What is defense stat?

jawa7778

Hey everyone. So Sith Empire Trooper has a unique that gives him 100% defense, but I can't find an actual stat called defense. Characters have a stat called Armor, but nothing called defense? Are armor and defense the same thing?

littleMAC77

jawa7778 wrote: »

Hey everyone. So Sith Empire Trooper has a unique that gives him 100% defense, but I can't find an actual stat called defense. Characters have a stat called Armor, but nothing called defense? Are armor and defense the same thing?

The quick answer is sort of.

I believe that defense is the general underlying stat that drives Armor and Resistance. Armor decreases the damage taken from physical damage attacks, Resistance decreases damage from special damage attacks. Similar to how offense impacts Physical offense and Special offense.

Now, as for improving defense stats: there is a diminishing return to increases due to how it is calculated. In this case you are doubling their defense stat, but that will not change his Armor form 40% to 80%. I wish i had a better technical understanding of exactly what that doubling would do, but maybe someone else has more info.

UdalCuain

Armour (against physical damage) and resistance (against special damage) form defense.

Sith Empire Trooper's unique doubles both of those stats.

jawa7778

Okay. Thanks guys for responding. That makes sense. So if a Relic 7 Sith Empire Trooper has
55.87% Armor, he gains 100% from his unique so he has 155.87% and then if you have a triple defense set he gains another 75% defense for a total of 230.87% defense? Is that correct?

UdalCuain

jawa7778 wrote: »

Okay. Thanks guys for responding. That makes sense. So if a Relic 7 Sith Empire Trooper has
55.87% Armor, he gains 100% from his unique so he has 155.87% and then if you have a triple defense set he gains another 75% defense for a total of 230.87% defense? Is that correct?

The 100% from his unique is multiplicative not additive, so it doubles the armour and resistance valued. You don't add the 100%. In your example for armour: 55.87 x 2 = 111.74. Not sure what happens in relation to mods though.

jawa7778

UdalCuain wrote: »

jawa7778 wrote: »

Okay. Thanks guys for responding. That makes sense. So if a Relic 7 Sith Empire Trooper has
55.87% Armor, he gains 100% from his unique so he has 155.87% and then if you have a triple defense set he gains another 75% defense for a total of 230.87% defense? Is that correct?

The 100% from his unique is multiplicative not additive, so it doubles the armour and resistance valued. You don't add the 100%. In your example for armour: 55.87 x 2 = 111.74. Not sure what happens in relation to mods though.

Ohhh, okay. I assume that since mods are added before battle and then leaderships and unique are added at the start of battle that it would add the stats for mods and then double it?

Mephisto_style

I have heard that there are diminishing returns on the defense stat, so it is probably logarithmic. You could always perform a line of best fit in a spreadsheet by putting a variety of mods on and plotting the armor changes, although I know another player made a defense stat calculator somewhere in a spreadsheet

ImaSmakya

Not sure if this will help or not but...

https://sirggames.com/2019/08/16/swgoh-defense-calculator-for-armor-and-resistance/

EduardoCadav

Discussion and understanding of defense in SWGOH is significantly hindered by the fact that the actual stat used in the damage calculation is not included in the in game character stat screen. Instead what is shown is the % damage reduction, separated for physical and special damage, that occurs when attacked by a character with zero defense penetration. This choice of display, while useful to quickly judge expected damage mitigation numbers, results in a lot of confusion when extra % defense comes from mods or abilities and also leads to myths like the defense has diminishing returns idea.

Put as simply as possible, each character has a flat number stat for armor and resistance which is used in the damage calculation, each time damage is dealt in battle. This flat value is what is modified by mods and abilities. It can only be found by back calculation from the % value in the in game stat screen or on external sites like swgoh.gg. At G13, Armor is in a range of 142 (NS acolyte) up to 781 (Fives) while resistance ranges from 63 (carth) up to 669 (Scarif Pathfinder).

For Sith Empire Trooper at g13 his armor is 453 and his resistance is 478. When modding tanks it's reasonable to aim for adding about 100% defense from mods (2 sets, 1 6dot primary and average of 6% secondary on the other mods) with an average of 15 flat defense secondary per mod an additional 90 flat defense can be achieved. Sticking with just armor, for SET this would give you a modded armor value = 453 + (453 * 100%) + 90 = 996. (EDIT: Originally used 960 here because of typo) In battle you would then receive an additional 100% defense, i.e. your defense would be 960 + (960*100%) = 1920. With the buff defense up he would gain an additional 50% defense i.e. 1920 + (960*50%) = 2400.

All those numbers can be translated into the % value you see in the stat screen in game as follows;

Armor% = (armor*100) / (armor+(Level*7.5))

the level is the character level and why you see some lower level characters look like they have ridiculously high armor%.

For G13 SET without mods armor = 453 so Armor% = 41.54%
For G13 SET with mods suggested above armor = 960 so Armor% = 60.09%
For modded G13 SET above, in battle armor = 1920 so Armor% = 75.07%
For above in battle SET with defense up armor = 2400 so Armor% = 79.01%

As you can see just in this small example is that the Armor% (what is displayed on the in game stats) looks like it has diminishing returns. In the first instance armor is increased over 100% from 453 to 960 and the armor% only increases ~19% (additive). Increasing armor by another 100% to 1920 then only adds ~15% damage mitigation. If you stop thinking of each point of armor% as adding a constant amount of survivability however, and consider it in the context of Effective Health = Health + Protection / ( 1 - (Armor% / 100) ) then you'll see adding defense (changing the flat value of armor) does not have diminishing returns.

Train

Good explanation by Eduardo. In the %Armor equation, I believe “level” is the attackers level, not the defenders. For the purposes of showing the stat on the character screen, it uses that characters level, but in battle I believe it uses the attackers level.