question about the AL damage reduction on armor

im thinking into buying some of the defensive armors (studded,drakescale to be exact). to get to the point, how does the +15 vs fire/lighting work? is like lets say a meteor shower does 130dmg, so if i had drakescale it would be 115dmg? is it really useful? which ele would i likely run into, fire or lighting? thx. btw, this is for pvp, not pve

In my limited experience of ranger in PvP, I would still recommend using Druids armor for the extra energy. However, if you are going to be flag running in PvP, you might want to consider a studded leather chest piece in case you have to face an E/Mo flag runner (using lightning attacks).

There is probably a guide like this around here somewhere, but here is how damage and armor works:

http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=157

thx for the guide dean but i need real advice from someone with drakescale armor who faced fire mages, and how much it helped them. anyone can answer my questions ? thxx in advance

Here's our guru guide on damage calculations: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...nics-id674.php. If you didn't understand that the previous linked guide answered your question,then I doubt you'll get that this one does too. So let me spell it out for you. The following is the game's equation for damage you deal:

skills:
base_damage * 2 ^ ((3 * your_level - enemy's_AL) / 40)

attacks:
base_damage * 2 ^ ((5 * attribute_level - enemy's_AL) / 40)

So then you can simply plug in the numbers of your drakescale armor. Reverse the equation so that you're calculating your enemy's damage, or in other words how much damage you'll be taking. It should look something like this:

enemy's_base_damage * 2 ^ ((3 * enemy's_level - your_AL) / 40)
enemy's_base_damage * 2 ^ ((5 * enemy's_attribute_level - your_AL) / 40)

See, it's simple. Now all you have to do is plug in the base damage of the skill/weapon you'd be up against, the level of that enemy and/or their estimated attribute points, and your armor level with and without the +15 boost. Then you can see what the difference in final damage will be.