Quick armor question.

[Samsam1]

I was wondering, it is not possible to go below 0 armor rigth via armor reduction skills and item rigth? If it is, how is damage calculated then?

[Bahamut]

it is supposed to scale just like possitive armor but backwards it will increase the damage recieved.. that's the idea of stacking deamonic breastplate/shieldbreaker on pestilence

[Samsam1]

Alright, thank you very much.

[Glorify1]

Actually going into negative armor scales differently. Each point of negative armor offers diminishing increased damage output. The most effective way to add the most damage per armor lost is to reduce their armor to zero.

[Karmashock]

Pest's ult should pretty much take someone's armor to zero...

[Bahamut]

so Tauren Chieftain >> Slardar/Dazzle/Cuirras/Desolator? didnt know that...

[LegoPirate]

Actually going into negative armor scales differently. Each point of negative armor offers diminishing increased damage output. The most effective way to add the most damage per armor lost is to reduce their armor to zero.

wrong, for the same reason that adding more armor doesnt give dimishing returns

negative armor scales the same way, only backwards. so if +1 armor gives 20% reduction, -1 armor will give 20% bonus damage.

if your telling me that 20% bonus damage isnt worth it then your insane.

also, the reason armor doesnt give diminishing returns is that each point of armor increases your effective hp by the same amount even if the reduction bonus is only .1%

lets use a different example to explain the situation.

you have 15 dollars. but someone gives you 5 dollars. now you have 20 dollars. this is a 33% increase

now lets say you have 10 dollars and someone gives you 5 dollars. now you have 15 dollars. thats a 50% increase.

so is going from 10 dollars to 15 better then 15 to 20?

no, because you still have 5 more dollars at 20 then you do at 15.

same logic applies to -armor, but i wouldnt recommend stacking both a deamonic breastplate and a sheildbreaker pest

just get a sheildbreaker and a flayer. then procced to 1shot anyone on their team with less then 1500 hp lolz

and also, how can you say that -1 armor isnt worth it, even if the returns afterword are diminishing (which they arent) because just that 1 point of - armor will give you like 10% bonus damage.

[ElementUser]

Tauren Chieftain only removes 80% of base armor at level 4 (and that's sort of off-topic by the way)

To further support Glorify's explanation, here's a graph for Desolator in DotA.

(Taken from this thread (http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=140913))

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/Blaow/dota/damagegraph.png


As you can see, Desolator provides a larger damage boost than Buriza from about -2 to 14 armor - the range which most hero's armor is in during a normal game.@LegoPirate: Assuming armor functions the same way in HoN as it does in DotA, Glorify is correct about negative armor having diminishing returns.


Basically, as you reduce armor further into negative values you start to hit diminishing returns. The biggest damage boosts come from reducing armor to around -2 to 0.

[LegoPirate]

your link is broken -_-

[LegoPirate]

also, would the author say that adding armor has diminishing returns? because even if the bonus scales differently, the returns are not diminishing.

and what is a damage coefficent? could you explain what factors are put into that?

1 last thing.

slardar at lvl 25 with a deso does more damage to a hero

then a slardar at lvl 25 with a rapier.

ive tested this personally (i found out in a game once and then did a test on it.)

so please explain how that works, if the returns are truely diminishing as you say?

if your curious of the build i used for the test it

one slardar had armlet tread vlad deso heart mkb

other had armlet tread vlad rapier heart mkb

[ElementUser]

Oh yeah, I forgot you need an account on the DotA Allstars forums to view that, sorry xD

Here's some more info, from the Armor & EHP Guide (http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=67285) (yes it needs a registered DA account too, sorry):


Facts

Armour does not stack with diminishing returns. It is damage reduction that stacks with diminishing returns. This will be proven later.

Damage reduction from armour is different from armour type reduction. They are independent of each other.

Critical strike does not ignore armour.

Melee bashes are reduced by armour type spell resistance.
Ranged bashes are counted just as normal damage.

Spell damage ignores armour but is reduced by spell damage resistance.

Formula for damage reduction is :
Damage Reduction = ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor])

The formula above only applies for positive values. For negative values, it is calculated differently.

Formula for damage increase (negative armour):
Damage Increase = 2 - 0.94^(-[armor]) or Damage Reduction = 0.94^(-[armour]) - 1
Both formula will give you the same answer, with the first one as positive value and second one as negative.

To answer your question more specifically, here's a quote from Virot2:


There is in fact a different formula for negative armor. The formula for damage increase for negative armor is given as:

damage increase = 1-0.94^(-armor)

As far as I know, there's no easy way to think of that in terms of EHP. The general idea is that as your armor becomes more and more negative, you receive closer and closer to double damage (but never more than double).

[LegoPirate]

correct me if im wrong, but what i got for that is, negative armor doesnt have diminishing returns, just scales differently then positive armor?

[RenoFox]

Good read for general HoN knowledge ;]

[ElementUser]

Sort of. The formula for negative armor is an exponential equation, which means that each point of negative armor would in fact be less effective (hence the diminishing returns), if you think about that graph & concept mathematically. Therefore, each point of armor reduction would amplify your damage less

[LegoPirate]

ah, true. i get what you mean tho.

doesnt mean a slardar with deso is less effective then a slardar with rapier tho, even if the returns are diminishing.

so basically, the most effective way to reduce armor for the most returns is to get it to -1. but going past -1 will still give decent returns, even if they arent as great as going from 0 to -1

[ElementUser]

doesnt mean a slardar with deso is less effective then a slardar with rapier tho, even if the returns are diminishing.

Completely dependent on how much armor the enemy has. Since Shield Breaker + Amplify level 3 gives a total of -21 armor, you'd want the enemy to have ~23 armor (even 13-33 armor is fine) to have optimal damage amplification. If you get Shield Breaker on Pestilence, you'll chop up squishy intelligence heroes fast regardless (and shred other heroes fast too), not to mention amplifying your allies' damage as well. It's certainly not a bad choice on Pestilence either way, since you can only have Swarm on 2 heroes at one time (30 second duration, 10 second cooldown - by the time you cast your third Swarm, the first one would have worn off)

Here's another graph showing your damage coefficient (not restricted to Shield Breaker; a graph for general armor reduction) that goes with the quote earlier on: the biggest damage boost comes from reducing the enemy armor to around -2 to 0.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/Blaow/dota/damagebyarmor.png


so basically, the most effective way to reduce armor for the most returns is to get it to -1. but going past -1 will still give decent returns, even if they arent as great as going from 0 to -1I believe that would be a correct statement

[LegoPirate]

just one more question. what is damage coeffecient?

i would thing it is damage %, but that graph doesnt look like 0 armor = 1.0 dmg coef.

so im curious what the damage coeffectient is?

[ElementUser]

How much your damage is multiplied by. So at -30 armor, you'd do approximately 1.8x damage. And it acutally is 1.0x damage at 0 armor O.o. Look closer lol

[LegoPirate]

How much your damage is multiplied by. So at -30 armor, you'd do approximately 1.8x damage. And it acutally is 1.0x damage at 0 armor O.o. Look closer lol

lol your right. it doesnt look like it would be. trixy graph.

aight all makes sense now thanks :D

[Froozog]

Given that -30 armor gives you a damage coefficient increase of about 0.9x from 0 armor and then 30 armor reduces the damage coefficient by about 0.6x from 0 armor, this means that putting an enemy from 0 armor to -30 is more effective than 30 armor to 0 right? I'm interested because I enjoy playing Pestilence and I had a feeling that up to a point getting the enemy into negative armor is better than reducing positive.

[Trysaeder]

No, reducing the enemy to 0 armor is always the best in terms of damage output.

Getting the person to anything above -5 is fine, because it still is increasing the damage, just a little less.

[Miggs_Luna]

Anyway, to say, I like HoN cause the new armor reduction system is better, cause in Warcraft 3, if you would put the Amplify Damage (Swarm) buff on an opponent, and have Stygian Desolator (Shieldbreaker), then attack the opponent, the Stygian Desolator would just add +6 armor to the opponent instead of reducing the opponents armor by -21, so that's why it's better here, since you can get -26 armor on an opponent and deal an extra -30% percentage on the opponent and lets say you deal 300 damage per hit, then you would deal 390.

[ElementUser]

Anyway, to say, I like HoN cause the new armor reduction system is better, cause in Warcraft 3, if you would put the Amplify Damage (Swarm) buff on an opponent, and have Stygian Desolator (Shieldbreaker), then attack the opponent, the Stygian Desolator would just add +6 armor to the opponent instead of reducing the opponents armor by -21, so that's why it's better here, since you can get -26 armor on an opponent and deal an extra -30% percentage on the opponent and lets say you deal 300 damage per hit, then you would deal 390.

??

That makes no sense, it'll give a total of -21 armor no matter what with what you said (assuming Swarm is level 3)

[n00binator1]

since you can only have Swarm on 2 heroes at one time (30 second duration, 10 second cooldown - by the time you cast your third Swarm, the first one would have worn off)

0 seconds - cast on first hero
10 seconds - cast on second hero
20 seconds - cast on third hero
30 seconds - first debuff expires/you recast it on the first hero
40 seconds - second debuff expires/you recast it, e.t.c.

So nope, you can keep it on 3 heroes, not 2.

[n00binator1]

No, reducing the enemy to 0 armor is always the best in terms of damage output.

Getting the person to anything above -5 is fine, because it still is increasing the damage, just a little less.

Not true, the best value actually depends on the amount of armor reduction. For example: -15 from level 3 ult, -6 from desolator/shiedbreaker and -5 from assault cuirass/demonic breastplate gives the best damage increase when the enemy armor is between 19 and 18 and the end result is -7 to -8 armor.
For just a desolator the best case is enemy armor between 3 and 4, e.t.c(I'm too lazy to bother with the exact values and all possible combinations.)
I attached a table with calculations and the formulas are shown as well(the forums heavily downgraded the quality, but it's still readable).

[Idejder]

Somewhere around -5 armor is the most 'effective' point to get an enemy to.

[Buckwild]

Not true, the best value actually depends on the amount of armor reduction. For example: -15 from level 3 ult, -6 from desolator/shiedbreaker and -5 from assault cuirass/demonic breastplate gives the best damage increase when the enemy armor is between 19 and 18 and the end result is -7 to -8 armor.
For just a desolator the best case is enemy armor between 3 and 4, e.t.c(I'm too lazy to bother with the exact values and all possible combinations.)
I attached a table with calculations and the formulas are shown as well(the forums heavily downgraded the quality, but it's still readable).

Noobinator wins at math once again.

[FlamerFuel]

Its all mathematicall bull.. Who cares if the enemy goes from 30 to 0, OR from 28 to -2 in armor. The true formula is as follows:

Enemys with Low armor = you make more damage = faster kills = win

Thats it. Nothing else to discuss.

[Wicory]

Lower armor = better, but as mitigation decreases/increases with armor diminishingly, sometimes going all out in -armor items is a little cost innefective.

i.e, if for every 1 armor, it costs 100g, getting the armor of a person to -1 would yield the greatest increase in damage per gold against that target.


I still think pesti/androm etc should stack armor reduction as the damage is insane and helps teammates / forces enemies to spend a slot and money getting armor based items.

[zeke47]

ok this really just has to do with EHP, lets say you have 1000 health and 1 armor your effective health is 6% reduction and will take 1064 damage to kill you while 5 armor is .94^5 damage taken meaning about 26.6% reduction or taking 1362 damage to kill you, as your armor goes from 1-5 the amount of extra health you got per armor increased from 64 to 72, now lets do this in reverse if you lower their armor from a high value to a low one as you aproach 0 armor it become less effective as the damage you have to deal is changing at a slower pace, well anyways i'm gunna make a spreadsheet so i can easily change numbers and see all this so i'll be back

[zeke47]

ok i figured it out, taking away armor is always benificial like people have been saying till 0, its still benificial past that but the moment it goes 0 to -1 it has already got diminishing returns, if you deal 100 damage and the enemy has 1000 health every armor point he has adds 60 effective health, taking .6 more hits to kill him and every armor you take off takes away 60 health, but once you get him to 0 armor every point you take off lowers his health by less each time.

this does not mean that lowering armor is just as effective at all levels of armor, as the rate at which you kill him compared to one armor greater changes because for instance lets say you deal 60 damage per hit and they have 1000 health so every armor is 1 more attack you need to kill, at 0 armor it takes 17 hits to kill and every extra armor increases that by one hit. so at 10 armor it takes 27 hits to kill, at 20 armor it takes 37 hits to kill, now if you look at the difference there a change from 0-10 armor increases the time to kill by 37% while 10-20 increased the time by 27%.


this just means the point at which its most effecient to lower their armor is as said from 8 to -3, for comparason sake i'll say some comparisons of lowering armor at different numbers, going from 20 to 19 is about the same as -7 to -8.

my final analyse of this is that i wasted alot of time finding out that you kill people faster when they have less armor, don't be like me kids, if you want to know what i actually got from this it's that if possible don't go over board on lowering armor because lowering someone far into the negetives is about as effective as lowering some with tons of armor a little bit, by that i don't mean don't lower their armor but don't bother lowering their armor any more if its already in the negatives, and also versus someone with TONS of armor peircing its best to get tons and tons of armor to counter it(keeping yours at 5+) or not at all because raising your armor from -10 to -5 isn;t all that useful

[DemonSouL]

lol, what's with these blocks of text explanations. know a little calculus and look at the graph. the bigger the slope, the bigger the return. so at the point of 0 armor, the slop is the greatest.

just calculate damage taken with 2 variables, one being the base armor and the other is the item's stats for -armor, and +damage (fixed cost on item to do either) and tada, you can find out exactly what -armor it would be worth buying cuirass/desolator for.

[R4GE]

its easy to understand - we did it the other day in physics.

NB:this is a principle - obviously this is not real and did not actually happen


Imagine a man shoots an arrow at a wall. Lets say A represents a unit of time then relate 1A to armor. The distance the arrow has traveled every A is:

A = 1/2m
2A = 2/3m
3A = 3/4m
4A = 4/5m
5A = 5/6m
6A = 6/7m
7A = 7/8m

-armor is trying to get to 1 (which is ingame double damage basically) and it will keep getting close, the gap will always get smaller, but the increase also gets smaller every A (armor) so because of the principle that nA (n=number if u do not understand what n stands for) will never reach 1 (the point at which double damage is reached) the increase in damage will keep getting smaller.

do you see??
It is a hard concept to understand, but you should get it eventually


i know u didnt look at this thread to get a physics lesson but there you go!!!

[ElementUser]

That's the same as the behaviour of the graph 1/x as x-> infinity....or an exponential graph flipped on the y-axis and then looking at its behaviour as x-> infinity...

Aka horizontal asymptotes & limits. Which is true for the damage reduction formula because as x-> infinity, f(x) -> 1 (but never actually reaches 1): 0.06x / (1 + 0.06x)

[krucifix]

meh, beaten

[Verith]

I would just like to point out that even with the diminishing returns of negative armor, it's often still worth it to stack -armor items depending on your own team.

While the items might not be cost effective considering only your own hero, if you have other physical damage dealers on your team that often changes things considerably.

[Servitor]

Somewhere around -5 armor is the most 'effective' point to get an enemy to.

Don't you mean efficient? :O -100 would also be quite effective. -2 also, compared to 0.

:) I will still try to get them down to -20 with a pesti/shaman combo.

[R4GE]

elementUser, I was trying to explain it in a way that people could understand, because lets b honest, most people wont understand ur post (i dont either tbh lol).

btw i know this is a bit off topic, but how do i view threads/posts that ive made???i cant seem to find it anywhere.

[ElementUser]

btw i know this is a bit off topic, but how do i view threads/posts that ive made???i cant seem to find it anywhere.

Click on your name -> Public Profile, click on "Statistics"

[R4GE]

thnx!!!

[Vodka]

Would you say it's more cost effective to go from 15 armor to 20, or from 20 to 25 by buying a chainmail for 550g?

[Ubuntu]

Would you say it's more cost effective to go from 15 armor to 20, or from 20 to 25 by buying a chainmail for 550g?

Well, going from 15 to 20 will increase your resistance from 47.4% to 54.5%

Going from 20 to 25 is only going to increase from 54.5% to 60.0%


And, everyone have a look at this thread about shieldbreaker:

It shows that the absolute highest damage gain is achieved by lowering their armor to -2 (from 4), however shieldbreaker still remains viable when their armor is as low as -9 (from -3)

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=62871

NOTE: The posts after have some contradictory data in them, I was confused at first. I have since updated the chart with the correct information.



In conclusion, shieldbreaker gains the most dps from a target with +4 armor, however it remains viable in the range of -3 to 20 armor.

[Ender]

So if you were facing a pestilence etc. and you were one of those squishy int heros that he likes to pound, the best means of getting EHP would be to stack HP, and don't worry too much about armor?

[WhoIsMrBlack]

Completely dependent on how much armor the enemy has. Since Shield Breaker + Amplify level 3 gives a total of -21 armor, you'd want the enemy to have ~23 armor (even 13-33 armor is fine) to have optimal damage amplification. If you get Shield Breaker on Pestilence, you'll chop up squishy intelligence heroes fast regardless (and shred other heroes fast too), not to mention amplifying your allies' damage as well. It's certainly not a bad choice on Pestilence either way, since you can only have Swarm on 2 heroes at one time (30 second duration, 10 second cooldown - by the time you cast your third Swarm, the first one would have worn off)

Here's another graph showing your damage coefficient (not restricted to Shield Breaker; a graph for general armor reduction) that goes with the quote earlier on: the biggest damage boost comes from reducing the enemy armor to around -2 to 0.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/Blaow/dota/damagebyarmor.png

I believe that would be a correct statement

So the point of inflection is at 0 or -1?

[ElementUser]

It's sort of hard to see on that graph. Try this one (taken from another thread in Guides & Lists)

http://hon.mikaelsunde.se/mechanics-damagecoefficients-1.62.0-full.png

Looks more like it's -1 than 0 (but that's just by eyeballing it)

[kslghost]

Casablanca, it would be very situationally dependent.

It very much would depend on your current armor levels and amount of HP you already have. If you had 1HP, then absolutely of course. If you had 10000HP, then armor would be better, especially when you factor in the cost/benefit of raising that EHP. (extreme, yes, I know). But basically, you'd have to make a graph with multiple lines (if you want to factor in the pestilence debuff part), that I can't care to make. :)

However, I'm pretty sure a void talisman and something like a tablet of command or hex stick would give you a better chance than either adding armor or hp.


Actually, if you converted the damage coefficient graph to an EHP graph (0.1x would be 10xHP, 2.0x would be 0.5xHP), you could pretty quickly figure it out based on how much HP you have.

For example, if you had exactly 1000HP (for ease), and you added a beastheart (1100gold), your EHP would be 1.25X. If you had 0 armor (laff), then adding 5 armor would increase your EHP by something like 1.33X. Thus, adding armor would be better and would only cost you 550.

[skanzz]

Theres a lot of mess posted on here. The graph is effectively mirrored around a point (0, -1, not really important) which means that yes, once you get into negative armour it becomes less efficient the more you take off but it is still more efficient to take them from 0 to -10 than it is to take them from 20 to 10.

The area armour makes most difference is either side of the zero mark. (where the gradient is largest).

So basically, unless you are removing armour below -10, you arent wasting -armour.

[Deathbeproud]

Theres a lot of mess posted on here. The graph is effectively mirrored around a point (0, -1, not really important) which means that yes, once you get into negative armour it becomes less efficient the more you take off but it is still more efficient to take them from 0 to -10 than it is to take them from 20 to 10.

The area armour makes most difference is either side of the zero mark. (where the gradient is largest).

So basically, unless you are removing armour below -10, you arent wasting -armour.

Pesti/Andro/Soulstealer do -25 armor by 16 easily making them very effective for -armor strat. Add a shieldbreaker on Soulstealer and your gaurenteed to pretty much get the max effect.

[OhBob]

Yea, sure. The same way, it just will go the opposite way (the more it raises/lowers the less it will readuce/amplify).

[klind]

Okay, head asploding a bit from all the mathematics.

Short form from what I can tell:

- armour is a good thing at all times. However, if you already have an opponent's armour to -9/-2, then your gold is better spent on other damage increasing items, like Riftshards, since the damage increase given by reducing armour further is less damage/gold spent than buying another damage item.

Is this correct?