It's understood that they're both tanky armors, but is there honestly a difference? What I don't understand is the different versions of beetle, and if there's really a difference between the two. Please explain your thoughts/experience!!
There's obviously some difference.
For one thing, beetle is an upgrade of turtle armor. (Keep in mind that a higher tier armor isn't necessarily objectively better than a lower tier armor, see titanium vs hallowed armor for example)
I don't need to explain the stats since they are obvious enough, I'll explain the set bonus instead:
Turtle is a tank armor with the ability to do 100% damage reflect. While seemingly op/convenient, remember that the player only has 500 HP (600 with lifeforce) at most, while bosses can have 10k hp++, so turtle set bonus isn't that effective vs bosses.
Beetle set with shell is also a tank armor, with a "charge" system: You periodically generate one beetle (max 3), which gives 15% damage reduction (stacks with other beetles, so 3 beetle = 45% damage reduction). When you get hit, you'll consume one beetle but yeah that hit would deal less damage due to the damage reduction.
Beetle set with scale mail is a melee dps armor, with a kinda reversed charge system: When you hit an enemy, you get one beetle (max 3 too). Each beetle will give 10% melee damage and melee speed (that also stacks with other beetles, so up to 30%). If you stop/fail to hit any enemy after some time, the beetles will reset to 0.
So yeah. I'd say turtle is definitely worse than beetle shell (except in some special cases like fighting dungeon guardian), but beetle shell and beetle scale mail is meant for different things (with obvious difference in set bonus) and shouldn't be compared.
Beetle armor is the upgraded version of turtle armor.
Still relatively new player
So I've been working in actually playing though the whole game solo since 1.4 came to console and right now it seems like turtle armor is my best bet for taking down the cultist. I got the stuff to make beetle armor and looked up it's stats to be sorely disappointed by the wiki.
Variant 1: Better damage buffs, worse defense. Not a pure upgrade.
Variant 2: Better defense buffs, worse offense. The set bonus also seems worse. It's superior damage reduction but only for two hits. And after 3 it's completly gone.
15% damage reduction forever seems better than 45% that dissapears immediatly. I watched a video onnyoutube on maximum tanking and I noted the youtuber was having trouble getting the moon lord to hit him with the big beam whole he had beetles out because the sheer number of smaller attacks meant he had almost no beetle uptime.
I think slightly worse armor with 100% damage reduction uptime is probably superior against swarms and bullet hell fights.
But looking online everyone recommends beetle armor as the next progression. What am I missing here?
The negative effect is that enemies are more likely to target you