Where are the builds that don't dump resolve?

[Livegood118]

Yeah, must say I get a lot of mileage out of having average to good stats across the board. A good fit for me would be lots of 15's and 14's. It makes a pretty well balanced character. And it doesn't suffer as a jack of all, master of none - Pillars stats just don't work that way. In fact I reckon there is an argument that it makes the character stronger especially when you factor in all the stat boosting items.

 

 

In terms of actual effect, I think an argument can be made that the "best stat" e.g. the one that increasing makes the biggest difference, is intellect. It confers a pure multiplicative benefit to most abilities it interacts with and because of the way the equation works out in game works really effectively with CC crits e.g. a crit with a 10 second CC spell at 10 Int and the same one at 20 Int is 15 seconds vs 22.5 seconds respectively, which is another 3/4 of the way there to having another cast of the base spell again.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Livegood118

[hilfazer]

It's sad and strange at the same time that Resolve is so glaringly unbalanced with Perception: 1 deflectionequals about 0.5 accuracy.

 

 

Yes, people think it's bad because its description says "27% of damage". But it's 27% of the higher crit damage:

 

100 (normal damage) + 50% (crit) = 150

 

150 * (1-0.27) = 109.5

 

So, a bit less than 10% bonus damage you have to soak up instead of 50%

 

It worked really well on a solo PotD priest of Berath with dumped RES who used Tidefall and wore Sanguine Plate + Shod-in-Faith.

Crits are only 150% damage if attacker doesn't have any damage bonuses. Edited March 29, 2017 by hilfazer

[Livegood118]

It's sad and strange at the same time that Resolve is so glaringly unbalanced with Perception: 1 deflectionequals about 0.5 accuracy.

 

 

Yes, people think it's bad because its description says "27% of damage". But it's 27% of the higher crit damage:

 

100 (normal damage) + 50% (crit) = 150

 

150 * (1-0.27) = 109.5

 

So, a bit less than 10% bonus damage you have to soak up instead of 50%

 

It worked really well on a solo PotD priest of Berath with dumped RES who used Tidefall and wore Sanguine Plate + Shod-in-Faith.

Crits are only 150% damage if attacker doesn't have any damage bonuses.

 

 

Boeroer's math seems to indicate that the belt works inclusive of any bonus to damage.

 

So if you had a 100 base damage attack, 20 Might (+30% DMG) and Crit (+50%) Damage, that'd be 180 damage total, which would be reduced by *(1-0.27) = 131.4 on a crit. An ordinary hit would be 130 damage, before DR is taken in to account.

 

Funnily enough, it seems with higher might (say 25 Might for +45% DMG) a hit would actually do more damage than a crit e.g. 142.35 (crit) vs 145 (hit).

 

Can't think of many attacks in the game that have 100 base damage though ... Dragon Breath?

 

Also not sure what you mean by 1 deflection = 0.5 accuracy.

[Boeroer]

 

 

Crits are only 150% damage if attacker doesn't have any damage bonuses.

I didn't say anything different.

 

And obviously I chose 100 as base because you can easily add 50% to it. Not because some creature does 100 damage per hit or something.

 

In fact I do not exactly know how the Girdle works when additional damage bonuses are at work, but it's not taking away 27% of the crit bonus damage alone - that would be quite whimpy. And my tests and the whole playthrough indicated that it's calculated differently. I saw no big difference between hits and crits. 

[hilfazer]

Also not sure what you mean by 1 deflection = 0.5 accuracy.

I'm being generous here and consider deflection to be as good as 3 other defenses togehter. If it's weaker then imbalance between RES and PER is even greater.

 

Everyone knows that accuracy is rolled against all defenses so:

 

1 acc = 1 def + 1 ref + 1 for + 1 wil

 

assuming 1 def = 1 ref + 1 for + 1 wil we have

 

1 acc = 1 def + 1 def

 

and after simplification

 

0.5 acc = 1 def

[Boeroer]

Erm... what? 

[Livegood118]

More accuracy (Perception) is pretty much always useful for most characters, up until you reach the point where you start never missing, after which diminishing returns kick in relative to other stats. Arguably a case can be made for accuracy being more useful on characters that use duration based damage, CC effects and attacks with larger base damage.

 

Deflection is far and away the most useful defence, so much so that the ways of stacking it have been consistently nerfed throughout development (such as reducing different classes' base deflection, and changing perception from a deflection bonus to an accuracy bonus). It'll be the defence that's hit the hardest and most frequently by pretty much every single character in the game. Most afflictions in the game can be cured by a priest or by scrolls or by other abilities whereas there's no cure at all for having ****ty deflection.

 

1 deflection doesn't really = 0.5 accuracy as they're both different things with different purposes and have different kinds of utility on different characters. 

Edited March 30, 2017 by Livegood118

[Natures Bounty]

well but htis is somewhat subjective. i would say that fortitude is by far the most important defense overall. it protects you from the most annoying afflictions, particularly from being stunned. and there is no aoe priest spell or scroll that protects your whole party against it.

being stunned, paralyzed or petrified is far more annoying than just being hit by normal weapon attacks. and you can easily get enough deflection to not be hit all the time even on potd and even if you do not max resolve. there are even manifold builds that evolve around items that require being hit!

this is why i would consider fortitude the more important defense overall. in my opinion, you do not need more than 10 resolve on any kind of build, but that may be due to my dislike for pure tanks.

[Livegood118]

well but htis is somewhat subjective. i would say that fortitude is by far the most important defense overall. it protects you from the most annoying afflictions, particularly from being stunned. and there is no aoe priest spell or scroll that protects your whole party against it.

being stunned, paralyzed or petrified is far more annoying than just being hit by normal weapon attacks. and you can easily get enough deflection to not be hit all the time even on potd and even if you do not max resolve. there are even manifold builds that evolve around items that require being hit!

this is why i would consider fortitude the more important defense overall. in my opinion, you do not need more than 10 resolve on any kind of build, but that may be due to my dislike for pure tanks.

 

 

That's true to an extent, however I still think deflection is the most important overall in the majority of cases.

 

I would rank defences as follows Deflection -> Fort -> Reflex -> Will

 

Sure, you can't really "cure" prone and stun other than casting suppress affliction/liberating exhortation or one of the single target priest protection spells, but for that there's the preservation enchantment which more or less nullifies the afflictions (other than keeping the char immobile) and will give you a defensive boost too. 

 

Deflection and Fortitude are definitely useful on everyone, but I bet if you tanked deflection you'd notice it much sooner than if you tanked fortitude. 

[hilfazer]

Erm... what? 

I was talking about how valuable things are.

 

 

 

 

1 deflection doesn't really = 0.5 accuracy as they're both different things with different purposes and have different kinds of utility on different characters. 

 

One of their purposes is to counter each other. If an attacker raises its accuracy by X defender needs to raise his deflection by X as well to mach attacker's increase in accuracy.

But not just deflection!

He also needs to raise his reflex, fortitude and will by X. Otherwise an attacker would have easier time hitting defender's will/reflex/fort and balance would change.

[Livegood118]

One of their purposes is to counter each other. If an attacker raises its accuracy by X defender needs to raise his deflection by X as well to mach attacker's increase in accuracy.

But not just deflection!

He also needs to raise his reflex, fortitude and will by X. Otherwise an attacker would have easier time hitting defender's will/reflex/fort and balance would change.

 

 

If someone asked me whether I wanted +10 Deflection or +10 accuracy on a character I would probably say "it depends".

 

The value of either is dependant on a variety of different factors, including, but not limited to:

 

– The class of the character getting it e.g. whether it's more defensive or offensive, whether accuracy or staying alive is more valuable to increasing dps, whether it can actually do much damage in the first place, whether they're going to be using CC etc ...

– What existing equipment the character is using

– Other party members, and the extent that they can buff stats such that further boosts become less effective

– What kind of opponent I'm fighting e.g. how often is my deflection going to be tested, how high is its deflection

– Do I want this character taking hits (e.g. offtank to attract aggro, spell holding items)

 

While accuracy arguably becomes less valuable the more you can stack, I don't think you ever reach the point in ordinary gameplay where not having more deflection is a great thing if you can get away with it given how often it is tested. It massively increases in value the more you can stack, e.g.:

 

– When deflection and accuracy are equal, there'll be a 15% chance to miss, 35% chance of half damage and 50% chance full damage

– If Deflection is 50 points above accuracy, there'll be a 65% chance to miss and 35% chance to do half damage

 

In the first scenario, if a character was hit 100 times with an attack that did average 15 damage, on average they'd take 762.5 damage. In the second with the same attack strength the character would only take 262.5 damage, which is 34% of the damage you would have otherwise taken had you not got that 50 deflection (e.g. a 66% reduction in damage). It scales much more nicely than increased accuracy.

 

Also, many of the status effects tied to fortitude or other defensive stats have an initial deflection component, whereby if the attack misses then the secondary status effect cannot come in to effect.

 

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say at least 85-90% of the damage incurred by a party in any given playthrough comes from attacks to the deflection stat.

[Ensign]

 

One of their purposes is to counter each other. If an attacker raises its accuracy by X defender needs to raise his deflection by X as well to mach attacker's increase in accuracy.

But not just deflection!

He also needs to raise his reflex, fortitude and will by X. Otherwise an attacker would have easier time hitting defender's will/reflex/fort and balance would change.

 

 

Which is absolutely true.  If you had two otherwise identical clones beating on each other, with the only difference being one pumping perception at the cost of resolve, the high perception clone has the advantage - since all of their non-deflection targeting abilities would be more likely to land.

 

We can have a lively debate on the relative merits of the different pieces of defense - maybe +1 deflection is 90% as valuable as +1 accuracy in the clone war, maybe it's only 50% as valuable - but it's less valuable, in a vacuum, without question.

 

That doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the game, where your fights are decidedly *not* otherwise mirror matches, and situational factors dominate.  In a more general context, resolve is interesting in that it has both increasing returns and discontinuous jumps in effectiveness, giving you three clear optimal points to hit - maximum possible to get full increasing returns benefits, just enough to avoid incoming crits, and full dump.