Armor (rating)

Description
A character's armor is a measurement of how well protected he/she is against taking damage. Generally speaking, a high armor level prevents more damage from a successful attack than a low one. However, there are many more aspects to it than that. For a detailed look on how armor affects damage, see the article: Damage.

A very rough estimate, just to get a feel for a character's armor level: For every increase of 40 in armor level, damage will be halved.

Just as there are different damage types, there are, correspondingly, different types of armor. General armor will prevent damage from all sources, specific armor will only prevent damage of its type. For example, an item that reads "Armor +5 (vs. Fire dmg)" will only prevent Fire damage with this ability. It should be noted that damage from most blood magic skills, mesmer skills, health degeneration, and generic loss of health are completely unaffected by armor.

There are many skills that influence the armor level of oneself, allies, or foes.

Armor Types
Since there are numerous damage types, there is numerous armor types to counter them. The armor types divide in two main categories being armor against physical damage and armor against elemental damage. Physical damage including Slashing damage, Blunt damage and Piercing damage and the Elemental damage including Fire damage, Cold damage, Lightning damage and Earth damage. If an armor bonus does not specify to which category it applies, it basically means that the armor bonus is aplied against physical and elemental damage. For example, the skill "Watch Yourself!" gives allies within earshot +20 armor. A Ranger wearing a end-of-the-game Drakescale armor (70 base Armor, 100 Armor against Elemental damage, 115 Armor against Fire damage) under the effect of this shout would then have 90 base Armor (70 +20), 120 Armor against Elemental damage (100 + 20) and 135 Armor against Fire Damage (115 + 20) for the time he is affected by the shout. However, if the armor bonus is applied to a specific type of damage such as "Shields Up!" (which gives allies within earshot a +50 armor bonus against Piercing damage, then the previous ranger would have 70 + 50 Armor (120 Armor) against Piercing damage.

Skills influencing armor
There is a great number of skills influencing the armor level of oneself, an ally or a foe. Below is the a list of these skills. The armor bonuses that are ranging between a value and another (+15...60 for example) are the value of the bonus at 0 in the corresponding attribute to 15.