Is armor/protection near useless?

[Soulmancer]

I certainly notice the benefit of evasion, but protection/armor seems useless. I have a front roar minotaur fighter with max vitality and many points invested in the armor skill. I keep him heavily equipped with a priority on high protection while sacrificing evasion but it seems to have very little impact; enemies can still inflict heavy amounts of damage on him regardless... On the other hand my front row melee rogue who sacrifices nearly all protection for a very high evasion seems to dodge attacks very frequently; despite having half the HP of my minotaur in many battles he actually out tanks my minotaur fighter due to his success at dodging attacks. I find that I am always having to move around in battles constantly because my dedicated tanking fighter doesn't seem effective in his role at all.

[killington]

I find that my warriors outlive my rogue. Also keep in mind, the attacks seem to be random, it could be that your warrior is getting attacked way more often.

[Jack Dandy]

Remember that even with tank-ish builds, you gotta rely on moving manually to dodge attacks. You can't simply soak 'em in like in MMORPGs.

[spreadsheets]

You only need to rely on moving against strong-hitting enemies and magic attacks.
If an ogre hits you in the face, no amount of plate armor should save you from that, it's good that way.
But Herders (the plant-things) and the little zergling-like beasts definitely do have a harder time against armored guys.
Also heavy armor can make the difference between pretty fucking dead and "I shouldn't take any more of those!" against stuff like ogres.

[SodanKerjuu]

Protection and hitpoints will play bigger role against archery and elemental damage, since they always hit you.
Also falling down pits etc feels next to nothing on a fighter minotaur, but evasion rogue can lose a much bigger percentage.

Although I think you should never sacrifice evasion just to use that heavier armor.

[Varil]

I've found this to be mostly true too, though. At the end I had a rogue with ~100 evade in the Lurker's suit and a fighter in full Valor, and the rogue tended to either last as long as or longer than my fighter. They seemed to roughly even out near the end, but at around midgame my rogue was a way better survivor. It took him forever to die in the Fighter's challenge, long after my fighter dropped.

Protection might need a bit of a buff, as it is evasion seems a lot more reliable.

[Soulmancer]

I can safely say protection does absolutly nothing unless the character in slot 2 of the front row takes less damage... My rogue with 12 protection takes less damage in melee combat when hits land then my fighter with 32 protection.

[MoreDread]

my party consists of a human rogue and minotaur fighter in the front, and 2 human mages in the back.
my rogue is the highest level because he is wearing the 25% xp amulet, he hits more frequently, strikes more often, has a lower base damage, but much higher damage on special attacks compared to the minotaur
she (the fighter) kept dying until i invested quite a bit in her armor skill and other skills that raise dex to raise her evasion.
her offense suffered for that, but its much better than having her die all the time.
she has about 50 protection and 35 evasion now. the rogue is at 40 protection (chitin) and 60 evasion.
in tough battles, the rogue is always the last man standing. my minotaur died all the time when she didn't have armor proficiency and shield expert.
the only thing that seems to even touch my rogue is magic and missiles... but they are easily dodged by moving around.
even if everyone else is dead, the rogue can defeat most enemies easily.

my mages die all the time (not a single point in staff defense for both of them)
oh and the average level is 13, the rogue is usually about 2-3 levels ahead because of the amulet and beeing alive all the time. he never died.

the funny thing here is, with lower hp the rogue not only lives longer, but even has a higher damage output than my fighter, because the high DEX makes sure he hits most of the time
and he is about twice as fast.

the only downside is that getting hit by magic, missiles or falling down pits is more dangerous for a rogue type character.
he's a little more tricky to use in these kinds of situations.

when fighting against larger groups of enemies he has a clear advantage tho.