I've been ranting about
defensive items for a while now, although thinking about it, Celestial Rod and Geometrid suffer from the same problem.
Generally to buy a (good) recipe item in RoW you have to expend about 1500-3000 gold, although most big recipe items are over 2000. I'm going to arbitrarily assume that the price of all high-tier items are the same for driving my point home, but I'm pretty sure in practice this is an extremely generous assumption (Slotted Shield/Magemail both cost below 2000 IIRC, which is much cheaper than most offensive items).
So, using Assassin as a base, I have RoW open at the moment.
Level 1 Assassin with one Magemail:
21% Physical Damage reduction
17% Magical Damage reduction
Level 1 Assassin with one Stormstrike:
DPS: 36 (up from 22 without items)
with one Lavabuster:
DPS: 39
with one Ribbonmaker:
DPS: 31
with one Bloodhive (people use this item!?):
DPS: 35
with one Mallaton:
DPS: 22 (lol...)
with one Phoenix Fury:
DPS: 35
Pretty sure I just hit all of the major offense items. Since I'm using an agility hero as a base, a lot of them would be less effective on non-agility heroes, too, as it wouldn't raise their damage via the stat boost. If everyone stayed at level 1 all game, offensive items might actually be able to compete with armor and resistance.
However...that's hardly a realistic scenario! Let's run this again.
Level 15 Assassin with one Magemail:
(Same as above.)
Level 15 Assassin with one Stormstrike:
DPS: 111 (up from 85 without items)
with one Lavabuster:
DPS: 110
with one Bloodhive:
DPS: 105
with one Mallaton:
DPS: 85
with one Phoenix Fury:
DPS: 105
with one Ribbonmaker:
DPS: 100
with one Lothar:
DPS: 105
The above data shows immediate problems.
-The DPS counter does not factor in Mallaton. Bugs.
-More relevantly to the thread, armor and resistance scale in effectiveness as the game goes on and constantly get better and better because they are
percentage reductions. The attack damage bonus/stat bonus from offensive items usually just outright don't scale in such a way (everything that just deals damage or increases stats by a set amount like Lothar's, Ribbonmaker, Bloodhive, Phoenix Fury) and the ones that do have some kind of scaling (attack speed since the hero's attack speed will rise as agility is gained per level) often fall short (the attackspeed bonus on Mallaton/Stormstrike
isn't very big, and Lavabuster is a proc so the extra 25% damage might counteract enemy armor damage reduction once every three or four hits).
So, what does this mean?
-That 1500 gold Magemail basically (and very easily) beats out any offensive item in the game.
-That 1900 gold Slotted Shield beats out any offensive item in the game if the heroes opposing it deal physical damage. And this isn't even counting the regeneration, the sheer potency of which often makes it viable versus spellcasters anyway (add a kirus?).
-That 2100 gold Magma Shield at the very least goes even with offensive items just on the basis of the +5 armor. This is not counting its other two benefits.
-The only offensive stat I've really been referencing is attack damage! Don't even get me started on where all of your spell damage went. Want to hose Miney, Assassin, or Kukulza? Just buy armor. GG.
In short, either armor/resistance is way, way undervalued (not expensive enough) for the tremendous benefits it provides, or weapons are too expensive (not good enough to justify their current prices),
or weapons do not do enough, or armor does too much.
Celestial Rod has similar scaling to armor/resistance in that it confers a percentage bonus, but I don't really consider this a bad thing. It is one of the few items in the game right now that could actually compete with defensive items (granted, not extremely relevant since resistance is not a very popular stat to focus right now, but it comes with Magemail, possibly the most cost-effective item in the entire game right now.)