I have this Phantom Turian armor that has a massive boost to tech/biotic protection (something like 65 or so) but the damage protection is only in the 40s, versus the Colossus has damage protection in the 70s, but tech/biotic protection is only like 16. Which would be better?
And in general, was does hardening and the other one (can't remember the name) mean?
For your first question, Colossus is better than Phantom, especially considering that you can get medium Colossus for Garrus instead of being restricted to light Phantom.
For your second question, Physical Threshold is for preventing knockdowns and Hardening for Tech/Biotic protection.
Damage protection >>> Everything else. The only armours I can think of that come close to Colossus are the Geth Armory ones for Wrex.
For your second question, Physical Threshold is for preventing knockdowns and Hardening for Tech/Biotic protection.
I can't confirm this, but I've read that, at least in the case of tech, it only reduces the damage of the abilities, but does not prevent all the annoying effects (overheating, cooldowns being restarted, etc.). I never base my armour choices on hardening anyway, but if that's true, meh.
I can't confirm this, but I've read that, at least in the case of tech, it only reduces the damage of the abilities, but does not prevent all the annoying effects (overheating, cooldowns being restarted, etc.). I never base my armour choices on hardening anyway, but if that's true, meh.
Tech protection does reduce the time your weapons are sabotaged. AFAIK (it's been some time since i tried it) max protection lowers the sabotage duratio to about 1 or 2 seconds, while no protection equals something like 10 seconds -> that was against a (lv40?) geth hopper on veteran or hardcore difficulty.
I'm not sure what biotic protection should do, most/all biotic attacks used against the player are force based and don't seem to be affected by it.
Colossus is better for Garrus as far as survivability is concerned.
I make him wear Phantom though because I think it looks better. But I don't really go out of my way to find it in the store if I already have Colossus for him.
Predator L/M/X
If you're decently good, most of the time you won't let your shields down, so damage protection is somewhat useless most of the time. And the Predator from Armax Arsenal has the most shields of all armors in the game.
Plus, it's one of the very few ones that has a military look, and not a Star Trek' one.
[...]so damage protection is somewhat useless most of the time.
Sorry, but this is incorrect. ME1 has a great deal of attacks that completely bypass shields,
(e.g. all physic based attacks, as well as venom attacks from Thorian Creepers or Thresher maws)
Additionally there are certain attack that drain shields pretty well (if they hit), e.g. the husk AOE thingy, rockets or Armature/Colossus primary fire
So all in all ME1 is the game where DamageReduction is the most usefull, in all other ME-games shields are (to some extend) better.
Sorry, but this is incorrect. ME1 has a great deal of attacks that completely bypass shields,
(e.g. all physic based attacks, as well as venom attacks from Thorian Creepers or Thresher maws)
Additionally there are certain attack that drain shields pretty well (if they hit), e.g. the husk AOE thingy, rockets or Armature/Colossus primary fire
So all in all ME1 is the game where DamageReduction is the most usefull, in all other ME-games shields are (to some extend) better.
You only find Thorian creepers in literally 2 missions (Feros (and only in the final part of it), and ExoGeni scientists), plus a pair of them while looking for admiral Kahoku, and there are even fewer thresher maws in the game.
Like it or not, in the game you'll mostly find enemies that shoot at you (mercs, geth, krogan...). And that's why shields are the utmost important.
P.D: Not to talk you supposeadly have to dodge thresher maw spits, and not wait until one of them splashes in your face.
You only find Thorian creepers in literally 2 missions (Feros (and only in the final part of it), and ExoGeni scientists), plus a pair of them while looking for admiral Kahoku, and there are even fewer thresher maws in the game.
Like it or not, in the game you'll mostly find enemies that shoot at you (mercs, geth, krogan...). And that's why shields are the utmost important.
P.D: Not to talk you supposeadly have to dodge thresher maw spits, and not wait until one of them splashes in your face.
Agree about Thresher Maws, but there are still some enemies that will annoy you most of the time... Creepers are surely can be shot and meleed easily unless you are standing looking pretty, hell, even against husk AOE helps biotics and melee. But Rachni and Varren are really dangerous. For example, it's not easy to dodge 3 acid balls flying from different directions at the same time and with a high chance some of it will hit ya. And Varren can surely chew on you because they are fast and tend to surround you pretty quickly (unless you have full-biotic team though...) So I'd say damage protection really saved my med-gel sometimes while shields were pretty useless. I agree that most of the time you face shooting enemies but against any type of animal or undead or even biotic it's recommended to use armor with high damage protection.
There are usually a unit or two on most missions that can bypass shields. All melee attacks (Juggernaut, Krogan), rockets (mercs, Geth), snipers (may only be percent bypass), acid (Rachni, Creepers).
The other issue is that you can't simply compare shields vs damage protection as all armor have both.
So then the next issue is "Does Predator L/M/H damage protection and shields outweigh Colossus armor damage protection + shields?"
Really I don't think it typically does for most of the squadmates, even the ones with Electronics and Barrier. At least not by the time you are able to unlock the good armors. It is probably close though, so on someone like Garrus or Kaidan it might work out depending on levels.
For Tali I think you are stuck with Colossus because of the limited selection of Quarian armor.
Ashley and Wrex are nearly always better with as much damage protection as you can get. They have better health pools, and with Immunity stacking they can be nearly invulnerable. This is also why many times I run an Ablative (or whatever the name is) in one of their armor slots in conjunction with a Med Exo (since they both also get health regen from a talent).
Predator L/M/X
If you're decently good, most of the time you won't let your shields down, so damage protection is somewhat useless most of the time. And the Predator from Armax Arsenal has the most shields of all armors in the game.
Plus, it's one of the very few ones that has a military look, and not a Star Trek' one.
I'll give you the visual. But for pretty much everything else dr is better than shields.
Just as an example comparing Predator X M and Colossus X Medium. I'll even ignore shield bypass.
Say both are hit with a 1000 points of damage. (This is not unreasonable for things like sniper, rockets and such not.
So with Predator X M, the results are
1000-486 for shields, leaving 514 points of damage.
Of that 514 you can subtract 42% leaving 298 damage to health.
For Colossus X M the numbers are better.
1000-405 leaves 595 after the shields.
From the 595 you then subtract 71% leaving you with 172 points of damage to your health.
So aside from appearance, and tech protection, colossus armor is superior to the armax stuff.
And looks are irrelevant in a discussion about what's better mechanically. If the OP were going to choose an armour based on its looks, this thread wouldn't exist.
PS: Light Colossus is hideous, but Predator doesn't look THAT good to me either (nor the medium and heavy versions of the Colossus look THAT bad).
If we were going off of looks then the Hazard armour would leave everything in the dust.
Thaaaaaaaaaaank you, console commands
I prefer Colossus, although I do like Armax Predator. DR over shields for me.
As for looks I like the Ariake Mercenary line.
I have everyone decked out in Colossus. He would look out of place without it. I even go to the point of changing my armor in ME2 and ME3 to red/black so it looks like Colossus.
I like the Colossus more for the color scheme and it looks good on Shepard.
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