Strategy:Blue armor

The second of the three standard armors, which you'll often first obtain as a reward from Hell's Arena or shortly after if you did not clear Hell's Arena, or you can even sometimes find it earlier if you get lucky with a vault spawning. Despite it slowing you down farther with its -10% movement speed, it's an all-around upgrade to the Green armor with its 2 protection, and even with its lack of bullet and shrapnel resistances, its extra point of protection is enough to largely protect you as well against Formers as the Green Armor did, with the exception of reducing damage even farther against their low damage rolls (bullets that deal exactly 3 damage and shotgun blasts that deal less than 10 damage will have Blue Armor save you an extra point of damage over Green Armor), and being slightly worse against very high damage shotgun blasts (shotgun blasts that deal more than 16 damage will have Green Armor save you an extra point of damage, but such damage is rare when you have to get hit by a high damage roll from a Former sergeant at close range, or get hit by a Super shotgun from an Elite former sergeant, and saving one point when you're taking such severe damage is making little difference any way). Yet while it's protecting as well against Formers, that extra point of protection makes a more substantial difference against Imps and melee attacks. More importantly, unlike Green Armor, the Blue Armor actually protects against plasma attacks (with it still having protection after plasma rounds it down), especially so with its decent 20% plasma resistance on top of that (which unlike protection, resistances aren't rounded down by plasma damage). For some damage calculations on the impact that wearing unmodified Blue Armor provides:

• Imps' fireballs and Lost souls deal 6 damage on average, killing a Scout/Technician without any armor in 9 hits. With Blue Armor to reduce it to 4 damage, it's now taking 13 hits to kill you.
• Imps' melee attacks deal 4 damage on average, killing in 13 hits. Blue Armor reduces to 2 damage, now taking a whopping 25 hits to kill you.
• Demon bites deal 7 damage on average, killing in 8 hits. Blue Armor reduces it to 5 damage, letting you take two extra hits.
• The plasma balls of Cacodemons and Hell knights deal 7 damage on average, killing in 8 hits. Blue Armor reduces it to 5 damage, again letting you take two extra hits. Then any plasma ball of theirs that deals more than 7 damage will have Blue Armor reduce it by three points, so even with bad luck, Blue Armor will always let you take at least one more hit. Also even with their melee attacks that deal 8 damage on average, killing you in 7 hits, Blue Armor reducing it to 6 damage will extend survival by another two hits.
• Each 1d5 plasma bolt from an Arachnotron deals 3 damage on average, 15 total in their full five shot burst, killing in just 4 bursts if every hit connects. Blue Armor reduces their damage rolls to 1/1/1/2/3 respectively, working out to each bolt dealing about 1.6 damage on average and each burst dealing about 8 damage total, effectively doubling the amount of bursts you can take from them. Then an Arachnotron's melee attack is just as weak as an Imp's, so no need to calculate it here.
• Former commandos are even nastier, as their Plasma rifles shoot six 1d7 plasma bolts, with each bolt dealing 4 damage on average and 24 damage total if every bolt connects, killing you in just three bursts, or even two with the slightest bad luck. Blue armor reduces their damage rolls to 1/1/1/2/3/4/5 respectively, working out to each bolt dealing about 2.4 damage on average, and a full burst averages to 17 damage, which is still enough to kill in you in three bursts, but since it's now taking 21 plasma bolts total from them to kill you rather than 13, you have substantially more margin of error with misses to in practice survive multiple more bursts, or at least you won't have over half your health suddenly melt away from stepping into a Commando's vision.

As these calculations demonstrate, by the time you start encountering Cacodemons and Hell Knights regularly, you'll want to have some Blue Armor around instead of being stuck with Green Armor or nothing, and you especially don't want to be fighting Arachnotrons and Former Commandos in Green Armor. When you're fighting Barons and the VMR however, Blue Armor starts being inadequate. Barons hurl 4d5 acid balls that deal 12 damage on average and up to 20 maximum, if you're lucky with lower damage rolls Blue Armor will let you take one more hit, but on average it's not making a difference for Scouts/Technicians (reducing 12 damage to 10 still kills you in five hits). Then the VMR deal even greater damage than that, Blue Armor could give you slightly more margin of error against them but you are going to be evaporated quickly if you take more than a couple hits from them in Blue Armor.

Once you procure Red armor, Blue Armor is mostly obsolete, as Red Armor has double the protection and a very valuable 25% fire resistance to better stand against Barons and especially the VMR. At this point, Blue Armor will be relegated to backup armor until you have enough Reds or better armors to get rid of your Blue Armor stash entirely. It should be noted that Blue Armor still has a niche in that it's actually more effective than Red Armor against plasma hits that deal more than 7 damage thanks to its plasma resistance, but this is largely only relevant when fighting the Shamblers in Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab (mainly as you'll very likely lack anything better), as otherwise saving an extra point of damage from high damage rolls of Cacodemons and Hell Knights is too marginal to worry about keeping Blue Armor around once you got enough Red Armors to replace them all, and in possible situations where you'll fight enemies with even stronger plasma attacks, you're going to need better plasma-resistant armor to survive. The only other reason to keep a Blue Armor around is for situations where the -20% movement speed on Red Armor is too much of a hindrance and you found no faster armor, such as for when trying to clear Halls of Carnage, or if you come across a timed nuke event

Modding and assemblies

Generally it'll serve you better to save any mods for Red Armor or better exotic armors rather than them spending on Blue Armor. But if you come across a surplus of mods early, your lone Red Armor from Phobos Anomaly got damaged or destroyed and you've been unable to find another, or are playing Angel of 100 and the RNG has been unkind with denying you any armor better than Blue armor, modding Blue Armor isn't a bad idea if it'll help you survive.

With basic modding, any of the four standard mods can work well. Beefing its protection with a Power mod or resistances with a Technical mod have obvious benefits, with a Power mod being preferred but a Technical mod will likely be more expendable, and the +15% movement speed from an Agility mod will result in having +5% movement speed, actually making you faster wearing the armor than wearing nothing. Fully modded, a PAT Blue Armor with +5% movement speed, 4 protection, 30% plasma resistance, 20% physical resistances, and 10% acid/fire resistance is a pretty solid armor if you got nothing better to use all those mods on. A Bulk mod could also be used in place of one of those mods, which adds another 100% to the armor's durability. This comes at the cost of a very undesirable -10% movement speed, but considering armor gets damaged and has its protection + resistances halved when its durability falls under 50%, a bulk mod triples the effective durability you get before the armor enter its damaged state, so it can be valuable if you're taking a lot of hits and need the armor to last. If you still got Blue Armors in reserve purely as backup, a Bulk mod could especially work well, as it'll let your backup Blue Armor last while you prioritize Armor shards for your primary armors and Bulk mods are generally in less demand than the other mods. When it comes to an Onyx mod and Nano mod however, using them on a Blue Armor would be an absolute waste, Red Armor and certain exotic armors make a far better recipient of an Onyx mod, as well as for a Nano mod if you really want to use it on armor rather than on your weapons or for Antigrav boots.

When it comes to assemblies, Blue Armor can be used for the following:

• Fireproof armor (BT) - This assembly adds +30% fire resistance, in exchange for -30% melee resistance. Generally Red Armor is the far more ideal base for this assembly, as it results in an armor that can actually tank the VMR while still providing solid all-around armor against everything but melee, but if you lost your Red Armor from Phobos Anomaly and haven't found another, are playing A100 and still have no Red Armor when VMR are regularly showing up, or otherwise need a backup fire-resistant armor to your Fireproof Red Armor and don't have another Red Armor to use, fireproofing Blue Armor can be decent in a pinch. 30% fire resistance with 2 protection isn't great, you'll still die swiftly if you try tanking a swarm of VMR in it, but it'll make eating a Revenant missile or getting caught in an Archvile zap hurt a lot less, and you won't have to worry about having most of your health blasted away by a Mancubus (for the numbers, that 30% fire resistance results in you taking around 3 to 7 damage less per hit from Revenants and Mancubi, and always 6 damage less from Archviles). Fireproof Blue Armor will also keep its 20% plasma resistance, so it is still protecting you decently against plasma enemies, which means you'll have at least average protection against most enemies... except for Barons that will still be pushing your shit in, and will wreck this armor's durability fast if you wear it around them. Also with -30% melee resistance and only 2 protection, the majority of melee attacks will be hitting you as hard as if you were naked, or in the case of melee attacks that deal more than 8 damage, as possessed by Barons and Mancubi, they'll actually be hitting you harder than you would be wearing nothing. So in conclusion, if you make Fireproof Blue Armor, stay away from melee, and absolutely try to avoid wearing it around Barons if you can help it.

• Ballistic armor (AT) - This assembly adds +40% resistances to bullet, shrapnel, and melee damage, while subtracting -20% fire resistance. The only scenario to consider using this assembly on Blue Armor is if you're playing a melee-restricted challenge and desperately need armor that can better protect you in melee, or are really scared of the Nightmare demons in Phobos Lab and have the mods to spare, while in both cases also having nothing better to use for this assembly, as negative fire resistance is just so detrimental. This assembly reduces typical melee hits by 2 to 4 damage, and even more with the aforementioned Nightmare demons and certain bosses, which can have a serious niche, but again Red Armor is far better for this, as its extra 2 points of protection will let it combine with that melee resistance much more effectively and its fire resistance won't go negative, so making it Ballistic won't make the player get exploded if they get surprised by the VMR in it.

• Nanofiber armor (PB) - This assembly gives infinite durability to any armor it's applied to, in exchange for cutting its protection and all its resistances by half. Simply never use this assembly on Blue Armor, an armor with only 1 point of protection and 10% plasma resistance that still slows your movement by -10% is near worthless, it's now barely helping against plasma enemies (only reducing damage rolls greater than 4 by 1 point) and is no better than Green Armor against everything else. Once again, Red Armor is a much better base for this assembly, and this is a niche assembly only useful for extreme tanking builds like Vampyre as is, while if you're in a desperate situation where you would actually consider using this assembly on Blue Armor after Bulk modding the armor wasn't enough to make it last, you should be seriously reevaluating your tactics or consider just letting yourself die, as you are absolutely not going to last taking all those hits in armor as weak as Nanofiber Blue Armor.

• Power armor (PN) - An assembly that can only be used on standard armors, which makes Blue Armor eligible. This assembly adds a point of protection, adds +20% movement speed, adds +25 melee resistances, triples plasma resistance, and bolsters the regenerating durability added by the Nano mod (with it restoring 5% durability per action of the standard 2% from the Nano mod alone). The resulting Powered Blue Armor has 3 protection, +10% movement speed, 25% melee resistances, a great 60% plasma resistance, on top of regenerating durability. This is a pretty damn good armor, and in particular it has higher plasma resistance than any other armor that isn't a shield or the Energy-shielded vest in the Nanofiber skin armor assembly, but it rarely would be worth it. First of all, using a Nano mod on this assembly is a huge opportunity cost, when the mod could be put to much better use getting infinite ammo on one of your weapons or making Antigrav boots. Secondly, if you're in a situation where you would want to use a Nano mod on armor over those other uses and would consider this assembly, Red Armor is yet again almost certainly a better choice. Rather than tripled plasma resistance, this assembly doubles Red Armor's fire resistance instead, which as made clear before, is very valuable with how dangerous the VMR are, and 3 protection with no fire resistance is doing little against them, while Powered Red Armor would still be adequate against the plasma enemies you're largely fighting. The main situations to consider this assembly over Powered Red Armor would be if you're playing Malicious Blades and so already got the VMR covered with its inherent 50% fire resistance but really need something better than Powered Red Armor for plasma enemies that give the build such grief, or are playing A100/666 and came across multiple Nano mods to spare, as some of the biggest threats to lategame A100/666 players are Nightmare Cacodemon and Nightmare Arachnotron caves, as well as the rare yet very dangerous Shambler-only levels, so having a regenerating speedy armor on hand with better plasma resistance than Cerberus armor could be a lategame life saver.

• Nanofiber skin armor (PPN) and Cybernano armor (PPNO) - Lumping these assemblies together as they're similar with both making the armor cursed (so you can never remove it), indestructible, and significantly buffing the armor, except the former gives regenerating durability and boosts all resistances by +25%, while the latter gives infinite durability and +4 protection. Absolutely never use Blue Armor for these assemblies; aside from the huge opportunity cost, the resulting Nanofiber skin/Cybernano Blue Armor is not remotely good enough armor to commit being stuck with for the rest of your run. The aforementioned Power Armor assembly would actually be better, as at least the armor makes you faster and gives a niche of unmatched plasma resistance, while you still will be able to remove it for other armors better for the situation at hand. If you absolutely want to commit to one super buffed armor for your entire run and haven't found one of the few exotic armors that are worthwhile in this assembly, as least use Red Armor, though the Power Armor assembly would still be better for it too.

• Cerberus armor (PPTA) - Finally there's Cerberus Armor, an assembly that results in an armor with 0 protection but massive 70% resistances to fire and acid, and a great 50% plasma resistance. Cerberus Armor inherits its physical resistances and durability from the armor used to assemble it, which with Blue Armor... results in no physical resistances and normal durability, making Blue Armor completely not ideal at all for this assembly. Baseline Cerberus Armor is still good, so if you couldn't find one of the exotic armors that are much better bases for this assembly, you can just use a Blue if you really have to, but in that case even a Green Armor would be a better base, as at least it would give Cerberus Armor some sort of resistance to Formers instead of leaving you essentially naked against them.

Omega Tyrant (talk) 15:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)