In The Division, the attribute “Armor” loses significance with Update 1.6. Other attributes are also changing.
Currently, armor is the best attribute you can have on your gear. High armor values are essential for every build, as they allow your agent to withstand more damage before going down. If “Armor” can be rolled on a piece of armor, it will be done.
If an attribute is the only logical choice for the gear bonuses, diversity is suppressed. Prior to 1.5, there were plans to find a solution to this problem, but the ideas were discarded. The developers and players on the PTS were dissatisfied with this.
With 1.6, Massive has now provided a fix that aims to address the core armor issue.
Armor is no longer a higher attribute – Update 1.6
Even in 1.6, armor pieces will have a base armor value, but the armor bonus will be removed as a higher attribute. Instead, health points will take its place. This means that health points and stamina will primarily be responsible for toughness – and no longer armor.
This is a change with significant consequences: The overall meta will be affected, damage, healing, and skill power must be rebalanced. However, there is an advantage that health points scale more linearly than armor, which will be better for balance in the long run.
Status Effects and Resistances
The armor bonuses on your current gear will therefore become health point bonuses. But what about the health point bonuses that are currently on your armors? These will convert to a new stat called “Resist All”, increasing resistance against status effects.
Currently, resistances give you a certain %-chance to completely resist the effect.
With 1.6, resistances will diminish the effect. For instance, if you have 40% resistance against burns, you will now take 40% less damage from it when on fire. The duration of the burn will also be shorter. If you achieve 100% resistance, you will be immune to this status effect at all times.
Additionally: Whenever you suffer from a status effect, you will temporarily receive a certain %-amount of resistance against it.
All changes will be tested on the PTS to refine them. After all, “Time to Kill” and “Time to be killed” still need to fit.
Changes to Skill Power
The changes to armor are meant to lead to greater build variety – as are the changes to skill power. In 1.6, the effectiveness of skill power scales depending on the world rank: At each higher rank, you will need to invest more skill power to reach the relative skill effectiveness.
Moreover, there will be greater differences between builds with a lot of skill power and builds with little skill power. This means that if you currently have a build in which you hardly increase skill power, your skills will be significantly weaker in 1.6. Conversely, if you fully focus on skill power, your build will perform even more powerful skills after 1.6.
To achieve these high skill power values, however, you will have to make choices: Other values will suffer as a result, and you will have to make sacrifices. This is aimed at achieving greater build diversity by Massive.
Not only the bonuses on the armor pieces are changing: New armor pieces are also being added. Here you can find info about the SEEKR set and upcoming gear set changes.
