[Question] Armor Ignoringness of damages

Just wanted to add some things of note:

1) Back before the patch that increased IWAY area of effect from heal area's range to a ranger spirit's range; and healing sig read -40 armor (instead of double dmg) while in use.

- I've noticed that I took more dmg from balthazar's aura while using healing sig than when I wasn't.

Say balthazar's aura did 20 dmg per second to me; then I activate healing sig, and suddenly the numbers popping out change to 30 or 40.

This would indicate that holy dmg was affected by my lessened armor, unless it was a bug with healing sig - as it may have still doubled dmg taken rather than just give -40 armor.

__________________________________________________ ___________
2) It does seem like the bonus dmg of weapon skills ignore armor, but what happens if you used an elemental weapon (fiery/shocking/icy/ebon hilt/haft)?

Doesn't that convert all of the dmg, including the bonus dmg from weapon skills to elemental?

It's probably impossible to test this because the armor value changes for the base dmg of the physical or elemental dmg though.

I dunno about back then, but I was just messing with some smiting skills (including balth's aura) last night, and the damage definitely ignores armor.

The armor value only changes for physical vs elemental if you're hitting someone whose armor has a +AL bonus against one type. As far as I know the target dummies have the same AL against all damage types, so it shouldn't be hard to test at all.

The problems with Theory 2 aren't exceptions, but rather questions like "why do holy and light damage have different names if they're the same thing?" or "why did they change the mesmer skills to not say chaos damage if not to avoid confusion between two damage types?".

I prefer Theory 1 because it implies general sensibility on Anet's part and just a few misleading skill descriptions, which are a given in Guild Wars anyway. Theory 2 seems to explain the observed facts better, but it doesn't actually make any sense.

If I did that (run the test on something with the same armor vs all dmg types), the dmg I get would be the same for either fiery or physical dmg.

What I want to know is if there can be a case where bonus dmg (assumed fire) != bonus dmg (physical); (given the same weapon dmg)
if it is, then bonus dmg from weapon skills is affected by armor.

Hmm, I guess you could test if bonus dmg from galrath_slash/power_attack was changed to fire dmg or not by making the base dmg = 1 for both fire and physical weapons. (by not meeting reqs.)

__________________________________________________ ____
So then could someone test that vs ranger armor (drakescale):

given base dmg (fire) = base dmg (physical) = 1;
is bonus dmg (assumed fire) < bonus dmg (physical)?

I'd try that myself, but I don't know anyone that plays guild wars, much less ranger players.

Doesn't Healing Signet still say -40 armor? Perhaps you're thinking about Frenzy, but I don't recall Frenzy ever saying -40 armor. People just (mistakenly) used to equate -40 armor with double damage before SonOfRah's wrote his damage research article.

Healing Signet still says -40 armor, but unless I'm mistaken it still translates to double damage from things that hit armor.

Indeed; however, the point is that double damage applies to all damage, including armor ignoring damage. Getting hit by Obsidian Flame while under Frenzy is quite horrible, but Healing Signet increases the damage not at all. And I was simply pointing out that Healing Signet has always been -40 armor, never double damage.

What I meant was that at a time of healing sig reading "-40 armor...", I took extra dmg from balthazar's aura while using it next to the monk that used it.

And to clarify, there was actually a time when healing sig read "take double dmg...", and I never used it before because of that.

I know I'm not mistaking it for frenzy because I never use frenzy and I fully expected to outheal the balthazar's aura at 140 hp per 2 seconds activation time (more like 3 seconds, counting the recharge) vs 20 dmg per second for 10 seconds (200 dmg by the end of 10 seconds).

Should have easily outhealed the balthazar's aura after the second use, but as it turned out, that was not the case.

The dmg from balthazar's aura (armor ignoring holy dmg), noticeably doubled before the end of it's duration as soon as I activated healing sig - making it more like 420 hp healed over 9 seconds (3 uses) vs ~400 dmg over 10 seconds.

All the monk had to do was toss in a 150 dmg worth of symbol of wrath which also doubled when healing sig was activated and you get - 420 hp heal over 9 seconds vs 700 dmg over 10 seconds instead 350 dmg over 10 seconds.

Because of this, I actually had to move to avoid dmg and make progress healing, and the monk brags about the fact that the war ran away, when it was actually the smart thing to do.

Are you sure of this? I have no memory of it, and neither does GuildWiki.

It used to back in the beta weekends. I'm pretty sure it was modified to -40AL either just prior or just after release.

Yes, I'm positive about it.
Here're some old archives to reference, btw-
http://guildwars.tentonhammer.com/in...play&ceid= 13

Well, the base damage is NOT 1 if you don't meet reqs. It falls into a hidden unknown range typically coresspond to "Level 5 weapons", whatever the heck that means.

The +x bonus damage ignore armor (or at least the ones I've paid attention to), so ranger or ele's armor bonus won't show up. You will need mantras from the Mesmer inspiration line to test them.

And this means if I want to use the Doppleganer to test this, I can only check +x bonus damage from ranger skills (since I need Greater Conflagration and/or Winter to ensure damage conversion), not warrior skills.

Hmm, maybe having the weakness condition might make lvl 5 weapon dmg = 1.