Heavy armor will still make the same kind of difference compared to medium armor. How many hits you need to die on average will just be lower, regardless of what armor you are wearing, and thats a good thing. People have been able to tank way too many hits in cRPG in the past.
Which is an unjust and unfair and (insert other QQ words here) buff to peasants. They already took 1 hit to kill, so they will be able to take the same amount of hits! This is such a load of bullcrap, peasants too stronk. Please buff useless plate compared to how great shirts and other peasant armours are. Especially straw hats, they need to be nerfed to the ground. /sarcasm
On a more serious note, same way as the amount of dmg abilities will increase, so will defensive ones like IF, especially if it is buffed as some people are saying in this thread, which will make your armour better and negate totally if not just partially the reduced effectiveness that you will have.
In other words, when everyone is high level, noone is high level. 35 will just be the new standard, everything will be slightly higher but for a similar amount for everybody, so not much will change other than the ranged nerfs if they happen, the ability to have more extreme builds and maybe a couple of other things, hybrids will still gimp you making you have the equivalent of a few lvls less than a pure build, and a lot of issues will not be solved (some may even be amplified, but we will have to see for that). But hey, they give a reskin, free respec etc, and some people are happy, some QQ, and so cRPG rolls on and on until the momentum will finally be dissipated and it will die silently like one of those Western movies. This may just be a little shove that keeps it rolling a bit more... /rant over, Moncho out