How does armour work?

Hi,

I'm currently not sure how armour works in the game. I understand how armour affects damage and the effects of increasing and decreasing armour. I also understand how armour works with physical damage (i.e. being hit while a weapon).

What I am unsure about is how armour works with elemental damage (not including weapons with an elemental mod)? My example is this: I am playing as an elementalist. My headgear and chest have 60 AL while using insignias my hands, legs, and feet have 70 AL. Say I am being hit with SF at 15 Fire Magic while on fire (so 100 fire dmg to 60 AL targets) how much damage would I actually take? Does SF only take into account only 1 piece or armour like physical damage or do all pieces affect the damage taken? If so, what would be my effective armour level? Also, does making my chest piece 70 AL instead of say feet make more of a difference when taking elemental damage?

Thanks.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Armor_rating

^^ Armor works like that.

@70 AL, 100 fire damage would result in you taking 84 damage, assuming you are both level 20.

Guild Wars Guru has a damage calculator here.

I've read that. However, it only deals with attacks (i.e. attack actions). My question regards damage that don't seem to affect just one part of the body. Also, the scenario has the elementalist with different amounts of AL on different pieces of armour. Does it actually hit only one part of the armour or does the entire armour affect in which case I want to know how to calculate that entire armour AL.

Each attack has a % chance of hitting each piece of armour.

Can't remember the exact figures but they're on wiki...

for example: 30% chest, 25% legs, 15% head, arms and feet.

So whichever piece of armour it hits the damage calculation will be dependant on the armour rating of that piece.

Each attack by a skill, such as SF is treated the same as an attack with the weapon in the way you mean.

Chest = 3/8 chance of getting hit. Legs = 2/8. Head, arms and feet each have 1/8 chance.

That means in your scenario, half of the time you'll get hit on 60 armor and half the time on 70 armor (3/8 + 1/8 and 1/8 + 2/8 + 1/8). So, half of the time you'd get 100 dmg and the other half you'd get 84 dmg.

Consider this. Before the costume update, festival hats replaced the head piece of your armor and they had 0 armor rating. This meant that if you equipped a festival hat in combat, you'd have a 1/8 chance of getting a 'headshot' and pretty much being dead in 1 shot.

And yes, spell damage (like searing flames) hits on one armor piece, just like weapon damage.

No, you have not read it. That article has answers to all of your questions. It does not only deal with attacks like you said.

Your armor rating is local. Each piece of armor has a separate value, and there is a different chance for each being hit, like Dzjudz said (3/8 chest, 2/8 legs, 1/8 for hands, feet, and head). You don't add your armor values from each piece you have equipped, because you are only struck in one location at a time. The armor rating of the location you are struck will affect the damage you will take.

One exception is a few skills like vampiric touch and vampiric gaze, so called armor ignoring skills. They just steal a specified amount of health regardless of your armor. They would steal same amount from the wurm boss Cyndr with carapace up and a naked lvl1 player.

Life stealing is not damage. Those vampiric skills steal life; they do not inflict damage.

Armor ignoring damage sources ignore armor by definition.

Thanks everyone. By the way, I had already read the wiki article before I started this thread. However, it seemed to only deal with weapon attacks. By "all pieces affect the damage taken" I meant that it sort of averaged out the AL of all of the pieces.