[Autumn]

I want to be clear that this is mostly a discussion piece to be considered if it receives a positive response mostly.

Some time ago a discussion came up in general chat about the balance of tanks mostly in that it is much different than it was back in GR, in post-GR tanks instantly became incredibly hard to just balance overall given that there is no solid enough weakness for them, they can build both Defense and Resistance to subvert many of their problems by just being effective HP walls towards anything that dares to threaten their existence. Numerically a tank is usually much much more efficient than a dodge character might be given all of that.

One suggestion to balance all of this is to rework armor classes into being much much more important to your character's chosen defensive type, if a tank should choose to deny a lot of magical damage it would leave them more vulnerable to physical damage, and vice versa, this would in some sense impact dodgy characters only minorly, but there may be ways to assist them anyways through further buffs to specific DRs in favor of powering them up accordingly, I do relate to the armor triangle though which typically sees:

-Heavy armor as bearing the most armor of any class of armor
-Light armor as bearing the most magic armor of any class of armor
-Unarmored as bearing the most evade of any class of armor, as well as having the highest evasion damage reduction value.

Bearing this mind the following changes could potentially be taken into effect:

-Heavy Armor allows you 100% DEF value, this would mean 50 scaled DEF = 50% P.DR, however heavy armor would have 50% RES value which would mean 50 Scaled RES = 25% M.DR
-Light armor would be the inverse, 50% DEF value and 100% RES Value
-Unarmored would have neither, and instead have 50% DEF and RES value

But Amber, wouldn't this mean that unarmored is practically useless to tank characters? Yes, it would in some sense, I could see a passive in the typically tanky mage class (Hexer) give additional DEF/RES Value to unarmored torsos so this wouldn't be as much an issue, however I do feel as though a mage wearing unarmored to make the most of their magic should feel a little uneasy defensively, and they always have the option of investing into light armor or heavy armor as well at the cost of perhaps an Evoker's offense. (Mutation would also favor them here too.)

I would love to discuss this in further detail over the course of this thread, because that is something I am invested into at the current moment, however I have two more thoughts I would like to share.

What about classes that typically split their damage? Most classes in the game are currently capable of swapping between physical and magical damage on the fly!

This is a tough answer, because of how many classes in the game have split damage sources I think I would go about this in a fashion that goes back and decides if a class should be allowed to do this or not, the answer is typically not, but depending on the context like with Magic Gunner and with Martial Artist, some exceptions can apply, this would mostly go about doing stuff like the following:

-Black Knight should deal physical damage only, this would convert Board Shaker/Crescent Rook/Bright Bishop to physical damage instead of magical damage.
-Any skill in a physical oriented class that is considered "Magic" that is cast from a martial weapon such as Scarlet Twister/Blood Spike/Lift Off would remain magical damage.

Specifically the classes I'd deem to be physical/magical/split orientated would be:

Physical:
-Soldier
-Demon Hunter (Retaliate/Bellowing Stag/Crashing Bull)
-Black Knight (Crescent Rook/Bright Bishop/Board Shaker)
-Duelist (Eclair Lacroix)
-Kensei
-Firebird (Feathers become physical damage)
-Ghost (Reaper Scythe becomes physical damage)
-Archer
-Arbalest
-Rogue
-Engineer (Bombs/Grenades/Flamethrower/Electro shield would all be changed.)
-Boxer (Nachenbeben becomes Physical Damage)

Magical:
-Mage
-Evoker
-Hexer
-Rune Magician
-Tactician
-Spellthief (Flying Dagger would become magical damage)
-Priest
-Grand Summoner (Youkai Tamer would also give spell power)

Split (Basically stays the exact same):
-Curate
-Lantern Bearer
-Verglas
-Monk
-Summoner
-Bonder
-Shapeshifter
-Ranger
-Magic Gunner
-Void Assassin

Now I know I'm gonna meet a lot of groans by proposing this, having split damage is incredibly nice to have given even now physical/magical DR is not always the same, but in accordance to streamlining damage types to be more effective vs certain folks this will certainly help mitigate the impact that effect would have on how people dish out damage overall.

For example a black knight having access to both damage types alone would upset a lot of balance given it is meant to be a very durable class, so it having the versatility of dishing out both damage types would be very hard to deal with

Conversely most DRs in the game would be empowered and tailored towards specific damage types instead of universal damage types, this would include things like

-Ogata Waraji becoming 15% Physical damage reduction instead of 10%, already helping towards the roughly 5-10 phys DR that an unarmored user would lose from this change.
-Weathered Body becoming 15% Physical damage reduction instead of 10% all encompassing DR
-Wraithguard becoming 30% Magical damage reduction

-Stand Off now becomes M.DR and is no longer mitigated by how much RES you have
-Weir Kounen now becomes P.DR and is no longer mitigated by how much DEF you have

And so on and so forth, some things obviously will not translate as well like One Vs One but all-encompassing DRs can remain minor in the first place.

This is for the most part what I wanted to bring up today, I would like to have a serious discussion on the matter and see what people's thoughts might be, the main goal of a damage rework like this is to make it so tank balance may become easier by disallowing them perfect matchups based on how much effective health they have, and instead opening up to them a bigger weakness than critical evade/status resistance, and with indignant idol existing, stacking resistance onto a hyper physical tank still makes them have a magical damage weakness.

[Sawrock]

Due to certain tropes, I'd prefer if it wasn't armor types that split the defense values, but rather the armor itself. Unless you're a Black Knight, Evoker, Ranger, or rely on dodge, you're going to see people switch out armor types for different opponents. If you make it based off of each individual armor piece, it lets some character concepts still exist (such as the Made of Iron trope).

[Shujin]

I am not really a fan of this for similiar reasons.

But also because I believe all this does is making people either build full Physical tanks or full magical tanks. (cause lets be honest 40/40 both is already feeling like you are made of paper unless you have other reductions, halving one makes you just not build it at all and focus on the other.)

What that means is that you technically reduce the stat spread and open a weird situation where people are tanky but not really simply because of the sheer amount of access from both Physical and Magical damage types in almost every class.
And because of a thinner stat spread its like they become even more DPS Tanks...With one weakness. I think thats a weird way of balancing the game. I think it just kills Tanks, while tanking isn't even the issue.

[Balor]

Not the biggest fan of splitting the damage types and removing magic options from some of the martial classes. I don't think they need this change, and without them most physical tank vs physical tank battles would be even more boring to watch, and since atm dealing with magic damage seems more akin to stacking specific elemental resists rather than the res stat alone.

However I also feel that not everyone, myself included. Understand how much of the damage in SL2 is calculated. I feel rather than just proposing a shift, I'd like to see the current equations, and then how you would recommend we fix them. As I feel that would be incredibly insightful for anyone trying to understand what's going on when damage is dealt and would allow us here to give you better input rather than my opening line.

"Not the biggest fan."

[FatherCrixius]

Instead of giving each armour type numerical weaknesses to X or Y, why not establish what each armour type is meant to do; Because right now? It's what flavour of DR you want, and one is significantly shittier than alternatives.

If combat could have better designed roles, IE not have doom walls moving 20 tiles in a round, and attribute certain exclusive options to each category, there wouldn't be any need to maintain the tanking gap between armour types or playstyles. These numerical shifts, yes while easier, do not make the game any more strategic- and serve as a bandaid fix to an issue of viability and resource abundance. Kiting on an over BW doomwall is entirely feasible, as is magical damage on a kensei with long-forgotten potions. Same exact issue league of legends had, where everyone can do everything lest they fall out of meta. As it stands, I forsee Dev will continue to add DR-ignoring forms of damage or True damage as a means to "counteract" this tank unfavourability.

Limiting the damage types from each class, however, I am all on board- Albeit more strictly on certain classes. The ability to decide what damage type is one of the many reasons why one defensive stat builds (Def Or Res) suck so much ass right now, and hampers options greatly. The few classes that are exclusively magical or exclusively physical are the old, worn down classes or classes that excel to the point of needing a specific counter, And I foresee it helping the above point of limitations.

[Snake]

Limiting the damage types from each class is basically the genius of it and would fix more problems than messing with armors would. The fact all classes can reliably use both magic and physical damage is a pain in the left nut every time, and what drives people into going for 'omnitanking'.

The approach to this would not be by messing with someone's stat investment, but with armor values such as Armor and Magic Armor each one of those types grant.

Heavy Armor should all have 0 Base Magic Armor, for example. The fact it doesn't proc Evasion means all magic attacks will just rip them a new one. Bazinga. One problem solved.

Unarmored Torsos should 'not' have Armor, and all should have 0 Base Armor the same way as Heavy Armor in regards to the resistances they'll grant. It will make tanking without a proper torso harder by default.

Remember why Armor was nerfed as a statistic from the sources? It's due to how effective it was at lowering damage when paired properly with DEF/RES. So why not use that nerf as a factor?