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Effectiveness of DEF in reducing damage taken
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.
Comments
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.
Any info on critical resistance or if it has any correlation to defense when hit by a critical attack?
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.
P.S.
Which Spear Lanns have the highest stats in terms of survivability (HP, Defense, critical resistance & DMG Reflection)?
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.