Spiral Knights - Defense and UV questions

Defense and UV questions

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Tue, 12/13/2011 - 15:26

Kalaina-Elderfall

I've been reading up on everything I can find regarding how exactly defense translates into damage. The problem is, the results don't all consistently indicate the same thing, and there's no truly conclusive test that's been done that I can find. So here are my questions:

1) There are three options for how defense works: diminishing returns, constant returns, and increasing returns.

Diminishing returns - If one equip takes off X% of the damage, the second equip of the same type takes off X% of the remaining damage.

So which is it? Specifically, if I'm going up against an attack that deals 50% normal and 50% piercing, would I be better off with two equips that resist normal, or one equip that resists normal and one equip that resists piercing? And how much better off would I be?

2) The defense bars in the character screen. Are they really worthless?

3) Damage types. Does nearly everything really do partial normal in T3? And if so, is it true that attacks that do partial normal are 50% normal or can they be something else like 25% normal?

4) Status effects. Does a status effect chance really have no effect on the damage dealt by an attack?

5) UVs. Is a high UV really roughly equivalent to the defense typically offered on an equip? How much better is a max UV?

I'm really not looking for specific blow-by-blow damage calculations, although that would be nice. I'm really just looking for the general idea of how equipment affects how you take damage and how best to prepare for any given area defensively. And how certain anyone is as to the truth of any of these things. Thanks in advance.

Wed, 12/14/2011 - 12:57

Culture

Great questions

1. As far as we know, Diminishing Returns is the manner in which damage defense and status resistance works:
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/User:Antistone

You should be better off with one piece of each defense, against a split attack the defense should come out to 50.6% vs 44.1%. I've tried testing Full Vog vs Skolver/Divine and it seems to be the case. The different between 50 and 44% though is like 0-1 pips of damage depending on the magnitude. Personally, I'm much more worried about getting hit by a pure damage attack when I'm using a mixed set. That hurts much more.

2. Defensive bars seem accurate now. Previously UVs were too strong for their size and some trinkets simply didn't work. That has all been fixed as far as I can tell.

3. Yep, lots of normal in T3. In T3 I think it is always 50%. Haven't looked closely.
Edit - I should clarify. In T3, if an attack is split normal/special it seems to be half and half. For example, a wolver bite is split in T3 between normal and piercing. If you have just Shadow/Elemental defense then the number of bars falling off should be even between red and yellow. If you are wearing full Vog, you'll see a lot more yellow than red bars falling off.

4. More soon...

Tue, 12/13/2011 - 17:54

Ween-Bot

3) In T3, some attacks

3) In T3, some attacks (especially projectiles like Kat bullets and Jelly spikes) do pure special damage. However I've looked at the colours of damage bars when I get hit by split attacks and it seems to be less normal than special (about 25% normal to 75% special). A few enemies always do pure normal damage, but overall you'll want more specialised defense than normal defense in T3, compared to T2.

4) I don't think Statuses affect damage dealt to you personally. However if a shield absorbs a status effect it seems to take more damage (depending on its resistance to that status). For example, in poison brambles (which inflict Normal damage with a chance of Poison), a Skelly Shield will break slower than an Owlite Shield.

5) I can't really tell you much about UVs, but apparently a low UV is much better than no UV at all in terms of defense. That kinda fits with the diminishing returns system.

Tue, 12/13/2011 - 20:00

Kalaina-Elderfall

Er, part of my post got cut

Er, part of my post got cut but I don't think it matters.

I think that all makes sense. I'm gonna work with this:

It doesn't really matter too much which part of an attack you defend against so long as you're defending against parts of the attack in the first place. The reason split sets seem weak is because the returns don't diminish THAT much and defending against an attack twice is significantly better than defending against it once, and in most strata you don't have too many types of damage to contend with.

My remaining questions:

1) Original question 5. How do UVs compare to regular defense? Are good UVs actually more important than regular armor defense? Or not?

2) Are UV bars accurate? They seem like they're still too short for their effects if they're comparable to regular armor defenses.

3) In the face on diminishing returns, is there a point where it just doesn't make sense to add more defense? I.e. if you have a pierce hat and pierce armor, does having a max pierce on one of them still provide a decent enough bonus to allow you to take more hits? And if you have max pierce on both, does that provide a decent enough further bonus? Or is there some threshold where adding more defense is just splitting hairs over negligible amounts of damage?

Wed, 12/14/2011 - 13:18

Culture

More...

1 - UV compared to regular defense

For Damage Defense UVs they are much weaker. If you check out Antistone's damage predictions you'll see that a UV Max is about a third the strength of Vog Cub's Normal defense. So a UV Piercing Max on Vog isn't anything like Skolver. If you want to defend against an attack type one should just get armor that defenses against it initially.

For Status Resistance, a UV Max seems to be the same as 5* armor's original resistance. So a UV Fire Max is as good as Vog's Fire resistance.

2 - Bar length

The UV defense bar length is incredibly short. This is probably accurate. I've tried various armors with UV Max on the testing server and they all defend an additional 0 to 1 pips of health for typical attacks like a Zombie swipe or Howlitzer projectile. Something like a Vanaduke/Trojan smash with Max Normal should see more than just 1 pip reduction, just because defense is percentage-based.

3 - Diminishing returns

For PvE, definitely. Adding that UV Max Pierce to full Skolver... you'd rarely run into situations where it would have made a difference. This would be moving your piercing resistance from 39.9% to about 46.6%. With most hits that is 1/2 pip of damage. Not worth it in my opinion. For PvP though, Full Skolver with one Max Pierce might mean you can kill the other Striker and still have a pip of health left if you are trading blows and have even health.

On status resistance, once you get to two 5* pieces like full Vog for fire resistance or one piece of Vog with UV Fire Max then there isn't a lot more you can do. If you add another UV Fire Max you might take the amount of time down by 1/2 second, which might remove an additional burn, but it isn't going to be noticeable. The nice thing is that you can get a Vog Cub Coat with Max Fire and be all set for fire resistance. Going into a fire strata you can wear that coat and then any hat that fancies you. Or... you can make a Vog set that has Max Shock on each piece and have plenty of shock resistance for any shock depth. Even UV Max + UV High is plenty and will protect from vapor bombs in Lockdown.

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Defense and UV questions