The Guild Wars Law Of Inverse Proportion

The armor designs that are part of the Guild Wars game posses an interesting property. As your character advances through the game there are several choices of styles per character class and gender for increased protection.  What I find to be a curious bit of logic is that the less armor there is covering the character's body the more protection it offers (and the more in game gold is costs to buy).  I have dubbed this phenomenon The Guild Wars Law of Inverse Proportion.

In mathematics an inverse proportion is defined this way:

"Two quantities, A and B, are in inverse proportion if by whatever factor A changes, B changes by the multiplicative inverse, or reciprocal, of that factor."

Although the actual algorithms used to calculate armor stats during combat may not adhere to this mathematical definition, a few minutes capturing screen shots at Marhan's Grotto offers up some compelling anecdotal evidence.  Marhan's is one of the sources for what is know as 15K armor, due to the price of 15,000 gold per armor piece. These 15K armors are not all so revealing, but they do offer some of the skimpier options in the Guild Wars universe in damage protection.

How do they keep from catching an arrow in that long expanse of a midriff?

There is an amusing piece on Wonderland addressing a similar issue in WoW, which was presented in conjunction with an original post on The Geeky Feminist entitled "I Blame the Patriarchy".  The later was written in response to the plethora of female Elementalist characters dancing in the towns with nothing but their undies on.

Just in case you think it is only female characters running around in the buff in Tyria, here's a few parting images:

Comments

[Kat]

I don't have enough gold yet to get the 15K armour, but I noticed the Law of Inverse Proportion on GWOnline.Net's armour crafting guide. Scroll down the page for each class and watch the female's armour slowly disappear.

[Brinstar]

Somehow I don't see the 15k armour as very good value for money/time investment... :-/

Great post. :-D

[bigwig]

It should probably also be mentioned that 15k armour is the exact equivalent to 1.5k armour at forge, except it looks different. the extra cost is merely for prestige, or aethetics.

[Guilded Lily]

15K armor is a bad deal if armor level is your only interest. For the best armor for the money, there is a collector's set available in the desert with the same specs as the 1.5K Drok's armor. That set can be had by saving up the various bits the critters drop, so is basically free.

15K armor is entirely an aesthetic choice, and for most character classes, the only option if you want to run around in a bikini and underpants. - GL

[Guilded Lily]

Kat -

With your new blog layout I couldn't find the direct link to the "I blame the partiarchy" post. Feel free to post the link here. Thanks! - GL

[Kat]

Here you go!

[Guilded Lily]

Thanks Kat - I love the image you have with the post. It says it all! - GL