At a guess what you were seeing is down to the combination of paltry damage and marginal armor benefit...
i.e. 4.85 damage and 4.05 will both show as 4 even though one is actually ~15% smaller than the other. You'd notice if it went from 100 to 85 but low level mob damage numbers are so small you really can't see a difference.
Unless they made change, the original concept about armor calculation weren't to make them flat damage reduction like in Wow-ish games.
The point was to move a bell curve over statistical damage dealt by the ennemy, meaning the more armor the less median damage you would take, without entirely exclusing the maximum damage range, simply reducing it's odds to a minimal frequency.
If it still works that way, that also means more than often avoidance results to similar results, and health is a constant benefit if your healer can keep the cost of healing more.
Note that again, such systems when facing extremely hard attack stat monsters, it might also reduce your armor to statistically zero, by simply allowing maximum damage regardless of your investment in armor. Such happened in Everquest where high end raid mobs just rolled maximum damage every single hit and survival was only due to maximim health, avoidance and constant heals.
I also have this experience.
I recently SIGNIFICANTLY upgraded my armor on my warrior and went to fight the standard crocodile I always use to test upgrades. I ended up on the exact same health as I had before the upgrades. It did not seem to make a bit of difference.
Is there some cap involved which is artificially limiting effectiveness of armor, because there sure seems like there is?
My warrior seems petty lame. I definitely dont get a sense that he is 'tough'. Even when I charge up the skill that is supposed to increase my armor by 9% with three charges, it make zero difference to how much damage I take. I think there is an issue, but im not sure how to prove it.
A dark blue crocodile leave me on around 1/3rd health no matter what I do. If I use a shield it's even worse. I attacked a light blue skeleton caster and had to use a potion to stay alive. On my wizard the thing would have died before got close to me and I would have had 80% mana left.
i would say no difference.
me (18 enchanter) with full cloth 84AC and 17 paladin friend full plate 219 AC went to AVP to kill orcs, spiders, and bears and bats, light to dark blue.
FULL plate armor paladin : taking excactly the same damage, as often as me (enchanter) per hit. Paladin's bar only went down slower due to larger HP pool.
Then we pulled a couple more very similar level mobs, paladin ZERO armor - down to 29 AC exact same dmg / hit on several mobs.
how do you go zero armor, cloth, leather, chain, PLATE finally... and no difference on 4 tiers up of armor ?
the mobs need to either hit hard or the AC difference needs to make a difference. the current set up is beyond stupid and gives zero sense of accomplishment other than looks.
the testing VR team needs to really test this and see each hit, % chance to get hit, etc, makes no or almost no differnce.
Again, not naked to cloth. not cloth to leather. not leather to chain. not cloth to chain. not cloth to plate. NAKED to plate. no difference. The AC calculations are NOT working or are a stupid , stupid implementation. I don't see myself playing this much at all now that i know that armor is not a goal that makes a difference.
I suggest you all test it out yourselves.
Ouch. This is bad.
This essentially means that leveling ANY armor skill is worthless. I guess if you simply want the looks, sure. Or if you expect them to change this and are building ahead. But wow man...
I get it that they want to have a more complex statistical calculation involved for...reasons...I guess. Perhaps so that other defensive stats matter too, like avoidance.
But not having any system in the game AT ALL for armor is just...bad. you will lose players with that. That's one of those "need to have in game when it's made available to the public" things. Early Access really isn't an excuse for something like that. It's a foundational core mechanic. You should at least have something in game. even if you change it later on.
That being said...I do remember hearing something about a change to Mob damage and armor coming soon, so I hope that means it's getting fixed. It just sort of blows my mind that you literally are ignoring one of the most important parts of a tanks life. I suppose I'll just store all my armor that I'm wearing and enjoy the bikini look for now. At least the armor w/o stats on it.
VR is still very focused on weapon damage, abilities and other basic tho complex algorithms. This really is a game in Alpha ( one could argue pre-alpha). They took Mastery completely out, even tho it works fine and will be back, just to simplify the process. I know armor 'works' in that it has a complex algorithm and an effect. My guess is that they are just not focusing on it until the other areas are closer to completion.
Yes, it sux for Crafters, I'm one of them LoL.
While i'm not a fan, they could just change the AC to extra HP vs physical damage. Every fight you take damage and your armor HP goes down. If they crit, a portion of the damage bleed through to your HP. Other damage over time effects, like poison and disease, would apply directly to YOUR hp. But the initial attack should have to reach a certain level to even get the poison past the armor. In between fights, you can temporarily repair your armor. Armor degrades over time with usage and needs to be repaired by an armorer or vendor. Cloth armor shouldn't even add HP but should be considered enchanted cloth to give Magic HP, so you are more resistant to magic. Shields should also have HP and when you block the damage gets applied to your shield first. Once shield hp are gone, blocking will only prevent minor damage and needs to be repaired during rest. This also makes dodging and parrying very useful.
I hope they don't do a POE2 and make armor the noob stat. In PoE2's current state, the players that favor heavy armor are the squishys while the mana shield and evasion boys are the tanks. Some players enjoy seeing returns on the armor pump moreso than the damage route and shouldnt be penalized for that. Maybe even make armor stacking it's own character progression.