Armor

# Overview

Armor benefits you by increasing Defense, Absorption, and Resistance, reducing the amount of damage you take.

# Defense Penalties

Leaving an Armor slot empty will induce a Defense penalty on the character, reducing it by a multiplier. These multipliers stack together the less armor slots are filled (E.G. no Head + no Hands = 0.855x penalty).

Slot Penalty
Chest 0.8x
Hands 0.95x
Legs 0.87x

Source:1

# Absorption Diminishing Returns

Absorption is actually the inverse of what is displayed. 20% Absorption would be 0.8 inside the game data, and diminishing returns are the result of values being multiplied together. For example, with a common PvP Armor Set's Dark Absorption:

5.7% Head, 16.7% Chest, 4.5% Hands, and 8.1% Legs

Are actually different values in data, and are multiplied together for diminishing returns:

0.943 * 0.833 * 0.955 * 0.919 = 0.6894068228

Subtract from 1 for the value of % Absorption represented in-game:

1 - 0.6894068228 = 0.3105931772

Which is our final result for:

31.05931772% Dark Absorption

Shown in-game as 31.059% (values for three Winged Knight Set pieces + Harald Legion Leggings).

If desired, the formula for the values represented in the game would thus be:

(1)
\begin{align} Total Absorption = 100 * (1 - ((1 - [abs1] / 100) * (1 - [abs2] / 100) * (1 - [abs3] / 100) * (1 - [abs4] / 100) * (etc))) \end{align}

# Poise Diminishing Returns

Poise is affected by diminishing returns for additional items. The diminishing returns formula is as follows:

(2)
$$-(currentPoise × addedPoise)/100+currentPoise+addedPoise$$