In Destiny, the armor value hardly makes a difference, as a YouTuber has tested in a self-experiment.
Destiny is a game full of secrets
The shared-world shooter Destiny is full of mysteries. Where is the Last City located? Who is the Wolf? What is Xur actually doing with all those coins? Why does the worst player in an activity always get the best loot? Does it really help to do a silly dance and shoot the lock of a chest to get better loot?
And there are even some mysteries in the gameplay. Normally, we don’t get “numbers” from Destiny; instead, we only see bars indicating how good the item and the Guardian are in something. Here, Guardians have three bars in their talent tree: one each for armor value, agility, and recovery rate.
Indeed, this armor value, which can be increased through specific traits in the classes’ talent trees, is one of Destiny’s mysteries. From classic MMORPGs or RPGs, one would think: It’s logical, the higher the value and the fuller the bar, the less damage one receives. And those with higher agility can also run faster.
On the trail of the armor value in Destiny
But the game doesn’t tell us exactly how much damage is reduced or, better yet, how the hit points of the Guardian increase. A YouTuber has tested how the armor value actually affects things. This is the same person who has already dealt with movement speed. Once again, he uses the same methods, sets up an experimental procedure, conducts the experiment, and analyzes the results frame by frame afterward.
And his result is: The armor value hardly plays any role. Although the armor value does what it’s supposed to do, the result is minimal. A shooting Acolyte of the same level as the Guardian would need 23 shots to take him out with full armor. If the Guardian only has a minimally filled armor bar, it would only take 22.
With a Minion, armor would be irrelevant again: After 9 hits, it’s game over, although he admits that the Thrall with full armor can just barely kill the Guardian. With a low armor value, however, it’s very easy. But dead is just dead.
In two videos, the YouTuber shows his results. The conclusion is clear: the armor value can basically be disregarded in PvE.
Not completely useless in PvP
In the discussion on Reddit about this topic, it was mentioned that in PvP, the armor value makes a difference and can decide whether players survive a Hunter’s tripmine grenade or other typical attacks with a tiny bit of HP.
Here, a YouTuber from Planet-Destiny conducted investigations outside the Iron Banner and found that for Hunter and Warlock in PvP, the “Toughness” value provides a little more HP and can really decide whether one can narrowly survive certain situations or not. However, the differences are relatively small, it’s about 7 to 11 hit points with a maximum HP of 200. But exactly those can determine in PvP whether one survives or not. For Titans, however, it is advised not to invest in this value. The yield is even lower here.
