I've been wanting to know this for a long time, and finally decided to make a thread on it. Basically, I want to know how damage and defense works in SK, specifically the algorithms.
It's pretty obvious that there are four defense and damage types being elemental, piercing, shadow and normal. We all know that if a monster or an enemy player (Lockdown) doesn't have have resistance against the damage type we are inflicting, they are weak to us and therefore receive "Strong damage". If they DO have defense, our weapon damage is minimal and categorized as "Weak". Normal damage is "Neutral" and does intermediate or average damage.
Aside from strength's and weakness's, something I've wanted to do for a while is know the damage or defense values of gear. In-game, an item's stats are show as bars with pips but there are no actually numeric values. Is there any way to know how much defense a piece of armor has? If so, is there also a way to know the same thing with weapons?
For example: If I have a full Vog set, each armor piece having 70 normal defense and 55 elemental defense, giving me a total of 140 normal and 110 elemental defense, will a Nova Driver with 300 points of elemental damage do 190 damage to me (300-110)? Does the normal defense even factor in?
What if we changed the situation a bit so that instead of a Nova Driver, someone slashed me with an Acheron that has 350 points of shadow and normal damage. How does the game calculate the two elements hitting me at the same time, is it like two separate attacks or is it one attack of 700 points of damage. (BTW, how does this affect my health percent?)
Anyway, I wanted to try to figure this out to know exactly how many hits I can take before dying in PvE and Lockdown, and get a better understanding of what trinkets and gear I should take.
Note: I read all the "Defense" and "Damage" guides on the wiki but they aren't as in depth as I would like, and didn't explain everything I want to know.
Aside from strength's and weakness's, something I've wanted to do for a while is know the damage or defense values of gear. In-game, an item's stats are show as bars with pips but there are no actually numeric values. Is there any way to know how much defense a piece of armor has? If so, is there also a way to know the same thing with weapons?
I don't remember whether people have precise measurements on armor. Maybe. We have precise measurements on weapon damage. You can get the raw numbers from hitting lost souls and howlitzer heads, which have no armor. If you're willing to correct for armor, then you can also use the numbers in the damage table on each weapon's wiki page.
For example: If I have a full Vog set, each armor piece having 70 normal defense and 55 elemental defense, giving me a total of 140 normal and 110 elemental defense, will a Nova Driver with 300 points of elemental damage do 190 damage to me (300-110)? Does the normal defense even factor in?
As the Defense article says, each damage type is treated independently. So your normal armor will have no effect on a Nova Driver attack. Your 55 elemental defense will subtract from Nova Driver's 300, leaving you with 245 lost health.
What if we changed the situation a bit so that instead of a Nova Driver, someone slashed me with an Acheron that has 350 points of shadow and normal damage. How does the game calculate the two elements hitting me at the same time, is it like two separate attacks or is it one attack of 700 points of damage. (BTW, how does this affect my health percent?)
You're supposing that Acheron has 175 normal and 175 shadow? Then your Vog Cub blocks 70 normal and 0 shadow. So 105 normal and 175 shadow gets through your armor. So your health is decreased by 280. And each pip of health is 40 points. So you lose 7 pips.
You might want to re-read the section "Large Attacks" in the "Defense" article. It does several explicit examples like this. I hope that this helps. :)