Protection and You or Why protection needs a hug. (in General)

Now im sure im not the only one that is thinking this, but ill be the first brave one to say anything. First ill say I love the new weapon, the VB is awsome, so I wont ask for it to be nerfed dramaticly (like not working on protection). Protection, wonderful spell, always has been that way if used right. When CB2 came out cause fear was replaced by dispell magic, a more useful enchantment but this is where my complaint starts. I have been in the top 5 protection at various spots for awhile. Then came the rampant use of Dispell magic, seeing my (20) protection cut down to (9) is harsh. Now with a VB attached to that opponent I only have a (4/5). Is the use of Protection trying to be cut down? Has protection become that big of a problem? The VB cuts AC in half (no other spell does that) it cuts Endurance in half (no spell does that) yet protection can be completely negated by a single spell and made completely useless, on top of natural damage mitigation being cut in half with the VB. Now I have a few solutions for this problem. The first would be to just cut in half the VBs effective decay of protection by 1/2 (so it only cuts protection only by 1/4 of its total). The second would be to change the way VB interacts with protection, say every 2 to hit on the VB removes (1) protection. (which would require +40 on it to completely remove a 60k protection) The third would be to make the protection spell "bounce" physical attacks so they do no damage and thus the effects of weapons wouldn't take effect on the minion. (and the bounce isn't reflected back at attacker, just reflected away) These are just my thoughts, anyone else feel the same way or have any other ideas?

The only thing about VB that bothers me is the fact it does such a significant thing without NW or Exp. Even with Morgs and BoTH you don't take much life back unless the weapon does damage. This VB takes AC regardless of it's NW. I can't think of any other weapon/armor that acts at 100% of it's bonus with absolutely base NW

That is the only thing that frustrates me with the VB

Of course replace AC with Ac/Protection/Endurance in there =P

None do now, that's a change Jon made to armor and stuff just before the NW change.

Guys,

I think your misunderstanding the vorpal blade.
The blade itself does not cut your protection/Endurance/AC for the entire battle for all characters.

Its just for the blows that are landed with the vorpal blade.

When calculating damage with a weapon, the damage it would do is subject to the standard AC/endurance/protection modifiers. The VB just halves those modifiers JUST for the blows that are landed with that weapon. Each blow it hit with is calculated seperately, the 1/2 effect of the weapon is not cumulative.

Just like the MH only works for the blows that are successful, the same is for the VB.

I understood how the blade works Ranger. My real complaint isnt about the VB, it just compounds the "problem". at 65k points in protection (roughly 654k exp) you have a protection number of 20. Now unless each point gives you 1% or more mitigation/absorbtion of damage, a combined Dispell magic+VB could make al lthat experience worthless. Now the same could be said about GS/Haste and the Ax/Exbows but you can always train strength/dex, but then again you can train str/dex. Personally I like my third idea of physical attacks "bounceing"/"glancing" off the magical barrier occasionally. Which would allow even a small protection to be somewhat more useful.

Sev. If facing anyone with a large DM, all the ED's are worthless experience. especially if you train the same one on multiple minions.

I hate to think of my hard earned Endurance being cut in half by a VB, but if there wasn't something out there to do it, I would have fully exploited massive AC, protection and a tiny amount of Endurance. I'll hopefully reach around 200 AC soon on my wall, that's about a 42% reduction to damage (well physical damage..) before my protection of 4 or Endurance (as it's aura based, it'll never reach the 75% cap, but it all adds up).

But, there already exists one damaging spell that ignores AC/Endurance/Protection, so a weapon doing 1/2 of that wasn't too much of a surprise.

Thinking about what Space has said, I'd like some way of tying it into the weapons NW (hey, why don't we go the whole hog and do the same for VA on weapons...) but I'm unsure of how it would work.

Well like i said same could be said for GS and Haste, except isnt the rate on stat points they give something like 4points=1stat? or even lower? To even gain (1) more into the skill you need to dump 5K+ expereince for a raise, and the gap grows.As far as i can see, there is no gain in having experience into the skill inbetween (#)s. To have a spell make that much experience useless is bad in itself, having a weapon on top of that makes it worse. Protection deffinatly needs a hug, and im sure im not the only protection user to think so. Id also like to say again i dont want to nerf anything really, just get protection boosted a bit to be in line with the other EDs in usefulness. Protection is one of the least used defense enchantments, it could be argued thats because noone is exactly sure (except Jon) what exactly it does as far as I know. Or because it really is underpowered and has potential to be a good spell with a bit of love given to it. Ill also say again I like my third idea the best, no nerfing of items, no altering of how the wonderful new melee toy works, just a little modification to protection.

But look at it this way;

If you have Protection (x) and it takes you y to drop one level to protection (z), unless the DM hits you for y amount, you won't loss anything.

GS, Haste et all will have lost y amount from whatever they give.

If you're training protection and haven't yet reached the next level, all the xp you pumped to get there is a buffer versus DM.

But you can also train str/dex on the warrior you are trying to buff. Last i checked you cant train...well im not sure what to call protection, its not ac, and its not endurance...but still the point, you cant train the minion you are actually trying to buff in that stat. If you are trying to build a pseudo warrior team with no str/dex trained and just GS/Haste, good luck.

Sevare, isn't training protection about the same as training HP? If you have 20% protection effect, all damages are reduced to 4/5 of what it should be, which is the same as having 5/4 the HP you have trained. Or maybe protection isn't working that way at all?