The persistent balance issues surrounding Body Armor (BA) have been neglected for too long, and it is time for it to be addressed. Below, I break down why it is fundamentally broken.
The Problem with Body Armor
Body Armor provides a flat 10% damage reduction across all incoming weapon fire. Previously, this mechanic was somewhat hidden, but the appearance menu now clearly displays a shield icon indicating damage reduction. As visibility increases, adoption will only skyrocket.
Why This Breaks Combat?
The 10% threshold creates severe, game-distorting breakpoints: (The Enemy in these scenarios will have vitality + BA)
Intermediate Cartridges (ARs, MGs, Semi-Autos, Select-Fire Rifles): Beyond 10 meters, a BA user can survive 1 extra round before dying (with the Type Hei Automatic already requiring an extra hit at almost any range).
Pistol Calibers (SMGs and Pistols): A BA user survives 2 extra rounds before being downed.
In squad-based combat, requiring an extra shot per soldier rapidly exhausts effective magzine size. Factions against BA (Soviets), your effective magazine capacity is essentially cut in half.
This consistently swings critical gunfights. You can shoot a BA user, land the first shot, and still lose the duel simply because they absorbed a round that should have been lethal. While you are caught switching soldiers, that single player can wipe your active soldier and eliminate your entire squad waiting around the corner
The Ripple Effect on Weapon Balance
Because BA forces players to land extra rounds to secure a kill, it drastically distorts the value of other weapon stats:
Bullet Velocity: A slower projectile delays the lethal follow-up shot, giving the BA user more time to return fire and kill you first.
Magazine Size: Needing more bullets per target severely limits how many enemies you can engage per reload, crippling low-capacity weapons.
Dispersion: Requiring a second or third follow-up shot increases the risk of dispersion RNG causing a miss outright, even when your aim is centered.
Forced to use BA and not other customization
With how broken BA armour is, it is foolish not to use it over all customization available.
I want to use the many drippy customizations available to the soviets but no all must wear BA
Below is my proposal to handle Body Armor:
Remove Body Armour’s Ability to reduce damage and keep that feature to the specific few event squad only.
Most of Germany’s smgs were given damage buffs for armor. If armor gets removed, a lot of guns need their damage changed.
It would be far better to remove/rework the vitality perk and leave everything else as is. It’s a game breaking perk and is currently an automatic pick. It also widens the gap between new and old players. It needs to go.
You can get sprint and vitality on a ton of classes/squads.
You clearly have no idea how busted vitality is then, so I’ll rephrase, it’s an automatic pick except for newbs and/or people who don’t care about winning
Uhh yeah, I known what vitality does, it’s never worth it to get for me because it’s too expensive and other perks in the health tree are simply better combined, especially stamina, regens, and that one perk that reduces the dizziness effect
No not really. Not in the sense of body armour. At least with vitality, it’s the same for every faction, not just limited to one like body armour.
Besides, with a fully upgraded bolt action, you’re dead in one shot anyway with vitality or not. It only affects semi/automatic weapons, which anyway the time to down remains the same, just the chance of outright death is lessened.
It was specifically because of the issues vitality brought to the game. And body armor is only an issue because of vitality. Maybe you weren’t around when smg damage values were less?
I firmly believe that at the end of the day functional damage reducing body armour should remain a mechanic to event or premium soldiers.
Without a substantial rework to how body armour is equipped, user movement penalties and stamina encumbrance, I believe this is the outright simplest and most straightforward change that would result in a healthier weapon balancing ecosystem.
Only SMG to get a damage buff was MP35/I and it received a buff to keep it BR III worthy, 7.2 damage is still not enough to “bypass” body armour.
You would need 7.7 damage for that.
Who are you talking to? I never said that? Was it you who flagged and got my comment deleted? I said removing vitality lessens the gap between rifles like type hei with 13.6 damage and federov rifle with 15.3 damage. Learn to read
The MP40 has 170 less ROF than the PPS 43. That is the reason why it has more damage, but that does not beat being able to put another round down range than having .3 extra damage
