Why is this stat useless in 99% of games?
you're not stacking it hard enough
It's not you just don't realize that you need it due to most games upgrade systems passively giving you more defense.
>>729901794Because the winning condition is always to drop the enemy's HP, so the only stats that matter are the ones that help you do that (ATK, INT, etc)Source: Disgaea player
>>729901794because you win by killing the opponent, not by surving for 130 turns.
>>729901794>Raise defense as high as possible>Still die in a few hitsThe devs just don't want you to be a walking tank because it trivializes their bullshit.
>>729901794she is meta and her main stat is DEF
>Diablo 2>"defense" actually just reduces the enemy's chance to hit you with melee attacks>can't reduce that chance any lower than 5%
>>729901794You can't get hurt if the enemy is dead.
>>729901794
>>729902031>raise defense as high as possible>enemy hits you for a percent of your max hp
>>729901794The most optimal way to win any engagement and to be truly great in warfare is to strike the enemy as one-sidedly as possible.Also, in most games, trading with enemies is a bad idea because you're fighting game battles back-to-back.
>>729902776And that's why DS1 will be forever superior to Elden Shit and Dark Shit 3
>>729902290at least it does have flat damage reductions that could block all incoming damage, there's just not enough of it on gear
>>729901794Used to make you invincible in Barony if you spent the whole game stacking it until the faggot dev changed how the stat worked
>>729902821go back shartyfag
>game originally has flat DR>devs rework it to a % damage reduction instead>endgame armor top character still takes damage from lvl1 shit mobsfuck avernum: escape from the pit
>>729903243meds
>>729901794Because it's not a substitute for git gud
>>729902031This shit infuriates me. Why have the stat in the first place then you faggots?
>armorheavy>shieldgreat>statusesnulled>blood100% ironYup it's gaming time.
>>729902914>reduce damage by single or low double digital>mob hit you for almost 500 damageThose mods are shit
>>729903382And take your meds too, yes.
>>729902290>run>defense is set to nulllmao
>>729902031Then they shouldn’t put it in the damn game. This isn’t a difficult problem.
>>729901794Reasons Health is better than Defense>armor can be bought to increase defense, while hp is typically only increased temporarily by items.>defense is often split into multiple types usually physical and magical while health is universal, so you would need to invest in multiple defense stats rather than a single hp stat.>in most games critical hits often ignore defense>most games use scratch damage, meaning an attack must deal at least 1 damage if a hit occurs, this can be abused with attacks with high hit counts. So high defense against these kind of attacks is meaningless.>poison and other damage over time often deal a fixed amount of damage essentially bypassing defense.>Any build where damage inflicted to a player is mirrored onto an enemy favors high HP and lower defense.The sole exception I can think of where you want defense instead of HP is if an enemy has life steal. Thats it.
>>729901794Not getting hit is better than minimizing damage.
>>729902290>>729902914>>729904421You Anons have never heard of immortal sorcs huh?
>phantasy star online>most of the strongest enemies do fixed damage with certain attacks. this includes an unavoidable attack by episode 1's final boss if he targets you with it>fuckers like epsilon and gran sorcerers do absurd amounts of damage with their technique attacks. the only way to reduce it is to use equipment that cuts down damage from the element the enemy's technique is>a common enemy in the cave and temple area shoots an instakill projectile in ultimate difficulty that you can reduce the odds of working or be immune to only if you stack dark element resistance>mericarols and their recolors will instakill you with their projectiles in ultimate and you can't prevent it from working if it hits you unless you cheatPSO is not a good game for the defense stat.
Just attack more. There u go
i really like the way health/blocking works in slay the spire
>>729902776wow armor that actually works
>>729902893because you can fat tank everything?
>>729902821Alternatively>pump defense so your AC is in the 30's>get hit>check combat log>monster has a flat +10 Attack bonus on top of what tabletop has
You're making me think of stacking DEF for a bit in Sky SC Nightmare, but the solution to encounters is absolute one-time defense. Confident that nothing is capable of saving you from some bullshit though (Abyss Worms, but i think that's Magic DEF).
The reason why the defense stat always ends up being an afterthought is because the majority of players refuse to build it.>Game makes defensive stats actually matter, possibly a requirement to actually win>95% of players refuse to build it in any capacity because they just default to wanting big damage numbers>They eventually start getting one shot repeatedly>"omg this game is so bad and unfair">rage quitsDon't believe me?>Only 5-10% of players tend to play tank in MMORPGs, the least popular role by far. Meanwhile DPS, the class that rewards ignoring building survivability is the most popular >When Path of Exile came out a huge number of players got filtered because the game actually expected you to build life (and some secondary form of survivability like armor), leading to tons of people rage quitting>Modern Monster Hunter games (World and up) make defensive traits SIGNIFICANTLY better than offensive traits. For example reducing the damage you take by 25% vs dealing 5% more damage. Even so the vast majority of people still build pure damage sets because they want to copy speed runners and just assume they'll play perfectly and never get hit (They don't).
>>729910848Vigor leveling is particularly important in elden ring and most soulsgames
>>729901794Defence, on the other hand, is very useful
>>729910920Yeah and don't remember 90% of discussion about the game when Elden Ring came out was>wtf this boss is too hard/one shotting me>Build vigor retard
>>729910920thats because the investment to use heavy armor is so high it's not worth it at all. nobody wants to waste 30 lvls on encumbrance just to wear a set of medium armor without fat rolling
>be me>playing wow classic priest>go into a fight and put on the +200 defense spell>mobs still wipe over 100 hp per shit attack>in 10 seconds barely have just 15% hpIt's fucking useless if I'm honest.
>>729901794Because devs can't come up with new gameplay ideas and it's really easy to make a kusoge about avoiding damage. Shmups are a creatively bankrupt genre and the stagnant shmup mentality can be found across pretty much all types of action games.
>>729910848>Modern Monster Hunter games (World and up) make defensive traits SIGNIFICANTLY better than offensive traits. For example reducing the damage you take by 25% vs dealing 5% more damage. Even so the vast majority of people still build pure damage sets because they want to copy speed runners and just assume they'll play perfectly and never get hit (They don't).This is the most disingenuous part of the post. nuMH doesn't need your hand to be held to reach armor stats that even resemble a 5% difference in damage resistance because it's been watered down to the point where you either hit wall A or wall B before ever reaching such low armor values where you'd ever see the kind of damage resistance ever get to +25% resistance due to one piece of armor unless you were single-digit levels of IQ.Wall A: you do so little damage that you, by efforts to just run the clock out, don't do enough damage, period. In which case one piece of armor will have that kind of addition to damage resistance or...Wall B: the monster you're currently fighting outclasses your current armor so much (or you simply suck so badly) that you are getting one-shot even when your armor skills are attuned to pure damage output to the point where you MUST make a new set to both increase your damage potential AND passively increasing your armor rating.Both walls are mutually exclusive, and both are brain-dead easy to get past with even minimal knowledge of how the game works. Capcom made armor in nuMH so piss easy to "get on the same level" as the monster you're supposed to be fighting that it works itself out.
>>729910920>>729911293Defense used to be a lot more effective in Souls games before Dark Souls II. It gets sidelined because people fixate on poise in DS1 but defense stacking absolutely works. It was nerfed in DS2 because they wanted more predictable damage numbers to the player. It's why people used to go autismo in Souls games armors but not anymore.
>>729911568What, you want a game where you facetank the enemy and nothing can stop you?
>>729901794I noticed most games either dropped this in favor of just giving more HP to tank shit, or simple percentage based damage reduction. It's just not intuitive as HP or ATK.
>>729911718Anon what are you going on about? I'm genuinely confused, I think you misinterpreted my post.My point is that in terms of opportunity cost in Monster Hunter, a defensive option will be more rewarding than an offensive option of the same opportunity cost. For example just look at how easy it is to get something like divine blessing or health skills. These are super easy and common skills to get (Aka. The decorations/talismans are handed out like candy)and improve your survivability by 25-30% on average (That is, you get 25% more health or reduce damage by 30% on average). You can gem these into basically any set with just 3 or 5 slots.Meanwhile something like attack boost requires 7 slots, uses a very rare decoration, doesn't appear often, and even if you get attack boost 7 might increase your actual damage by 5-10% at most.
>>729912174This is what I mean by>can't come up with new gameplay ideas
>>729912595Then you needed to clarify the differences you meant. The entire discussion here in this thread is armor/defense stats. As in "the stat used to reduce damage applied when hit without other factors involved". Granted you're correct in defensive decos being thrown at the hunter like candy is true, but what has been discussed this entire thread (or at least in the spirit of the OP, which has been followed so far) is the pure armor/defense stat itself. Which makes your addition to the thread moot as not only are MH defense 'skills' an external part of this discussion, but also not applicable to the topic.
>>729912998I mean just because armor in Monster Hunter naturally has better defense as it gains better offensive skills on average doesn't remove it from this discussion. The 5 pieces of armor you equip are just a small part of your build in a MH game after all.And I mean if you want to be so autistic that you can't even accept anything but the LITERAL defense stat. Defense boost as a skill is a lot more impactful than the attack boost skill, even though it's not considered a great way to build survivability.
>>729901794Defense/HP stacking is fucking kino when it works, if anyone is ever playing Dokapon Kingdom with friends I implore you to make a build that stacks HP and defense. You can't kill people easily, but you become economically unviable to fight since any fight you enter is going to take like 10-20 turns until endgame instakills start being spammed
>>729913237Yes, because you want to be the outlier, you want your argument to hold more weight. If you can't follow a simple conversation which doesn't even require autism to follow, then get the fuck out of here and let the discussion flow as it should.
>>729911878I don't know how the physical reduction worked in 2 but the elemental reduction was extremely effective if you properly geared around it, however there were massive nerfs to dark spells and moonlight greatsword early on in the games life because people didn't understand how much stats could affect mitigation and went with minmaxed 150 builds with 1 int and got ripped apart. Dark Souls 3 and beyond completely gutted mitigation rings/spells in pvp.
>>729911527Guild Wars 2 > World Of Warcraft.Deal with it.
>>729901794It's not useless but it's often difficult to build around.Defense is just another layer of survivability (with hp and dodge in some games).Often you are more effective by getting both, but it's not noticeable so players often end up just stacking hp. Also, giving too much damage reduction can be really hard to balance:if you allow too much, you either let the player be invincible (which is harder to achieve with just hp), or you're force to increase the damage which make defense a necessary stat for everyoneAt the end of the day, it's how you calculate the stats that make it useless or not.The easy way for defense it's to model it with some kind of exponential decay, so that it's always worth to get some (and if your hp is based on a stat like vigor, you can also give diminishing returns to that so hp become less and less valuable)
>>729913652Hell fucking no, classic is much better than gw2, retail is worse.I've played to max level in gw2 and it's not even close, and the fucking goddamn expansions being locked behind grinding a fucking skill point is mindbogglingly bad design.
>>729913480Anon, you're the one who replied to my post talking about nonsense in the first place. The other anons seemed to understand just fine.
>>729902776me but havel set and i actually dodged his explosion, idk whygame is braindead and whenever someone says DS1 is a hard game i immediately think they are a mouthbreather
>>729910320Unironically yes. It gives the player more options in builds.
>>729913618>I don't know how the physical reduction worked in 2You stack a 1000 points of defense at the cost of your roll distance and it has very minor effect on the incoming physical damage. Least satisfying mechanic and why everyone just dressed for the looks or additional bonuses.I remember the elemental things working too and being effective in PVP in 2 with just the rings, but a lot of time you just had physical vs physical fights and there was very little your armor would do against it where in DeS and DaS it had a major impact.
>>729901957Smogon bros our response? my elo isn't high enough to vote.
>>729901794Luck
>>729914024I'm the only one to reply to you ya dumbfuck. Now out, and take your retardation with you.
>>729901794devs usually make max hp scale better, and you often don't need to focus on both
>>729901794It's good in Fire Emblem, which I think is mainly because the calculations are as elegant as possible. ie:>1 str = 1 point of damage>1 def = 1 point of damage reductionetc. so stats never scale out of control and lose their intended relationship with each other. There are still ways around it like using magic/effective weapons, but you'd still value a unit with good defence much more than one without.Sometimes simple is better.
>>729914263facerolling isn't exactly a fighting style
>>729902031this but with hp.In relink, you HAVE TO DODGE EVERY HIT. because the final boss hits you for 50k to 250k per hit.max hp you can have is 99999so people throw HP away and come with 28k-35k hp trading the rest for attack, the game creates some absolute madmen dodge masters / blockeds
>>729901794Depends heavily on the game. Defense is one of the strongest stats in Pokemon, for example.
In multiplayer games, defense stacking is typically a miserable strategy that reduces in stalling games forever.In singleplayer games, it's not fun for the majority of players either; while some DEF is usually required, devs (rightfully) assume lots of it shouldn't be necessary to finish the game because, again, the strategy tends towards miserable nongames because, as you'll probably weaken your offense in rhe process, you'll just drag everything out and win by death of a thousand cuts.
>>729915536But that would be because Pokemon automatically puts you on an equal playing field with your opponent since the games are inherently multiplayer. It's not like other RPGs where the devs want bosses to take 20+ turns to kill and be threatening the entire time so they massively over-tune the boss's offenses. Defense in Pokemon is a really strong stat because you can realistically expect to survive 5+ hits if you spec heavily into defense, and 5 turns can be very impactful
Currently the popular thing to do is dodge or parry, so defense is worthless
>>729910468Owlcat's balancing is great. Core isn't even the core stats of monsters
>>729901794You can just walk away from enemy attacks.Plus healing consumables are was more common and powerful than damage consumables.>potion of +2000 health>bomb of 50 damage
>>729901794Because games make it too weak compared to other stats, mostly because it's usually more fun to deal more damage than take less damage
>Play tank>Build defense>Actually I was supposed to build damage to get aggro because I'm already tanky enough baseline.
>>729901924Disgaea is one of the few games where tank builds can actually be good. stacking the sludge and sicily evilities makes you damn take half damage from all attacks
>>729904421>thorns ability>enemy gets 50 damage when they hit you>enemy has 60k hp
>>729901794Defense is fucking great
>>729901794Because in a lot of games, skilled play compensates for a low Def stat. So, if you are a skilled player, or think you are, its better to stat as a glass cannon and simply physically play defensively. Even in games that don't let you do that, its often better or more fun to get the encounter over with faster than tank a lot of hits and kill enemies slower.Even worse, enemy defensive stat scaling means that no matter what you usually have to spec at least somewhat into damage if you want to even scratch enemies later in the game. Going fully into damage is often just the better choice at that point.I think the design space for tanks is better served with some sort of active defense that does damage as well. Shorter term buffs, parries or taunts that return enemy damage or allow free attacks when hit. Obviously lower overall damage output than a glass cannon but some way to leverage your DEF stats into damage is basically required if its not an old school trinity MMO or something. A single player RPG for example that wants good class identity needs some way for a tank to do damage too.
>>729901794Dumb dev will make offensive attack scaling with defense to fix it
>>729901794The current popular thing in video games is to make it so enemies kill you in 2-3 hits, but you have health potions and a dodge button.So defense allowing you to bypass this and play differently is frowned upon.
>>729901794Wizardry variants Daphne proves evasion atk mag sur and div are better
>>729904421Damage reduction is GOAT if you stack it correctly. It's applied last, so the idea is you start with a 500 elemental damage hit, have 80% res, now it's 100 damage, then 20% absorb, now it's 60 damage, then you put on 30 flat damage reduction, voila, it basically acts as an additional 50% res.
>fighting gamesHistorically glass cannon characters like akuma die in like 2 touches but he overwhelms you with insane pressure that none of it matters. Yeah sometimes you get unlucky and could have lived with more health but 99% of the time you are facerolling>runescapeProtection prayers literally negate all damage of a certain type and along with movement, you will never take considerable damage. All that leaves is DPS so tanky gear is useless>card gameseven TCG suffer from this, it doesn't matter if you have a billion life points in yugioh when you get locked down and negated and all that life did was make you die in 2 turns instead of 1
>>729901794Generally games either have unconditional damage or avoidable damageIf damage has to be taken, and it's high enough then defense is worth investing into. People also hate this route of balanceIf damage does not have to be taken or the damage you do take is manageable, then glass cannons are more appealing
>insist that defense is useless>come to a boss whose only gimmick is having astronomical DEF>HOW DO I BEAT THIS GUY FUCK THIS SHIT GAME
>>729901794Says who?I play tanks all the time.
>>729921560Yu-Gi-Oh! is a special case because the entire game is control oriented and any deck can put lethal on board in a single turn.Try playing white on Magic.
>>729908145Best part is common enemies stunlocking you if your defense or evasion is too high. You actually want to job and get knocked down for the wakeup immunity
>>729908145I lol at needing a FOnewearl in the high 180s to have high enough hp to survive Falz's swipe on ult. That shit was so retarded and was rightfully nerfed down to 800 damage from 1200 on Dreamcast.
>>729925183>Gamer hate this route of balance>dev too lazy to brainstorm Yeah we will never fix it
>>729902893Elden Ring is even more bonkers than DS1. https://youtu.be/ULhI_OcUpDw
>>729901794Defense stacking trivializes 99% of Terraria's content outside of getfixedboi's Legendary difficulty.
>>729926738>*rapes ure buthole upon starting hardmode*Or maybe im a jobber idk
>>729915461I'd argue it's as long as there are meaningful drawbacks.
Honestly builds are gay. you shouldn't be allowed to minmax it kills fun.
because dodging is usually better, I don't know many games where maxing out your defense actually makes an impact beyond "you die in 5 hits instead of 4 now"
>>729925895FF8 had a boss that did just that. He was even programmed to say something in response to every attack you threw at him, so it was clear what would work (gravity spells that do percentage based damage, summoning Bahamut who ignores magic defence), and what wouldn't (almost everything else).However, FF8 also had a spell that could inflict a status effect that would reduce all defence to zero. There was no immunity to it, and the boss wasn't programmed to take this status into account. So you could hit him with the status effect, then watch him laugh off your 'pathetic' 9999 damage from a regular attack.
>>729906671Defense increases the efficiency of healing though, since it increases your effective hit points without indirectly reducing the percentage of max health your healing gives you. I learned this from flying passive shield tanked drakes and rattlesnakes in eve online.
>>729910848Pretty much this. People bitch about being one shot in Nioh 1 all the time, but you can literally become immune to all ranged attacks, and elemental attacks, cut damage taken from yokai down to like half, stack something stupid like 6 sources of health regen over time, AND shit on enemy attack power with like three different debuffs - two that you can passively apply by slapping the effects on your weapons. But everyone wants to be a glass cannon wrapped in wet toilet paper.
>>729901794I'm useless?
>>729928091Stacking regen in Demon Souls was pretty fun.Souls games are ideal candidates for defensive builds too because you usually have a way to enchant a weapon to deal a ton of damage without having to invest on stats.
>>729901794Where is your god now?
>>729901794They suck because most devs hate the idea of players dropping all "skill" in favor of infinite survivability. I think Path of Exile is a good example of this because years and years ago when it was more RPG then action the design allowed this, you could not care at all about bosses and tank every bit of them with the right set up and investments.But over the years they keep shifting the design away to more "action" based things that don't allow it. Every boss as some silly slow change AOE attack where your supposed to get out of the way. They make the damage so impossibly high because they want you to have to actually notice it charging and get out the way as that's apparently good game design. But that defeats the purpose of defense at all. If the boss no matter what I do has some super kill shot why invest in defense? The weak defense player and the high defense player both need to move out the way so who cares?And that's how you end up with trash like Path of Exile 2. Regular mobs are old school and you are supposed to build defenses because their attacks are instant and not telegraphed to evade. But bosses are still have their BIG attacks which you need to get out of the way anyway. So defenses are only really there to tank the trash mobs because of their bad design. And do you know what's even better then being able to tank trash mobs? Destroying them so fast they aren't a problem. And that works on bosses too.So as long as devs refuse to allow high defense players to skip all boss and gameplay mechanics by being immortal defense will always be shit.
Maplestory piss me off, Pick a warrior class to be tanky and for most of the game you are basically immortal. Fight a boss that ignore your defense and knock you to 1 hp. Hell the paladin class literally need passives to lessen such insta kill-like attacks and even a skill to become outright immortal just to keep up with classes that can actually deal real damage. Nowadays picking a class with low health/defense means very little because ALL bosses (that matters) only allow for 2 hits but let you revive like 20 times. Classes like the Shade who give a small chance to revive on death for free have more value than defense focus classes because you WILL die. If you going to die anyway may as well deal a billion or so damage instead of dealing almost no damage but hey at least that paladin was immortal for a minute while he was doing jack shit! Oh did I mention bosses on Maplestory have a timer? Dying 19+ times but killing the boss have WAYYYYYY more value than not dying once but was so shit you couldn't even bring the boss to half health.
>>729928413>>729928860I really like how two different games came to the same conclusion of ruining themselves because bosses NEED to be hard for whatever reason even if it means outright cheating the system they should been built on.
>>729928372>implying you didn't just become a free lunchperish
>>729928413How is stacking defense and ignoring everything the game throws at you at the expense of it taking forever to kill a boss something you'd want?
>>729902031>because it trivializes their bullshitYou mean the gameplay?
>>729929253How is stacking attack and ignoring everything the game throws at you at the expense of it taking nothing to kill a boss something you'd want?
>>729929492That doesn't work unless you kill the boss before he can do anything, in which case that's also not something I'd want.
>>729929253Its an option right? The point of these games is to be able to play the way you want so someone will take it eventually. If they don't want me doing that don't make it an option. Why bother have a health bar if I'm supposed to just get out out the way and never get hit? That's how action games work, well for their grading systems at least>>729929492>Bosses become immortal at certain HP thresholds>Have to spend 30 seconds dodging their ultimate attack as the boss is immortal the entire duration of the attack>You WILL participate in the devs forced run around bullshit and are NOT allowed to skip fights by becoming too strongtee hee
>>729901794They can’t hurt you if they’re already dead. Stack damage.
>>729902031>all bosses hit through defense levels and armor
>>729929121Depends on Skarmbliss's typing. If it's Normal/Steel it rapes Magnezone, but otherwise Magnezone wins.
>>729929639Sure, railroading is annoying. But on the other hand, players are retarded and will minmax the fun out of the game and then cry about it.
>>729901794Because games witgh stats are typically designed around you playing wellThe defense stat only matters if you're getting hitGetting hit is not playing well.
Basically every form of damage resistance can assrape a game's design.It's why most games just ignore itDesign around you maxing it outOr pull out the old classic>Elemental attack that will instantly kill you but you get a pair of Thunderwear in a chest just before you go to Electronigga's Thundah Dome
>>729929864"Playing Well" also doesn't mean never getting hit and it's shit game design if you do this.
>>729929864>Because games witgh stats are typically designed around you playing wellGames with stats are based off of tabletop games like D&D that have rolls, RPGs that have their own systems are similar and use dice rolls to determine damage.Getting hit in those is an inevitability and is at best a matter of risk management.
>>729901794It also doesn't help that in many games endgame content means killing bosses or waves of enemies under a certain time limit. it doesnt matter how tanky you are if you cant kill fast enough
>>729915830>Defense in Pokemon is a really strong stat because you can realistically expect to survive 5+ hits if you spec heavily into defenseNot when Game Freak's poor game design barges in to molest Aggron.
Tell a gamer that gameplay could involve something besides a dexterity test, and his brain will short out.
>>729901794The problem is that all games calculate defense in a different way and they all hide it from the player. The player cannot make an informed choice on whether building more defense is worth it or not. in genshin it's def / (def + 5 * enemy level + 500). in the first descendant it's 10% for a 1000 def and then it doubles for the next 10% every time until it caps at 80% for 256000 defense. to someone who doesn't visit wiki's to look into this defense means nothing (fault of the gamedevs) and the players rightly so build health or attack instead
>>729906671Counterpoint: a system with injuries. If a game has those that reduce your stats based on damage received rather than overall health remaining, it's better to not get hit or absorb the damage in full rather than just being a sponge
>>729901794say that to my -40 AC valk in nethack
I love having a random number like 63528 DEF on my screen that magically gets turned into a percentage number through some hidden formula :) I love not knowing what my stats are actually doing :)
>>729921560>RSThere are plenty of bosses that hit through prayer and roll def, and then there's stuff like colo or inferno where some mobs can't be off-ticked at all and you need to be able to take a few hits.
>>729911527>playing wowFound your problem
>>729901794because you don't wanna get hit
>>729901794Shit and/or unintuitive design. Why would i have it if i don't know what it does or if it even does anything at all.
>>729901794>"D-Do I invest my points into health or armor?"
>>729932446In Diablo it tells you how likely you are to be hit by specific enemies.It seems like PoE has too many variables for that measure to be sufficient.
>>729921560I notice not having defence levels or good armor in osrs pretty easily like I notice not having attack levels. It's like night and day. I remember eating way more during leagues and they even have damage mitigation relics there.I also notice eating more shit when my potions run out and hitting less. Those are like 12-18 levels but they're still very noticeable if you put any amount of time into pvm. It's the difference between a 2 minute kill and a 3.5 minute kill, hit rng nonwithstanding. Eating more shit means I have to eat more supplies and that makes the fights longer.I think a lot of people underestimate defence's influence because of that same prayer sentiment but when you do have to eat hits it's very measurable.
>>729915461
>>729901794Its a basic consequence of game design. You have a choice between a stat that lets you win (Attack) and a stat that lets you not lose (Defense), so of course winning is always better. Even if you could somehow not lose indefinitely, at most that gets you a stalemate.
>>729902031>raise defense as high as possible>lower ranked enemies literally can't do shit to you until your armor breaks I liked what FNV was attempting with DT. Even if you can trivialize the whole thing with a near 200 year old blackpowder rifle and a handful of bitchslaps from an oversized jackson chameleon.
>>729901794>Action gamesUseless. Don't get hit lol.>Turn based gamesHaving high defense is absolutely vital. Always stack the best most highest defense armor. Especially in games wherehealing is scarce or enemies hit hard.
>>729935232Turn-based RPGs can also have evasion or percentage reduction, and those tend to be favored with few exceptions.
>>729936543>Have 95% evasion>Get hit anyways because the adventure is long and a 5% chance to get hit stacks over 60+hours>Die in one hitDefense is just better for turn based games. But having both balanced evasion and defense is the best.
>level 1>defense: 10>hp: 1000>enemy damage: 100>level 100>defense 100000>hp 1000000000>enemy damage: 10000000I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUCING FUN
>>729901794It's not relevant at all unless you're forced to take damage, but even if that's the case, it's generally still weaker than just killing the enemies faster.
>>729936812If you are not getting hit 95% of the time, you will have healing resources to spare.Also you are ignoring obvious issues like getting hit with statuses or forced OHKOs.
>>729932762attack is severely underrated in osrs because of pvpfags strengthmaxxingthere's a reason fang is considered so powerful
So flat damage reduction is just superior to damage percentage reduction, right?
>>729937136No, it really depends on the size of the numbers in the systemflat is better with small numbers, percentage is better with huge numbers
>>729937052Fang rolls twice, which is an insane 33% accuracy bonus with no downsides. And it is extremely cheap/common, as compared to it's (potential) upgrade - nally. For comparison, 33% dps increase is going from fang to scythe
>>729937597haven't played in a while but just checked and holy fuck fang is 25 mil nowdidn't people only use it because it was dirt cheap compared to rapier and now they are not even that different in price
>>729901794A shame since I like blocking (and bitchslapping enemies with my big fat shield)
>>729937795Rapier is slightly better at low def, but there are no bosses like that.
>>729919434whoopdiefriggindoo, half damage in a game where everything deals 1 gorillion damage and has a 14 mile wide radius
>>729937136It really depends on the game, but generally percentage is better.
>>729937136If damage scaling is linear(generally in games with low numbers), then flat reduction > multiplicative reduction generally.If it's exponential, then flat is usually not even a thing as it would make the stat scale terribly past early game.
>defense just determines a percentage based damage reduction>there is no damage source that ignores defense>all healing is based on a percentage of maximum hp>one guy just cannot comprehend that increasing defense has the same effect as increasing hp (multiplicative with each other)
>>729939786"Effective" anything can filter brainlets because they cannot make that connection between theory and application.
>>729901794Defense can be good with good healers. People forget those two synergize. Ive seen it in dota or hon, ive seen it in early gw2 wvw meta. I do like games and abilities where your selective or well timed use of defensive abilities turns the tide in your favor instead of braindead hit the other guy first and hardest. Some games have terrible parry systems though.
>>729901794Play the 1%
>>729901794If you have 500 HP and an attack does 50 damage, you die in 10 hits. This graph I made shows how many hits it takes to die if you take 49, 48, 47, ..., 2, and 1 damage. As you can see there is a massive plateau before it explodes.
Because the very foundation of stats based RPGs are flawed, it's all meant to give you a fake sense of power fantasy by numbers going up (both in and out), but to do that you need to buff the enemies on a similar curve as the player's as he progresses, else enemies of your level will still deal the same minuscule amount of damage towards the end of the game, which often is when the character has thousands of health points, or whatever the scale is, and this leads to a very trivial expérience if not boringSo in general, it's shit because it can't not be shit
>>729940759So what about games like Bug Fables where the numbers start low and stay low throughout the entire game? I will admit these are quite rare however.
>>729940861How would defense as a stat even work in this case? Chance to dodge? Flat damage reduction? This sounds stupid to me either way ngl, I can't think of a single game I ever played that wasn't multiplayer where defense felt worthwhile to invest into, because of one reason or another, and in case of mp games then it's really a case or need, rather than want The one instance where it doesn't feel completely half assed is if you have control of multiple characters and you can have the tanks actually stop the enemies from going after the damage dealers, but this can get very tedious or lead to pretty awkward systems (like vanilla wow for example), or feel very rewarding when you can use bodyblock and other forms of control to get the enemy stuck between two lines of tanks while your archers and damage dealers deal with them (m&b) But this can just be seen as convoluted for a lot of players too so we're back to the starting line
>>729941446Maybe play the game.Think that pretty much any low number game uses either flat reduction or no defensive stat.
>>729941446It's a game where ±1 damage is a big fucking deal, and most of them are situational.
>>729901794It's never useless. But being able to kill the enemy faster is just the better option.
>>729941446>Chance to dodge?Also that's armor class in DnD
>>729901794Most game devs are spiteful, hate their own customers and generally play in a specific way themselves.So they always demand the faggiest of DEX-fag builds, with STR/CON chads being shat on.
>>729915536really? how do you use it? I thought it was all about being faster than your opponent and then just one shotting them with a super effective movet. never played multi
>>729901794Because it's fucking all or nothing. If defense doesn't matter, business as usual. If defense matters, holy shit, stack defense and you can't lose.
>>729901794In Elden Ring defense is a heavily underrated stat. Stacking reduction gets you from being 2 shot (with the first hit doing 70% of your life) in Wizard clothes to tanking 4-6 hits from a boss.
>>729941446Elden Ring makes Defense feel needed once you get past Altus simply because enemies start hitting so hard that you'll need both VIG and decent gear to not get oneshot>inb4 just dodge lmaoGreat, with the way enemies attack and move in ER, oneshots will make you want to quit if you need to rely on dodging at all times. Shields are also underrated simply because there were too many retards around release that tried to use them against obvious bait attacks that were designed to break your guard if you tried to rely on it too much.
>>729941835With enough defense you can tank 2 or 3 SE hits, and there are boost moves + healing moves that can make you effectively unkillable through normal means.
>Fallout 4's dumbass defense system>You need as much defence as an enemy's attack to make it do 50% damage>50% of what is potentially a huge amount of damage means some enemies just rip your ass apart in short order anyways>But comically it means that lower-damage attacks quickly become mosquito-bites with no way to pierce armor like AP rounds or anything>So that huge fuckoff minigun-equipped enemy? He's actually hurting you less than that dickhead next to him with the rusty bolt action rifle>Even the biggest beefiest regular armor barely protects you from 'serious' enemies like high level deathclaws>Meanwhile the lowest level power armor you find in 30 minutes will outclass any regular armor even in the endgame>Lol whoops unless you wore some clothes under your armor and a top-hat, which you can both enhance with ballistic mesh to give you more armor than any actual non-power armor
>>729915508You can tank in ReLink but only with those busted guaranteed dodge buffs that Lancelot and the midgets get
>>729941742Yeah and it feels pretty stupid in bg3, a random % of the next hit killing you or the enemy needing five hits to do it just because you got lucky kinda feels shitty, this is just XCOM bullshittery all over again, but to each their own >>729941981But ER doesn't go against my point, quite the opposite, because with ER they decided to mostly do away with the idea of a real defense stat and you just slowly move it up as you level, no matter what stat you invest into, and vigor (or health) is then making the idea of defense completely redundant, why invest in defense if you can just have more health? And then does it feel worthwhile to spend so many levels in some shitty stat all so that you can wear an armor that'll tank two waterfowls instead of one?No, of course it doesn't, which is why vigor was the stat to pump out asap and everyone would tell you to just do that
>>729941835Being able to take hits and do annoying shit for the rest of the match like spam status effects or set up hazards
>>729929330Dodge rolling infinitely is not gameplay. Fuck Soulsslop.
>>729901794because its only use is lowering the difficulty and stalling. all it does is either grant you an additional hit or 2 of durability at the cost of damage or delay the inevitable (if the opponent has higher DPS)>>729906671>Reasons Health is better than Defensedepends on the game>you take a gorillion damage from attacks. in most games you can heal for fixed amounts, meaning enemies can outdamage your heals>if defense doesn't scale linearly, some enemies may one-shot you>games often have (low-ish) hp caps>>poison and other damage over time often deal a fixed amount of damageexcept %hp damage exists precisely to counter hp stacking>>Any build where damage inflicted to a player is mirroredthat happens because most games rely on asymmetrical stats>The sole exception I can think of where you want defense instead of HPyou haven't really thought things through
>>729942665>this is just XCOM bullshittery all over again, but to each their ownDnD was always XCOM bullshittery, in fact it's the original one.Except the tabletop version is more heavily scripted by the DM so if an encounter ruins your day he can always bullshit whatever is necessary to continue, or at least make it not too painful to create another character to continue the campaign with. So what I'm trying to say is that the videogaem format isn't the best for accurate RPG mechanics, but you tell that to the entire western sphere.
>>729942665Because armor gives 4x more negation than your raw stats do and shields can negate everything by another 90% on top of that dumbfuckAnd thats without getting into buffs if you wanna do an actual no dodge run which plenty of autists have shown off by now.You can trivially beat every boss in the DLC that isn't bleed immune by hiding behind a greatshield with a bleed spear
>>729942829I think you're too retarded to even realize you're making my points for me
I upgrade it in turn based games but not real time action games because there is usually no point especially if you have a parry I also hate when enemies level woth you so you barely notice a difference after upgrading defense because enemies in the starter area you go back to do similar damage to ones later on
>>729942665ER uses both flat defense and percentage base defense, armor gives you percentage based defense and level ups (of all kinds but especially from STR) gives you flat defense, spells and talismans gives you a mix of both. You want as much as possible from both and the more of it you have the more effective your VIG becomes since your chances of survival scales off of all 3, shields is also defensive gear that is easier to use than dodging but it requires you to know different information about each attack that is thrown at you vs just dodging it.A lot of people dismiss how defensive stats work in ER because they only see the effectiveness of a singular one of them and thinks "this isn't good enough" when they should think about the impact that all 3 provides at once, it's the same as dismissing resistance, defense and health in any other RPG because "Resistance is useless against physical attacks" or "Health is the best since it lets you surive for longer regardless of any other modifier"
>>729901794>every dnd-like CRPG>always keep a healer support character and a tanky vanguard character >always really helps me have a smooth and fun time >every single guide on the internet:>>TANKING AND HEALING DOES NOT WORK IN THIS GAME, IT DOES NOT EXIST, OUR PARTY WILL BE ALL GLASS CANNON LOW LIFE BUILDS, OBVIOUSLY i don't get itit works on my machine
>>729901794>character's offense scales with DEF>stack DEF hell yeah I'll be invincible AND do damage>ends up having shitty both survivability and damage output
>>729939786>HP increased from 50 to 75> +50% increase in survivability>Armor increased from 50% to 75%> +100% increase in survivabilityIncrease HP at low levels, increase armor at high levels. Each point of % damage reduction has an ever greater effect at higher percentages.
>>729901794Because it's usually a compensation for low skill.If you get better at the game it's wasted points
>>729902776>poise actually workingi kneel...
>>729902776Eat shit dexfag.
>>729931154What did they do to Aggron?I thought it would be cool to raise one with max defense. Thought it could tank even a x4 weakness fighting type move. It couldn't. Then I remembered all fighting types have massive attack scores.
>>729903257Every subsequent Spiderweb remake is mechanically worse than the game it's remaking. I don't know how he does it.
>>729901794Because you either survive 1-3 more attacks than normal at the cost of other stats like speed which probably isn't worth it or you can reach damage reduction so high you basically have 5 times more health than normal. Finding the sweet spot is hard, even more so if it's a multiplayer game, there are ways of raising your max HP etc.
>>729903690>rollfat
>>729901794>Why is this stat useless in 99% of games?It isn't.It exists to mitigate the damage you can receive so you can more opportunities to survive a combat, not to trivialize damage and thus the game's challenge.If it were too effective it would make things boring.
>>729942746Mad 'cause bad.
>Pokemon trying to make a defensive Rock type work every gen since the first>every single time they suck because Rocks weaknesses are terrible to have>they finally make it work but they have to make the most overtuned piece of shit imaginable to do so (signature ability that makes it completely immune to status AND gives it an extra resistance, and signature move that actively punishes its own hard counters, Water and Steel, for entering on it)>is literally made of salt
>>729931770Why is your Valk sitting at -40 AC, That's like taking super hits every time
>>729943994My nigga. Loved these games over the newer ones.
>>729929253Sounds like a fair trade? You can build damage, you are required to perform better to not die, and in return the fights are faster. You can build defense, you can take a lot of abuse and ignore some mechanics, but in return the fights are slow. Building insane defense is usually more resource or know-how demanding than acceptable offense, so becoming immortal (albeit slow) is a fun reward for the effort.
More games should use a damage threshold system.
>>729928091Nioh 2 is great at continuing the power fantasy when you get your build together and gitgud at the game. Taking hits and dumpstering bosses isn't out of reach for even casual play
