The plan of introducing Enemy Armor Damage in PvP as well as handling it as a Major attribute in the future led to a lot of discussions in The Division’s community. Also the developers weren’t really happy about the latter gear attribute change.
In the latest SotG episode, the developers tried to explain why an alternative stat to the currently BIS (Best in Slot) attribute Armor is needed in order to bring back more variety when it comes to creating a solid build. However, it seems so that the latest public test phase wasn’t long enough to consider all aspects and impacts of this major change. Therefore, the developers have reverted their PTS experiment which was mainly about turning Enemy Armor Damage into a Major stat.
This was confirmed by Community Manager Gabe via reddit post
Hey [removed] Based on feedback and what we saw, we decided to revert making Enemy Armor damage a major stat. It will go back to how it is currently in Update 1.4. :)
Edit: For clarification, it will still apply in PVP. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. :)Gabe via reddit
and Senior Designer Fredrik Thylander on Twitter a few hours ago.
Not sure why people think EAD will be turned off in PVP. The move from major bonus has nothing to do with it. Still works in PVP
— Fredrik Thylander (@Thylander) November 14th, 2016
Nevertheless and to avoid confusion, Enemy Armor Damage will still work in PvP. Based on the preliminary patch notes (#1), the damage calculation against other players in the Dark Zone will start to ignore a percentage of the target’s armor equal to one third of the shooter’s Enemy Armor Damage.
The final patch notes haven’t been released yet, but with the shutdown of the PTS today, they will most likely be released in the next couple of days!