Medium armor question

[Ralom-Enoco]

Will having 1 medium armor chest plate with heavy armor mods crucially affect my stats although the rest of my armor is heavy with heavy mods? I am a MERC Dps btw -lvl 37

 

can I even put heavy armor mods in medium armor?

 

thanks!

[SteveMellross]

Short Answer

 

At level 50 with close to best-in-slot gear it will mean you take about 1.5% more damage. That's it.

 

There are no such things as 'heavy armor' mods (or armorings). They can be put in any shell if they have a slot for it. The shell is what is heavy, medium or light. Since all the stats come from the mods changing the shell type only affects the amount of armor you get from it. Stats stay exactly the same. You're damage output, etc will be unchanged, you'll just take a bit more damage.

 

 

Long Answer

 

There are three things that affect the armor value of a piece of gear:

 

• Armor Slot (chest, feet, etc): Head, chest and legs have a higher value while hands, feet, waist and wrists have a lower value. The difference is about 60%.
   
  
• Armor Type (heavy, medium, light): This is an attribute of the shell - not the armoring. There are no heavy armorings. 33%-42% increase between types.
   
  
• Armoring level (50, 63, etc): The level of the armoring causes a small increase in armor. Going from a 50 armoring (i.e. Reflex 22) all the way to a 63 armoring (Denova Eliminator 27) gives a 20% increase. This makes it about 4% per increment.
  

 

See below for some examples. Armor values listed are for the different armor types: Heavy - Medium - Light. The level listed is the level of the armoring in the shell. The level of the other mods is irrelevant.

 

• Level 63 Chest: 921 - 691 - 488
  
• Level 50 Chest: 764 - 573 - 404
  
• Level 50 Feet: 477 - 358 - 253
  

 

With my gear (61/63), changing my chest to medium armor drops my defense by about 1%. It takes me from 31.62% defense to 30.64% defense.

 

This means I will actually take 1.43% more damage. It's really not much in the scheme of things. The only time I'd really recommend against it is if you're struggling to progress through raid content and it's incoming damage that's wiping you. If you're just farming then it shouldn't really make any difference.

[Ralom-Enoco]

Thank you so much for the help!

[bahdasz]

Will having 1 medium armor chest plate with heavy armor mods crucially affect my stats although the rest of my armor is heavy with heavy mods? I am a MERC Dps btw -lvl 37

 

can I even put heavy armor mods in medium armor?

 

thanks!

 

Um... the mods don't make a difference, the armor type makes a difference. If you have a piece of heavy armor and a piece of medium armor, both with the exact same armoring, mod and enhancement, the heavy armor will always give you more armor protection. There isn't a way to offset that armor protection loss. If you can live with the lower armor mitigation then it's all good, I guess it depends on your advanced class/play style.

 

As a merc pyrotech I always use Mako as a companion and I could probably get away with one or two pieces of medium armor in PvE, I would never try that stuff in PvP though... of course you're probably going to get stomped as a mercenary in PvP anyway, so in the end it still wouldn't matter.

Edited January 12, 2013 by bahdasz