Can someone please explain how defense works?
I was looking at sith trooper and his unique gives him 100% defense. I have no idea what it does for him. Can someone explain or send a link to a thread that explains?
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Howdy, Stranger!
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Use the calculator in the post above, to work out what your modded armor/resistance is by matching the percentage reduction from your stats screen and reading out the flat number the calculator gives you. Now double the flat number (if it was 400, use 800) and enter it back into the calculator and it will give you the resultant damage reduction that sith trooper will have in combat. Use 2.5x if you want to simulate for Defense Up,
Does the defense ever cap at some point? Like if he has 30% base armor, doubles it to 60% defense and then gives himself Defense up wouldn't that give him effectively 90% armor? Or does defense up only go off of base armor which would be 75% total damage reduction.
No ones talking about Defense mods, we're talking about defense uniques and defense up. Everyone already knows to stack protection.
Defense boosts on characters with already high defense is best, but as a rule of thumb it is easier to just stack protection on your character. Both protection and defense (armor) help your character survive longer, but the game tends to give you more bang for your buck with protection
Defense and damage reduction is 2 different things, how did you read the links and not understand that? Giving 100% bonus to the defense doubles up the defense value but it does not double your damage reduction because of the 'diminishing' returns. You have to actually input the values to the defense calculator to check how much it benefits each specific character.
Since you are so interested in Sith Trooper, let us look at his stats and see the effects of his unique.
As max level, his defense is 264 according to swgoh.gg.
His damage reduction comes up to 264/(264+(85*7.5)) = 29.29%.
If you doubled his defense, 528/(528+(85*7.5)) = 45.31%
So you can see that there is diminishing returns and that there isn't a need for any cap since it will never hit 100%.
Defense is damage reduction that's applied to an attack as a percentage. So if you have 20% Armor (which mitigates physical damage) and take an attack for 1000 damage, then you lose 800 life. It's complexified by the fact that all you'll see on your screen is the big 800 number since there's no damage lig.
Armor reduces physical damage, Resistance reduces special damage. "Defense" refers to both Armor and Resitance. So if something increases your Defense by 10%, both will go up equally.
Here's where stuff gets wonky. When you look at a piece of gear, it says (for example) +5 Armor. Your defense stats are a flat number, but when you go to a character stat screen you'll see it expressed as a percentage. There's a formula that converts the raw number into the final value. Whenever an effect affects your defense (or armor or resistance specifically) it applies to that raw number. So in the example you asked about, if a Sith Trooper's Armor was 100 and Resistance was 50, the end result would be 200 Armor and 100 Resistance. If the mitigation percentages were 20% and 10% (making up numbers now) then that doubled Defense doesn't necessarily mean 40%/20% because the formula is whatever it is, and you can't assume it's totally linear.
The defense stat translates into % damage reduction (see the calculators above). Doubling your defense will NOT double your damage reduction. If that were true, it would be really easy to reach 100% damage reduction an be immune to damage.
Damage reduction can seem simple. Lets say you have a toon with 100 health that is getting hit for 100 damage. With 50% damage reduction, he only takes 50 damage, and can now take two hits instead of one before he dies. Using this simplistic approach, you can divide the toons health by 1 minus the % damage reduction to determine the effective health of the toon (100/.5=200). In other words, if you had a choice between +50% damage reduction and +500 health for a toon with 100 health, you would want to go with +500 health. If your toon has 1000 health, however, +50% damage reduction would net you +1000 extra health.
Now, once a toon has damage reduction, any additional health you add to them also adds effective health. That guy with 1000 health and 50% damage reduction? +10% more damage reduction would net you another (1000/.4=2500) +500 effective health, while +500 health would net you (1500/.5=3000) +1000 effective health.
This is starting to get confusing, but the point here is simple: For toons with high defense, health (or prot) is more effective than defense. For toons with high health, defense is more effective than health.
But then comes the wrench: Healing.
Lets consider our two options from previously: one toon with 1000 health and 60% damage reduction (let's call him Bob) and the other with 1500 health and 50% damage reduction (Jim). Based on the previous analysis, we would choose the Jim build, because he has 500 more effective health than Bob. BUT, lets try the two of them in combat against each other, and add offensive stats: each deals 1000 damage per hit, with 25% life steal:
Bob is worse, so he will go first.
Bob hits Jim for 500 damage and heals 125 (J: 1000, B: 1000)
Jim hits Bob for 400 damage and heals 100 (J: 1100, B: 600)
Bob hits Jim for 500 damage and heals 125 (J: 600, B: 725)
Jim hits Bob for 400 damage and heals 100 (J: 700, B: 325)
Bob hits Jim for 500 damage and heals 125 (J: 200, B: 450)
Jim hits Bob for 400 damage and heals 100 (J: 300, B: 50)
Bob hits Jim for 500 damage, heals 125, and wins!!! (J: -200, B: 175)
Bob took 3 1000 damage attacks, and had 175 health left over. His effective health was 3175
Jim took 4 1000 damage attacks and had -200 health left over. His effective health was 3800
Bob only won because he went first, so as always, speed is king-- BUT, Bob's defense not only increased his health-- it increase the effectiveness of his heals and REDUCED the effectiveness of his opponents lifesteal.
Give each of them a healer, and Bob may win regardless of who goes first.
Defense is not to be underestimated. Go take another look at the Stormtrooper, and consider him with defense mods and a healer.
https://swgoh.gg/u/arkham/, A Team
Ok, thank you for that, that was super helpful. I read both of those links posted above, but didn't see anything specifically about how the diminishing returns worked. The calculator is nice and all, but I wanted to know how the calculator worked, not just get the number out. Probably just skimmed over it too quickly.
Huh? Do you not know how percentages work? 25% of high damage is a lot more reduction than 25% of tiny damage.
The bigger argument against Defense is Armor Penetration. High damage attackers have high AP. General Greivous gets 105 AP, which basically translates to true damage on every attack against anyone who isn't a panzer tank.
Armor means nothing against:
EP, Krennic, DN, and many other special attacks that deal special damage.
Looking at sith trooper
Max base armor is 29.3%
Max base resistance is 20.9%