armor use skill practice challenge

[Adresin]

I wasn't quite sure which category to put this under, so general it is.

I'd like to open discussion on the challenge setup for gaining armor use skill. In my opinion, how it's set currently is way more difficult than it should be. I can understand that this may be one of those skills that maybe doesn't need to be trainable up to the 2500 max, though there are apparently some legacy chars that do have that. However, to give you an idea, the end of my armor command display looks like this.

Armor Hindrance Check: d441 vs 330

That's a 4 to 3 ratio, approximately, and with that my armor use has stopped training. That's with full ridgeleather except for a gorget and gauntlets that are metal plate. In order to train it further, I'd need to find more plate armor which is one, not available right now, but also would raise the hindrance even further.

With the armor I was wearing to get those numbers, in order to train armor use up to that point, I had to fight skeletons, rather than the guardians I usually fight, because the failure of the hindrance check would be so drastic that I wouldn't stand a chance against the guardians. Even the skeletons were hurting much more than they should have been.

When I was first training the skill, I got to where I was wearing light armor on all slots and couldn't get the skill over 100. I believe, with full light leather, the hindrance was 120, making it stop training at 200 vs 120. To get it going again, I had to replace both the breastplate and vambraces with ridgeleather, bringing the hindrance up to 195. 200 vs 195, now that was painful.

On cogg, people generally advised to have a 2 to 1 ratio minimum, 3 to 1 was more preferable. With a 2 to 1 ratio, I noticed the hindrance fairly regularly, and I tried to get it above that, but it was reasonably doable. So my suggestion would be to change the challenge for practicing armor use to allow it to train up to somewhere in that range. Even making it stop training at 2 to 1, you'd be taking some hits for sure but not as drastically as it is now and we wouldn't be forced to drop way down to easier opponents just to train it. I don't know what the hindrance is on full plate, but I'd guess somewhere around 500. That would allow training the skill up to 1000, or 1500 if it stopped training at 3 to 1 instead. In my mind, that's fair.

[Gorth]

Another big issue with the armor grind in this game, if it works the way it used to, is that you have to succeed the check to get any bonus. Succeeding the check is hard, when you get to these high points. And the penalty for failure is so ridiculously punishing.