I don't understand armor as well as weapons (in fact, until just know I thought guarding was just below invul....so sorry to anyone I misinformed
).
But here are the modifiers and the order of (weakest to greatest) magical armor types. The modifier is total additional AR when using an entire suit of that type. (You get the bonus for each piece regardless, this just shows how much an entire suit of one type would offer).
Defense +5
Guarding +10
Hardening +15
Fortification +20
Invulnerability +25
I don't know where exceptional falls in here...can anyone else elaborate here?
Weapons can be a bit difficult to understand at first. To start with the basics a regular weapon has no damage modifier. An exceptional weapon (gm) offers a +4 damage modifier...thus there is quite the difference between buying from an npc and buying from a player vendor.
Suffix Effect
Ruin +1 damage
Might +3 damage
Force +5 damage
Power +7 damage
Vanquishing +9 damage
As you can see, an exceptional weapon falls just between Might and Force. Thus Ruin and Might weapons are (typically) worse than gm . Force is a little better, and with Power and Vanq you're noticing significantly better dmg.
So far it's simple enough, but then comes tactics modifiers....
A common misconception for new players is that Tactics determines if you hit your opponent as weapons that offer a tactics bonus are referred to as "accurate". Tactics only determines damage (150% base dmg at gm skill, for example). Thus weapons that are "accurate" do not improve your chance to hit but instead increase damage dealt (this is the opposite with archery weps, where "accurate" increases archery skill, thus making the weapon more accurate
).
Now because Tactics multiplies (via percentage) base dmg, an accurate modifier cannot fall into place amongst a list of magic weps to show you which is clearly better.
For example, a kryss which is fast but does smaller amounts of damage will most likely benefit most from it's magical type (that is force, power, etc) as that is giving it a flat bonus of +5, +7, etc. The tactics modifier still helps, but a percentile bonus on a smaller amount of base dmg isn't going to increase the overall dmg as it would with something that is doing larger amounts of dmg such as a halberd.
To see how it plays out, I'll copy a bit from a topic on the same subject....
For a halberd, which is all people seem to want to talk about, the order of awesomeness goes like this:
+25 vanq
+20 vanq
+15 vanq
+25 power
+10 vanq
+20 power
+5 vanq
+15 power
+25 force
+10 power
vanq
+20 force
+5 power
+15 force
+25 might
power
+10 force
+20 might
+5 force
+15 might
+25 ruin
force
+10 might
+20 ruin
GM
+25
+5 might
+15 ruin
+20
might
+10 ruin
+15
+5 ruin
+10
ruin
+5
store
For a kryss, tactics are much less important, because 5% of a small number is much smaller than 5% of a large number. Here is the order of pwn for a kryss:
+25 vanq
+20 vanq
+15 vanq
+10 vanq
+25 power
+5 vanq
+20 power
vanq
+15 power
+10 power
+25 force
+5 power
+20 force
power
+15 force
+10 force
+5 force
+25 might
force
+20 might
+15 might
GM
+10 might
+5 might
+25 ruin
might
+20 ruin
+15 ruin
+25
+10 ruin
+20
+5 ruin
+15
ruin
+10
+5
store
As you can see, even a +25 ruin kryss is worse than a GM. But, a +20 ruin halberd is better than GM.
Also, you can note that a +25 power hally is better than a +10 vanq hally, but a +25 power kryss is worse than a +10 vanq kryss.
Confusing, eh? Heh. I wouldn't worry too much about what is better than the other. Just rememeber...
exceptional
force
power
vanq
and a tactics modifier is a big boost to base dmg.
Hope that helps.