Plate Mails are, if you don't know, the most defensive pieces of equipment in Spiral Knights. They have great amounts of Normal defence, as opposed to the other defensive sets that are Royal Jelly, Mercurial, Ice Queen, Grey Feather, and Dread Skelly which all give more specialised defence than Normal defence. Do note that the specialised defences aren't as high as the Normal defence of plate gear. See this page for an example on specialised defence gear: http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Royal_Jelly_Mail
Let's look at the stats of the plate items.
Ironmight Plate:
- +5 pips of health
- 1.5 times the Normal defence of Skolver
- Same Piercing defence as Skolver
- +4 Stun resistance
- -4 Sleep resistance
- Attack Speed Decrease: Low
- +5 pips of health
- 1.5 times the Normal defence of Vog Cub
- Same Elemental defence as Vog Cub
- +4 Stun resistance
- +4 Fire resistance
- -4 Sleep resistance
- Attack Speed Decrease: Low
- +8 pips of health
- 2 times the Normal defence of Skolver
- No specialised defence
- +4 Stun resistance
- -4 Sleep resistance
- Attack Speed Decrease: Low
- Movement Speed Decrease: Low
With all that in mind, we can conclude a lot.
- Ancient Plate only gives 123 health extra per piece. A full set gives 246. This should barely be one attack unless you're up against a normal weapon or a poisoned enemy.
- Ironmight and Volcanic Plate give more defence than Ancient Plate in the end. Since defence diminishes, the defences of Ironmight and Volcanic Plate will most often prove more useful than the ones of Ancient Plate.
- Ancient Plate will take huge amounts of damage from a great majority of guns, Warmaster Rocket Hammer, toothpicks as well as a few bombs. Split damage swords are partially resisted but the specialised damage will still be severe.
- Volcanic Plate has the greatest defence available against Divine Avenger, the Elemental Brandishes, and Fang of Vog.
- Volcanic Plate has objectively higher numbers than Ironmight as it has Fire resistance. Ironmight has no equivalent resistance.
- All sets will allow you to walk through Stagger Storm. Volcanic Plate will allow you to walk through Ash of Agni.
- It's rather notable that fire isn't very common in Lockdown, though.
- All items give Attack Speed Decrease: Low. Therefore, it can be pretty dangerous to wear even one piece for someone without Attack Speed UVs (bombs aside, naturally) unless it is compensated for with Vog Cub, Justifier, or Nameless.
- The Movement Speed Decrease of Ancient Plate can be extremely devastating. A popular counter is using Black Kat Cowl with Ancient Plate Mail, making one land at no Movement Speed Increase or Decrease. Being a Striker while using the Black Kat Cowl also means one reaches Damage Bonus: Ultra for swords, which is very desirable.
If I forgot any notable conclusions, make sure to post about it. On to opinions!
My personal preference is Ironmight due to the great defences it offers. Since you'll find yourself attacking and moving slower in Plate gear, I find Piercing defence to outweigh Elemental defence as toothpicks, the quickest of swords commonly found in LD, deal Piercing defence. Kindly post your opinion so we can have a proper debate about this and let's not derail the thread, please?
I vote VP
-Immune to stagger storm
-better against gunners
-fire resist because why not
-looks way cooler than ironmight
-beastly
Toothpicks will destroy your soul, but its ok since they dont have as high base dmg as elemental weapons.