 raw DPS; in order for you to remain alive, you have to receive 1000 HP worth of Healing per Second (HPS). If you double the armor to 21,114 you get up to 66.6% mitigation, or someone dealing 2000 raw DPS will drop to 666 DPS... which means you'd have to attack them 50% longer to drop them in absolute TTL terms, or give them 33% less healing in PvP terms.

Armor Penetration provides a correspondingly larger increase to DPS at lower ranges of the armor spectrum. While it may add (say) ~2s worth of life if you exclude heals, requiring the target to receive 10% more healing (due to a 10% DPS increase) when compared to a ~5% increase in required healing (due to a 5% DPS increase) is an immense difference when you _do_ take healing into consideration.

I love how this game keeps everyone on their toes. Every time we finally figure out exactly what optimal is, they change it or add more factors to the equations.

There must be a guy at Blizzard who just reads forums all day. On his wall there is a dartboard. It would have a section that says Nerf, one that says Buff, and one that says New.

When he realizes that we've got something down to a science, he gets drunk, puts on a blindfold, and throws a dart. Then he tells the coders in the basement to nerf, buff, or add a new element accordingly.


That aside done, the addition of the complications from healing, as zip brought up will certainly change our theories on this new element.

It's gonna be interesting to see how this affect EA and Imp EA.

Basic fact:

5 point EA -2025 armor
5 point imp EA -3050 armor
Executioner enchant -840 armor (Is it stackable if you DW?)
New PVP set -? armor (let's assume 800 for simplicity's sake).

So with full pvp gear, you're looking at -2825armor with a 5point EA and -4690 with 5 point imp EA, Executioner proc and pvp armor. And -5530 armor if Executioner can double proc like mongoose.

Can we say overkill? No caster has that much armor.

While Imp EA might still be used for 5v5, the talent will become a lot less important for smaller fights where you're usually the only melee dps and fighting a clothie. In fact, it'll now only be useful when applied to non-clothie.

On the other hand, this will be very effective against hunter (and the rare enhancement shaman) and even high armor target like arms warriors are going to feel a lost of 4k+ armor...

I have 3.3k Armor in damn near full Merciless.

We won't feel - 4k+ armor because we don't have that much.

A rogue with imp EA already strip us of all our armor really.