How does True Damage work with negative armor rating?

Frivolousz21

An unawakened Medusa would be a great chance to see if her attack increases with armor shatter.


Awakened Medusa can't be used because of her furies

Magrailothos

Frivolousz21 said:

Duke_Silver said:

Wait why are people fighting against IF? I thought the issues was that his constant armor breaks he placed with his sig were messed up.

Because IF doesn't have armor.

Some are saying there isn't negative armor.

But using DD Netflix who doesn't have any attack buffs.

His damage output versus IF dramatically increases with each armor break stack.


This could only be possible if IFs armor rating went into the negative.

Quite. Thank you, @Frivolousz21

By fighting Iron Fist, it's very easy to prove the existence of negative armour. Which is one of the two things we were talking about.

Without first establishing the possibility of negative armour, trying to discuss how it interacts with 'Ignore armour' is rather moot.

It's equally easy to prove that 'Ignore Armour' or 'True Damage' ignores both positive and negative armour; and acts as though everyone has an armour of zero.

Just like I quoted from Heimdall's spotlight several hours ago...

GroundedWisdom

Heimdall was alleged to be in the Ether a long time. He was data mined long ago. Anything is possible. As for negative Armor, no Champ operates solely by Ignore Armor. The fact that they do Damage doesn't prove negative Armor exists.

Magrailothos

*sigh*

Duke_Silver

Frivolousz21 said:

Duke_Silver said:

Wait why are people fighting against IF? I thought the issues was that his constant armor breaks he placed with his sig were messed up.

Because IF doesn't have armor.

Some are saying there isn't negative armor.

But using DD Netflix who doesn't have any attack buffs.

His damage output versus IF dramatically increases with each armor break stack.


This could only be possible if IFs armor rating went into the negative.

Ah cool, that makes sense. Thanks

Colonaut123

Frivolousz21 said:

An unawakened Medusa would be a great chance to see if her attack increases with armor shatter.


Awakened Medusa can't be used because of her furies

I've an unawakened 5* Medusa and yes, stacking armor breaks makes her damage high. People who say she needs her sig to hit hard don't know about negative armor.

Colonaut123

Magrailothos said:

Also, @Colonaut123, @GroundedWisdom, @will-o-wisp:

Found this in Heimdall's spotlight:

Kabam Vydious said:

Heimdall enters The Contest August 16th at 10AM PDT...


Special 1: Hofund - Heimdall wields his uru sword Hofund with powerful sweeping blows, combining his natural strength with enchantments woven into the blade by Odin himself.

• 100% chance to Armor Break the Opponent once for each Fury Buff more than Armor Up Buff currently active on Heimdall. These Armor Breaks reduce Armor by 105 and last for 10 seconds.

*** Developer Note: Heimdall’s Armor Breaks won’t grant him additional Damage while his True Strike is active, as it’s ignoring his Opponent’s Armor (positive or negative), however they’re still very useful in certain matchups clearing Armor effects from the Opponent.

It seems the developers still think armour can go negative. It also seems that (they think that) True Strike ignores all armour, so doesn't benefit from Armour Break.

But hey, what does the game design team know? Probably let's just go on a half-remembered, article-of-faith-announcement by a forum moderator that they were planning to remove negative armour back in 12.0. Plans never change, and as we all know, the mods are never wrong. Let's just keep saying there's no such thing as negative armour...

That's interesting. Now would this also apply to passive True Damage? Has anyone fought IF with the new Captain Marvel?

GroundedWisdom

What I'm trying to explain is Champs don't operate solely on Ignore Armor. You don't need to go into negative Armor to inflict high Damage. They also have the ability to Crit, as in Medusa. If the Debuffs are applied, their Crit is increased. This wouldn't be the case with PS because the mechanic operates solely through Ignore. The fact that a Champ HAS Armor Break and does Damage is not proof negative Armor exists.

Colonaut123

GroundedWisdom said:

What I'm trying to explain is Champs don't operate solely on Ignore Armor. You don't need to go into negative Armor to inflict high Damage. They also have the ability to Crit, as in Medusa. If the Debuffs are applied, their Crit is increased. This wouldn't be the case with PS because the mechanic operates solely through Ignore. The fact that a Champ HAS Armor Break and does Damage is not proof negative Armor exists.

Dude, we already established the existence of negative armor. Stop beating that dead horse. The question is if True Damage also ignores negative armor. From the Heimdall spotlight we know it does for True Damage buffs. So now I only need to know if it applies to True Damage passive effects like Captain Marvel.

GroundedWisdom

You haven't established anything but the fact that Champs inflict Damage. Show me official confirmation that negative Armor is active, and I'll admit I'm wrong. Until then, all you have is a theory.

Colonaut123

GroundedWisdom said:

You haven't established anything but the fact that Champs inflict Damage. Show me official confirmation that negative Armor is active, and I'll admit I'm wrong. Until then, all you have is a theory.

Go take any champion with armor break against IF, compare damage output with and without. That's your evidence.

GroundedWisdom

I literally just explained that Champs don't operate on that alone. They can Crit when Debuffs are active. Measure that Damage against a Champ WITH Armor and check the difference.

Colonaut123

GroundedWisdom said:

I literally just explained that Champs don't operate on that alone. They can Crit when Debuffs are active. Measure that Damage against a Champ WITH Armor and check the difference.

You don't need crits to check this. Regular hits are fine to.

Batman05

I do remember kabams explanation why pure skill doesn’t have any benignity past level three is because you can’t go negitave armor. They said rank four and five would only be benificial against champs with unusually high armor rating. Once amor is zero it’s zero. That’s how they controlled post 12.0 Thor

GroundedWisdom

That's what I'm trying to explain but it's not going over. We're not operating within the same Percentage System anymore.

Colonaut123

Batman05 said:

I do remember kabams explanation why pure skill doesn’t have any benignity past level three is because you can’t go negitave armor. They said rank four and five would only be benificial against champs with unusually high armor rating. Once amor is zero it’s zero. That’s how they controlled post 12.0 Thor

No that's because crits ignore damage percentage based. You can't ignore more than 100%. Armor break on the other hand subtracts and can go into the negative.

GroundedWisdom

So I just spoke with DNA, and it appears I was wrong. He tried to post an explanation but it went to Moderation. In any event, I trust his feedback. I have no issues admitting I was wrong. What confuses me is the part about Ignore Armor. Not sure how you can Ignore negative Armor. Perhaps you can't and that's what I was focusing on, but Armor itself can go into the negative. Anyhow, I apologize.

V1PER1987

GroundedWisdom said:

So I just spoke with DNA, and it appears I was wrong. He tried to post an explanation but it went to Moderation. In any event, I trust his feedback. I have no issues admitting I was wrong. What confuses me is the part about Ignore Armor. Not sure how you can Ignore negative Armor. Perhaps you can't and that's what I was focusing on, but Armor itself can go into the negative. Anyhow, I apologize.

First things first, you have to realize that ignore armor isnt related to negative armor. It sounds like you think they’re the same thing and they’re not.

GroundedWisdom

Yeah I was hanging on to the logic of one and it wasn't the same. My bad. I've always had a bit of a mental block surrounding the topic to begin with. No one is perfect.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom said:

So I just spoke with DNA, and it appears I was wrong. He tried to post an explanation but it went to Moderation. In any event, I trust his feedback. I have no issues admitting I was wrong. What confuses me is the part about Ignore Armor. Not sure how you can Ignore negative Armor. Perhaps you can't and that's what I was focusing on, but Armor itself can go into the negative. Anyhow, I apologize.

It is probably more evocative for True Strike to say it "ignores armor" but in fact on a game mechanical level it ignores armor rating. If you think about it that way, no matter what armor rating is, positive, negative, or zero, it simply isn't even looked at when calculating True Strike damage and other damage that ignores armor.

Still not sure why my other post went into moderation, but I'll give it a while then try to write up something completely different that maybe the forums won't accidentally key off of (sometimes, I notice that the specific sequence of words I use in a post causes it to auto-mod the post, and then when I say the same thing in a completely different way the post gets posted just fine).

GroundedWisdom

Thank you.

V1PER1987

Just another note or two. There are some other champs that have zero armor that you can try to test on, Karnak, and MODOK. However Karnak shrugs off armor breaks faster and MODOK is a PITA to test against with auto block, so IF is ideal for testing.

On another note, I’m not sure if the testing done by the previous poster with DDNF was based on crits or just normal attacks. I feel like testing would probably be more accurate when testing normal attacks rather than crits considering crits can get complicated with ignoring armor (pierce mastery), additional/reduced crit damage (cruelty mastery, synergies, abilities), and crit resistance (KM, Corvus, Korg).

I remember the mods discussing how armor cannot be negative values and that’s why IF and Pure Skill fell off as effective tools for fights because they were essentially ineffective. However, judging by the testing in this thread, it would seem to me that negative armor is in fact a thing. So I’m not sure if this is just an effect of DR (maybe they thought DR would cancel negative armor values but it didn’t) or they just decided against implementation to make armor values remain at 0 or higher. Either way, I have to go where the data leads and it seems to prove negative armor values are still a thing.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom said:

Perhaps @DNA3000 could expand on the subject.

Net armor percentage can go negative post-12.0. The mechanics for this were changed a couple times after 12.0 released, so any testing done immediately after 12.0 (say, between 12.0 and 13.0) could be inconsistent with how it works now, but the bottom line is that @Colonaut123 is basically correct: the DR formula "presumes" AR is positive for the purposes of the DR calculation, and then the armor percentage that pops out is used in the damage equation with the original sign. This means if net overall armor percentage is negative, then damage is increased. And since True Strike ignores armor rating, true strike attacks always land for the same damage regardless of whether armor is positive, negative, or zero - they literally ignore armor.

I say "basically correct" because his discussion omits the effects of resistances. Pre-12.0, armor and resistances stacked. Post 12.0, armor and resistances still stack, but it is their flat stats that stack, not their net percentages. In other words, if you have 1000 rating armor and 1000 rating physical resistance, you have 2000 net overall armor verses physical damage, and that net percentage will be lower than if the armor and physical resistance percentages stacked. This can throw off testing people do when they are testing with something that has resistances, but doesn't factor in the fact that the resistances alter the armor calculations. Armor debuffs can't "go negative" until they wipe out all the armor, and *also* all the resistances (for attacks that deal that kind of damage).

This is all as of when I last checked, which was a while ago. Kabam has changed underlying mechanics without patch notes in the past, although I don't think this has changed behavior.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom said:

Perhaps @DNA3000 could expand on the subject.

Net armor percentage can go negative post-12.0. The mechanics for this were changed a couple times after 12.0 released, so any testing done immediately after 12.0 (say, between 12.0 and 13.0) could be inconsistent with how it works now, but the bottom line is that @Colonaut123 is basically correct: the DR formula "presumes" AR is positive for the purposes of the DR calculation, and then the armor percentage that pops out is used in the damage equation with the original sign. This means if net overall armor percentage is negative, then damage is increased. And since True Strike ignores armor rating, true strike attacks always land for the same damage regardless of whether armor is positive, negative, or zero - they literally ignore armor.

I say "basically correct" because his discussion omits the effects of resistances. Pre-12.0, armor and resistances stacked. Post 12.0, armor and resistances still stack, but it is their flat stats that stack, not their net percentages. In other words, if you have 1000 rating armor and 1000 rating physical resistance, you have 2000 net overall armor verses physical damage, and that net percentage will be lower than if the armor and physical resistance percentages stacked. This can throw off testing people do when they are testing with something that has resistances, but doesn't factor in the fact that the resistances alter the armor calculations.

This is all as of when I last checked, which was a while ago. Kabam has changed underlying mechanics without patch notes in the past, although I don't think this has changed behavior.

The math @Colonaut123 shows is correct for how to convert Armor Rating into Armor Percentage. To find damage, the simplified equation is: NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - Armor). So if your armor is 50%, i.e. 0.5, then the damage you see is NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - 0.5) = IncomingDamage * 0.5. So half damage. But if armor rating is negative 50%, then that same equation becomes NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - (-0.5)) = IncomingDamage * (1 + 0.5) = IncomingDamage * 1.5. So 50% more damage.

GroundedWisdom

Ok, thank you. I remember we've had the same conversation many times, and it seems I've been carrying that misunderstanding all this time. I appreciate you taking the time to explain it, yet again.

Magrailothos

Thanks, @DNA3000

Colonaut123

DNA3000 said:

The math @Colonaut123 shows is correct for how to convert Armor Rating into Armor Percentage. To find damage, the simplified equation is: NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - Armor). So if your armor is 50%, i.e. 0.5, then the damage you see is NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - 0.5) = IncomingDamage * 0.5. So half damage. But if armor rating is negative 50%, then that same equation becomes NetDamage = IncomingDamage * (1 - (-0.5)) = IncomingDamage * (1 + 0.5) = IncomingDamage * 1.5. So 50% more damage.

Most importantly, the damage modifier is added after all other damage modifiers such as Special Attack Damage and Fury. Probably crits to, but as those ignore 50% armor, the modifier will be lower.

Colonaut123

DNA3000 said:

Net armor percentage can go negative post-12.0. The mechanics for this were changed a couple times after 12.0 released, so any testing done immediately after 12.0 (say, between 12.0 and 13.0) could be inconsistent with how it works now, but the bottom line is that @Colonaut123 is basically correct: the DR formula "presumes" AR is positive for the purposes of the DR calculation, and then the armor percentage that pops out is used in the damage equation with the original sign. This means if net overall armor percentage is negative, then damage is increased. And since True Strike ignores armor rating, true strike attacks always land for the same damage regardless of whether armor is positive, negative, or zero - they literally ignore armor.

You could say that True Strike is a sort of damage cap. Especially Corvus Glaive is in this way balanced, despite having guaranteed crit and True Damage. People assume that without his Glaive Charges his hits suck, forget that without his crits and True Damage, nothing ignores armor rating and thus you can freely stack armor breaks into the negative.

DNA3000 said:

I say "basically correct" because his discussion omits the effects of resistances. Pre-12.0, armor and resistances stacked. Post 12.0, armor and resistances still stack, but it is their flat stats that stack, not their net percentages. In other words, if you have 1000 rating armor and 1000 rating physical resistance, you have 2000 net overall armor verses physical damage, and that net percentage will be lower than if the armor and physical resistance percentages stacked. This can throw off testing people do when they are testing with something that has resistances, but doesn't factor in the fact that the resistances alter the armor calculations.

This is all as of when I last checked, which was a while ago. Kabam has changed underlying mechanics without patch notes in the past, although I don't think this has changed behavior.

Resistances are an enigma by themselves. Tbh, I think it is a rather redundant game mechanic. It does the same thing as armor, but it differentiates between types of attacks, even though the game only does invisibly. Maybe if resistances simply substracted base attack rating, it would become something unique. But then physical and energy attacks should get different colours.

DNA3000

... and another one of my posts went straight to moderation in this thread. This thread apparently has very high resistances to my replies.

DNA3000

Colonaut123 said:

DNA3000 said:

Net armor percentage can go negative post-12.0. The mechanics for this were changed a couple times after 12.0 released, so any testing done immediately after 12.0 (say, between 12.0 and 13.0) could be inconsistent with how it works now, but the bottom line is that @Colonaut123 is basically correct: the DR formula "presumes" AR is positive for the purposes of the DR calculation, and then the armor percentage that pops out is used in the damage equation with the original sign. This means if net overall armor percentage is negative, then damage is increased. And since True Strike ignores armor rating, true strike attacks always land for the same damage regardless of whether armor is positive, negative, or zero - they literally ignore armor.

You could say that True Strike is a sort of damage cap. Especially Corvus Glaive is in this way balanced, despite having guaranteed crit and True Damage. People assume that without his Glaive Charges his hits suck, forget that without his crits and True Damage, nothing ignores armor rating and thus you can freely stack armor breaks into the negative.

DNA3000 said:

I say "basically correct" because his discussion omits the effects of resistances. Pre-12.0, armor and resistances stacked. Post 12.0, armor and resistances still stack, but it is their flat stats that stack, not their net percentages. In other words, if you have 1000 rating armor and 1000 rating physical resistance, you have 2000 net overall armor verses physical damage, and that net percentage will be lower than if the armor and physical resistance percentages stacked. This can throw off testing people do when they are testing with something that has resistances, but doesn't factor in the fact that the resistances alter the armor calculations.

This is all as of when I last checked, which was a while ago. Kabam has changed underlying mechanics without patch notes in the past, although I don't think this has changed behavior.

Resistances are an enigma by themselves. Tbh, I think it is a rather redundant game mechanic. It does the same thing as armor, but it differentiates between types of attacks, even though the game only does invisibly. Maybe if resistances simply substracted base attack rating, it would become something unique. But then physical and energy attacks should get different colours.

I wouldn't say they are redundant, but I think they were not well-thought out at the beginning of time, and flat stats further mushed them into being a less significant stat. Resistances are basically typed armor that can't be broken. That's not entirely redundant, but it probably isn't interesting enough to pay for their conceptual space in the game.

I think how they *should* work is that armor should conceptually be something that is sort of a "shell" in mechanics if not concept that blocks damage, but critical hits can "penetrate." Resistances would be the stuff "inside" the shell that also reduces damage, and critical hits don't avoid, but different types of damage do.