Kagenutto wrote:
Each piece of armor in SRO has a parry rate listed on it. The higher armor sets have higher rates. What parry does in SRO is not like the parry rates of other games. It does not stop incoming attacks. Instead, it deflects the damage range of an incoming attack.
At this point if you read the above sentance you might be wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Well lets have an example.... In this example we'll use two opponents, an Attacker and a Defender.
An Attacker is using a weapon with a physical damage range of 100-150. If the defender was wearing no armor at all and this was a rather static environment, the damage dealt would fall somewhere inbetween 100 and 150 for each attack made. The average damage would be 125 in a perfect world. If the defender is wearing armor that gives a physical resistance of say 50, then the damage recieved would be reduced by 50 points. This makes the damage range of the attacker now 50 to 100 with an average hit of 75. Still so far, this is pretty basic.
Now SRO throws us a curve ball by implementing is own special brand of Attacking Rating and Parry Ratio. These two numbers are compared for each attack made by the attacker and the defender. Based upon the comparison the average damage is "shifted" in one direction or another. Still using the above example, we'll add Attack Rating and Parry Ratio into the mix. If the Attacker has a rating of 100 and the defender has a parry of 100 then the average damage would remain 75. Now, if the defender had aparry skill of 150 compared to an attack rating of 100 then the average damage would slide down to 50 damage. This isn't getting rid of the damage range of the attacker. It is still 100 to 150 minus 50 armor so 50 to 100. Hits for 100 are still possible. However, when a hit is made, a random roll occurs. The roll is the "weight" of the difference between attack rating and parry ratio. If the roll is in favor of the defender, the damage that would normally occur is instead reduced but never exceeds the minimum. If the roll is in favor of the attacker the damage is increased but does not exceed the max damage. If the Parry Ratio is higher then that random roll is going to occur more often favorably for the defender. If the attack rating is higher, then it is going to occur more favorably for the attacker. Just think of a shifted bell curve from statistics.
The effect of having a higher parry ratio is rather astounding in the low levels when the physical resistance between Garments and Armor sets are very minimal. A full set of Small Linen Garments will have a physical resistance of around 24.7 if bought directly from the store. A full set of Infantry Bronz Armor of the same level will have a resistance of 30.1ish. That 5.4 points of damage reduction is not that much of a difference to out weigh the benefits of Garment armor at lower levels. At higher levels, the difference becomes great enough that for melee users, going with protector or armor will severly cut down on the damage recieved by physical sources.
