Effectiveness of DEF in reducing damage taken

Question2

I was wondering if anyone has bothered to do any testing for this?

I tried testing with hero mode royal army crossbow archers in succubus, and I was surprised by how little difference DEF made.

Damage was consistent, so it seems that mobs and possibly bosses all have 100 balance. The damage doesn't vary between hits. No crits were taken.

Crossbow archer vs 7999 DEF : 552 damage taken

Crossbow archer vs 4316 DEF : 831 damage taken

85% more DEF results in 34% less damage taken. Thats not a very good ratio, given the amount of work that goes into getting an extra 500 DEF at higher levels. Even with 13k DEF (which is the upper end of level 90 gear), s3 raid bosses still hit me for 1-2k damage (not counting red unblockables or special attacks). Increasing crit resist seems to be a lot more effective at reducing damage taken compared to increasing DEF.

Order5

Lots of people have already done testing on this, and the results are inconclusive at best. All they really found out was that DEF works in tiers that don't show a clearly defined pattern. For example, the damage reduction difference between 11k DEF and 12k DEF will not be the same as 12k and 13k DEF. I was even told that there isn't much difference after 12k until you hit 15k DEF. This information comes from a Fiona with 20k+ DEF, the same one that did these videos: https://youtube.com/user/2famoua



It has also been tested that enemies have fixed damage, varying only based on the type of attack they use and critical hits.

According to Shippuu, the DEF cap is currently 19k, soon to be 21k.

hi5josh

As a Spear Lann that's always been focused on defensive stats, this is heartbreaking....

Any info on critical resistance or if it has any correlation to defense when hit by a critical attack?

Question2

Crit resist just decreases the chance of you getting hit by a critical attack, same as boss crit resist reduces the chance of you doing a crit on the boss.

Ive heard of the DEF tier thing before, but that seems unnecessarily hard to code, especially when bosses/mobs have different amounts of ATT. If DEF works in tiers, I think the most probable system would be to have the boss ATT - your DEF to calculate the tier you are in, which reduces the damage taken by a % amount.

Maybe a korean fansite might have some info...

Order5

Question2 wrote: »

Crit resist just decreases the chance of you getting hit by a critical attack, same as boss crit resist reduces the chance of you doing a crit on the boss.

Ive heard of the DEF tier thing before, but that seems unnecessarily hard to code, especially when bosses/mobs have different amounts of ATT. If DEF works in tiers, I think the most probable system would be to have the boss ATT - your DEF to calculate the tier you are in, which reduces the damage taken by a % amount.

Maybe a korean fansite might have some info...

I don't know much beyond what I've been told, I hesitate to agree with that theory. I also haven't asked if enemies possess fixed damage values or formula-produced damage that is also affected by the enemyATT - playerDEF values. I'm not even sure if the DEF tiers reduce by a percentage or flat amount either.

Example 1 | Elchulus's tailswipe damage = elchulusATT reduced by playerDEFtier%
Example 2 | Elchulus's tailswipe damage = (elchulusATT - playerDEF)*(TAILSWIPEmodifier) reduced by playerDEFtier%
Example 3 | Elchulus's tailswipe damage = (elchulusATT - playerDEF)*(TAILSWIPEmodifier) reduced by playerDEFtierX

I'm most likely over-thinking it at this point, but the formula could be even more complex than this. I suppose an easy test would be to try and hit up one of these DEF tiers, then reduce your DEF by as much as possible without dropping to the next tier, and then checking if the numbers come out the same or different. These are just my own thoughts about that theory if anyone wanted input to help with testing.

hi5josh

If only Nexon clarified these stats more so dedicated players didn't have use "exploitable programs" to data mine this information on our behalf and in turn get banned... Knowledge is power! Maybe they want to keep us uninformed and thus powerless? I should remove my tinfoil hat before my posts start getting removed for spreading FUD...

hi5josh

I'm looking for some more knowledge as to how defense and critical resistance will benefit my class and playstyle. I'm currently working on raising my defense & critical resistance right now. I finished material synthesis on my weapon and now am working on material synthesis for my armor. My class is strictly spear Lann, as I could never get accustomed to swords as hard as I tried nor do I plan on changing. My playstyle is kind of diverse. I love to sandbag at any given good opportunity with moonsplitter and sometime with succubus fang I will just take hard consistent critical hits onward while using slashing high. I generally switch out to deal optimal DPS at any given time depending on the difficulty of the content I'm playing. So my question I suppose is how will these 2 stats affect my character personally as they are raised and how dramatically? We tend to only focus on offensive stats and their caps against the bosses. I imagine maximum effective critical resistance can be calculated based upon the enemy's critical attack. But how does defense correlate to damage taken? Is it linear or at random intervals as others have suggested? Is it infinitely beneficial, or not? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or if i'm missing something... I don't plan on changing my playstyle because I like it the way it is. I'm just in the process of maxing out the stats available to me without changing my character build. If anyone would like to see my character build currently to better understand where I'm going with this, I can post it here...

P.S.
Which Spear Lanns have the highest stats in terms of survivability (HP, Defense, critical resistance & DMG Reflection)?

Question2

I think the major point for end game content now is at least 13k DEF, i seem to take a lot more damage in zecallion when using sapphire bracelets instead of my emerald ones, because i end up with just under 13k DEF.

Crit resist : Get as high as possible IMHO, enough to crit resist cap s3 at least. Each crit = 50% extra damage to you, while DEF seems to be much harder to raise and less effective in general until you hit certain tiers.