Tree of Savior Forum

Plate Mastery (Common Misconception From Misleading Translation)

Translations
#1

So plate mastery dictates “Allows you to equip [Plate] armor. When equiped with 3 or more pieces of [Plate] armor, increase your maximum HP and physical damage taken is decreased by 5% When equiped with 4 [Plate] armor pieces, your maximum stamina increases and physical damage taken is decreased by an additional 10%”

Now this is very misleading to players, especially those who have played cloth characters, as cloth mastery unfairly scales MDEF with level where as plate mastery does not scale the DEFENSE stat at all.

Now in english this would make the player immediately assume that you would gain +15% defense (which would make more sense than the current effect) scaling per level, meaning physical damage taken -100 if you have 100 armor, but if you have level 10 plate mastery it should be 250 defense +15 levels of plate mastery multiplying your defense by .15 per level… That being said, this is not about the balance aspect of this attribute.

What this is about, is the wording. The translation should read something more like this…

“Allows the user to wear [Plate] armor and gives the user a 5% physical damage reduction, and 34 hp when wearing 3 pieces of [Plate] armor, when wearing 4 pieces of [Plate] armor the physical damage reduction increases to 15% and the user gains 33% of their current stamina. Each level of Plate Mastery will increase the HP and Stamina effects of Plate Mastery by their original value.”

This shows the user that the physical damage reduction is not a useful scaling end game damage reduction that will help them, but rather a flat 15% that will leave them needing peltesta to block or be destroyed by any and all units because they are meelee #salty…

Regardless this description would stop the misconceptions that require user to search forums for an hour to investigate and confirm the actual effects of the mastery.

A side note, a big contributing factor to this misconception is the fact that the attribute is called “Plate Mastery: Defense” and not “Plate Mastery: HP and stamina” which makes it horribly misleading because in English defense, means defense, not dash gauge…

#2

Is it misleading? I think most knew that it means 15% physical damage reduction (physical damage reduced by 15%).

Other part is not clear though, that I agree with.

#3

Yes, the 15% is fairly readable, but it could be worded better seeing as the title is “Plate Master: DEFENSE”

#4

Uh… what?

There’s nothing misleading about what it says at all. No, the Defense Stat does not scale, but physical damage taken is reduced by 15%. Whether 15% is better or not than Defense is determined by the hit you take.

If you have 1000 Defense and a hit comes your way with 4000 ATK, you would take 3000 damage.

Of that 3000 damage, if you had 15% increased Defense, bringing you up to 1150 Defense, you would take 2850 Damage, for a 150 damage difference.

On the other hand, if you took 15% reduced Physical Damage, of that 3000 damage, you would reduce the damage by 450 damage

In this scenario, the % Damage Reduction is better than a 15% Defense increase.

However, if there are a lot of enemies that hit for relatively low amounts, then the flat scaling would help you more.

% Damage Reduction will save you from large single hits, yet will still reduce damage you take from smaller sources anyway.

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#5

It does seem pretty misleading. I interpreted that equipping 3 or 4 pieces would perform the HP, stamina and physical damage reduction effects. The value on HP and stamina isn’t shown, but I could see it update in my stats with a before and after. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me that leveling up Plate Mastery only increased HP and stamina, not affecting the damage reduction effect in any way.

I also thought the cap was lower to compensate for this overpowered effect (e.g. +HP, +stamina, another -5% physical damage reduction for 3 pieces and -10% physical damage reduction for 4 pieces or some hidden value thereof)

#7

The fact that you state that it is not misleading, and then go on to point out the obviously misleading situation of having multiple scenarios in which the defense skill could be misinterpreted… proves my point solidly.

The effect of the attribute is not the problem. It is that the defense does not scale with level, even though the NAME of the attribute is “Plate Mastery: DEFENSE”. The average person would see plate mastery: defense and level it up thinking this is increasing their defense. 10 levels would be 150% additional defense, taking your defense from 350 to 600, at making it a much larger bonus to defensive capabilities.

The scenarios you described make the case that a flat 15% is better than +15% defense, this is true, but only at attribute level 1. As there are 50 levels of plate mastery, and it is named DEFENSE, one would assume that they could level up plate mastery to improve their defense to a point where it would diffuse a reasonable amount of damage, which at level 230+ I have yet to find anything besides holding “C” while having the peltesta job blocking attribute, that does.

I don’t mind if you believe the skill is fine. I think it is horrible compared to what the skill name would imply it is, and that is the point of the misconception and the entire reason I posted this for the translation team to look at, not for you, and not about balance.