Doom Roguelike Equipment Analysis: Armors
Armor is relatively straightforward overall, though with plenty of wrinkles that aren't necessarily strongly intuitive.
So first of all: durability. Almost all Armors have a durability stat, which is presented as a percentage, defaults to starting from 100%, and when it hits 0% the Armor is destroyed. This seems straightforward enough, and in some sense it is pretty straightforward...
... but first of all, the usage of a percentage system suggests Armor durability works exactly like Doomguy's HP meter, and they're really not alike at all. Armor's stated percentage is not obscuring a hidden raw HP value; 1% is simply 1 point of durability. This then intersects with how durability loss works to create inconsistent-looking outcomes, in that Armor loses a point of durability for every single point of unblocked damage that makes it through to Doomguy's raw HP meter. So for a Scout or Technician who has no ranks in Ironman, every 2% of HP they lose will result in 1% of their Armor's durability being lost, since 2% of their HP is 1 point of raw HP. This gets particularly unfortunate when you consider that the Marine is the default easing-you-in class, since their slightly higher base HP means they'll unpredictably lose 1% or 2% listed HP percent per point of raw HP lost, and so chipping damage will sometimes produce a 1% loss of HP and durability but often be a loss of 2% HP and 1% Armor durability.
A similar point is that Armor durability can in fact go over 100% as a standard mechanic, just like Doomguy's HP, but once again this similarity is misleading because the details and implications are quite different. First of all, where multiple sources of healing can just naturally push Doomguy's HP over 100%, Armor durability can only go over 100% in three cases: firstly, installing a Bulk Mod Pack in an Armor causes its current and maximum durability to rise by 100%. Second, a specific Exotic Armor -the Gothic Armor- has a base durability of 200%, which can in fact be raised to 300% with a Bulk Mod Pack. Third, a specific Assembly adds 100% to the Armor's maximum durability. (50% in 0.9.9.7) In all three cases, Armor repair effects can naturally take the Armor to its current maximum, including that a Megasphere will set their durability to their current max regardless of how large a gap that might be. (Actually, there's a second Assembly that increases durability, but it also forbids repairing the Armor, reducing the significance of the increase in durability)
The second big difference from HP is that going over 100% durability has no decay mechanic; so long as a given Armor can go over 100% durability in the first place, it can sit there forever without consequence. Indeed, Armor durability instead has changed behavior when getting low on durability: if an Armor currently has less than 50% durability, its Protection and positive damage resistances are both halved. And that's 50% as in '50 durability points', to be clear; an Armor with a maximum of 200% durability doesn't suffer this penalty until its listed percent is 49% or less. At less than 25%, these penalties increase to 75% of the Armor's Protection and positive damage resistances being lost. Also, a handful of Armors can survive hitting 0% durability, and if that happens the penalties increase to 100%, ie the Armor provides no damage reduction whatsoever.
This itself requires further explanation because the numbers in question are often small enough it's not obvious what 'lose 50% of 1 Protection' actually means.
So first of all, the game rounds these penalties down if it the penalty wouldn't result in a whole number. Green Armor's 1 point of Protection simply never goes away, for example, because the penalty can't produce a whole number, and rounding down any number less than 1 results in 0. Similarly, Blue Armor has 2 points of Protection, and so loses 1 point when below 50% durability but doesn't lose any more Protection when hitting 25% durability. It's not until you're looking at Red Armor with its 4 points of Protection that the full progression occurs.
Damage type resistance works off the same rules, but consistently uses large enough numbers that the impact of this rounding is much smaller. For example, Green Armor provides 15% Bullet and Shrapnel resistance; at 50% durability, the game halves that, notices it's trying to subtract 7.5, rounds down, and so only takes away 7, resulting in a final resistance of 8%. Then when below 25% durability, it now tries to remove 11.25 points, rounds that down to 11, and so the final resistance is 4%.
An implication to note is that Armor durability is lost faster as the Armor's protective qualities decay since Armor durability loss is derived directly from HP lost. Say you have a Blue Armor with a Power Mod Pack attached and are playing Angel of Max Carnage. (So that an Imp throwing its fireball at you rolls exactly 10 damage every single time, simplifying describing my example) Initially your Armor's 4 Protection will knock that down to 6 damage, and so your Blue Armor will lose 6% durability per hit. 7 hits later, your Armor drops to 46% durability and suddenly is only providing 2 Protection, and so loses 8% durability per hit; 3 hits later, your Armor has dropped to 22% durability and lost another point of Protection and is now losing 9% durability per hit, and will completely vaporize after 3 more hits. (While you presumably are cramming Medpacks down your throat throughout this experiment, since you'd normally run out of HP long before the Armor runs out of durability)
This effect is a lot more dramatic when resistances are stacked on. Say we replace our Power Mod-boosted Blue Armor with a Red Armor, so you have 25% Fire resistance in addition to 4 Protection; Imp fireballs are in fact Fire damage, so this is immediately relevant. So first of all let's note that damage resistances are applied before Protection, so initially your Red Armor shaves off 2.5 damage via its Fire resistance before it gets around to removing 4 damage via its Protection. I am unfortunately unsure exactly how the game prefers to round damage in this context, but know from experience that it does at least some rounding up to ensure the resistances do anything and will be proceeding forward as if this is absolutely true. (Green Armor's Bullet resistance would be almost irrelevant if the game didn't round in a favorable-to-resistances way, for example)
In that scenario you're initially taking only 3 damage per hit and so only losing 3% durability per hit; 17 hits later, you finally drop to 49% durability and so your Protection drops to 2 and your Fire resistance drops to 13%, so you're negating 1.3 (Rounding up to 2) damage from resistance and 2 from Protection, resulting in a final damage of 6 -so twice as much as before the Armor degraded, and in turn doubling the durability loss to 6% per hit. 9 hits later, you drop to 19% durability and your resistance drops to 1 Protection and 7% Fire resistance, so you're only shaving off 2 points total and so losing 8% durability per hit. 3 hits later, your Red Armor vaporizes.
Notice especially how just dropping below 50% durability was a massive increase in damage taken and in turn durability lost. The exact numbers vary, but this axiom holds pretty reliably true. If we replace the Red Armor with Lava Armor -which also has 4 Protection but has 75% Fire resistance- you're literally taking 1 point of damage until you hit 49% durability, at which point the damage you're taking quadruples to 4 damage a hit (75% resistance becomes 38% resistance, rounds up to 4 damage removed plus 2 from Protection, so 6 damage subtracted from 10), and then dropping below 25% durability raises it to 7 damage per hit, which isn't even doubling. (The Fire resistance drops to 18% and rounds up to removing 2 damage, while the Protection is of course 1 point)
Or alternatively I can use an Energy Shield as the example, which has 80% Fire resistance and zero Protection. It will initially reduce damage from our Max Carnage Imp Fireball to 2 per hit, 26 hits later you're at 48% durability and so 40% Fire resistance and so the damage triples to 6, 4 hits later you're down to 24% durability and 20% Fire resistance and so the damage rises to 8 and 3 hits later your Energy Shield is gone.
So in general, you should prefer to try to avoid fighting with your Armor at less than 50% durability. Notably, the mechanics of all this mean that a Bulk Mod Pack's durability increase triples how long a (non-Gothic) Armor operates at peak effectiveness, because instead of 51 durability points lost being the threshold it's now 151 durability points being lost. I suspect a lot of players intuitively expect a Bulk Mod Pack to be doubling the Armor's value, but no, it's triple! (Okay, not quite triple, but very close)
Also, I should note that this Armor rot mechanic only affects Protection and damage resistance. Armors additionally can affect movement speed and knockback received, and neither of these is affected by Armor dropping below 50% durability. For many Armors this is a subtle layer to why them dropping low is bad, as many Armors provide a movement speed penalty and no knockback resistance, and so eg a half-busted Red Armor is giving you the full -20% movement speed penalty while offering drastically less protection. It's often better to switch from a badly damaged Armor to a lower-quality Armor that is in good condition due to all these points; switching from a half-busted Red Armor to a mint condition Blue Armor will speed you up, provide just as much protection against non-Fire threats, and often provide only slightly worse protection from Fire threats.
Conversely if you're worried about knockback more than damage for some reason, it can be worth keeping an Armor equipped even as it degrades because its knockback resistance won't be affected. This is a bit of a niche possibility, but may save a run if you keep it in mind!
Also, to be explicit: this rot mechanic is based on current durability, where restoring durability can in fact give back the Protection and damage resistances if it brings the Armor back above a relevant threshold. That's another reason why swapping to a less valuable Armor that's in better condition makes sense; so you can later use Armor repair effects on the damaged Armor to get it back to full utility, an option lost to you if it gets destroyed outright.
I should also point out once again that Doom Roguelike normally enforces a minimum of 1 damage taken no matter how much Protection and damage resistance is involved. Specifically, I'm emphasizing this because it means enemies who fire multiple projectiles per volley become the biggest threats if your defenses are sufficiently significant; if you're reducing the damage of even the hardest-hitting enemies to 1 anyway, then suddenly a Former Captain unloading 4 bullets per volley means they get 4 times the damage. (And 4 times the ability to tear through your Armor's durability)
Furthermore, all damage is calculated and then durability is removed, per individual attack. An enemy who hits one time for enough damage to knock your Armor below 50% doesn't actually benefit from your defenses weakening until their next attack, whereas a multi-shot enemy may kick your Armor below a threshold with their first hit and then the other shots that are part of that same volley get to immediately benefit; this makes multishot enemies especially easy to misjudge your ability to soak punishment from, because their damage can spike before you get to even see that they knocked your Armor past a durability threshold.
A couple related wrinkles are Plasma damage and Acid damage. Acid damage doubles the durability loss after all other calculations are made; a Baron of Hell will always remove 2% durability at minimum, because even 1 point of damage to your HP becomes 2 points of damage to your durability. Plasma damage ignores half your Protection, so it does more damage and in turn removes more durability compared to the same base damage in a different damage type. This is straightforward, but it's still worth explicitly stating that durability loss is based on actual HP lost and so Plasma partially ignoring Protection does in fact affect how well it tears through your Armor's durability.
Green Armor
Protection: 1
Damage Resistances: 15% Bullet and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -5%
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 1
Green Armor is your basic crap Armor you'll tend to move past eventually, but which is actually pretty good at the very beginning of the game when a lot of the attacks you'll be taking are Bullet or Shrapnel damage. Even with how low the damage per shot on Bullet attacks pretty consistently is, the rounding means Green Armor will be consistently shaving off a couple points of damage -which is a lot when it comes to, say, a Former Captain hitting for d6 damage. That means that 50% of their shots will only do 1 damage, and their best per-bullet damage is 4 instead of 6, notably extending your durability. That's well worth laboring under a 5% movement penalty.
Green Armor has the unique distinction that you basically don't care about its durability loss up until it outright breaks. Its 1 point of Protection is never lost due to the rounding rules, while its 15% Bullet and to a lesser extent Shrapnel resistances do technically go down but this mostly has no effect due to how Bullet damage is universally low and Shrapnel damage is often functionally low. A Former Captain's d6 per hit, for example, is affected identically by the base 15% resistance and the 4% resistance of a Green Armor that's almost gone; even on a max-damage roll, they both attempt to shave off less than 1 point of damage (0.9 for Green Armor in good condition, 0.24 for Green Armor that's about to disintegrate) and then round it up to 1 point of damage reduction.
Similarly, a Former Sergeant has a much more impressive 3d8 damage for a maximum of 24 damage, where 15% Shrapnel resistance shaves off 3.6 damage (and thus rounds up to 4 damage removed) vs 4% Shrapnel resistance only shaving off 0.96 damage (and thus rounding up to 1 damage removed), but in real play they'll only rarely roll max damage and will never actually be firing a shot point-blank, which means Shotgun damage dropoff kicks in; at 2 tiles, they're already losing 14% of their damage before your damage reduction kicks in, so their maximum damage is actually 20.64 damage, which gets rounded to 21, at which point 15% Shrapnel resistance shaves off exactly 3 points of damage, not 3.6-rounding-up-to-4. If they're firing at line of sight, their maximum damage is actually only 12.24 damage; 15% resistance takes off 1.8-rounding-up-to-2 from 12 damage. So a nearly-destroyed Green Armor is often at worst only taking 1 more point of damage from a Former Sergeant's shot -and again, they'll only rarely roll max damage. More often they'll roll about 12~ damage; at line of sight that'll be 6~ damage, which you'll note is the high roll on a Former Captain where I already walked you through 15% and 4% resistance having identical performance.
And the Bullet and Shrapnel threats that are more lethal per hit than these literally cannot be encountered unless you're either playing on an upper difficulty or doing an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run, and in any of those cases they'll still take a while to be relevant; for the very early game, Green Armor taking damage really does have almost no effect until it actually breaks.
Less significant but also worth pointing out is low-rolls on damage. That is, if a Former Sergeant fires on you from 2 tiles away, but rolls low enough for even near-destroyed Green Armor to reduce the damage to 1 point, then in that case it doesn't actually matter whether the Green Armor is in mint condition or below 26% durability; either way, the attack ends up at 1 damage. So even if an attacker's maximum damage is enough for 15% resistance to be meaningfully better than 4% resistance, it won't necessarily matter against a given attack. (Unless you're doing an Angel of Max Carnage run, of course)
Anyway, Green Armor is also the best common Armor to use as a base for Cerberus Armor, as its Bullet and Shrapnel resistances will be inherited, while all the other differences between it and Blue or Red Armor are overruled by Cerberus Armor's modifications. If you don't luck into one of a few specific Exotic Armors, you're probably going to use a Green Armor as the base in any run that assembles a Cerberus Armor.
Aside the Cerberus Armor point, though, you really do want to move up to other Armors if you can. The overall low damage on Bullet and Shrapnel damage enemies actually contributes to this point; since Green Armor's resistance is only shaving off 1 point from a Former Captain's bullets, Blue Armor having 2 points of Protection makes it equally effective at reducing damage from Former Captains even though Blue Armor's resistance is not relevant, and Red Armor provides more damage reduction against a Former Captain than Green Armor thanks to its 4 Protection.
Green Armor is also the only legal base of Tactical Armor. If you're at the kind of skill level where 'kill everything and never take damage' is realistic, I suspect that's very important. I'm not at that kind of skill and doubt I ever will be, though, so this is just a guess.
Protection: 2
Damage Resistances: 20% Plasma
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -10%
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 4
The middle-tier common Armor, with another point of Protection, slightly harsher movement speed penalty, and mild Plasma resistance. In the mid-early game you're liable to be running around in Blue Armor if you don't luck into a relevant Exotic Armor, especially on higher difficulties where threats that don't do Bullet or Shrapnel damage get added a lot faster. Cacodemons and Hell Knights in particular can show up really early if up on Ultraviolence, and they do Plasma damage; if they roll max damage (12), Blue Armor shaves off a third of the damage. (4 points, because the resistance shaves off 2.4 points that get rounded up to 3 points plus the 2 Protection gets knocked down to 1 point by the Plasma damage, resulting in a total of 4) That's a lot better than Green Armor shaving off literally nothing! (Because its 1 Protection gets halved and then rounded down to 0 by the Plasma damage) On the lower difficulties you'll generally want to linger on Green Armor for longer, breaking out Blue Armor in response to stuff like finding a Cacodemon-filled Vault.
Note that the later Plasma damage threats of Former Commandos and Arachnotrons don't actually give a particularly strong argument to keep using Blue Armor into the late-game. Their damage per shot is simply too low to be strongly impacted by mild Plasma resistance; a Former Commando's high roll ends up losing 3 points of damage in total from Blue Armor (1.4 rounds up to 2 from the resistance plus 1 Protection), and Arachnotrons literally only lose 2 points of damage from Blue Armor! (Their high roll is 5 damage, so 20% resistance removes exactly 1 point of damage, and then 1 Protection removes the other) Red Armor provides the same 2 damage reduction, and with a Former Commando less than a third of their shots will roll high enough for Blue Armor to give better performance than Red Armor.
Even ultra lategame and boss enemies don't really affect this point; only (some) Elite Former Commandos and Shamblers can hit hard enough per shot for the Plasma resistance to become particularly notable. (A Shambler's 4d5 damage mean they can hit for up to 20 damage, and on such a high roll Blue Armor's Plasma resistance is shaving off 4 damage all by itself) As such, Blue Armor mostly gets pushed aside even though Plasma damage remains a relevant problem and ignores half of Protection and so you might intuitively expect resistance to be more important for surviving Plasma threats than having good Protection.
Assemblies don't do much to give Blue Armor extra longevity, either. There are no Assemblies that specifically require Blue Armor, and no Assemblies for which Blue Armor is a particularly favorable base. This isn't to suggest that Blue Armor as an Assembly base is uniformly without merit, to be clear, just that there is no Assembly for which Blue Armor is straightforwardly a superior base compared to Green and Red, contrasting with how Green Armor is the best of the three for Cerberus Armor due to its mechanics. You might, for example, decide to convert Blue Armor into Power Armor (Assuming you get a Nano Mod Pack) if you're most concerned about Plasma threats, and that would be a perfectly sensible choice, but Power Armor's mechanics don't make Blue Armor broadly its best base.
All that said, you shouldn't mindlessly swap out Blue Armor for Red Armor, as Red Armor's additional movement speed penalty is a fairly significant flaw. For example, in the Phobos Anomaly you're guaranteed to get a Red Armor, and you might expect that the correct thing to do is to immediately equip it as preparation for the rest of the floor... but if you're on Ultraviolence and your plan is to trigger the initial ambush, start Running, and flee back to the door, you should actually equip a Blue Armor, which will provide similar damage reduction against the Cacodemons while not impairing your movement so badly and so both give the pinkie Demons less opportunity to bite you and reduce the damage you take overall by getting to the relative safety of the initial room sooner.
As of 0.9.9.8, Nightmare Archviles having switched to Plasma damage gives Blue Armor more of a place in the late game: a Red Armor will reduce their 20 damage by 2, while a Blue Armor will reduce it by 5.
Protection: 4
Damage Resistances: 25% Fire
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -20%
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 9
Do keep in mind the fairly significant movement speed penalty on Red Armor. While Unique Armors tend to have a similar or worse penalty, the overwhelming majority of Exotic Armors have no movement speed penalty at all, or outright boost movement speed when worn. How important this is depends on your build -melee builds and Shottyman builds are particularly heavy on movement in combat, for example, whereas a Technician running Entrenchment has to stand still for extended periods to get the most out of their Mastery- but as I covered with Hellrunner in the Universal Traits post, positive movement speed has a lot of beneficial qualities, including reducing the damage you expect to take overall, and this includes the inverse point that negative movement speed is notably dangerous and tends to increase the damage you take. As such, there are Exotic Armors you might intuitively expect to be a downgrade relative to Red Armor that in practice tend to be better. (Especially in the early game, where the Fire resistance on Red Armor is often not important)
Overall, Red Armor is straightforward enough; it's good, it's good design that it takes a bit to actually show up because its qualities are more of a mixed bag in the early game, it's good design that Exotic Armors tend to be meaningfully better than it (Since they're the Rare Cool Armors a player is liable to expect to be better, not to mention want to give a try for novelty's sake), etc. It's well-tuned and well-placed in a manner that makes it difficult to add much nuance to talking about it. (Especially since I'm mostly reserving Assembly talk for the Mod Packs and Assemblies post)
So on to Exotic Armors!
Ballistic Vest
Protection: 1
Damage Resistances: 50% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 2
100% superior to Green Armor, so you might as well use a Ballistic Vest over Green Armor if you have the option. It's also an excellent base for Cerberus Armor, and for runs that intend to take on the Unholy Cathedral it's potentially worth considering holding onto for that Special Level; 50% Melee resistance is really helpful when literally everything you're fighting is dedicated melee and you're forced to melee them yourself. This is usually overshadowed by the Melee resistance from Berserker or Malicious Blades, but if you're wanting to have a not-melee-focused run take on the Unholy Cathedral? It's potentially very great.
Aside the Cerberus Armor point it overall falls off pretty hard once a run is into the midgame or so; Bullet and Shrapnel threats largely vanish, while Melee damage can (And mostly should) be handled by just not getting into melee in the first place if you're not doing a melee build yourself. (Exception: Arachnotrons, where getting into melee is safer than letting them hurl Plasma bolts into you... but their Melee damage is atrocious, such that Melee resistance is essentially moot) Which is a little unfortunate, as most runs that see a Ballistic Vest at all will have it spawn somewhere past the point where it's strongly useful. It at least can spawn really early -in a standard run it can spawn as soon as random floor generation is occurring at all- but Doom Roguelike's floor generation doesn't seem to weight its appearance toward the early floors in particular; you'll still see it late more often than early simply because more floors are late than are early.
In the extreme long haul of an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run where Elite versions of Formers start being allowed to spawn normally one might expect the Ballistic Vest to regain relevance, but... not really? Only Elite Former Humans reliably stay inside the bubble of relevant damage types; a given Elite Former Captain or Elite Former Sergeant might hit you with a bunch of Bullet or Shrapnel damage, but they both can just as easily hit you with a bunch of Plasma damage instead. So the Ballistic Vest really is pretty firmly left behind by the evolution of enemy compositions if you're not talking turning it into Cerberus Armor.
Protection: 1
Damage Resistances: 95% Bullet
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 2
I don't really get why the Bullet-Proof Vest exists. Even if you find it really early, it's debatable whether it's worth using over Green Armor given the loss of Shrapnel resistance means you'll be that bit more vulnerable to Former Sergeants. Bullet damage is also really narrow, only coming from Former Humans, Former Captains, and from the very rare Elite Former Humans and Elite Former Captains, and of these Former Captains are the only reasonably dangerous, reasonably common enemy... and they fire streams of 1d6 damage shots. A Green Armor is already knocking that down to 1-3 damage, with expected trending low. (Because rolling any of 1, 2, or 3 will all result in 1 damage; only 50% of the time will a given hit do more than 1 damage) Same for a Blue Armor. A Red Armor will only occasionally take even 2 damage!
If it was 95% resistance to Bullet and Shrapnel damage, it would at least be reasonably strong in a few specific Special Levels, such as the Military Base, where literally every enemy is a zombie. On lower difficulties, that Special Level doesn't even include Former Commandos/Elite Former Commandos, so the damage really is uniformly Bullet and Shrapnel.
But it's just Bullet, and that makes it really hard to find a good time to equip it.
It's too bad the Spider Mastermind does Plasma, instead of the Bullet damage you'd expect her to do...
No, Assemblies don't really help.
0.9.9.8 attempted to buff it: in 0.9.9.7, it provided 80% Bullet resistance. I say 'attempted', because this doesn't matter: the single highest damage possible from a Bullet damage enemy is 9 (Combat Pistols on Elite Former Humans), which gets knocked down to 1 point by 80% Bullet resistance. At 50% durability, 80% and 95% resistance become 40% and 47%, which... both reduce 9 damage to 3. At 25% durability, we finally see a 1-point difference: 6 vs 7 damage. That's it.
So... it'll very erratically shave off 1 extra point of damage? Sometimes? When heavily damaged in specific? This does not solve its problems.
Duelist Armor
Yes, it's very slightly darker than the Bullet-Proof Vest, but otherwise the same color scheme. Yes, that can get confusing in-game.
Protection: 2
Damage Resistances: 75% Melee
Knockback Modification: -15%
Move Modification: +15%
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 5
In 0.9.9.7, Duelist Armor was a very good possible base for Cerberus Armor, giving you a surprisingly general Armor. Slap a Power Mod Pack on for even more damage reduction or an Onyx to keep it perpetually in mint condition, and your run was pretty well set for Armor.
For some reason 0.9.9.8 horribly nerfed it: in 0.9.9.7, it was 50% Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee resistance, not its current 75% Melee resistance. The patch notes don't even mention that it was changed. It's still one of the better bases for Cerberus Armor, but it's no longer one of the best bases.
I guess it's one of the better Armors for going into the Unholy Cathedral in a non-melee-focused run?
I appreciate that Duelist Armor has stopped being A Better Ballistic Vest, but this is a really strange nerf in practice.
Phaseshift Armor
Note that the 'set bonus' effect is retained even if you apply an Assembly to Phaseshift Armor and/or Phaseshift Boots.
Protection: 2
Damage Resistances: 30% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: +50%
Move Modification: +25%
Special: If worn alongside Phaseshift Boots, renders the player immune to damage from Acid and Lava on the ground.
Minimum floor: 10
By default and by itself, Phaseshift Armor is a dubious trade. By the time it's allowed to show up, its resistances have already heavily dropped off in relevance, while an increase in how much knockback you suffer from attacks is generally very problematic, and overall gets more problematic as Mancubi enter rotation and enemy counts continue to go up. Being pingponged chaotically by enemy action has a whole host of hazards attached to it (Risking ending up on fluid tiles, risking being knocked next to exploding barrels and then they get detonated on you, risking being knocked near items on the floor that then get blown up by still other enemies trying to attack you...), and with late-game enemy counts you start regularly running into the possibility of knockback effects sending you into sight of enemies you didn't even know were there so damage can spike even more on essentially no warning.
+25% movement speed is cool and all, with only a single Unique Armor matching Phaseshift Armor on this topic, but unless you have 2 ranks in Badass the pingpong problem is a pretty severe one, and the defensive benefits are mediocre, outclassed in real terms by even generic Blue Armor.
If a run actually lucks into both parts of the set (Which is a rare event in general and basically impossible to have occur if you're not insisting on holding onto a piece in express hope of finding the other piece), things get a bit better. If nothing else, they're useful swaps for dealing with rampant Lava, whether that's a Lava river in a standard floor or looking to get through Mount Erebus/The Lava Pits. Still very flawed, but potentially worth carrying around as a backup option. (So you can escape the lava level even if you run out of Envirosuit Packs, for example)
Ranks in Badass also does a lot to mitigate Phaseshift Armor's biggest flaw, and so for a Marine especially it can be easier to justify using it for the speed (Which Marines notably appreciate given only one of their Masteries doesn't block Hellrunner) and even just as a backup Armor it's less likely to be outright worse than no Armor at all. Keep in mind that the Phaseshift Boots also increase how much knockback you take, though; 2 ranks in Badass does not mean you can just freely toss the set on and expect to be safe from knockback.
Assemblies unfortunately don't do a lot for Phaseshift Armor. Cerberus Armor is actually an okay Assembly if you don't mind losing the movement speed, funnily enough, and that's genuinely worth considering if you have the Phaseshift Boots as you'll end up perpetually immune to fluids while having your movement speed and knockback resistance neutral-ish. (-10% knockback resistance and -15% movement speed, specifically) Even Phaseshift Armor's damage resistances are a good fit to Cerberus Armor.
I'm having trouble imagining why you'd want to apply any other Assemblies to Phaseshift Armor, though.
Overall, I feel Phaseshift Armor is a nice idea that doesn't really hit the mark -it's surprisingly difficult to get positive value out of it, which hurts given it's an Exotic Armor.
Ballistic Shield
Protection: 0
Damage Resistances: 95% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: Cannot be modded, and durability can only be restored by a Megasphere. Resistances do not lower in response to durability checkpoints.
Minimum floor: 6
Our first example of the 'shield' concept, which is Armor you're largely unable to repair and are forbidden from modding. (Presumably so you can't equip an Onyx pack on them or the like) The Ballistic Shield is representative: 0 Protection, but extremely high resistances.
In the Ballistic Shield's case, this overall just makes it... bad. Bullet damage attacks are always fairly weak as individual hits, capping out at Elite Former Humans doing up to 9 damage on a hit: just having high Protection is enough to render Bullet damage a low threat. And by 'high', I mean that the 4 Protection on Red Armor already means you'll regularly take 1 damage from Bullet attacks.
The Shrapnel part is a little better: a Former Sergeant can do up to 20 damage at 1 tile away (They could do slightly better point-blank, but they always melee you if you're adjacent), which is a lot... but focusing on that scenario is misleading. If you're not a melee build, a lot of the time Former Sergeants will be shooting you from the edge of vision, where their max damage drops to 12, which is nowhere near as scary. For another, Shrapnel is hit twice as hard by Protection: a Red Armor with a Power Mod is already reducing edge-of-sight Shotgun blasts to chipping damage, let alone some of the Exotic and Unique Armors. For a third, Shotgun blasts are made of many small dice, and so it's extremely rare to actually see a max damage roll if you're not doing an Angel of Max Carnage run: literal max damage is a 1/6,561 event! The vast majority of the time, Shotgun blasts will do 12 damage for their roll, or something within a couple points of damage of that. At line of sight, you'll almost always see 7~ damage, ie enough that plain Red Armor is only not immunity to Former Sergeants at line of sight because attacks can't do less than 1 damage. (Outside the Marine's Survivalist Mastery)
Most importantly, Former Sergeants and Elite Former Sergeants are the only Shrapnel damage sources in the game. Elite Former Sergeants will never show up outside a handful of Special Levels if you're not playing an Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 run, while regular Former Sergeants almost entirely vanish from the spawn pool fairly quickly, in the late game only ever spawning in as part of a pack as Archvile resurrection fodder.
So actually the utility against Shrapnel is largely theoretical unless you get lucky and find it very early on. Which probably means an early Vault, given it can normally only spawn in starting from the sixth floor.
This all gets worse on higher difficulties, where threats like Hellknights show up fast, and of course their shots do Plasma damage.
That leaves the Melee resistance as significant, and, well... once again, pretty narrow.
For non-melee builds, melee resistance is low-value. The vast majority of enemies should only rarely get into melee with you in the first place, with the primary exceptions -Lost Souls when getting seriously swarmed, enemies like Arachnotrons you should deliberately get into melee with- all having such weak base damage that modest Protection is a better, more general way to keep their damage nearly nonexistent. There's edge cases where you might conceivably equip it if you were carrying it anyway -you could potentially use it to get through the Tower of Babel by deliberately meleeing the Cyberdemon, for example- but for the most part... there's better options.
Melee builds do of course place much higher value on Melee resistance since they're regularly getting into melee... but melee builds are going to rapidly be running Berserker, except for Technicians who'll instead be relying on Malicious Blades providing resistances. Either way, you'll be more or less continuously heavily protected from Melee, where even a generically decent Armor is plenty of protection -the Angel of Death is one of the most serious melee threats in the entire game, and if you're Berserking a generic Red Armor is already enough to ensure its max damage roll is only barely above... 1 point of damage. You don't need the additional Melee resistance the Ballistic Shield provides.
This is all before taking into account the difficulties in repairing the Ballistic Shield and the inability to mod it. Those two points are basically a death knell, preventing you from resolving key flaws (eg its lack of Protection) and making it difficult to avoid it being torn apart in no time flat.
You could take it to help with the Unholy Cathedral, I guess? Like, if you happened to find it immediately after the Tower of Babel, in a non-melee run. Maybe you want to get the badge for clearing every Special Level in a single run, for example. That's... a possibility?
On the plus side, it has no movement penalty, so if nothing else it's strictly superior to being naked. That puts it marginally ahead of some Armors: if you have no other Armors, you might as well wear it, and if you're low on Armor in inventory, it's worth considering carting it around until you find a comfortable number of alternatives.
It -and the other shields- do at least have the benefit of not degrading as durability lowers. This... doesn't actually help much, but for one thing I feel a need to emphasize it simply for the fact that the game does a terrible job of communicating it: the shields still do the 'Armor UI turns yellow and red at degradation checkpoints' thing, so unless you very specifically check them from the equipment or inventory screen, you're liable to just assume they do degrade! If you do know about it, it at least gives a luckily-relevant shield more of a lifespan; instead of ditching it the second it has 49% durability, you can wait until its in danger of disintegrating before ditching it.
Energy Shield
Protection: 0
Damage Resistances: 80% Fire, Plasma, and Acid.
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: Cannot be modded, and durability can only be restored by a Megasphere. Resistances do not lower in response to durability checkpoints.
Minimum floor: 8
It's still heavily limited by the inability to mod it and difficulty repairing it, but carrying an Energy Shield Just In Case is very much worth considering if you find one; it's a solid fallback if your preferred Armors are getting torn up and you're not getting opportunities to repair them. Just don't expect it to become your default, long-haul Armor, since your ability to keep it topped off is so unreliable.
Plasma Shield
Protection: 0
Damage Resistances: 95% Plasma
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: Cannot be modded, and durability can only be restored by a Megasphere. Resistances do not lower in response to durability checkpoints.
Minimum floor: 10
The thing is, most of the serious Plasma damage threats -Former Commandos, Arachnotrons, Elite Former Commandos, and Nightmare Arachnotrons- fire streams of shots that are individually not that strong, and Doom Roguelike refuses to knock an individual attack below 1 damage unless resistance is 100% or you specifically have the Marine's Survivor Mastery. (And in the latter case it still only happens half the time...) The 80% reduction from the Energy Shield already reduces these attacks to 1 damage per shot; 95% resistance is no better. The Plasma Shield slightly helps against Hell Knights, Nightmare Imps, (Nightmare) Cacodemons, and Nightmare Archviles... but then the Energy Shield will also massively reduce damage from Barons, Mancubi, Archviles, Revenants, Imps...
... and durability loss is directly lowered by taking less HP damage from attacks, so the Energy Shield is also a lot easier to use without it disintegrating suddenly, since it'll take less damage from all those threats by virtue of protecting you from them.
The Plasma Shield is also technically better against the Spider Mastermind, I suppose, as that can do up to 15 Plasma damage per shot. So I suppose it could be worth holding onto for that fight? It's not like she's got any buddies to complicate damage types, and she does do a lot of damage.
Still.
I really don't get why the Plasma Shield exists.
Medical Armor
Energy-Shielded Vest
Protection: 1
Damage Resistances: 50% Fire, Plasma, and Acid
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: None.
Minimum floor: 5
So you know how the Energy Shield is a bit limited? Well, in spite of a name similarity, the Energy-Shielded Vest is actually really general and good! Indeed, it can make for a very solid base for an endgame Armor; get an Onyx pack on it and a Power pack, and now you've got an indestructible source of 3 points of Protection that heavily reduces the damage from basically all the late-game enemies, with only Melee damage remaining potentially scary. If you get lucky enough to find the components for Cybernano Armor while having Whizkid 2, it's one of the better bases for that, giving you an indestructible 5 Armor: in conjunction with the resistances, that quarters Archvile damage, ensures Arachnotrons do 1 damage per successful hit, ensures Barons do at best 5 damage and quite often only 1... oh, and you can still put another Mod pack onto it! (2 if you're a Technician!)
Do keep in mind that it's absolutely worthless as a base for Cerberus Armor, and that a good Cerberus Armor will generally be better protection if you get it built, even if you don't apply Cerberus Armor to an above-average base. If you're playing an Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 run, you should basically assume you're building Cerberus Armor if you're not using a Mastery that blocks Whizkid (Which 0.9.9.8 did away with such Masteries), at which point investing Mod Packs into an Energy-Shielded Vest is a shakier proposition.
But in a standard run, the Energy-Shielded Vest is one of the better Exotic Armors to find and well worth trying to keep intact and invest Mod Packs into.
I should explicitly point out that Shielded Vests do not get the 'immunity to degradation' quality of the proper shields. Don't make the mistake of thinking they do.
Medical Armor
Protection: 2
Damage Resistances: 15% Fire, Plasma, and Acid
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -15%
Special: If the player has less than 50% HP, and the Medical Armor has more than 20% durability, trades 1 durability for 1 HP per action until one of these conditions ceases to be true.
Minimum floor: 5
In 0.9.9.7, this was really bad: it provided 20% resistance to Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee, which is generally less valuable than resistance to the energy damage types, and it only healed Doomguy up to 25% of his max HP. 25% is low enough for a lot of enemies to potentially kill Doomguy in one attack!
0.9.9.8 switching it to energy resistances and raising the healing to 50% helps a lot: the healing gimmick is still lackluster but is no longer somewhere from 'worthless' to 'actively a disadvantage', and if you ignore the healing gimmick it's basically a fairly straightforward upgrade over a Blue Armor: it slows Doomguy down 5% more and technically provides 5% less Plasma resistance, but Doom Roguelike's numbers are simply too small for so small a difference in resistance to matter. So basically it's a slightly slower Blue Armor that provides some Fire and Acid resistance -that's a decent trade.
The healing gimmick is still unfortunately pretty sucky. For one thing, Doom Roguelike is much more generous with ability to restore Doomguy's HP than to repair his Armor: only Armor Shards, Megaspheres, and one type of Lever can repair Armor, whereas there are Small Health Globes, Large Health Globes, Supercharges, Megaspheres, Berserk Packs, Invulnerability Spheres, Small Medpacks, Large Medpacks, one type of Lever, and even the Vampyre Mastery for the Marine. The only capacity to repair Armor that actually lacks a parallel for restoring HP is that completing some Assemblies sets the durability stat to max, which of course can only be done once on a given Armor. As such, trading Armor durability for HP restoration is just contrary to the system incentives.
I guess you could put a Nano Mod Pack on it to get unlimited healing forever? That seems like a severe waste of a Nano Mod Pack. It might be worth it in one of the Angel Challenges that constrains your ability to heal? If you're lucky enough to have everything line up while doing such an Angel Challenge?
It's a decent enough Armor as of 0.9.9.8 due to its statline, but the healing gimmick is still not well-designed.
Gothic Armor
Protection: 6
Damage Resistances: 50% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: -90%
Move Modification: -70%
Special: Has a base max durability of 200%. (A Bulk Mod will raise this to 300%) If worn alongside Gothic Boots, renders the player unable to move but all their resistances are raised by 40%.
Minimum floor: 15
Another one of the best possible bases for Cerberus Armor. Cerberus Armor will even actually speed up the Gothic Armor! Admittedly you'll lose the impressive 6 Protection, but the universal suite of good resistances you'll have at that point is pretty great, and if you're that bothered by having 0 Protection the innate 200% max durability makes it easier to justify putting a Power Mod Pack in rather than trying to get an Onyx Mod Pack slotted in.
Gothic Armor on its own merits is... sketchy. Its defensive profile is certainly very impressive, but the move speed penalty is crushing, and it takes so long to be allowed to spawn that you're already past the point its resistances are particularly great even if you find it as early as possible. (Even if it spawns via a Vault, in fact) You can work around its movement speed penalty some by being willing to switch Armors in combat and all, but this is less than ideal. Notably, switching equipped Armor always takes exactly 1 second (Aside very specifically the Energy generation modifiers from being a Scout and from Berserking), with no Traits or Mod Packs or the like letting you reduce this. As such, spotting an enemy and switching into the Gothic Armor at that step in particular is virtually always giving enemies free attacks on you: only a Cateye Scout can semi-reliably get away with such. And it's still problematic when turning corners, opening doors, going through teleporters, etc.
Notably, Cerberus Armor is the only particularly significant Assembly for Gothic Armor; there's not some other Assembly that is uniquely amazing on Gothic Armor. So if you're not interested in using it baseline and aren't going to apply Cerberus Armor to it, you probably don't want to commit an inventory slot to it unless your Armor situation is doing very poorly all-around.
The 'set bonus' is at least better as of 0.9.9.8: in 0.9.9.7, it provided 4 more Protection, not 40% resistances. Given the Gothic Armor's high base Protection and the tuning of enemy damage numbers, this is virtually always equal to or better in practice than the old Protection boost: anything hitting for 10 or more damage a hit is losing 4 or more damage (Even Plasma hits), while anything hitting for less is getting knocked down to 1 damage regardless. (eg 7 damage only loses 3 damage to 40% resistance... but you have 6 Protection. So unless it was a Plasma hit, it's being knocked down to 1 before the set bonus regardless... and if it is a Plasma hit so only 3 Protection applies, 3 points shaved off by 40% resistance still brings you right back to taking 1 damage) Basically the only time the old set bonus could be better was when you Assemble the Gothic Armor into Cerberus Armor... and there's still a pretty narrow damage range in which the old bonus would be better.
The set bonus is unfortunately awkward regardless, but I can buy it's actually worth leveraging now semi-regularly.
Onyx Armor
Armor: 2
Damage Resistances: None.
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -25%
Special: Durability never lowers, rendering it indestructible. (Can still be destroyed by explosions when on the ground)
Minimum floor: 7
Onyx Armor is surprisingly underwhelming in practice.
In theory, it makes for a great base for Assemblies, letting you make an indestructible Assembly even if you don't have Whizkid 2, don't have an Onyx Mod Pack or don't want to spend it on the Assembly, and of course leaving you free to put a Mod Pack of your choice on the result if you do have Whizkid 2, instead of being obligated to put in an Onyx Mod Pack to make it indestructible.
Unfortunately, the Assembly lineup doesn't support this theoretical utility very much.
There are exactly 10 Assemblies for Armor. Four of them can't use Onyx Armor as the base: Tactical Armor is Green-specific, Power Armor only works on 'common' Armors (ie Green, Blue, and Red), and Tower Shield and Fireshield only accept Red Armor as a base.
As for those that can use Onyx Armor as a base...
-Nanofiber Armor cripples an Armor's benefits in exchange for making it indestructible. Onyx Armor is already indestructible. Why would you do this to yourself?
-Nanofiber Skin Armor's primary benefit is that it makes the Armor regenerate durability. It does also add 25% to all resistances, but honestly, you'd probably rather use an Armor with better base parameters for this, due in part to how resistance stacking has increasing returns.
-Cybernano Armor has zero cause to use Onyx Armor as a base, since it renders the Armor indestructible anyway. Just use a Red Armor if you don't have some other, more useful Exotic to use as the base.
That leaves exactly three Assemblies that get enough benefit out of Onyx Armor to be worth considering using it as a foundation.
-Indestructible Fireproof Armor is nice and all, but Fireproof Armor is made from the overall lowest-value Mod Packs (Making it easy to just make 2 or even 3 copies if you're struggling to keep your one copy in good condition), and applying it to a Red Armor has a much bigger payoff in practice. Onyx Armor as the base isn't worthless, but it isn't great.
-Ballistic Armor has it pretty irrelevant whether Onyx Armor makes a good base for it or not because Ballistic Armor is awful. Bullet, Shrapnel, and Melee resistance in exchange for a Fire weakness? Pass.
-That leaves only Cerberus Armor as actually appreciating Onyx Armor as a base: Cerberus Armor doesn't care about Onyx Armor's poor Protection value (It sets Protection to 0 regardless), doesn't care about Onyx Armor's painful movement penalty (It overwrites the Armor's movement modifier), and the fact that Onyx Armor has no resistances is only a small strike against it. (Cerberus Armor overwrites the Fire, Plasma, and Acid resistances of the base Armor, and Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel resistances are nice-to-have, not essential)
That said, Onyx Armor is a good base for Cerberus Armor. It's just unfortunate Onyx Armor's theoretical potential as a great base for Assemblies is largely not realized, among other points in practice demanding you have Whizkid 2 (Thus taking away one of its hypothetical benefits) to take advantage of. For the most part I think Doom Roguelike in 0.9.9.7 was a surprisingly well-realized game, but this is one case where the game not being supported for a decade was painful: further updates are needed to give Onyx Armor a significant opportunity to shine as an Assembly base.
Onyx Armor is also an okay Armor for just carting around as a backup if all your 'real' Armors get destroyed; 2 Protection isn't much, but several enemies fire volleys of individually-weak shots; 2 Protection can easily be the difference between taking egregious harm from a Former Captain's volley vs shrugging it off as only light damage. Even Arachnotrons, with their Plasma damage ignoring a point of Protection, will still suffer a fairly noticeable hit in effectiveness.
Overall, though, if you're not expecting to turn it into Cerberus Armor? Onyx Armor is an iffy use of an inventory slot.
Also, do note that, counterintuitively, Onyx Armor can be destroyed by explosions when laying on the ground, and will melt if dropped into Acid or Lava. Protection from those circumstances is provided solely by being a Unique item. This extends to Assemblies that make Armor (or Boots) indestructible, for that matter: the gear can still be destroyed if it's not carried by Doomguy.
Medical Powerarmor
Protection: 6
Damage Resistances: None.
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: -15%.
Special: If the player has less than 50% HP, and the Medical Armor has more than 20% durability, trades 1 durability for 1 HP per action until one of these conditions ceases to be true. Is not destroyed if durability reaches 0. In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed.
Minimum floor: 10
Alright, take the Medical Armor, triple its protection but get rid of its resistances, and do nothing to modify its healing mechanics. Then make it Unique, taking away the option of Modding it.
This is actually worse than the basic Medical Armor!
I just don't get this one.
At least it's indestructible? I suppose you might as well carry it around if you have no other indestructible Armors so you have a guaranteed fallback...
The bizarre thing is 0.9.9.8 buffed it... but only by raising the Protection from 4 to 6 and raising the healing threshold to 50%. Regular Medical Armor got a more generally-good resistance set in 0.9.8.8 so that it's pretty close to Better Blue Armor, but Medical Powerarmor still has no resistances? While being a Unique and thus not possible to mod?
Like this was especially embarrassing in 0.9.9.7 where regular Medical Armor was unambiguously better with just a Power Mod Pack attached to it, but though I can't say exactly that anymore, a Medical Armor with a Power Mod Pack and a Technical Mod Pack attached is going to be better than the Medical Powerarmor a lot of the time since resistances shave off at least 1 point of damage and a Medical Armor with a Technical Mod Pack has 25% energy resistances: an Archvile loses 5 damage to the Medical Armor's resistance! 2 Protection over the Medical Armor isn't actually putting the Medical Powerarmor ahead in terms of improving Doomguy's survivability!
Cybernetic Armor
Protection: 7
Damage Resistances: 20% Melee, Bullet, Shrapnel, Fire, Plasma, and Acid
Knockback Modification: -30%
Move Modification: -30%
Special: Cannot be removed once equipped, and durability reaching 0 won't destroy it. In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed.
Minimum floor: 10 (Can spawn in Hell's Armory, additionally)
This is essentially a trap, hinted at by the game itself talking about all the 'fishy dongles'. The overall parameters are a pretty decent trade, with 7 Armor in particular being really impressive at first glance...
... but you can't pull it off if it ends up horribly damaged, which it will. (If you're good enough to beat the game without ever letting a single enemy attack you, why are you even considering using Cybernetic Armor? Make yourself some Tactical Armor for that movement speed boost) That's a problem that can easily be run-ending, especially in conjunction with the movement penalty making it harder to get away from a bad situation, and as I've noted already durability repairs are very unreliable.
Furthermore, its status as a Unique hampers it. A plain, common Red Armor can have a Power Mod slapped on it to end up 1 short of the Armor value, for example. With Whizkid ranks, you can also throw a Technical Mod Pack on that Red Armor, ending up with the same physical resistances and superior Fire resistance in exchange for slightly lower Acid and Plasma resistance. And then there's Assemblies to potentially outclass it...
Reminder that its pretty severe movement penalty is not affected by it losing durability. At zero durability, you have all the (lack of) survivability of being naked and move at 70% speed!
So normally Cybernetic Armor is a trap choice and you should skip it, only bothering to pick it up if you want the credit for having seen it. This was especially so in 0.9.9.7: there it had 50% Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee resistance with no energy resistances!
For a Technician, Cybernetic Armor is actually worth considering, as it's a Unique the Technician can fully mod. (Even back in 0.9.9.7: back then, it was the only Unique that could be fully modded bu a Technician) It's still flawed, but just putting an Onyx Mod Pack on it instantly eliminates its worst problems. If you get a Nano Mod Pack as well, you could turn it into a Cybernano Armor, giving you 11 Protection in an invulnerable package with minimal tradeoffs -the Assembly trapping you in your Armor doesn't matter if the Armor does that anyway. And you'd still be able to add another Mod Pack, even! (2 more, once you have Whizkid 3!)
A Technician should still be wary of Cybernetic Armor -don't just slap it on the instant you find it- but it can be worth carrying it for a bit in hopes of finding an Onyx Mod Pack, if you're not already struggling to juggle your inventory. It's also okay as a recipient for Nanofiber Armor as of 0.9.9.8, which can be done with two common Mod Packs (Power, Bulk) and does away with the risk of it being zeroed out while still eating your Armor slot.
0.9.9.8 is very large of a boon to its relevancy to a Technician: its new resistance setup is much more reliably useful, you can put more Mod Packs on it than ever before once it's Assembled into something, and the fact that it's now technically not as good of a base for Cerberus Armor is a joke: it was always the worst base for Cerberus Armor out of the five Armors that were the best bases, and if you want that 50% Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee resistance back you can put a Technical Mod Pack on it and take a rank in Ironman and you're right back to that 50% physical resistance. In 0.9.9.8 I would in fact say it's one of the best Armors for a Technician, especially if they get Onyx or Nano packs to make it indestructible or self-repairing without compromising its stats.
Protection: 4
Damage Resistances: 75% Fire, 50% Plasma
Knockback Modification: -20%
Move Modification: -15%
Special: Cannot be repaired normally, but regains 5 durability per action spent standing in Lava while wearing it, and reaching 0 durability doesn't destroy it. In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed.
Minimum floor: 12
This is a cute gimmick, but difficult to justify using. To be able to reliably repair it requires either lucking into the Enviroboots (Very unlikely to happen alongside finding Lava Armor), or Assembling Lava Boots or Cerberus Boots. Lava Boots requires lucking into an Onyx Mod Pack and then deciding you want Lava immunity more than you want indestructible Armor, while Cerberus Boots implies you have Whizkid 2...
... at which point it really hurts the Lava Armor that it's a Unique and thus can't be modded.
To be fair, you can't quite make any clear, direct replacement. A Cerberus Armor will have better resistances, but will also slow you down more and at most get 2 Protection (If you Power Mod it after it's Assembled), and notably has slightly worse Fire resistance; given how a lot of serious late-game threats use Fire damage in specific, that puts Lava Armor in a better place than, say, a Bullet-Proof Vest. Cerberus Armor is also actually tied on Plasma resistance, so by default Lava Armor's lack of Acid resistance is its main flaw compared to Cerberus Armor.
But you can make a variety of possibilities that collectively tend to out-compete Lava Armor, and Lava Armor needing Lava to get repairs is an awkward limitation, even with Lava overall getting more common as a run progresses.
It can be worth considering using as a stop-gap if you've ended up with your main Armors in bad shape when you spot it, among other possible reasons to use it, but it's unlikely it'll ever be a central part of a run's toolkit. Alas.
As an aside, a change 0.9.9.8 made (And did not mention in its patch notes) of particular pertinence here is that Uniques were previously not fully indestructible on the floor: explosions and nukes couldn't destroy them, but Acid and Lava still ate them instantly. As such, if you intuitively expected to be able to drop your Lava Armor into Lava to initiate its repairs without standing in the Lava continuously yourself: surprise! It melted!
I don't think 0.9.9.8 has made it self-repair in that condition, but at least it no longer melts if you try that. Thank goodness: that was awful.
Shielded Armor
Protection: 2
Damage Resistances: 90% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: -50%
Move Modification: -25%
Special: Durability never lowers, rendering it indestructible. In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed.
Minimum floor: 10
This is a Unique that would be very good if only it wasn't a Unique. (Or if you could freely mod Uniques) It would be a ludicrous base for Cerberus Armor!
Unfortunately, it is a Unique, and it doesn't even get better in Technician hands. No modding of it, period. In conjunction with its resistance set being the physical resistances you shouldn't be fearing in the long haul, it's depressingly bad; I'd literally rather have a generic Red Armor or Blue Armor, to an extent even before accounting for the modding issue!
Since it normally doesn't have a chance to show until floor 10, you can't even luck into it on floor 2 to use as a temporarily-amazing Armor extremely well-suited to the early game.
It's not a trap like Cybernetic Armor is, but honestly, it's probably worse in practice, even for non-Technicians. The only reason to consider carting it around is that completely indestructible Armor is inherently useful, and you might not have an Onyx pack or other inherently-invincible Armor to fall back on. That's a decent reason to cart it around, to be clear, but it's easy to get excited by a truly indestructible Unique, thinking it's solved your Armor situation permanently, and... not really.
It's sad, because on paper it's 100% superior to Onyx Armor, but the 'no modding Uniques' limit is lethal to its potential, even for runs that never take a rank in Whizkid.
It's slightly better off in 0.9.9.8 due to indirect changes: a Marine's new energy resistances means they care a bit less about getting energy resistances from Armor. A Marine with Berserker basically doesn't care at all about their Armor's energy resistances! An Archvile hitting such a Marine only does 4 damage if the Marine is naked: with Shielded Armor and one point in Tough as Nails, your Marine is only taking 1 point of damage! As such, a Marine may actually find Shielded Armor to be a nice enough pickup to simply ditch all their other Armors and use the saved inventory space for other items.
Necroarmor
As the inverse to Medical Powerarmor, you might think Necroarmor is better by virtue of the 'HP restoration is way more abundant than Armor repair' issue I laid out earlier being to its favor...
Necroarmor
Protection: 6
Damage Resistances: None.
Knockback Modification: -20%
Move Modification: +10%
Special: Repairs 5 durability per action, eating 1 HP for each 2 durability repaired. (Rounding up) This effect stops if the wearer is at 1 HP.
Minimum floor: 10
... but while Necroarmor probably is better than Medical Powerarmor, that's like saying I'd rather have second-degree burns than third-degree burns: I'd rather have neither, thank you very much.
Notably, its quality of reducing knockback while increasing movement speed, though unusual, is not actually unique: Duelist Armor does the same (Slightly better movement, slightly worse knockback resistance, specifically) while having a damage resistance and being fully moddable. Slap Power and Onyx packs on it, and suddenly your Duelist Armor is indestructible (Clearly superior to 'repairs vampirically') and only 2 Protection short while having a useful resistance. A really lucky run could turn the Duelist Armor into Cybernano Armor, resulting in something with 6 points of Protection that's indestructible. (Admittedly, you'd never be able to remove it...)
Honestly, the other thing that really kills Necroarmor is its lack of resistances, a quality you can't fix due to its refusal to be modded. 6 Protection sounds good, but late-game threats will tend to be unimpressed: an Archvile is losing less than a third of its damage from that. A Fireproof Red Armor's 65% Fire resistance is already shaving off more than the Necroarmor clears out, and then the Fireproof Red still gets to reduce damage further with its Protection! Plasma threats knock the 6 down to an effective 3; instead of being borderline-immune to stuff like Arachnotrons, they still potentially get more than half their max damage through. Barons using Acid will shred the Necroarmor alarmingly quickly, knocking those 6 points to 3 and then less in short order; you'd rather have truly indestructible Armor when dealing with Barons if at all possible.
Also, while Necroarmor can't kill you itself, it's entirely possible to end up losing enough HP to it mid-battle that it fairly directly contributes to your death anyway, especially if you're prone to getting into the flow of things instead of taking things one turn at a time; it's easy to just not notice you're a lot closer to death than you're expecting, and the turn before you'd have used a Large Medpack instead ends up being the turn you die.
As such, while it's not explicitly a trap the way Cybernetic Armor is, I still largely class Necroarmor as a trap almost never worth picking up.
And then unlike Cybernetic Armor there's no class that makes it more appealing...
I guess I should point out that Medical Power or Medical Powerarmor can be used to funnel durability to Necroarmor at a technically superior rate, turning 1 point of durability into 2. I'm genuinely struggling to imagine a reason to care, as I can't see a way to do anything interestingly useful with this, but maybe someone else will see some meaningful use to this quirk I'm just not thinking of.
Uniques being unmoddable is in general often seriously dragging Uniques down, but for whatever reason Unique Armors are especially prone to being really clearly awful. I'm not sure why.
0.9.9.8 'buffed' Necroarmor: it used to restore 2 points of durability per Doomguy action, not 5 points. I'm dubious this is an actual buff given the wiki says the HP cost rounds up and so it should now be eating 3 HP for 5 durability where before 3 HP would've given 6 durability, albeit over three Doomguy actions rather than one. Even if the wiki is wrong and it actually rounds the HP cost down (Which would result in spending 2 HP for 5 durability), this still doesn't help with Necroarmor's myriad other flaws!
Malek's Armor
Protection: 3
Damage Resistances: 30% Fire, Plasma, and Acid
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: +20%
Special: Cannot be destroyed by durability loss, and after ten actions of taking no damage will regenerate 5 durability per action. (In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed) Additionally, if worn alongside Nyarlaptotep's Boots, grants 100% Fire resistance to body and feet, rendering the player completely immune to Fire damage.
Minimum floor: 15
You might've noticed Unique Armors are weirdly prone to being mediocre or terrible...
... but surprising Malek's Armor is actually really really good. It has decent Protection, a selection of resistances that's strongly useful in the late game, boosts movement speed without increasing knockback taken, and while it can suffer durability loss it repairs it for free. On top of all that, if you happen to get Nyarlaptotep's Boots then Malek's Armor turns into arguably the best Armor in the game, letting you literally ignore Mancubi, Revenants, and Archviles so long as you don't let them into melee range, among other things that can't hurt you anymore, while also letting you freely walk across Lava at full speed.
You'll always want a backup to switch to if it gets shredded in circumstances you can't just bail out of until it repairs itself, but it's legitimately fantastic, one of the only Unique Armors that really deserves its position, and I'd argue the only Unique Armor that both deserves its position and is 'normal' in access.
It is in fact the only Armor 0.9.9.8 unambiguously nerfed: it used to provide +25% movement speed, not +20%.
Also, the glow from it is funny to me:
Anyway, the inability to mod Malek's Armor still gives room for other Armors to have legitimacy, or at least notable enough niche uses to keep carting them around, but Malek's Armor really is very good; a Cerberus Armor with a Power Mod Pack will basically always give more damage reduction, for example, but Malek's Armor is better for scouting floors due to its movement speed advantage significantly reducing the odds of enemies getting a free attack in when you move into sight of them, not to mention is better anytime time pressure is involved, and is shockingly good at getting you through the late game unsupported, and if combined with Tough as Nails and Berserker will knock a shocking number of threats down to only doing 1 damage on a reliable basis. If you luck into Malek's Armor, you really should default to wearing it in most conditions, only breaking out other Armors either because Malek's Armor is falling apart in combat conditions or because you're confident some other Armor's specialist advantages are currently more relevant. (You made a Fireproof Red Armor, for example, and are surrounded primarily by Fire threats)
I would in fact argue it's probably overall the best Armor in the game -even ignoring its set bonus with the Boots.
Angelic Armor
Protection: 7
Damage Resistances: 50% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: No.
Move Modification: None.
Special: If equipped alongside the Longinus Spear, gains 4 Protection. Is not destroyed when durability reaches 0. In conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed.
Minimum floor: Can only be acquired by killing every enemy in the Mortuary or Limbo, and thus can never be seen in an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run.
Angelic Armor spawns in Limbo or the Mortuary, specifically once every enemy on the floor is dead; you can't just pop in, run to it, grab it, and escape, you have to actually complete the challenge of clearing the floor. It is in fact the only reward for doing so unless one counts the minor amount of experience you get out of killing the Archviles or count the ammunition the Formers will drop; if you don't care about the Angelic Armor and don't care about getting 100% kills in your run but do want the guaranteed Nuclear BFG, consider just bailing once you've picked it up.
The Angelic Armor itself is kind of awkward because its late placement makes its suite of resistances low-value. A completely generic Red Armor will actually provide better protection against many late-game threats because of its 25% Fire resistance, for example. As such, Angelic Armor is unlikely to be your 'main' Armor -just a decent swap for when your main Armor is getting dangerously low on Durability.
Its set bonus with the Longinus Spear is clunky and weird. Getting Angelic Armor requires pursuing 100% kills, whereas the Longinus Spear is only gotten if you clear the Unholy Cathedral without managing 100% kills prior to that point; if you're obsessively pursuing 100% floor completion as a default, you'll miss out, while if you're habitually bailing from floors once you've got all the loot without worrying about kill percent, you'll miss out. So... what kind of player is expected to organically get both parts?...
In any event, if you do a melee run and end up with both pieces, the Angelic Armor is still not ideal but 11 Protection with no disadvantage isn't bad, particularly given you are doing a melee run in this scenario; movement speed penalties are particularly harmful to melee fighting, so it's not like Cerberus Armor is really better for a melee run.
Unfortunately, its status as a Unique still notably drags it down even for a melee run that has the Longinus Spear. A melee run expects to be taking damage on a consistent basis, which means losing Armor durability consistently, and the inability to mod the Angelic Armor means you can't fix this issue. It would actually be an unusually good base for Nanofiber Armor since its set bonus-derived Protection (probably) wouldn't be halved, resulting in indestructible 7 Protection, or 9 if you slapped a Power Mod Pack on afterward. Alternatively, Nanofiber Skin would be a pretty good Assembly for it; 11 Protection and 25% or better on all resistances with in-built regeneration of durability? A melee run is going to have Berserker (Or Malicious Blades-derived resistances), at which point basically everything would be doing 1 damage, and being trapped in your Angelic Armor wouldn't be much of a disadvantage. Or how about Cybernano Armor, so you'd have 15 Protection on an indestructible Armor?
Or just throwing Mod Packs on it would help, most obviously Onyx for indestructability.
Alas, those options are unavailable, so Angelic Armor's strategic situation is always a bit flimsy.
Also, I should point out that its 'set bonus' with the Longinus Spear rolls the Protection in with its base amount, by which I mean that as the Angelic Armor loses durability this Protection rots as well. If you were hoping that the set bonus would let you hold onto a minimum of 4 Protection even with the Angelic Armor at 0 durability? Sorry, nope.
On a different note, the Angelic Armor has the unique quality that it actually uses a different base sprite from all other armors. The other armors all use...
... this sprite, which is then colored in by the engine. Angelic Armor instead uses...
... this sprite, with the only 'dynamically' added part being that the game adds the yellow glow.
I'm not sure why the Angelic Armor is the only one to use this sprite as a base; it seems a bit of a waste. Ah well.
Oh, and 0.9.9.8 somehow screwed up the graphic for when Doomguy is wearing it:
Previously, it correctly filled in Doomguy's armor color with yellow, but now it gives the golden aura but has the armor color pitch black.
I'd love to think it's a deliberate reference to Tyrael's cowl being pitch black inside (The Armor's description directly name-drops Tyrael), but it's new behavior and is inconsistent with the color of the sprite when it's on the ground, so... no.
Berserker Armor
If you're not digging for spoilers, Berserker Armor is a Mystery Item you'll intermittently run across, unable to figure out what you're supposed to do to be allowed to use it, taunted by its existence.
Protection: Variable, ranging from 4 to 19, dependent on current HP, going up as you lose HP
Damage Resistances: 50% Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel
Knockback Modification: -90%
Move Modification: -70%
Special: Cannot be unequipped. Equipping it causes Nightmare Demons (The Pinkie kind) to spawn randomly across the floor, wherever you go, forever. (These Nightmare Demons do not grant experience when killed) Durability never lowers; in conjunction with its status as a Unique, it cannot be destroyed
Minimum floor: 10
If you're the kind of player who regularly plays on Nightmare! difficulty and is practiced and good at it (I'm not that good, to be clear), you can force the Berserker Armor to spawn reliably; simply clear Hell's Arena, and then exit the floor with no enemies alive at the moment you exit the stairs. (So realistically you need to do a lot of corpse erasure) If you pull that off and then enter Limbo or the Mortuary, successfully killing everything on that floor will, instead of spawning the Angelic Armor, cause the Berserker Armor to spawn.
Or so the wider internet tells me, as I've yet to remotely approach the minimum conditions for pulling off that challenge. Nightmare! runs were simply not an option in the period of my life where I was playing Doom Roguelike most intensely, and honestly for me Nightmare!'s conditions don't really hit the note of 'I enjoy this increase in challenge so I am pressed to raise my skills yet further', but instead hit the note of 'this mode demands a lot of tedious unfun play and punishes non-mistakes and takes forever and I absolutely do not care about the social cred of being able to honestly say I cleared this'.
Point being, if you pull off these feats and I'm incorrect on something (Maybe the Berserker Armor spawns in Limbo/The Mortuary immediately, rather than only once everything is dead), don't be surprised.
That said, I absolutely have gotten the Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor equipped simultaneously through them spawning randomly, so I actually do know what I'm talking about as far as their innate effects.
Said effects are basically 'you win the game', as it happens. A Vampyre Marine in particular doesn't even need to worry about HP management -just keep killing things to heal- but the combined benefits of the Dragonslayer and the Berserker Armor are really bonkers, where enemies are largely only able to do damage to the player by virtue of the game enforcing a minimum damage of 1 per hit.
You might expect the Berserker Armor's horrible movement speed modifier to be a big caveat to that, but if you can equip it, you're permanently Berserk (Well, you were in 0.9.9.7, and presumably will be when future patches fix this issue), so the penalty isn't anywhere near as harsh as it looks; with no other modifiers in play, you'll get your next turn roughly 1.1 seconds after taking a step. So only slightly slower than regular baseline movement speed. That's ignoring the potential to take ranks in Hellrunner, boost movement speed with your Boots, or to just naturally generate Energy faster by virtue of being a Scout. (Admittedly you could instead slow yourself down with your Boots)
Being a Unique Armor, there is of course no point to discussing Assemblies or Mod Packs in relation to the Berserker Armor. Unlike most Uniques, though, this isn't really a problem for Berserker Armor; sure, if you could apply Mod Packs to Berserker Armor, you would, but the inability to do so doesn't leave it questionable whether it's worth equipping over an Assembly.
Oh, and for reference the added Protection from losing HP is specifically that you add 0.16 points of Protection per percentage of missing HP, but round down the final result before adding it. Thus, you need to drop to 93% HP before you gain a point of Protection (94% is trying to add 0.96 Protection and getting rounded down to 0), and every 6% or 7% of missing HP adds another point of Protection until you're down at 6% HP. (At 1% HP, you're technically getting 15.84 Protection added, but then it rounds down to 15; if you could reach 0% HP without dying, you'd be able to qualify for 16 added Protection, but you can't)
And it is specifically based on the displayed percent of HP, to be clear.
But yeah, not much to say about the Berserker Armor overall, given how you're forced into a very specific state; there is no 'maybe you're playing this way, or that way, or the other way'. You're a melee fighter, automatically.
In spite of the bug with Dragonslayer not providing infinite Berserk in 0.9.9.8, I do appreciate another change made: in 0.9.9.7, you couldn't pick up Berserker Armor at all unless you had Dragonslayer equipped, in which case it forced itself into your Armor slot on pickup. This was infuriating in that it was entirely possible to have a run where both Dragonslayer and the Berserker Armor did spawn and you did manage to equip the Dragonsalyer, but the Berserker Armor spawned first so you couldn't actually equip both. 0.9.9.8 letting you pick it up is a huge improvement.
As an aside, Berserker Armor lists 0 Protection if not equipped, such as when seen on the ground. It's... kind of unfortunate a decision, especially since Protection is the only stat Armor has that's visible when it's on the ground, making the Berserker Armor seem completely different from its reality and specifically much worse.
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Next time, we wrap up equipment with Boots.
See you then.
I have found myself organically getting both parts of the Angelic Arms in Angel of Berserk runs. The first few levels are rough, and it's not that rare to find a situation where it's better to go down the stairs instead of trying to stab a pinky demon with only a level or two of Brute and a combat knife.
ReplyDeleteBut then you hit the chained court, and once you have Berserker and a Chainsaw, going for 100% kills from that point on is much more practical.
One note about the item generation algorithm that's not at all obvious, and is relevant here and for a couple of other items is that it tries to prevent creating uniques and exotics for the first few floors (difficulty dependent. For UV, it tries to prevent exotics before 4 and uniques before 7) - doesn't matter for most uniques, but low-level items like the ballistic vest and butcher's cleaver are more unusual to find early than you'd expect.
(The wiki mentions this obliquely, in the modding guide. But like the 1 unique per level limit, I don't think it applies to every item generation)
One extra mechanic for shields: They don't degrade - you can't repair them, but you get full use of their durability, rather than them becoming useless at 50% durability.
ReplyDeleteI'm not at all surprised (though certainly annoyed) to hear that the game actively tries to not generate Exotics and Uniques early, given I have in fact only gotten the Butcher's Cleaver early once, ever, even though its minimum floor is 1.
DeleteI suppose it's possible shield items behave as you describe as of 0.9.9.8 (Maybe it's another not-mentioned-in-patch-notes change?), but I gave them multiple chances in 0.9.9.7 and they both displayed a loss of damage resistances and quite clearly did lose them in practice, where I'd suddenly start dying WAY faster once an Energy Shield hit the yellow zone. I'll try to keep an eye out for this as well in my following runs, though.
Finally had a shield spawn and confirmed they do indeed no longer suffer resistance degradation. Will be updating the post shortly.
DeleteDoes this extend to the Tower Shield Assembly? Not that it would help it a ton, but still.