Upcoming Armour Rebalance: Attempt II

[Poach]

Armour Alterations

Until now, we have tried to preserve the tiered system Minecraft has in place for armour: keeping diamond best and leather worst. We tried to balance it by reducing the gap between these tiers, and by giving Diamond a slight drawback to use. These balance efforts have not worked, and Diamond remains unquestionably the best choice for everything except the extremely rare 1v1 in open terrain.

As such, we are changing armour again, more drastically this time. Diamond will become a tank armour: low damage, high hitpoints. Iron is becoming the damage dealer armour. Leather remains as the skirmisher armour.

The following enchants are now present on armours:

Diamond Armour applies Weakness II. You will absorb damage but not deal much with a sword. Arrow damage remains 100%, and Slowness I is gone. Archers will favour this armour.

Iron Armour applies Strength I, giving it a damage buff. In a straight Diamond vs Iron sword fight, Iron has the edge. Swordsmen will favour this armour: if you can close with a diamond enemy without taking arrow damage you'll likely win.

Leather Armour applies Swiftness I, Strength I and Regeneration I. The armour of the skirmisher: you'll be fast and difficult to kill with a bow thanks to the Regen, but are still fatally weak in a sword fight against either of the other two armours. If you're scouting or moving around but don't intend to get into a fight, this is your armour.


The above changes are designed to remove the dependence on Diamond for all wars. Diamond armour still has its place and is still slightly superior to the other armour types because of Power I bows, but an Iron wearer is now a match in an equal sword fight.

We hope this will make wars more widespread and more fun: now your success is not dependant on not losing your few Diamond armour sets. Even in all Iron your armies will stand a strong fighting chance, even if they are slightly more vulnerable to arrow fire.

I leave the thread open to commentary.

[Connor93]

Are the effects only when the armor is equipped? Could you theoretically carry all the armors and just switch? And if not, what happens if you ARE carrying all the armor?

[Lord Romanus III]

You'll have the diamond effect.

[Pat89]

You'll have the diamond effect.

Something you might not have thought about and I don't know a solution this quickly either, but if you're fighting a guy in diamond and you pick up some of his gear, but have no chance to equip it or throw it away before someone else engages you, you're screwed. Even if you just pick up the diamond boots, you will still get the negative effects and all positive effects of your iron armour are gone.

I know this might sound a bit unlikely to happen, but it really is not. If you're fighting somewhere, chances are your inventory is full with loot or crap that your victims were wearing. I've often had this where you only have one piece of the enemies armour in your inventory and have to keep throwing stuff out to get the remaining pieces.

So what I personally think might not be such a big of a problem at all, is if only the most negative effects of the armour you're wearing are applied. Or perhaps (but I have no idea how doable it is) is make the effects only apply if you have more than one piece in your inventory (or at least either a pants or chestplate along with another piece). That way you would not be as much punished for killing a guy in diamond, mid battle.

Overall I like the changes though, btw.

[Poach]

Players will get into the habit of filling their inventory for battles, then. It is relatively easy to have 1 bit of cobble holding down all your open inventory slots. Still, that isn't intuitive and many players may fall for it and end up being shouldered with Weakness II while wearing Iron from killing an enemy archer.

It is a problem, one we didn't think of, and one we shall have to think on. We can't make it only worn armour being applied, because as Hil said people would carry Diamond and Iron, for example, and switch. Diamond until the enemy got through the walls, for example.

[wolfbane751]

and will these be coming with the 1.4.6 update?

[Pat89]

Filling your inventory with pieces of cobble might be the most simple solution indeed.

Or dirt. Giving it a prominent place in the battles of this server as it deserves to have.

[Consul Napoleon Bonaparte]

When is Power II being removed?

[Kamacite]

When is Power II being removed?

Where did it say they were?

[wolfbane751]

they mentioned it in game i believe.

[Consul Napoleon Bonaparte]

Indeed they did. "Too Powerful"

[Connor93]

Several times a long while back.. I too wonder at that. I like having it if we're gonna throw opinions out there on it ^.^

[Lord Romanus III]

To solve the diamond/iron/leather in your inventory dilemma: hand it over to whomever is already wearing that armor type, if possible. Place it in a chest or simply toss it somewhere else. It is an issue and not easy to do while in combat, I know. We could remove it, as armor swapping won't be too bad. As for Power II: it doesn't function well when combined with the new armor system. It makes leather useless and cripples iron even more. When designing this, I wanted each armor to feel more like a class type, rather than "grind for X armor to be better." Any other thoughts on the matter?

[Connor93]

To solve the diamond/iron/leather in your inventory dilemma: hand it over to whomever is already wearing that armor type, if possible. Place it in a chest or simply toss it somewhere else. It is an issue and not easy to do while in combat, I know. We could remove it, as armor swapping won't be too bad. As for Power II: it doesn't function well when combined with the new armor system. It makes leather useless and cripples iron even more. When designing this, I wanted each armor to feel more like a class type, rather than "grind for X armor to be better." Any other thoughts on the matter?

Oh yea forgot leather grants strength 1 as well so might have the same effect as having p2

EDIT: Dunno how it affects the new armor changes so can't really say

[Remlap]

Strength only affects melee.

[Archduke Greens]

Dirt will always be carried into battle with me!

Also I really feel that weakness II is too much but we'll see how it pans out.

[Poach]

It took testing to settle on Weakness II. With Weakness I Diamond still won against all other armours hands down with a comfortable margin. With Weakness II it wasn't quite even: Iron had the advantage but not a guaranteed win advantage. The Iron wearer usually came out of the fight with 1-2 hearts left if both players fought well, but it was usually the Iron wearer winning the fight.

Edit: That is, without a bow. Diamond was the better choice for archers because Weakness/Strength don't change arrow damage and Diamond absorbs more damage. In a 1v1 between the two armours a lot depended on how many arrows the Diamond wearer could land before the sword fight began.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I really hate that you keep putting more and more restrictions on the armor. Harms completely bypassed protection enchants, and the now that you can level up to 30 simply by MINING and get a high-level enchant on your armor means almost anyone can get high-level diamond armor, especially considering the spawn rate of diamonds in 1.3 map generation was increased.

I'm not saying we should bring back all of the enchants, but I am saying we need to bring a handful of things back. Potions of Harming, Protection II, potion of swiftness, sharpness I/sharpness II. This would help balance things out.

Also, Iron swords are still completely useless.

[The Hedge Knight]

I like this . Worlds going to be flooded with diamond picks though.

[Poach]

I really hate that you keep putting more and more restrictions on the armor. Harms completely bypassed protection enchants, and the now that you can level up to 30 simply by MINING and get a high-level enchant on your armor means almost anyone can get high-level diamond armor, especially considering the spawn rate of diamonds in 1.3 map generation was increased.

I'm not saying we should bring back all of the enchants, but I am saying we need to bring a handful of things back. Potions of Harming, Protection II, potion of swiftness, sharpness I/sharpness II. This would help balance things out.

Also, Iron swords are still completely useless.

Harm II did not bypass protection enchants. On Prot V armour, a Harm II did 0.5-1 heart of damage. The famous case of Dwarves vs Greens comes to mind, where Greens in Prot V Diamond, survived being attacked by 2-3 Dwarves until his armour literally broke.

Return Harm II without returning Prot and potion spamming wins everything. Return Prot, even Prot I, and you get Prot IV on armour (4x1) making people nearly unkillable.

We're doing the best we can with an enchanting system that was created without any thought to PvP balancing when it was made. If we could edit what the enchants actually did it'd be awesome, but all we can do is turn them on or off.