The Avoidance Advantage of Light Armor

[Kinesthesia]

I have always tried to protect myself as best I could.  I do not solo much, but try as I might to avoid aggro by letting tanks build hate and trying to pace my damage... when I hit one for 700+ points of damage, they tend to turn around to see where it came from =) So, I have always spoiled myself with the best medium armor I could get my hands on, usually crafted from rare metals.  However, I have seen more scouts running around in light armor lately and heard references to better avoidance but does any one have any definative information ?  Perhaps before and after avoidance data from switching from medium to light ? If I can not get any information, I suppose I will have to buy some light armor, attune it and find out for myself.  If it comes to that, I will post the information here.  I assume that avoidance is not affected by the quality of the armor, so buying the cheapest crafted armor I can find should do for a test ? Thanks in advance for any information.  I did some searches but found no direct answer. <div></div>

[Kyriel]

<P>Well i have the Bp and leggings of the t5 rare armor, good stats avoidance dont go up that much to be honest, is mostly our own buffs which crank up the avoidance. As far as mitigation goes, i have a set of fulgi, not much difference. BTW i got owned by the everling sister at nek castle at lvl 44 that is just ridiculous :/. So much for graying things out lol. My damage is at its best cant complain but these gray mobs hit hard even when i switched between L. armor and Medium i still got hit the same, all my buffs are adept 1 so i have no idea what went wrong.</P> <P> </P> <P>Landacet On toxx if u wanna check out some of my gear.</P>

[Zholain]

<font size="2">I think we may see a big difference in avoidance with light/very light armor when the combat changes (currently on test) are implemented.  Supposedly, the lighter the armor, the higher the avoidance factor.  I am skeptical, to say the least.  Personal preference, but I like the look of the medium chains that we get to wear better than any leather I've seen. I will continue to wear medium until the combat changes come.  And then, I will have to see a <b>significant</b> increase in avoidance before I switch to light or very light.  Regardless, I don't know if now is the best time to invest in any sort of new armor.  It'd be a shame to spend the coin, only to find out in a couple months that it was wasted.  It already stinks badly enough that I may have wasted the coin on feysteel chain...but we shall see. </font><div></div>

[TerminalVelocity]

<P>I would suggest going to EL and killing the Lamia's on the beach (North West shore).</P> <P> </P> <P>They are easy to kill, the Charmers you can kill with 2 or 3 ranged shots, and they drop Enchanted light armor you can wear at lvl38/9 and some rarer light armor you can wear at lvl41. The stats rock, you get great xp for easy mobs, you don't spend a penny on armor, and make lots of gold for the stuff you dont need. I probably made 40gp selling the bits of armor and drops i didn't need to merchants. Way too much of this stuff on broker, and i can't see people buying it.</P> <P>The armor looks cool, it's black and green, and gives great strength and agility, and mental and magic buffs.</P> <P> </P> <P>When they introduce the armor changes in the future, regardless of what happens, you will have had good armor for free.</P> <P>Oh, to help answer your question.....</P> <P>In terms of light vs medium? when I switched to light armor, my mitigation dropped from about 35% to 31% (it's about 1660 AC), and my avoidance stayed pretty much the same, maybe increased by 0.4% :smileysad:   But my STR is 119 and my AGI is 171, so I have good power and damage output at lvl40.</P> <p>Message Edited by TerminalVelocity on <span class=date_text>05-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:14 AM</span>

[Ibixat]

I think I'll be using light armor once I hit tier 5..... I seriously doubt I can afford to get ebon armor any time soon so it would be fulginate for me, Looking at the Light armor made from rare pelts (which are a fraction of the cost of ebon) the stats are far and away better than that of Fulginate and the Mitigation is actually higher as well.  So as it stands right now Light Rare T5 > Medium Common T5... far superior in EVERY regard, it will remain to be seen how the avoidance changes influence this. <div></div>

[Kinesthesia]

I decided to do some testing. Not sure why, but I assume that if agility increased avoidance and lighter armor helped avoidance than it made sense from a roleplaying perspective that having no armor at all would increase avoidance.  It makes sense, as you would be more free to move and dart out of the way of an incoming blow... but enough about reality. As it turns out, my avoidance went down when I took my armor off piece by piece.  Playing around, I also noticed a couple of other things. 1)  Bracers and Leggings had no effect on avoidance 2) The first piece (aside from leggings or bracers) that I put on, increased my avoidance by .5 % The second piece .4% and every piece thereafter was .3%. I tried them in different order and it didn't seem to matter which was added first. As for the light armor shopping, I have already picked up a whole suit of enchanted thicket woven armor, which I think drops from the lamia's you mentioned.  And the graphics match your description.  I also (while camping) added up the mitigation of my feysteel suit and it's 1083.  And the enchanted light armor is 900.  I then did a comparison piece by piece and the chest and legs make up about 130 of the 183 points in mitigation.  And while I do like my armor to match (silly but...), I wasn't crazy about giving up my embued feysteel anyway.  So I'm going to see how bad a mixture of feysteel and the enchanted stuff looks. We'll see... <div></div>

[sjaste]

<P>The Best way to find out is if someone on the test server could help with the infomation.</P> <P>Currently a 45 Ranger Wearing mostly Rare light armour with Imbued where possible. Seeing as I got all 5 pieces bought and made plus feerrott leaf collection (30 slot bag worth doing) Enchanter bone collection and crippling blade adept iii all for the price of 1 piece of unmade ebon I think it's worth it. =) </P>

[Neec]

<P>OK theres a few things that need to be taken into consideration here.</P> <P>Light armor does not increase avoidance on LIVE server YET..</P> <P>Also if your going to be swapping a 17 agil Chain shirt for a 8 str light  shirt you are likely to lose avodance remember that avoidance for us is afected by our agility, i can get nearly 330 agil self buffed and that currently gives me just over 70% avoidance, i am hoping when donning fabled light armor with nice agil stats that my avoidance will also go up althought i will continue to use fabled med and light armor combos if the avoidance boost isnt that great..</P> <P>In the grand scale fo things i really dont think it matters too much for scouts especially rangers, get kit with best stats and procs (like in combat power regen)  We cant tank to save ourselves we are RANGERS we kite snare  kite some more, sure casters kill us a LOT but melee targets with practice we can kite and kill quite easily jsut takes time..   Our job is NOT to get hit and do damage we cant take hits  i really dont think any of the combat changes are going to really help us soloing we can solo now jsut fine and will still be able to after combat changes jsut we may avoid 1 or 2 more attacks depending on our kit.. </P>