Stop Using Class 2 Soft Armor!

hello everyone it's gab beef here and today we're looking at why class 3 soft protection on Armor is important to stay alive in Escape From tarov There are two broad ballistic principles to understand here the first one being the penetration chance itself of a bullet and the second one being the amount of damage that an armor removes from a bullet when it hits a Target most people are familiar with how penetration chance works and broadly speaking if you want a 90% chance to defeat an armor the pen value on your bullet needs to be 10 times the armor class for example if you're facing Class 2 Armor you ideally want to have 2 * 10 so 20 pen or above to go through class 3 armor consistently this then becomes 10 * 3 so 30 pen instead to get a roughly 90% chance to go through on the first hit the second part that people are often not aware of is the amount of penetration that you need to prevent the armor from removing damage from the bullet when it hits for example even though a 20 pen bullet is very likely to go through a Class 2 Armor it will lose nearly 40% of its damage when it does so the point at which this effect goes away I.E when the bullet punches straight through without losing any energy is roughly 10 points higher than the consistent pen threshold so 10 times the armor class plus another 10 against Class 2 Armor to be able to ignore it entirely you would need to have at least 30 pen and against class 3 you want to have 40 one of the features of this damage mitigation effect that we've never really had to think about previously is that mitigation occurs both on the damage of the bullet but also on the pen value itself until patch 14 this didn't really matter but when a bullet passes through one piece of armor into another as is now possible it both has a lower damage and a lower penetration when it hits that second piece this is why sometimes you see surprising results with bullets passing through a class 4 or five plate first and then hitting either a Class 2 or class three piece of soft armor behind and getting stopped despite looking as if the Soft armor will not help against the penetration of the Bullet by the time that it has passed through the plate and had some of its penetration power removed then it turns out that the soft armor can help somewhat after all especially when we think about this in relation to the higher threshold of mitigation that we just spoke about these days armor is split into a few different categories some of which are just plate carriers some of which are plate carriers plus soft armor behind but it only protects against the plate hit box as well and some are plate carriers with soft armor behind that protects the full thorax hitbox which is a little wider than the plate this final category of armors is exclusively the one that I use these days because there's just no real reason to downgrade to any of the others but the interesting part about this is that we can be hitting either the soft armor or the plate and the soft armor together depending on where a bullet exactly lands if we're hit just around the sides of the plate but still on the front of the Torso then this will interact with our soft armor only avoiding the plates so it's important that we look at both of these situations as you might imagine the class 2 and class 3 armors on their own don't make that much difference against higher end rounds but against scav rounds and lower pen cartridges it can be be a big deal looking at this from a pen perspective specifically to start with there are a few bullets that are scary when you're wearing only class 2 such as 9 mil PST with 20 pen and m882 with 18 pen that have quite a good chance of going through whereas against class 3 they don't really stand a chance at all a classic one that I get asked about a lot is slugs as people understandably get fairly tilted when they get one hit wearing class 5 armor from the front there are a couple of these within the 20 to 30 pen range such as pver 6u with 20 FTX custom also with 20 and BMG slugs with 26 pen if you're wearing Class 2 and you get hit anywhere around the plate with these you will die if you're wearing class 3 though it is unlikely that you will be killed although the BMG slug is more of a 50/50 but with the Pala and FTX slugs it really is like a one in 10 chance that you will die from these if you're wearing a class 3 soft armor and it misses the plate another shotgun cartridge piran with 24 pen is also quite scary especially as it acts similarly to Buckshot and has 10 individual darts you're much better off wearing class 3 against this than Class 2 because the pen chance goes from 96% to 30% This lends an argument to prioritizing class 3 soft armor on customs in particular as there are always players completing setup on this map a few other scav rounds that give class two issues a 545t with 20 pen and 366 FMJ with 23 pen you do see these out in the wild and class 3 is significantly better against these as well although you won't die to a single shot even with 366 FMJ despite it headline damage of 98 this is because the damage mitigation on Class 2 takes that 98 damage down to around 70 which is clearly below the thorax HP threshold and we won't die even if we get hit by it speaking of damage reduction we need to think about this from the perspective of soft armor as well the difference between Class 2 and class 3 is the region from about 28 pen to 38 pen in terms of reducing that damage this matters because between those values you will get damage mitigation for class 3 soft armor but not for Class 2 the prime candidate for this is AP 6.3 with 30 pen and Deals 48 damage to class 2 Armor but only 37 damage to the class 3es which is a two-shot versus a three- shot kill despite the fact that the pen chances are 88 and 98% this demonstrates the point really well even though both armors are both likely to be defeated on hit class 3 is still a lot better when it comes to reducing the overall damage and that's because the threshold is so much higher for damage reduction that it is for penetration chance itself m855 is similar with 30 1 pen this does 55 damage against Class 2 versus 42 damage against class 3 so is another two-shot versus three shot situation again despite the high pen chance in both cases with 92% and 98% it's almost guaranteed to go through in either case but you're much better protected with the class 3 this is also the same for similar rounds like 545 PP which has 34 pen as you get 50 damage versus 40 for another two shot versus three shot and this is again similar with over 90% pen chances on both against these mid-tier rounds you're much better off having class 3 underneath what it doesn't save you from though is things like 762 PS with 35 pen or higher rated rounds like m856 A1 with 38 pen because the damage mitigation isn't enough to stop you dying to either in two hits no matter which soft armor you wear some extra Nuance is required around the neck area because this is also covered by Soft armor but only has 35 HP because it's connected to your pmc's head a couple of cartridges that are important here is again AP 6.3 as class 3 probably saves you to the neck due to the damage drop off over distance combined with the mitigation which is pretty extreme for 9 mil bullets JSP from an MP7 is similar as his 545 PS simply because of the increased damage reduction on that round so as we said over 35 pen soft armor doesn't really help anymore unless it's paired with a plate next we're going to look at a few different bullets starting with m856 A1 and run these simulations on which I used tof gunsmith which is a website made by Xerxes which is a very useful tool for looking at multiple layers of armor in one go I've done some work with him in the past testing and looking at some of these things previously and this website is one of the most underrated tools to get a proper understanding of how multi- armor Works in different situations these eight scenarios are broadly ordered in terms of penetration protection starting with class 2 and then class 3 armor just on their own a class 4 plate of which I've used the monocle every time then the monocle plate with class 2 and class 3 protection and then we finally move up to the GAC class 5 plate by itself and then paired with class 2 and class 3 as well we can see that the damage also scales from its base down to the minimum damage which is when the class 5 plate is paired with a class 3 backing as you might expect the interesting part about this for example is that if you get shot in class 2 aramid without a plate and then class two with the monocle that hits 85 exactly range might mean that you don't die but your thorax is going to be very close to zero and you're very much at risk of taking spillover damage and getting killed or a bleed blacking out your thorax which really screws up the rest of your raid when we look at class 3 instead for the same situation if you get shot in the class 3 soft armor around the plate that will deal 47 damage and then class 3 through the monocl we're not even talking about class 5 here that will then deal only 25 damage which together is 72 this leaves you with plenty of spare HP to heal up and while it's obviously not great it's nowh near as critical as being on the single digits of thorax HP we can also rather than just looking at one or two shots check the multi-shot chance with class 2 and class 3 as well well again with a monocle plate over the top of both if you get shot in that configuration repeatedly you can see that in the class 2 case there is a chance to die on shot three but if you move up to class three soft armor behind that chance disappears something interesting about the list here from the highest pen chance to the lowest pen chance is that in the middle there's a little bit of a discrepancy between Class 3 soft armor with a monocle plate over the top that leaves 48% of a bullet's damage afterwards as opposed to an individual GAC plate which although is class five and dramatically decreases the pen chance it ends up leaving more damage if a penetration does occur this is simply due to the fact that the class 3 and the monocle class 4 plate together have the possibility of applying damage reduction twice so long as the pen value of the bullet are in range of the mitigation for both layers in this case the monoc plate will act on the 38 pen round first and lower the value into an area where the class three can then work on it itself and so you end up getting damage reduction two times which is better than a GC plate can do on its own on to the next bullet a classic MP7 round FMJ SX this one has 40 pen and 43 damage and this is very powerful against most armors simply because it cuts through everything up to class 4 like butter although you can expect a penetration to occur using Class 2 soft armor with a monocle plate over the top despite its 85% chance this will only deal 31 damage which actually isn't that much at all however this still allows a kill in three and in a similar vein to m856 A1 moving up to class 3 instead removes the possibility of a three shot kill here as well next let's take a look at something a little bigger as we move up the pen classes towards M80 with 80 damage and 41 pen this is another round that's being used a lot this wipe and you might be surprised to see how strong a class 3 with a monocle plate underneath actually is taking the damage down from 80 all the way to 48 at its face value you might not think that this is much different to the class 2 plus the monocle because that deals 63 and both will kill you in two hits because well 48 will do as well because this is 96 damage total but what you need to remember is that the damage and P 10 drop off with distance is also in effect too and can matter in these cases especially with something that's typically used more in a DMR at 50 m M80 drops to 77.6 damage and 39.8 pen and this reduces the Damage Done through the monocle class 3 combo to 42.5 instead which is bang on the 85 thorax threshold any further than 50 m and you won't die in Two Hits with the class 3 plus 4 plate together despite the fact that the pen chances are still pretty high class three is valuable against pretty good bullets even when you don't have access to class 5 plates another round used pretty regularly this wipe is 762 PP these weapons are somewhat out of the meta with the exception of possibly the SKS but with 41 pen and 55 damage given they're purchasable from the Traders this is a pretty good staple Max Trader bullets this is another situation where a class 3 armor plus a monocle plate will receive 43 damage so at close range it will kill you to the chest or at least come extremely close with class 3 underneath we reduce the damage by a further 10 to 33 which means that we only take 66 in two bullets instead which is a huge decrease okay so finally what about something a lot higher rated like BP against class 5 armor well if we check the two particular cases with class 2 and three plus a GAC flate over the top against the class 2 this gives a 54% chance of a penetration on the first shot and 44 damage which again is a two- shot kill for the class three plus a GAC Instead This is still around the same pen with 52% so it doesn't really make any difference there but now you're only receiving 37 damage in instead which will allow you to survive two hits consecutively so yes I do think it is worth upgrading your armor to have class 3 soft protection where you can especially given that there are more options for this now after a recent balance patch whether you'll be able to notice this in your raid specifically is very hard to know because each situation depends on where you get shot and with what bullet in what circumstances and things like head shots don't matter anyway of course but if you want to give yourself the best chance of survival picking an armor with the class 3 softer under layer and plates over the top is usually the best answer given the couple of upgrades recently there are now 177 armors that have the optimal plate Plus Class 3 on thorax profile of which four take Eastern sty plates and 13 take the western style sappy plates cutting out Edie with over 8 kg of Base weight this only leaves you with 10 armors remaining and given the recent changes to arm penetration isn't particularly dramatic either I.E the upper arms are still very strong when it comes to absorbing bullets if I was going to pick one particular armor it would probably be the defender this gives a good balance between protection and economy with low weight and still uses SA plates which have the best thorx coverage overall but you still get the front of neck although I also use the Thor and the Anam M2 regularly neither of these have neck protection so you do have to choose between Class 3 neck or side plate compatibility on these lighter armors or more weight but higher coverage on something like the rute M or the Gen 4 assault so as usual a big shout out to all my patrons and as always have fun in your AIDS

Channel: Gigabeef

Views: 32,825

Keywords:

Id: BYEG0Ex3wIw

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2024