Does +5 defense on a weapon really makes a diference?

I have seen people talking about +5 defense on weapons and all...

And I just like to know if that makes a BIG differece, or is it just a little?

8.3% less damage. Up to you.

This is completely wrong.
If it would deal 100 damage and you have 60 AL you take 100 damage. If you have 100 AL you take 50 damage. + 5 AL reduces damage by 8.3%, or deals you 91.7% of the damage, hence, 92 damage from a 100 damage hit on 65 AL, or 46 damage from the same hit at 105 AL.

The formulae are

[Actualized Damage] = [Effective Damage] × [Defensive Adjustment]

[Defensive Adjustment] = 2((60 - [Armor Level]) / 40)

So at 60 AL it's 2^0=1, or the exact damage dealt. At 65 it's 2^-0.125=0.917, or an 8.3% reduction.

I was wrong, sorry.

i think it's useless, get a health mod.

really depends on personal preference. more health or more defense. when getting attacked, it'll all be relative for the most part anyways. you'll still live a few seconds longer with either.

go get a health mod, my grents ballance loves to kill thoose

Armour is better than health in most instances - 5 more AL will grant the equivalent of 9.05% more health vs the damage it protects against. Given the average healths are 450+ on lvl 20 characters that's 40+ more health (and thus about a 10 health edge over the health bonus), without healing - as soon as you get into a healing situation it gets more complex - let's say that over the course of the battle your healer will heal you for 300 health, and an enemy is dealing 800 damage at you before your 60 (and thus 65 AL) - start out at 510 health with 60AL or 480 health with 65 (difference of a +30 instead of +5 AL).

the +30 health ends up at 10 health.
the +5 AL ends up at 46 health. So in fact the more damage you suffer (not surprisingly) the bigger the effect - if the damage fluxed a great deal
(say you were dealt 1800 damage and healed for 1300? Sounds like a lot, but the center of attention can go through a lot of health in a short amount of time)

the +30 health ends up at 10 health.
the +5 AL ends up at 129 health.

Reduce the healing a bit (by 10 for example) and one is dead while the other one has 100+ health left. The more damage suffered the better the AL bonus is, but provided that you have >= 360 health or so the 5 AL will be better than the +30 health even without healing in the picture.

There are time when health is better - like vs degeneration (poison, bleeding etc) and vs damage that ignores armour (health steals, shadow damage/holy damage from spells).

I think it's 6.25 % less dmg. 40 armor is 50% less damage, and 5 is 1/8 of 40, hence the 6.25%

Health is the newbie trap. Go with armor in most circumstances. I'd much rather have 70+10 AL with my monk than 60 extra hp and 60+10 AL considering that dot/holy or shadow attacks aren't too effective anyway.

The Defense upgrades are statistically better than the Health upgrades.
As someone pointed out, +5 Defense is about ~8% extra damage reduction. A health upgrade that caps at +30 means you live what, one, two attacks longer than would normally?

People like the health upgrades because in their eyes, big numbers > small numbers. Not the case here.

Please don't post opinions about facts. You are wrong, it is 2^-5/40 which is ~.917, or a reduction of 8.3%. If you try it with 40 you get 2^-40/40, which is 2^-1, or 0.5, a 50% reduction.

It most certainly does not depend upon personal preference - that would mean that the decision was arbitrary. What color to dye your armor is personal preference. Whether fortitude or defense is better, on the other hand, is a pure effectiveness question, and that doesn't give one whit about what you'd prefer.


So, what do the numbers say?

They say that there's a fundamental difference between the two modifiers. The +armor that a defense upgrade gives you is damage prevention, actively mitigating every hit that you take and making you that much tougher to kill. Fortitude, on the other hand, is merely spike protection. You now take 30 more damage to spike out than before.

What's the difference? Epinephrine covered that pretty well - defense never stops working, while fortitude is effectively a one shot deal. As long as you don't dip below 31 hit points, the fortitude mod might as well not exist. On the other hand, a defensive part helps with every single hit, helping your healers whether you've taken ten damage or a thousand. Basically, defense is a fundamentally stronger mechanic. Then once you crunch the numbers and see that defensive gives better spike protection as well for more characters, and the choice looks like a no-brainer.

But there are other factors to consider that make the difference smaller than it might initially appear, and I'm not just talking about specialized skill interactions.

First, there's overhealing. The benefit of the defensive upgrade, besides the spike protection, is that it takes less heals to get them back to full health after they've taken damage. But in reality, a healing skill cannot be tailored to exactly match up with the amount of damage taken, for maximum efficiency. A healer has to make due with the limited healing tools he has, and oftentimes that means using a bigger heal than needed for the job. That extra healing is effectively wasted. Now on a character with a defense upgrade, that waste conflicts with the benefits gained from the damage mitigation, but on a character with a fortitude upgrade some of that extra healing goes straight into damage that *wasn't* prevented. This doesn't mean that defense isn't a better modifier in these cases - it is, especially when things are tight - but that when things aren't tight the extra benefit from defensive doesn't matter either.

Another thing to keep in mind is damage that ignores armor. From DoT to ignores armor spells to damage bonuses from skills, there's an awful lot of damage out there that doesn't really care how much armor you have. Now for a caster with a 60 AL, this isn't particularly important. Damage that ignores armor has pretty much the same effect as damage that doesn't ignore armor, so you can just look at the most dangerous spikes - damage tha does care about armor - see that +armor is much better there, and make your decision. It gets a bit sketchier for Warriors and Rangers though, because they have so much more armor. A Warrior, for example, is not particularly worried about conventional, armor-using damage. It's all going to be cut in half by his heavy armor, plus shield bonuses, plus absorption - basically, protection against that sort of damage is a non-issue. What does chew up a Warrior is damage that ignores armor - getting a bunch of DoTs stacked up, or getting Empathy slapped on him, or something of that sort. That'll rip through a Warrior much faster than anything that cares about armor. So to that end, something that helps against the sorts of spikes that a Warrior is afraid of - +health - is much more valuable than piling a little more armor on.

So which ends up being better?

Well, if we look at both of these upgrades through the lens of the fortitude upgrade - that is, spike resistance - then defensive is the winner in all but the most extreme circumstances. If you're using but a single superior attribute rune with a superior vigor, +5 armor is going to provide better mechanical defense along with better protection from even air spikes, regardless of class. You should have enough of a hit point buffer that the difference from DoTs and other ignore armor effects should be negligible.

If you're using multiple superior attribute runes, then fortitude becomes more attractive because of the ignore armor effects, though the spike protection remains comparable. Warriors and Rangers, who more rightly fear ignore armor effects, will probably want to switch to fortitude at this point, while casters should stick with +defense for all of the healing likely heading their way.


So there's your general rule: +defense with one superior or two superiors or less on a caster, +health when you're using two or more superiors on a Warrior or Ranger, or when using three or more superiors on a caster.

Peace,
-CxE

Charles, Epin: Thank you VERY much for explaining that. I've been looking for a solid explination/formula for damage calculations for a long time and I never knew (obviously) that +5 armor had as much of an effect.

*cheers*

x2

Kick ass info and thanks for it!

Makes me love my +17 armor bow

You must mean +7, since thats as high as you'll ever find. Even shields max out at +16.

I've got a question regarding defensive upgrades.

I have a +5 defense Bow Grip, and a +7 (vs physical) staff upgrade.

Are these "perfect"?

Thanks!

The +5 is perfect(I am not sure, correct me if I am wrong) and I don't believe the +7 is perfect, as most perfect numbers are mulitples of 5 (and again, correct if wrong)

Consider yourself corrected. +7 vs physical or elem. is as good as it gets for shelter and warding mods. +5 is the max. regular defense mod, as you said.