Making Gorment Armor Work (Patreon)

The second step we recently took while planning directions on our reset campaign was to take a long hard look at Gorment Armor and try to decide how we would use it if we went in that direction. 

There is no real debate about the power level of Gorment Armor, it's way behind Rawhide, Screaming & Leather (just like White Lion & Silk Armor... which we're getting too, trust me) and it cannot hold up in the late game, not even with the upgrade of the Regeneration Suit.

However, just like WLA, it is not a waste of space without merit (we'll leave that title for the Musk Bomb and Silk Bomb) because it is a unique set with some considerable upsides. So just like before, we'll put aside the assumption that the set is not worth building and see what we can do with it if we did build it.

Step One: Strengths & Weaknesses

As before, we'll start with a breakdown of what makes up the strengths and weaknesses of Gorment armor.

Strengths:

• 4 Pieces give set bonus
• Guard gives Block 1
• Guard gives 3 points of 'free' retreat
• Gorment Mask's ability to ignore Intimidate is unparalleled

Weaknesses:

• Set Bonus is very weak
• Costs 10 resources to construct (6x Stout Hide, 1x Handed Skull, 1x Stout Kidney, 2x bone)
• Boots are terrible
• Poor affinities
• Heavy affinity demand
• Guard does not scale well into the very late game
• Regeneration Suit does not work well with the rest of the gear
• Heavy keyword

Yeah... It's a LOT harder to find positives with Gorment Armor than even the much maligned White Lion Armor. There's a lot wrong with the set, so you have some considerable obstacles to overcome. Let us walk through each of these and discuss!

4 Piece Set

The second most impressive and powerful thing about this armor set. You can get an entire active set bonus with just for pieces. That frees up an entire extra slot in your build which you can fill with other items (though usually that slot = shield). This means for more gear intensive builds who don't care about a specific armor set, this is an option because you've gone from 5/9 slots filled to 4/9 filled. That is going from 55.56% of your gear grid invested into armor down to 44.44% - which is a 25% increase in your available space (or if you prefer a 20% decrease in how much space is taken up by armor).

Guard

Two parts of the Gorment Armor set are dedicated to the Guard ability, the body provides this bruiser class action for the cost of 1 survival (bruisers are survivors who attack and block in a single activation, so they can both tank and attack) and the gloves remove the survival cost. However, Guard is a somewhat problematic ability, while a free Block 1 is very strong in the early game and useful in the mid game - it does not scale at all when you get to the late game and it has no synergy with Deflect. 

In addition, the forced retreat of 3 spaces is not always a positive, it makes for difficult tanking situations and that pushes the Gorment set away from pure defense and starts to make it a set for survivors who want to get in, attack and then peel away with a block set up. This is similar to how Bruisers operate, but there are two significant advantages. Guard triggers with two-handed weapons (Blood Paint doesn't) and it triggers on Ranged weapons (Blood Paint can do this, but Thrown Weapons are very badly treated in KD:M at the moment, so it might as well not).

It is how Guard operates that pushes it into this tactical space, it is an armor set for 'dancing' forward and backward, that provides offense and defense (including insurance for a survivor who gets targeted unintentionally) or it allows for a bow user to put up a consistent hail of fire while also retreating and getting a block. Most (non-Sunshark) bow users are very fragile, but Gorment ones have a bit more backbone to them.

Oh and don't ask me what happens when you move directly backwards into another survivor. The rules only directly cover what happens when a survivor is knocked back into another survivor because of monster actions. Voluntary ones are not really explained. Multiple Gorment Survivors move backwards through each other because of how the boots work, but outside of that, you're going to have to decide if a survivor directly behind a Gorment survivor activating Guard results in the Guard survivor 'stopping' or 'colliding'. 

Gorment Mask

I wrote about this piece in the Mixed Armor Set series here and nothing has changed, it is still one of the best pieces of head gear available right now. With 4+ courage your survivor gets to treat intimidate action cards as being blank text (this is one of the ways that the Gigalion vignette can break btw) and that is nothing to sneeze at. It is the main argument behind picking this armor set, though it is not the most obvious one initially. So everything you do with Gorment Armor builds is going to be about activating this and Guard.

These two set bonuses are... not very good. They're not really a build-around (though you could construct a "Wolverine" style survivor who has a lot of anti-severe injury tools), it's more of a bonus 'hey have these extra armor points and some insurance vs. severe injuries. Now many set bonuses are also uninspiring (Leather, WLA, Screaming), but they work very well with what the particular armor set is trying to do. That is not the case here with Gorment, the set bonus is instead trying to combo with the various Gormchymist potions. But the armor's affinity situation means that many of the Gormchymist potions are just too awkward to fit in. Something like the Life Potion or Healing Potion are intended to combine with Gorment Armor's set bonus, but they struggle because their design is based on 'worst case scenarios' and you should not build for those, you should always build for 'expected outcome'.

As an aside; in gaming (video or board) the time to consider worst case scenarios and how to avoid them is when you're already solidly winning, the time to consider best case scenarios and take a gamble is when you're losing hard - the rest of the time, your decisions should be based on the expected outcome, and try to avoid results orientated thinking as any great Poker Player will confirm.

Gorment Boots

Just like the above mentioned potions, the problem with the Gorment Boots lays at the heart of a deadly combination, marginal ability in combination with a lack of affinities. This tends to spell a death sentence for many gear cards out there and only ones that are essential (for the set bonus benefits in this case) make the cut. 

So far, I've encountered exactly one situation where the Boots actually did anything useful, one. In thousands of showdowns. Once.  If these things had some red affinities, or a blue/green affinity that connected to the Gorment Mask, that would make a world of difference. Speaking of which...

Affinities

So, Gorment Armor wants 2 Green, 1 Blue and 1 Red affinity. With one of the Greens and the Blue being Puzzle requirements (for the mask) and having very limited orientations they can be placed in. The 4 piece early game set provides... 1 Green, 1 half green and 1 half blue. That's worse than Rawhide Armor (we'll get onto the Regeneration Suit version soon, I promise).

But on top of that, you have to put the Gloves and Body/Waist pieces adjacent in a 2 wide block and also place the Gorment mask in the middle row (slots 4,5 & 6). That's really, really awkward. It means that the Gorment Mask can't really be sat in slot 5, because then it disrupts the Gloves/Body positioning because they'll either have to be broken apart or have their pairing disrupted.

Keywords

This set has heavy, heavy is a massive downside for an armor set (and gear in general), but it is never priced as a negative. You have to be very careful when using heavy gear, the likely outcome is that at some point during the campaign it will either delete itself or kill its user. It's not as often as the noisy, but it is certainly in second place.

Regeneration Suit

This "upgrade" for the Gorment set provides an extra 1 armor to all locations, 2 extra to the body and three green affinities. It's so nearly an OK thing. If the Gorment full set bonus was +2 armor to all locations (5/5/7/5/5) and these affinities were rotated once clockwise (which would allow them to connect to the mask, gloves & body in position 8), then we'd be having a different discussion.

As it stands, this accessory is better used by other builds, it's not strong enough to justify negating the 4 slot benefit of Gorment Armor. You'd be better off sticking another shield in there most of the time.

And that is where we're going to focus, because when the 4 slot design of the armor set is a strength and the 5 slot version is a sideways development rather than a direct improvement.

The Builds

So, given that we are looking at a set with so many downsides & weaknesses, without the kind of focus and options that come even in maligned sets like the White  Lion Armor... What would you do with this armor? 

Well, what we can establish is the strengths are what we should be playing to. We want to be using Guard, we want to be activating the mask, and we want to be doing this in a way that is distinct from the Blood Paint versions (which can use any armor set they desire).

So, that leaves a focus on weapons that would not usually be used with Blood Paint in combination with shields. That means two-handed weapons are on the table, especially ones with red affinities. So let's look at the list of the strongest candidates:

• Counterweighted Axe
• Sunshark Bow
• Zanbato
• Gloom Hammer
• Arc Bow
• Vespertine Bow
• Skleaver
• Sky Harpoon
• Xmaxe
• Greater Gaxe

 Unfortunately the armor doesn't hold up well into the late game, but with Century Carapace Plates or additional shields you can consider:

• Lantern Glaive 
• Oxidized Ring Whip
• Dragon Slayer
• Perfect Slayer

On the shield front, it doesn't actually matter much which one you pick, you want one that provides protection of some form and that's kind of it. This opens up the space to candidates outside of the usual trio of: Round Leather Shield, Knuckle Shield & Beacon Shield (Fetorsaurus is an upgraded Beacon Shield). The Scrap Shield for example is perfectly fine here because it provides a red affinity and +1 armor points to all locations.

Of particular note is the Feather Shield, which can be combined with the Gorment Mask and the Immortal disorder in order to overcome the drawback of low armor while also protecting your Insanity from intimidates. It also has the same colour activation requirements as the Gorment Suit's Guard so it's no additional affinity pressure on the build.

All of that written however, the up green on the Round Leather Shield means that it is one of the most important and effective additional tools you can gather for Gorment Armor, almost being the 5th piece of the armor set all by itself. This is because it connects with that down green on the helmet, providing the shield for guard, helping activate the mask and also giving a second green to the armor set for activating Guard's no survival cost. 

Gormet Armor was designed with the Leather Shield in mind, it's hard to get around that.

Sunshark Bow Bruiser (Gorm & Sunstalker)

You'll see the Sunshark Bow crop up time and time again because of how powerful it is. I wanted to put this one at the start of the builds because it represents one of the peak builds you can get assembled with Gorment. This version is more of a close quarters build, where you try and score extra strength tokens with blocking occasionally, but most of the time you're just dealing damage and then Guard retreating. 

The Quiver helps with the squeeze in a build like this, there are not a lot of slots, so it gives you access to arrows - You can pick your favourite three. I recommend Claw Head, Hollowpoint and Dense Bone or Sunshark (Dense Bone are much, much better than Sunshark, but you might not be hunting Giggles).

In all, this is a classic Sunshark Bow Bruiser build, being more block orientated than the Phoenix or Dragon armor variants and also requiring less positional play. But it is also a lot less durable, with only 3 to 4 armor points on all locations, that's better than most archers, but you're also a lot closer to the monster than they typically are.

Zanbato Bruiser/Tank (Gorm & White Lion)

As an alternative to the Leather Tank in the mid game, this build (which can transition into the late game if you have the DBK to hunt) works as a retreating tank variant. It is more offensively orientated because it is able to ignore Intimidates and attack + block in the same turn. However, it is not as high on the armor point front and it lacks immunity to bash. So it is not strictly better than Leather Armor. Outside of that, this is a simple variation to a very common meta build.

The Healing Potion is a place holder for any down red affinity you desire.

Counterweighted Axe Bruiser

This build has a lot of benefits over many other non-"leap" orientated CWAxe builds because it has that in built automatic block + retreat. The Reach on the CWAxe means your Guard retreat is not as problematic as it might be for other survivors - because your effective re-engage range is increased by 2. Needless to say, Timeless Eye is good for this build.

(Again the Healing Potion is a place holder down affinity, I find I tend to have a few of these spare while trying to make the Wisdom, Steadfast Potions & Gormite.

Greater Gaxe variant

In this build you trade off the broken CWAxe ability in exchange for more strength and Deadly. While it's not possible to get the Lucky Charm active without compromise and a blue/red "L Shape" affinity piece of gear. This is one of the problems caused by the boots and the affinity/position requirements of the other three pieces of gear.

Sky Harpoon (Gorm, Sunstalker)

Worth a mention, because this build is one of the few that has a solid alternative to the Gorn in the Mask activation slot. In addition, the Reach 3 on the Sky Harpoon means that the retreat 3 on Guard isn't as large an issue as it normally is. The Monster Tooth Necklace pushes the weapon to 6 strength (an important breakpoint for 12 toughness monsters in SotF settlements) and you have one free slot to get additional armor points or a second hunt support item into the build. 

Gorment Archer - Pure DPS

OK, so here we're sacrificing the ability to activate Guard in exchange for being able to build a relatively tanky early game archer. (You can even scale this to the late game with a different bow and/or Dense Bone Arrows). This kind of Luck Based archer is not as strong as the Rawhide or Dancer variants, but it holds a lot of additional durability, which can count for a lot.  It is unfortunately, very one dimensional, it's just stats, brain damage mitigation and offense. You attack and reposition when you can't do that.

Finally we'll close out with one build that does carry through to the late game and has a lot of synergy with a partner using Spidicules Gear.

Gloom Hammer Control Bruiser

This survivor build is genuinely a lot of fun, the Gorment Mask protects your insanity which lets you keep the Gloom Hammer active, and each time you wound the monster both you and the monster push away from each other in a very cinematic style. The Feather Shield is simply a hunt tool used to protect Insanity on the hunt and can be something else, and the MTN is only there for the affinity, other options are available.

In combination with a Green Ring tank sitting after this build in the turn order, one can mitigate almost entirely any traditional damage based methods that the monster is employing to try and harm the party (I'd recommend running a mixed armor set for the Green Ring Tank so they can also employ a Gorment Mask).

Summary

I said I would not rag on Gorment Armor too much, but the truth is, unless the Gorms we fight drop out all the resources needed to make the armor easily, we're going to pass on building this one for sure. It's as expensive as Leather Armor to build the 4 slot version, but it doesn't compare to Leather Armor because of those armor points. 4+ Armor points to all locations is an important breakpoint for scaling towards the mid/late and late game. 3 Armor points doesn't cut it and Guard's failure to scale with Block 2 or Deflect means that the window in which the armor set is strong is very small. (You should be approaching Block 2 around LY12 to LY16).

Now if we do manage to smack the right resources out of the Gorm-Pinata; the Regeneration Suit can get you to that 4 Armor breakpoint, but because the item does almost nothing for the synergy of the set, it fails to help the affinity situation in a meaningful manner and it disables one of the benefits of the set (4 pieces), we're not going to pursue this one with repeated farming, if it happens, it happens - just like WLA it's not worth going out of your way to make it when you can just make another Leather Armor set (or Screaming Armor).

Like WLA, Gorment Armor is only a couple of missteps away from becoming a viable choice, it was designed to sit between Rawhide and Leather Armor and provide progression, but because of its extreme investment cost in monster specific resources, low affinity level, failure to scale the way that Rawhide and Leather Armor both manages and the ease of transition between RH -> LA hurt it. Also the lack of any weapon focus and a movement ability that has negative synergy with most weapon types (and a poor synergy with Shields) means that this one just doesn't have a home, no matter how cool it looks on a model.