Commander Cookoo Bananas' guide to ARMOR

Armor can be sort of confusing in this game, sometimes even to people who have played the game a long time. This is probably mainly due to the game itself never really describing how armor works in detail. So here's a rundown of it.


1. LOCALIZED TARGETING
Although it's not very obvious, Guild Wars uses a system of targeting separate limbs with damage-based attacks/skills. This is the first important thing to understand in order to understand how armor works. When your character gets hit with a physical or elemental attack, the attack will hit one of the 5 pieces of armor on your character (Head, Chest, Legs, Hands, or Feet). Each limb has its own individual armor rating, which is determined mainly by the piece of armor filling that slot. Keep in mind that you can't really directly target different limb sections specifically though, which is why it makes this factor not very obvious. Also keep in mind that spells/skills that do damage that is not considered physical or elemental will typically ignore armor completely, and therefore don't hit any specific limb location.

GENERAL HIT CHANCES:
Chest - 3/8 (37.5%)
Legs - 2/8 (25%)
Feet - 1/8 (12.5%)
Hands - 1/8 (12.5%)
Head - 1/8 (12.5%)
Note that you can use elevation to affect the chances of hitting the head or legs. It's also been found that elemental spells will never hit the hands. These two factors actually make the hands the least likely to be hit in practice, despite having the same base hit chance as the feet and head.

So if I'm a Warrior wearing a 80 armor rating torso, but no pants, and you hit me with an attack, it's going to do way more damage if you hit me in the legs than the torso. Given this independent localization of damage, it makes way more sense to buff certain armor slots with a high armor rating than others. The chest piece in particular should always take priority for any armor rating boosts you apply to your armor. On a Warrior for instance, if you want to use something like a Stonefist Insignia (which gives no armor rating bonus), it's better to place it on the hands or feet, where as something like a Dreadnought Insignia is more useful on the torso or legs. This will maximize the chance of getting hit in the slot with the higher armor rating, and minimize the chances of getting hit in the lower armor rating slots.


2. SHIELDS

Shields work differently than localized pieces of armor, in that they actually increase your global armor rating, similar to how armor raising skills can. So in effect, holding a 16 armor shield will stack with an 80 armor torso to make your armor rating actually 96 when hit in the chest. This makes shields have the single biggest equipment-based effect on your general armor rating. Note that shields only affect the 180 degree span in front of your character though, and getting hit from behind will ignore the shield completely. This makes it important to be facing enemies in order to be sure to receive the shield's armor boosting effect.


3. ARMOR RATING

In general, every 40 armor rating points provides 50% damage reduction. A character with 100 armor rating takes half as much damage as one with 60 armor rating, while a character with 140 armor rating takes half the amount of a character with 100 armor rating. Armor enhancing skills do not stack beyond +25 armor, but a single armor enhancing skill can increase your armor bonus beyond +25. If several skills are used which bypass this cap (for example Kinetic Armor and Armor of Earth at high attribute levels), only the skill with the highest armor bonus will apply.


4. STACKING AND NON-STACKING
Given what we know so far, GW's term "stacking" may seem strange. This is because they're using a term that doesn't fully apply for how they mean it. The best way to understand how they mean "non-stacking" is as "there's no point to putting more than one of this in your armor set". An insignia like Dreadnought's (+10 armor vs elemental) doesn't truly "stack" because it's independently affecting each individual armor slot it's placed in. But it's not tagged as a "non-stacking" insignia because there obviously IS a point to putting more than one of it in your armor set. Even knowing this, the way they use "stacking" and "non-stacking" may still be confusing, but just try to think of it like this:

STACKING (put more than one in your armor set):
1. Any Insignias that increase armor rating. Since they only apply to their individual armor slot, you will get sort of an added (though not additive) benefit from using more than one in your armor set.
2. Knight's Insignia and Runes of Absorption. These decrease damage taken, and are also specific only to the limb it is slotted to, just like armor rating related insignias.
3. Radiant Insignia, Survivor Insignia, Rune of Vitae, and Rune of Attunement. These all increase HP or energy, and have an additive/stacking effect.

NON-STACKING (don't put more than one in your armor set):
1. Rune of Valor. Unlike the Rune of Vitae, this increases HP but will not stack with other Runes of Valor.
2. Any Runes that decrease condition durations on you.
3. Runes that increase your attributes. It will only take the highest attribute rating boost into effect. Note that these DO stack with the inherent +1 attribute of certain hats, however (which is why a Superior attribute boosting Rune on a +1 attribute boosting hat can result in a +4 to said attribute).
4. Stonefist, Bloodstained, and Lieutenant's Insignias. These miscellaneous insignias give unique bonuses that don't stack.

Wow, I learned quite a bit from this. Thank you, Scott.

It looks really good, just a few spelling mistakes. =P

I never knew this! It's really good to actually understand the system. This could make tanking easier, since I'll actually bother keeping my shield in front of me! One last thing...
BOOM! Headshot!

Fink Dixel wrote:It looks really good, just a few spelling mistakes. =P

I wrote it at work when I was tired, distracted, and had a bad head cold, so I'm surprised it makes as much sense as it does.

I think I've fixed the spelling mistakes now though, thanks for letting me know.

Dreadnaughts should be spelled as Dreadnought.... The words would be Dreadnought Insignias

To Scott's credit, both spellings are correct in the English language and Dread-Naught (fear nothing) is actually the one that makes sense...
But the game devs chose the alternate spelling.

And I myself am going off of the spelling of the Insignia's themselves. Nothing else.

Chris, ya know, I thought it was supposed to be Dread-naught (but without the hyphen). When I looked at the insignias it said Dreadnought. Lol surprised me. Now I know I wasn't totally wrong.

That's what I meant. The hyphen was my emphasis

I have just realized this.

There is one correction to make to the section regarding stacking and non-stacking effects. While a Knights Insignia only affects the armor piece it is placed in, Runes of Absorption, like other runes, bestow effects on the character and not his armor. They are non-stacking, and should only be placed on one armor piece. It will reduce all damage the warrior takes, regardless of where it is placed, and regardless of where the warrior is struck.