User blog:Reikyu/Plot armor and why Yuubari might suck on 1-5

''This is not your appointed time to die. - Lucifer''

=Introduction=

Not sure what this is called. Heavy damage resistance? I'll just call it plot armor for now.

We've all had our ships get rekt, but how often do your ships get knocked down to 1 HP from full? A Yamato blasts your DD in PVP and yet it has more than 1 HP. Your DD on a sortie gets blasted by a gold Ru and yet it lives, maybe even in orange HP? Overkill protection. Your ship should have died but yet it lives. This entry will look at, How does this work? How can you use this? And why does Yuubari suck on 1-5? (c'mon she does yah? rekt magnet and all)

=Establishing the existence of plot armor=

For a small test I took a bunch of level 1 DDs out to 1-5 to play with the red nuclear sub. The red sub has a torpedo stat of 78 after including the equipment. Add 5 for combat calculations, assume a Red T, and worst case the sub would have attack power of 49.8. Against a 5-6 armor DD with only 13-16 HP, this is an overkill. Normally everything should be blasted down to -30 HP but yet as you will see with the data on the right, the ships lived on.

This data is interesting and I hope to collect more on it when I have more time.

First up are the REKTs which only happened 2/27 times. Coincidentally, this left the ship with exactly 25% damage (4/16 HP left) and only happened on the ships with 16 HP. Can't quite hit exactly 25% damage on a ship with 13-15 HP.

Secondly, two ships actually survived with yellow HP 2/27 times. Both cases happened to be on Mutsukis with their 13 HP (7/13 HP left). I'd like more data on the 15 HP ships to see if they too would have cases of staying alive.

In the end though, 25/27 of the runs resulted in the ship at orange or yellow despite taking a hit.

If only your ships could always be protected by plot armor. Unfortunately battle conditions involve various formations, various engagements, and hey if level 1 DDs rarely get rekt, why do my other ships get rekt all the time? Clearly you can't always be protected by plot armor. Gotta remodel your HP and modernize your armor sometime.

=What's wrong with Yuubari?=

Nothing. Who doesn't like melons. This will be a bit of theory crafting as I won't be throwing my Yuubari to the wolves endless amounts of times and burning plenty of buckets, but hopefully this gives you a rough idea of what I'm trying to get at.

Yuubari Kai has 36 HP and 49 Armor.

49 Armor results in damage reduction ranging from 32.67 - 65.33 (2/3 armor to 4/3 armor)



Low Armor Dmg: If your armor rolls a low number, this is the most damage you'll take from red sub during the different engagement forms (assuming no crit). Red T ignored because most people bring a Saiun with them to 1-5.

High Armor Dmg: If your armor rolls a high number, this is the least damage you'll take from red sub during the different engagement forms.

Remaining HP Low: How much HP Yuubari would have at the least after taking a hit from red sub.

Remaining HP High: How much HP Yuubari would have at most after taking a hit from red sub.

This is assuming the enemy sub doesn't crit you. I don't know how often it does crit but let's just assume for now no crits.

Green T: Odds are Yuubari is going straight to plot armor because her final HP would range between -30 and 1 HP. Possibly left with 1 HP, and that is pretty unlucky.

Parallel: Roughly a 44% chance of plot armor kicking in, 28% chance of getting rekt (1-9 HP left), and about 28% chance of orange HP (10-18).

Head on: No plot armor this time. Roughly 21% chance of getting rekt (2-9 HP left), 28% chance of orange (10-18), 52% chance of yellow or better HP (19-34)

The problem I see if my numbers are anywhere close, is that Yuubari is only protected by plot armor during Green T which only happens 15% of the time. During the more common Parallel and Head on engagements (85% of the time with saiun), she runs a high rekt % of around 28% during parallel and around 21% during head on. Right in the not so sweet spot.

How does this compare with another ship? Let's try Sendai Kai Ni.

Sendai Kai Ni has 48 HP and 69 Armor. 69 Armor results in damage reduction ranging from 46 - 92



Again assuming the sub doesn't crit you.

Green T: Plot armor kicks in for roughly 12% of the time, 26% chance of rekt, (1-12 HP left), 26% chance of orange HP (13-24 HP left), 36% chance of yellow HP or better (25-40 HP left)

Parallel: Roughly 4% chance of rekt (11-12 HP left), and overall very reliably should not get rekt in this formation.

Head On: No chance of rekt (barring no crits) and HP should be yellow or better.

In this case, Sendai's major Rekt chance occurs during Green T, but Green T only happens about 15% of the time. During parallel there is a very small chance of Sendai getting rekt, and no chance during Head On (assuming no crits).

=In Closing=

I could use plenty more data so I hope to take a closer look at this as most of it was theorycrafting. 1-5 is an extreme case as the biggest threat is on the first node and there's only one attack, but perhaps similar principles of armor control can be applied in other cases of great threat. How much of an improvement might a bulge provide if it happens to take away from your plot armor? It could possibly be a negative in certain cases. The same could be said with low vs high armor/hp ships in the same class, but these are extreme examples of pushing the lower boundry of hp/armor. Will also need to look at what happens when your HP isn't full like after a scratch or two, but for now sleeps.