Difference between revisions of "Strategy:Green armor"

Revision as of 07:45, 16 July 2024

Unless you're playing a challenge that starts you off with something better, this will almost certainly be the first armor you come across. With only a single point of protection, its only resistances being a measly 15% resistance against bullet and shrapnel damage, while slowing your movement speed by 5%, the Green Armor is very much a starting armor and you'll hope to find better armor soon. That said, the Green Armor is still better than nothing (usually, we'll get to that in a bit), as it does make a serious difference in extending survival against the Formers that populate early floors. With the attacks of Former humans and Captains doing low damage, that single point of protection does soften them up quite a bit and the bullet resistance does reduce damage by another point on most of their damage rolls, while armor has doubled effectiveness against shrapnel and so the Green Armor's protection always reduces the damage from Sergeant's shotguns by 2 after the aforementioned resistance is applied (which can reduce their stronger hits by another 2 damage, or even 3 if you took a high damage roll at near point blank range).

For some calculations on the effectiveness of Green Armor:

• The pistols of Former Humans deal 5 damage on average, which will kill Scouts and Technicians without any armor in 10 hits. With Green Armor on, that damage gets reduced to 3, and so now you'll survive 17 hits from them.

• With Former Captains, their chainguns deal 3.5 damage per bullet on average, which works out to 14 damage per burst if every hit connects. If they hit you with every bullet, it only takes them 4 attacks on average to kill you, and 15 bullets total. With Green Armor on, on average each bullet will only deal 2 damage to you and so a burst will deal 8 damage if each bullet connects, now requiring 7 attacks with every bullet connecting to kill you and 25 bullets total.

• With Former Sergeants, damage calculation is trickier due to shotguns' distance-based damage variance, so we'll calculate at different ranges.
  • From a distance of 8 (the edge of their vision range, where they'll hit you most often), their Shotguns deal 7 damage on average, which kills you in 8 hits. With Green Armor on, you'll reduce that damage to 4, now taking them 13 hits to kill you.
  • From a distance of 5, their Shotguns deal 10 damage on average, killing you in 5 hits. With Green Armor on, you'll reduce that damage to 6, now taking them 9 hits to kill you.
  • From a distance of 2 (the closest they can ever hit you as thankfully they'll attack with their pitiful melee attack at point blank range), their Shotguns deal 14 damage on average, killing you in just 4 hits. With Green Armor on, you'll reduce that to 10 damage, letting you at least survive one more hit if you somehow keep letting Shotgunners fire on you from such close distance.

Despite having no resistances against their attacks, the Green Armor still extends survival against against Imps, Lost souls, and Demons too:

• Imps' fireballs and Lost Souls deal 6 damage on average, killing a Scout/Technician in 9 hits. With Green Armor to reduce that damage by 1, you'll get to take an extra hit.
• Imps' melee attacks deal 4 damage on average, killing you in 13 hits. With Green Armor to reduce it to 3, it's now taking 17 hits to kill you.
• Demon's bites deal 7 damage on average, killing you in 8 hits. With Green Armor to reduce it to 6 damage, you'll get to take an extra hit.

So while being slowed down at all sucks, that -5% movement speed is still usually worth the tradeoff when you're mostly fighting these enemies, as Green Armor will let you survive additional hits that you wouldn't have otherwise, especially so early on when healing is mostly restricted to Small medkits and Small Health Globes. Another thing to note is that while armor has its protection and resistances halved in their damaged state, an armor's protection can never go below 1 and so Green Armor will still provide the same protection even when it's nearly destroyed. This means when your Green Armor gets damaged, you should just keep riding it out until it's destroyed or nearly so, especially when Green Armor is so disposable. However, even the resistances dropping from 15% to 7% when damaged is enough to make most attacks from the Formers deal an extra point of damage, so when entering a new floor where you may spawn surrounded by them, you may want to swap out for fresher Green Armor then.

Green Armor becomes rather worthless fast once you start encountering the bigger enemies. Against plasma attacks, Green Armor is outright ineffectual, as plasma halves protection in damage calculation, and it rounds down, which means armor with 1 protection doesn't reduce plasma damage at all. So against Cacodemons, Hell knights, Former commandos, and Arachnotrons (let alone all the nightmare enemies and bosses with plasma attacks), it is actually better to be naked, as at least not losing that 5% movement speed might be what gets you away from them. For example when fighting the Cacodemons in Hell's Arena, you should just take your Green Armor off, as their lighting balls are hitting you the same regardless, while outmaneuvering them around the pillars could be important to survival. Then against the other enemies, they just deal so much damage that 1 point of protection ain't worth shit. For example, Barons of hell deal 12 damage on average with their acid balls (and up to possibly 20!), killing Scouts/Technicians in just 5 hits, while with Green Armor you'll reduce it to 11 damage... still killing you in 5 hits. And against VMR that regularly deal in the high teens to 20ish damage, you're just not going to survive if you're still rocking Green Armor.

Ultimately Green Armor is a boon early in the game, but you'll really want to upgrade to at least Blue armor by the time you start encountering worse than Pinkies.

Modding and assemblies

Green Armor can be improved through mods and various assemblies, which can make it not so worthless against plasma and other strong enemies. Modding Green Armor is typically a waste however, as by the time you start encountering mods, you should be having at least one Blue Armor around that will make a much better usage of your mods if you really want stronger armor ASAP, and normally you'll want to wait for armor better than Blue Armor before expending your mods. Sure, you could make Fireproof Green Armor, but why waste the mods on that, when you could wait a bit and get Fireproof Red armor that will really let you tank the VMR? There are only two assemblies you should ever consider for Green Armor:

• Tactical armor, which specially requires a Green armor to make. This armor has 0 protection and no resistances, which sounds awful, but it does increase your movement speed by +15% (and could be modded even farther to +30% with Whizkid 2), which is the fastest movement speed you can get from armor without finding certain rare exotic and unique armors. It additionally gives a +10% bonus to your dodging rate, and nothing reduces damage more than not getting hit at all. Since Green Armor was doing practically nothing against the bigger enemies, this movement speed and dodging bonus is a definite improvement once you start fighting them regularly. Despite that, this is still an assembly you'll rarely want to make, as you would rather use the cost of two agility mods on other equipment, and wear other armor that will actually keep you alive when you do get hit.

• Cerberus armor, which regardless of the armor used, results in a 0 protection armor that has 70% resistance against fire and acid attacks, while also having a 50% plasma resistance. This armor inherits its resistances against the physical damage types from the base armors used, and so as a result, Green Armor actually works better for this assembly than Blue Armor and Red Armor, as making Cerberus Armor out of those two armors will result in one that has no physical resistances at all, while using the Green Armor will net you one that at least has the 15% resistances against bullet and shrapnel. This is a very marginal advantage, and there are several exotic armors that offer far better resistances to use as a base, but if you desire Cerberus Armor and can't find one of those better exotic armors nor can hold out for one, you can use a Green Armor if you really want your Cerberus Armor to have some sort of protection against Formers.

Omega Tyrant (talk) 07:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)