Overview: This is a suggestion to change armor values to make specialized armors more exclusive while making other armors more useful. This will create a new way to produce diversity/teamwork in the game.

8/25/13 EDIT: changed overview and title to better convey idea

Note: The changes to the armor's protection will require all projectiles and other long ranged attacks in the game to be pure shadow, pierce, or elemental (maybe until tier 3) while all close range attacks to be normal.

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A. Protection

1. Gunners: all gunslinger armors will have pure or hybrid defense (no normal)

2. Swordsmen: all swordsmen armors will always have high pure normal defense

3. Bombers: bombing armors will always have a hybrid normal defense.

4. All Others: armors may have pure or hybrid defense
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B. Reasoning for distribution of defenses

1. Gunners: the non-normal defenses encourage gunners to stay far away while feeling comfortable taking hits from a distance.

2. Swordsmen: the armors of swordsmen have pure normal defense to encourage them to fight close range battles.

3. Bombers: A pure bomber has more difficulty shielding quickly and mounting an attack. Bombers always have a hybrid normal defense to be able to more easily support a team.

4. All others: they have no defined role so the defense isn't defined by it.

Note: some monsters would have to be balanced to further reflect the roles.
For example, less bullet dodging from devilites and more aggressive from far away; less frequent attacks and more running away when in close range.

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C. Bonuses/Penalties: 

1. Specialized: specialized armors will have a bonus that corresponds to a certain weapon class.
        Each piece will have a med speed, charge, and power penalty when using any other weapon. 
 
2. Neutral: will not have a penalty or bonus when using any weapon but values will cap at very high. 

3. Family Specific: will have a weapon bonus to a certain family but will have an equal penalty to another. 

4. All in One (ex: Chaos Set): will have no weapon penalty but will have severe defensive penalties (not just statuses).

Note: there are armors that have a mixture of the bonuses. In those cases, they will have a certain defensive, family specific penalty, and/or class specific penalty to counter the bonuses.

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D. Reasoning for some of the Bonuses/Penalties

1. Specialized: The armors have bonuses to one weapon and penalties to all others to encourage specialized loadouts.

2. Neutral: these have no penalty because they're supposed to be more flexible. The values cap at very high to still encourage the use of specialized armors.

3. Family Specific: these armors don't have a cap to values but still have a high penalty against another family to avoid making this into the “neutral” set.

Note: At the moment, I cant think of another way to balance the family armors properly so I would like extra help for these ones (they're so underused already)

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Some aspects of this concept may have been posted somewhere in the forums but it's too much work to find them in pieces if they exist (tell me if they do though).

Thank You If You Read All Of This
Constructive Criticism Is Always Appreciated!