Talk:Armor/@comment-82.48.30.110-20131027185733/@comment-11753608-20131030153347

contributor 1:

1)  Elemental damage has NEVER ignored armor.  I have been working with the damage system since update 7 and not once had elemental damage ignored armor from that point on.  There are 4 types of damage that ignore armor - serrated blade, poison, physical impact, and armor piercing.  That has not changed... ever...  like ever...

If there was a bug in this regard from the Torid gas cloud, I am unaware of it.

2) All "simplifying" does is create a lack of clarity in your statements and gives the impression you don't actually know what you are talking about.  It makes it infinitely more difficult to communicate and actually answer your questions.

3.  The damage calculator is not incorrect. Armor is only applied on hitboxes that have armor and Ancients have armor on some hitboxes and not others. You need to read more carfeully. Galatine with 90% fire against a 200 ancient:  Head = 2, Body = 1, Lower Limbs = 64. Just as it should be.

4.  Serrated blade ignores armor. So yes the flux rifle ignores armor and the rocket launcher does not. You are correct.

If you are unconvinced of the Damage Calculator, you can go over and look at the Damage page and see what damage types are armor ignore or not. However, I will let you know, that I authored this page, the Damage page, the Elemental mod page, co-authored the Damage Calculator, etc., etc. They are all using the same datamined and in-game tested information. It is all correct as of now. If there are individual errors in weapon specific pages or the damage type specific pages, all I can say is - I can't keep up with all the dumbasses that change stuff on here. Especially not while I am in the middle of my semester.

If you can't find convincing information on the Damage page or don't believe the Calculator (which was created using the Damage page information anyway...) then I encourage you to check out my user page and read all of our research blogs.

Trust me bro, we been working on this crap since May and testing crap up and down, I know what I am talking about.

To answer your real question as I can ascertain it from your complaints I will say the following:

Despite what people try to convince you of in game, the DEs have been moving forward with a clearly tiered weapon system. If you are fighting high level enemies, you pretty much need to have one of the following:

1.  A weapon with armor ignoring base damage. (Acrid, Despair, Flux, etc.)

2.  A weapon with an extremely high base damage that does not necessarily ignore armor. (Ogris, Ignis, Synapse, charged Miter, etc.) with a maxed Armor Piercing mod attached.

3.  A weapon that has an extremely high fire rate coupled with an extremely high crit % and multipliers (Soma) or medium base damage level (Orthos Prime or something like that)  with a maxed Armor Piercing mod attached.

In the case of #3 in particular, the armor piercing mods actually increase your overall damage output faster than base damage mods. And of course, the best weapons are those that combine mutiple properties from the list above - Things like the Acrid (high base armor ignoring damage with good ROF), Dual Ichor (high ROF, armor ignore, and great crit stats), Lanka (extremely high base damage that ignores armor), etc., etc.

That isn't to say you can't use other weapon but if you are going into a Tier 3 Defense mission trying to take down Corrupted Ancients with Twin Vipers or a Skana you are going to get your ass handed to you.

What has changed in the last few updates - mainly update 9 - is that they are increasing enemy base levels in different zones and they have continued along the path of making tiers in the weapon system. If you aren't upgrading to Stalker gear, researched weapons, Prime weapons, or other exclusive weapons (Strun Wriath) to play end game content, you ARE going to have issues with damage output. This is intentional and GOOD. The prr-update 9 game was just dumb. If I can go into end game content and literally own enemies left and right with the weapons I started the game with, then I have absolutely no incentive to play the game for more than a week. There is no replay value at all.