alldarker wrote:I don't have the answer to your question, but if you need a bit of extra Energon to research this, I'd be happy to invest in return for a little extra knowledge about armor.
Actually, related to this same topic: what is more effective to invest points in: Rank + appropriate armor or Endurance? Have you been able to do any research into that question?
Thanks, I may take you up on the Energon bit.
Take this with a grain of salt as I have rocketed my three test subjects up in the past two months (LVL 3 to 6 and LVL 3 to 5).
At early levels (0-4) I can safely say this End > Rank+Armor.
I tested with 0 end, 0 rank (lvl 0-3). I then applied Endurance up to 3 and Rank up to 3 combinations. My findings is that Endurance will mitigate some damage from basic damage and reduce tactics much more. Going up against NV (or AD for you cons) you will find this pays off more than the basic melee damage that armor reduces.
With that said and done I can say this about armor:
Aluminum is better than nothing... but slightly
Iron is King at 0.
Ceramic I didn't notice much change for damage from Iron
Steel I saw small changes but honestly it was so random that I would say stay with Iron
Carbon Fiber is better than Iron, but I seem to get random damage spikes from higher physical attacks. Again random and build were not taken into account looking back at my spreadsheets, so say taking damage from Sustain (Speed/CRG builds) vs Burn (Strength/CRG) builds may have a lot to do with it.
Duranium: This is the final armor I stuck with before I abandoned armor for End boosts. It pretty much gave me over all better damage reductions (IE Less random occurrences of a greater reduction on this fight and a lesser there).
Again, I admit to making mistakes in data collection such as not counting weapons or stat levels from the cons tearing me apart.