Surprised to see this not already posted, this is worthy of some topical discussion here despite the urge to make some of this just DIAF here it is from:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/446136-Armor-Up-Developer-Diary-1#post...

Greetings,

To give insight to player about the changes involved with our Armor Up changes, Paladin buffs, and other balance changes we are writing a series of developer diaries to explain upcoming changes we have planned for the game.

In this first offering we will discuss some extensions to our basic systems so players can more easily understand how all of this works together. With this post players should become more familiar with the following:

~ Physical Resist Rating (or PRR), the new formula the increases its power, and the bonuses to PRR that heavier armors will grant.
~ Magical Resist Rating (or MRR), the new rating that will mitigate magical damage, and the bonuses to MRR that heavier armors will grant.
~ Melee Power, the new melee specific attribute similar to Spellpower, and how certain static effects will scale with this new attribute.
~ Ranged Power, the new missile specific attribute similar to Spellpower, and how it might affect future abilities.
~ Improvements to the mitigation of heavier armors.

NOTE: I realize some of this is math heavy designer speak, but we felt that the DDO players interested in these details would benefit from a post about how all of this fits into our greater balancing plan, and how it begins to put pieces into place for future balancing.


We are expanding some of our existing systems to give much needed tools to balance characters in both heroic and epic levels. To understand some of our upcomg changes, players will want to familiarize themselves with four attributes which extend the current system.


Physical Resist Rating
The attribute is used to mitigate physical damage of all types. The game already has Physical Resist Rating. We are changing the mitigation formula of this attribute, effectively buffing its power. The new formula:

100 / (100 + Rating)

This boost will help mitigate the damage of melee enemies in Epic Elite and will help players to build characters that can survive toe to toe with those enemies.


Magical Resist Rating
This new attribute is the magical equivalent of PRR. It can be increased by wearing armor, gearing up Sheltering effects, and picking certain enhancements. This rating works on most magical effects. It will not reduce force, bane and some other special effects. The mitigation this rating provides following a similar formula as PRR.

100 / (100 + Rating)



Melee Power
The new attribute is essentially the melee version of Spellpower. Melee Power will not only increase the damage of straight weapon damage, but certain static effects from enhancements will now scale up with Melee Power allowing them to be more useful in epic levels. Melee Power will be gained from certain enhancements and from some melee epic destinies. Our plan is to have future loot include Melee Power. This rating increases melee attacks by the following formula.

(100 + Rating) / 100

As we rebalance static effects found in enhancements we will make these scale with Melee Power so they increase as you gain power and new loot. As an example, several Paladin damage sources that were previously static will now scale with Melee Power.



Ranged Power
This new attribute is ranged version of Melee Power, or if you prefer the ranged equivalent to Spellpower. This rating increases missile attacks by the following formula.

(100 + Rating) / 100

This rating won't be used much in our first set of chancges but is a future tool for ranged builds.



With the description of these new attributes in mind, we next want to update you to upcoming changes to heavy armor and shields.

Buffing Heavy Armor
We've already talked about our plans for making heavier armors and shields more effective, and we want to update you with the latest design. Wearing armor will now provide bonus mitigation by increasing your Physical Resist Rating and Magical Resist Rating. We have updated values below.

Note that the values are changed from previously announced values. This is due to the fact that the Physical Resistance Rating formula has changed to offer more mitigation for each point. With the new PRR formula these new values offer similar mitigation to those previously announced.

Physical and Magical Resist Ratings offered by armor
Robes or Outfits: No PRR, no MRR
Light Armor: 10 PRR, 10 MRR if armor has enchantments. (This is in addtion to the current PRR bonus of 2 + (BAB / 2.0) )
Medium Armor: 20 PRR, 20 MRR if armor has enchantments. (This is in addtion to the current PRR bonus of 4 + (BAB / 1.5) )
Heavy Armor: 30 PRR, 30 MRR if armor has enchantments. (This is in addtion to the current PRR bonus of 4 + BAB )


Shields will give additional PRR and, if enchanted, MRR.

Physical and Magical Resist Ratings offered by sheilds
Buckler: None
Light Shield: 5 PRR, 5 MRR if shield has enchantments.
Heavy Shield: 10 PRR, 10 MRR if shield has enchantments.
Tower Shield: 15 PRR, 15 MRR if shield has enchantments.

In addition, characters who are proficient with shields can also use the larger shields for defense against magical attacks that would normally require a Reflex saving throw. Instead of (or in addition to) using your Reflex saving throw to mitigate the damage you can deflect the damage off your shield. This is represented by increasing your Physical and Magical Resist Ratings against those types of attacks when using a shield. Note that you gain this additional mitigation whether you make your Reflex saving throw or not.

Physical and Magical Resist Rating multiplier against magical attacks that normally allow a Reflex saving throw.
Buckler: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Light Shield: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Heavy Shield: 2.0
Tower Shield: 2.0

This means that characters with heavier armor and/or heavy or tower shields have an alternate mitigation against large area of effect attacks to help them compete in high level content with characters who use Evasion.

Magical Resistance Rating and Loot
Magical Resistance Rating will appear on existing and future items with the Sheltering effect. All items with the Sheltering effect will give an amount of MRR equal to the PRR of that effect. Note that armor type will still limit the amount of MRR you can have. In the future items may offer additional sources of PRR and/or MRR in addition to sheltering effects.


How does all of this work in future balancing?


In the next Armor Up developer's diary we will talk about the following topics:
~ Melee Power and scaling static abilities in epic elite.
~ Updated changes to Paladin to help them be fun and competitive in Heroic and Epic Elite content.

Sev~ 

Several points here worry me greatly. The whole Melee/Ranged Power bits. Along with the implications that if you are around and not armored you won't manage to scale for coming damage because you and I both know once they get such a system in place they will have to crank mob damage/hp/save up past 11 again since they can't write decent AI code to made the game a challenge.

While I may in certain aspects look forward to a caster or two in heavy armor that is in our future... just how much are these changes going to yet again invalidate every existing piece of gear in the bloody game?

More stupid confusing systems that not even devs will know how that will work.

Seriously awful.  Jesus christ.

Bet they'll add new skills for Melee Power and Ranged Power. Because we all have enough skill points for them.

Looks like they are going to nerf blitz for Ranged. Good call.

The whole melee and ranged power is..idk, gotta see it in action.

He has to TEST if it works on live. So out of touch.

This is interesting stuff, but they haven't implemented basic stuff well.  This is a radical change of systems - I hate to sound skeptical about this, but if they mess it up, they will seriously piss many players off.
What if they're pressured to release a half finished system again?  What happens if Sev leaves?

On the positive side at least, these changes are not something you would expect from a game going into maintenance mode.

They need to fix warforged/bladeforged horrible armor feats for starters.
And add a way for evasionists to avoid damage from fort/will based spells.
...And I kinda think the 100 cap is too low.. Hell even my rogue got close to that without trying.. And meleepower on only new stuff is bs.. Well it's bs to start with.

If the game survives another year they will be removing multiclassing as part of a balancepass and merge certain classes so we have healer, warlock, warrior and rogue.. oh.. wait.. Isn't that neverwinter?

Besides that.. I'm looking forward to wear full plate on some of my toons and not feel gimp..

What are you doing? *sob*

Many of my toons are caster based with melee subfocus. Jesus Fuck. Do I need to build for this shit too? Already I have to build and choose between every fucking thing in the game. Give me a break.

DropBear wrote on Jul 28^th, 2014 at 7:58pm:

ftfy

Bauble, esos, and ross.

Just read a bit of dev diary 2, was thinking of doing iconic pl now, but when I saw changes to blitz, I think Ill do martial pl first, have like 4 more. 

hmmm looks like I will be having to dust off my Shadow Guardian heavy wearing sorc plans pretty soon.. Bah!