Strategy:Necroarmor

With a protection of 6, the Necroarmor is one of the strongest armors in the game, only being exceeded by the Angelic Armor, Cybernetic Armor, and the Berserker Armor when the player's health is low enough. It also gives you a movement speed bonus of +10%, being one of the few armors at base in the game that make you faster for wearing it. And its durability regenerates, so this a no-brainer armor to wear you would think.

But this armor has one insidious gimmick; it regenerates its durability by taking it from your health, draining 1 HP for every 2% of durability. So while it'll protect you in the moment, you'll just end up losing the health it initially saved you anyway unless you can quickly grab an armor shard before it starts regenerating. It also has no resistances at all, so it doesn't actually protect you that well against strong hits and plasma hits.

As for some math on how much the Necroarmor's regenerating gimmick hurts you, against hits that deal less than 17 damage, you'll actually come out ahead with more health after the armor fully regenerates than you would have with no armor, with better appreciation the lower the damage. For some calculations:

• Against hits that deal 16 damage, with Necroarmor you'll immediately take 10 damage and then it drains 5 HP to regenerate, effectively being equivalent to armor with 1 protection.

• Against hits that deal 14 damage, with Necroarmor you'll immediately take 8 damage and then it drains 4 HP to regenerate, effectively being equivalent to armor with 2 protection.

• Against hits that deal 12 damage, with Necroarmor you'll immediately take 6 damage and then it drains 3 HP to regenerate, effectively being equivalent to armor with 3 protection.

• Against hits that deal 10 damage, with Necroarmor you'll immediately take 4 damage and then it drains 2 HP to regenerate, effectively being equivalent to armor with 4 protection.

• Against hits that deal 8 damage, with Necroarmor you'll immediately take 2 damage and then it drains 1 HP to regenerate, effectively being equivalent to armor with 5 protection.

Then you'll only take 1 damage against any hit that deals less than 8 damage, though you'll effectively always take at least 2 damage after it drains 1 HP to regenerate. However, it must be noted against hits that deal more than 18 damage, you'll actually lose more HP after the regeneration than you would have if you took the hit naked; against an Arch-vile's zap that always deals 20 damage, Necroarmor will reduce it to 14 damage but then drain 7 HP to recover, effectively making you take 21 damage. Then it just gets worse against even stronger hits. This makes the armor hazardous to wear against strong enemies like the VMR. It's especially bad against Barons, whose acid balls deal double damage to your armor's durability; as a result, any Baron ball that deals more than 12 damage would end making you lose more health after the Necroarmor's regeneration than you would have taken naked (and 12 damage is their average damage roll, while they can deal as much as 20, so they'll often hit you harder than that). Plasma enemies are also a problem with their attacks ignoring half your armor's protection; against any plasma hit that deals more than 9 damage, the Necroarmor leaves you net negative after regeneration compared to being naked, while Cacodemons and Hell knights can deal up to 12 damage with their projectiles. One strategy you can use to counteract this problem is immediately taking the Necroarmor off after it absorbs a strong hit and then not putting it back on until you're near an armor shard, Megasphere, or something that heals you fully. However, if you're unable to quickly kill the enemies or flee out of sight, you can't switch armors in the middle of a fight without giving enemies a free shot, and if you had good enough armor to be comfortable taking that free shot, then you should have been wearing that armor in the first place, so it's difficult to practically utilize that strategy.

So overall, against low tier enemies, the Necroarmor can actually be quite effective with protecting you, on top of the ever useful speed bonus. Against the higher tier enemies though, the armor's HP draining gimmick starts to really limit it or even outright hurt you, and wearing this armor around Barons in particular is especially counterproductive. If you already have multiple good armors to wear, it's hard to justify keeping this armor in your inventory. If you are still lugging around Green armors and unmodded Blue armors as backups though, this armor is probably better than them if your main armors get damaged, and otherwise if you have no movement boosting armor, you could keep this around for when you really need the movement boost (such as for beating Halls of Carnage or any level event with an effective timer, or to outspeed the Angel of Death in Unholy Cathedral). Omega Tyrant (talk) 18:04, 13 August 2023 (UTC)