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# Armor Stacking

Armor stacking refers to specifically building a team that increases a SG's (or 's/'s) armor value. This is used to reduce a highly accurate enemy's high Firepower when it is too high for a normal SG to handle and/or to inflate the team's CE to high levels. Enemies this has been used against are: Judge, Garm, SWAP Dragoons, Pyxis, Gustav and Coeous. It can also be used for 12-4E farming with or counteracting the armor debuff from Parachute Fairy.

## Buff Sources

Sources of armor are:

## Notable Examples

The best raw armor aura and skill comes from the aptly named Armor Fairy. There are additional potential fairy bonuses from the Armor I or II talents and Suee or Construction.

Notable MG armor buffers are with the largest armor tiles at 20%, RPK at 18%, and 's unique tile layout letting her be a third armor buffer in a team with two SGs.

and have the highest base SG armor at 24, and can self-buff her armor, albeit with a long initial cooldown.

Firepower debuff skills from dolls like or can lower the armor requirements as they affect the damage before armor is applied. On the flipside, skills that reduce damage taken like 's or 's apply after armor, and so would not help nearly as much with armor tanking.

It should also be noted that one of the stats the Para Fairy debuffs by 40% is armor, so armor stacking becomes significantly more difficult for parachute debuffed teams.

Flashbang ammunition is a shotgun shell that SGs can equip. Most notably for armor stacking, it reduces any damage taken by 3. This value isn't actually armor, as it applies after armor reductions and is unaffected by armor buffs. It even applies on attacks that typically ignore armor. If an enemy does less than 1 damage, it defaults to 0 damage and displays as a miss. What this enables is SGs becoming quite literally immortal against anything that cannot pierce their armor.

## Calculation

Due to the nature of armor, there is no point stacking armor past a certain point since attacks can do a minimum of 1 damage. But being even one point short means double the damage taken, so it helps to know what value to aim for when armor stacking. If the enemy is subject to damage variance, the goal is:

${\displaystyle \color {White}{\text{Effective Armor}}\geq {\text{Effective Enemy FP}}\cdot 1.15-1}$

Judge, the enemy commanders most commonly armor stack against, thankfully does not have damage variance. So the goal would be:

${\displaystyle \color {White}{\text{Effective Armor}}\geq {\text{Effective Enemy FP}}-1}$

Flashbang ammo turns this on its head, being able to reduce enemy damage to 0. To achieve this:

${\displaystyle \color {White}{\text{Effective Armor}}+3\geq {\text{Effective Enemy FP}}\cdot 1.15}$

And for Judge:

${\displaystyle \color {White}{\text{Effective Armor}}+3\geq {\text{Effective Enemy FP}}}$