Tuesday, 18th March 2014, 20:28 by damiac
I assumed that GDR was instead of AC, not in addition to. So GDR means you automatically win some AC rolls, then the rest happen as usual. I had figured it just used the GDR reduction if your AC rolls didn't reduce enough damage, so it's a little more powerful than I thought.
So since it looks at max incoming damage, then reduces THAT by gdr, unless ac/2 is lower, then it's reduced by that instead. So with 100% gdr, from the non-existent ring, and 30 AC, any and all incoming melee attacks would be reduced by at least 15 damage, but could be reduced by up to 30 damage. Non melee attacks will be reduced by 0 to 30 damage.
Of course, there's no such thing as 100% gdr.
But yeah, I guess what I'm seeing here is that GDR probably matters most when you find a plate armor on D1, or something like that. At that point, enemies aren't hitting hard enough for your lowish AC to matter (Lets say a D1 plate armor brings you to 10AC, that's up to 5 damage off each hit from GDR). On top of that, most threats are melee at that point of the game. Having almost all incoming damage reduced by over 1/3 is pretty huge, especially at the beginning of the game.
Later on, you've got bigger issues to deal with when it comes to armor choices than reducing a little melee damage. So I'd say GDR actually is an important consideration, but only when finding the heavy armors very early in the game. It makes the reduced accuracy and EV worthwhile, more so than just the AC boost would suggest.
However, I will say this. Misinformation and ignorance flourish in environments with less information, not more. So maybe a little stickied article in the advice section, titled "GDR: What it is, and what it isn't", or even "Why you shouldn't worry about GDR"
Otherwise, as you see in this thread, people will just come up with their own ideas and assumptions.