Right now, Armor Piercing just feels like Power but with an extra step, and ends up feeling less valuable because of it. Also this is pretty much a shower thought so I’m especially open to criticism.
Note: I don’t want this to replace Armor Piercing’s current effect of giving extra damage depending on Defense, but rather be an additional function of the stat.
Function
Armor Piercing (AP) would grant the ability to lower a target’s Max HP during combat. The more AP the attacker has, the more Max HP the target will lose. The cap on lost Max HP per attack is the damage of the attack itself (though you would only reach this cap with low Power or very high AP).
Extra Bits
Max HP lost to AP would be represented by red.
Lost Max HP would slowly regenerate outside of combat, though this rule would not apply to NPC enemies.
Closing Notes
I initially thought to make AP only lower Defense instead of Max HP (which is the stat AP is currently meant to counter), but felt it might be too limiting to its effectiveness, especially with the existance of Vitality.
I’d love to see peoples thoughts on this idea, since this is much more of a hypothetical than a concrete concept.
I’m really not a stickler for the exact equations and formulas that would be involved in this functionality, as long as it works and is reasonably balanced.
this would be better put into the balance suggestions channel on the discord
armor piercing is getting an effect on full release that applies a status that decreases substat amounts on targets. so its like an anti-substat substat on top of being an additional damaging substat too
keeping everything else (but i think they get slightly lower scaling or something)
however it is getting an additional effect where every hit will apply a status called “pierced” or something i think, which will decrease your substats afaik
i can go try to find the patch on trello but it’ll take a while
this being said, i do like an idea similar to this
it could work like wither in deepwoken where it fills up a bar from the other end of your hp and you can’t heal past it, and it can only fill up until base health, so it kind of negates defense
Interesting idea, but I dont think its better than the current planned armor piercing rework. This would only really serve to limit healing builds. While it would punish people who want to run around and prolong fights, it would also encourage the AP user to run away, as any subsequent fight (in a short time) would be started with a hp advantage. So those pros and cons kinda balance out, leaving it with a small added niche of anti-healing that wont affect the stat much.
Maybe for the function I proposed or the currently in-dev AP function, either one could be worked into a different seperate stat? Both ideas sound useful but tbh they might struggle to find a place among the current armors (like with how Resistance is right now)
Don’t want to have both on one stat though since that’d just make AP bloated function-wise
On a more serious note you have a fair point. An issue with the newer stats is they just don’t have many armours dedicated to them compared to the two quadrillion different things that give Defense, Power, Attack Speed, etc. Also for some reason the newer stats are relegated to Exotic gems???
Of course the only solution would be to create an ungodly amount of new random-ass accessories and armours that probably won’t be useful
