Spiral Knights - Defense/Resistance/Damage clarification

Defense/Resistance/Damage clarification

15 replies [Last post]

Thu, 05/12/2011 - 16:56

Kslo42

Legacy Username

This game could definitely use some defense/resistance/damage clarification. I have no proof of what I've learned other than the fact that I played around with some different gear and tested a few things. I encourage others to post any other information they come across, whether it is proven fact or just their own observation. Corrections to my post are fully welcome, as I am not 100% positive of it all. Hopefully this can provide newer players with the knowledge to understand the gear statistics in Spiral Knights.

For anyone who isn't sure how to check your characters overall stats, hover your mouse over the bottom row of items in your character's equipment screen(default p key). This will show you the cumulative Defense/Attack Power and Resists of your gear, as well as any bonuses you have(examples: Damage bonus:low, Good chance of causing strong freeze.)

Also, keep in mind that the rating system of bars, is not truly accurate in most cases. From what I have heard, each increasing 'bar' is worth more than the last, and additionally, your characters overall power is relative to the tier/depth you are in(for example, my 3* sword does around 90 damage on level 15, but only 30 damage on level 3.) Please note that I'm simply using the number of bars as a measurement for my explanations because, well, there's no other way of representing an items stat value.

-Shield's status resistances are only effective when blocking. From my testing I've decided that you CAN in fact get status conditions such as poison and fire when you are blocking an attack(although it seems to be a much lower chance), unless your shield has the respective resistance stat(all shield resistances are absolute from my understanding). This is the concept I am most unsure about... I'm certain that the shield status resistances do not grant you the respective protection when you are NOT blocking(having the icebreaker shield with full freeze resistance will not make you immune to being frozen while you are not blocking), but I've yet to fully determine how they DO work.

-Shield's defense power does not seem to affect your overall defense power like your armor and helm. I can't say for sure but I'm thinking that it provides additional protection for when you are blocking(so your block isn't broken as quickly).

-Shield's health is how much damage you can take while blocking, before your block is broken.

-Armor and Helm defense power(ie. normal/elemental/piercing/shadow) are AVERAGED. If I have a helm with 10 bars of normal defense an armor with 12 bars of normal defense, my overall defense is 11 bars. If that helm also provides 10 bars of piercing defense, and the armor has 0 bars of piercing defense, my overall piercing defense is 5 bars.

-Armor and Helm resistances are ADDITIVE. If your helm provides 2 bars of shock resistance, and your armor provides 3 bars of shock resistance, then you will have an overall shock resistance of 5 bars.

-Weapon's attack power can be very confusing, since it seems the bars are not a very good representation of their true damage output. All damage numbers I am using are not accurate, they are just for representation purposes... If a sword does 10 bars of piercing and 10 bars of elemental, that basically means the damage is 20 bars, split between piercing and elemental damage. Factor in the enemy strengths/weaknesses and you will get your damage number. Lets say the enemy is strong against elemental. Your normal damage would remain 10, but your elemental damage would be halved to 5. Your damage would then be 15. If your enemy is strong against piercing AND elemental, then your damage would be 10. Enemy strengths HALVE the damage. I have not been able to determine how enemy weaknesses affect your damage, but I'm almost certain it does not double your damage, but rather does +50% more damage for that type.(I would love some clarification on this matter if anyone could provide it.)

-All bonuses provided by any gear(ie Damage bonus:fiend, Moderate chance of causing strong fire) stack and work towards your characters overall stats. Having a wolver coat(Damage bonus:low) and a wolver cap(damage bonus:low) will provide an overall Damage bonus:Medium. To take it one step further, if you're using a slime slasher(Damage bonus vs. slime:high) to fight slimes, you will get the Damage bonus:medium from your wolver set, PLUS your Damage bonus vs. slime:high.

I highly recommend browsing the SK wiki if you have any questions about this post or any core game mechanics.

I hope this wasn't too long winded or confusing. I tried to explain the concepts as clearly as possible for the noobs because when I first started, I was utterly clueless about how the stats worked for defense/resistance/damage, and I was unable to find any info about it. I could definitely be wrong about a few things so I encourage anyone with more knowledge to post in a respectful manner. Thanks, I hope this was helpful!

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 07:51

Gigafreak

Legacy Username

Minor thing to note: Armor

Minor thing to note:

Armor and helmet defenses are actually additive. The defense meter on the character page is just worth twice as much defense per bar. You can see how this works when you equip an Ancient Plate Mail with your 0-star helmet-- the armor's Normal defense shows one full meter, but the character's Normal defense goes way past half the meter (Ancient Plate Mail gives enough Normal defense that it actually overflows about half a meter past the normal armor meter).

For anything that's NOT Ancient Plate set, though, it acts almost exactly the same as averaging the two defense values-- since you're adding them together and then dividing the result in half to fit it into the character stats meter. It just works for stuff that overflows.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 07:59

Stardrinker

Legacy Username

From what I have heard, each

From what I have heard, each increasing 'bar' is worth more than the last

I've heard that too but I don't think that's true. I think it's just that the devs got lazy and used a static bar image on the weapons tooltip (which they're supposed to update every time they decide to change it, but haven't) instead of using a bar whose size scales with the number that represents the swords power.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 08:21

DragnHntr

Legacy Username

couple things, resists to

couple things, resists to statuses on gear, including shields, does not decrease your likelyhood of being hit by the effect, it lowers the duration and the damage where applicable. I have heard both ways about shield status resists and have yet to do my own testing, but i would not entirely count out the fact that it could be working even when not shielded just because you got hit by a status effect.

If a status effect is fully resisted, thats when you would not get hit by that at all, I have seen this by walking through fire in my vog cub set on low levels and it having no effect. One odd thing is that when afflicted by shock, when i shield with my owlite (shock resist) and the shock ticks it often does no damage (on the lower levels) even though it will when I am not shielded. This seems to imply that the resists do not work outside of active shielding. Fire ticks do not seem affected by shielding however, even though my shield also has fire resist. Either my fire is already capped by the vog cub and thats just the lowest damage its gonna do, or its lowering it by a small amount i cant see, or some other explaination.

one final note, an enemy will never be resistant to two types of damage, all standard enemies are weak to one, strong to another, and neutral to the third. The worst case scenario for a dual type weapon is for one type to be resisted and the other neutral.

Also you are correct in that resists are much stronger then weaknesses.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 08:49

Gigafreak

Legacy Username

Shock damage is just

Shock damage is just blockable, even without resistances.

I have no idea how that would work, but it does.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 09:18

Sniperjoe

"Also you are correct in that

"Also you are correct in that resists are much stronger then weaknesses."

Half of 10 damage = 5
10 damage plus 50% = 15

So it's a bonus or penalty of 50%.

Now, let's give a wolver 50 hp. *yipe yipe* Shush.

Normal damage of 10 = 5 swings *whine*
Resistant damage of 5 = 10 swings *growl*
Weakness damage of 15 = 4 swings *dead*

It might seem like weaknesses have a much lower effect than resistances; however, if I'm correct in the 50% all around bonus/penalty assumption, then the numbers are correct, but the actual play feels much different. Three swings with a weakness would almost kill the wolver, but not quite. You have to attack almost as many times as you would normally, so it may feel like the the weapon is just not as potent as you would hope. This compares poorly to the resistance example, which (almost) always doubles the number of attacks necessary to kill a beastie.

Conversely, that 50% bonus damage might be just what you need to cut through a crowd of baddies in the arena or strike down a foe with one combo and no cooldown, so it's not to be ignored.

All of my weapons just deal normal damage, so I never have to worry about this. I do wonder how enemy weapon types are affected by armor, though.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 09:38

Gigafreak

Legacy Username

Enemy resistances do not work

Enemy resistances do not work that way.

Folks have started putting together damage tables for each weapon, starting with the Shadow-based Graviton Bomb.

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Graviton_Bomb

Based on the numbers there...

Resistant enemies take about 70-80% less damage than normal (i.e. they take about 20-30% of normal)
Susceptible enemies take about 20-30% more damage than normal.

So that 10-damage swing would hit for about 2-3 damage on a resistant enemy and 12-13 damage on a susceptible enemy.

If it was a split-damage weaponn you'd get...
6 damage from resistant/neutral enemies
7 damage from resistant/weak enemies
11 damage from neutral/weak enemies.

So, yeah, your 50HP Wolver would take 25(!) hits to slay with an Elemental weapon, 5 hits with a Normal or Shadow weapon, and... 4-5 hits with Piercing weapon.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 18:25

leolexington

Legacy Username

I believe shock status

I believe shock status doesn't do damage. It just make you lose control and open for attack that damage you. You don't die from being shock but you will die from being on fire.

Fri, 05/13/2011 - 20:51

ajericho

Legacy Username

leolexington, shock does deal

leolexington, shock does deal elemental damage on a tick, similar to fire. I've died purely from shock alone, watching it knock my last health bars out a few seconds after killing every monster in a room.

Sat, 05/14/2011 - 09:45

Kslo42

Legacy Username

Replies :)

Great feedback guys, this is what I was hoping to accomplish with that wall of text. I know all of my theories are not correct and so I want to form a little community consensus on certain aspects of the game. Below are a few things I'd like to comment on.

@Gigafreak: After reconsidering what I wrote about the armor and helm defense being averaged, I think you are absolutely correct in saying that they are actually added together, and that the 'overall' that you see in your equipment screen is basically worth double what you see on an individual item. But when you think about it, we are both saying the same thing, just looking at it from different points of view...I think. I personally have not used the ancient plate set or been able to overflow a certain stat bar, so I'm going to take your word on that. Thanks for the info!

@Stardrinker: There's really no way for me to confirm whether or not the bars act in such manner or not, at least not until I have tested every single weapon and compared their bars sizes etc. Which probably won't happen sooner than the wiki guys can come up with their damage charts(can't wait for those)!

@DragnHntr: Quote: "resists to statuses on gear, including shields, does not decrease your likelyhood of being hit by the effect, it lowers the duration and the damage where applicable." If that statement is true then my whole take on shield resistances/blocking could very well be flawed from the start. When testing, I noticed that having full freeze resistance would not prevent me from being frozen, unless I was blocking. However, if status resistance doesn't work as a preventative measure and rather as a 'debuff' for the status effect, then I'll have to take another look at it all. As I said in the original post, I've yet to determine specifics on shield stats/use, and any/all clarification is welcome. I'm beginning to doubt the comment I made about being able to receive status effects while blocking but I'm also getting the feeling that either each status effect was designed to act differently, or different monsters status effects' act differently.

@JVoltage & Gigafreak: The x2 and 50% numbers I kind of plucked from thin air. I was mainly going for a simple explanation of how certain damage types and resistances affect your overall damage. However, it seems to be agreed upon by most people on the forums that enemy strengths are stronger then their weaknesses. And I'll agree with you that while playing, the numbers do seem to boil down to doing around -70-80% or +20-30% against strong/weak enemies. I think the damage charts on the wiki, when completed, will help to pinpoint those actual numbers, so I'm not going to be doing extensive testing on this matter.

@leolexington: I'm certain shock does do damage on its ticks. Combined with the split second stun, it can be a dangerous ailment. So far it's the one that gets me dead much more than fire, freeze, stun, or poison. Curse is bad too but at least you can avoid the damage if you notice it right away. Note that each time you take damage, its represented by spilling a number of boxes on the battlefield. But these boxes each represent 1/4 of your health boxes, so its entirely possible you took shock(or any type) damage without a visible change to your overall health boxes. Just a thought...maybe that's why you thought it didn't do damage.

Thanks for all the input! Keep it up. I hope to edit out and fix some of the things I was wrong about in my original post in the next couple days. I'm too busy to do that today, but I really am happy with the participation and helpfulness of the posters thus far, so I'd like to keep this thread going.

Mon, 05/16/2011 - 12:47

#10

culture

Legacy Username

On the topic of being shocked

On the topic of being shocked to death - if I have the shock status and keep my shield up, I can avoid almost all shock damage. My shield will still go down briefly when the tick occurs, but I rarely take the damage. If I get shocked then just continue running around without my shield up then I'll take damage every tick.

I've tried this a few times in shock arenas and it seems to really help. Only annoying side effect is that movement speed is reduced when shielding continuously so I have to balance running away with the possibility of taking shock tick damage.

I use a Wise Owlite Shield which has shock resistance, so that might be a reason the shielding removes the shock damage? Doesn't seem to do so for fire though, which the shield also has resistance to.

Mon, 05/16/2011 - 17:00

#11

Senshi

Legacy Username

Shielding status...

I use Wise Owlite too, but I understand from people who use defender-line and such that you can shield shock-tick damage anyway. Also, Wise Owlite has fire resist, and you -cannot- shield away fire damage. (Or not completely?) I think you can shield away freeze shatter damage but I'm not certain of it.

Shielding prevents status most of the time, regardless of the status. I use Wise Owlite to avoid status in poison and frost hazes as well as shock and fire threats.
I believe the times status reaches through a shield are when it is broken, and when you shielded too late so that the client shows your shield up and yet you still get hit as if unshielded.

I'm quite certain (though I haven't clocked it) that I'm stunned far longer than I'm on fire, and of course, my hood and shield are owlite line giving me stun vulnerability and fire resistance.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 16:07

#12

Mortaal

Status defenses \\ resists when shielding

I had a though on how shields effect your status defense and status resist conditions. Could it be that while shielding the values of the shield are applied instead of those of your armor? As it seems averaging the elemental resistances of shields and armor while shielding would only make them lower instead of higher. Just my 2 cents on the matter and perhaps the same goes for status resists?

regards,

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 18:58

#13

Prisega

Yeah you have the right idea,

Yeah you have the right idea, the Shield is the only thing applies to defense while the shield is acutally up. Thats why I can take Piercing damage even though all of my armor is Elemental defensive, my shield has Piercing defense.

Also I assumed that using a shield with resists just more effectively blocked attacks that could cause that status. I guess it could be tested by standing on a shock tile or something but it'd need a shield with Elemental defense and one without to see what works and how. Unfortunately a good majority (if not all) of status resisting shields (for Fire and Shock) are elementally defensive. The only other thing I can think of is that when the shield is up, chances of Greavers giving you status effects drops or maybe a Fire resist shield gives defense against Fire ticks when the shield is up.

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 02:18

#14

Mortaal

status resists?

So what about the status resists in that case? Are your armor status resists also replaced by your shields or are they added to the ones you already had?

regards,

Mon, 08/01/2011 - 10:07

#15

caseyweederm

Legacy Username

I think the status condition

I think the status condition resistance issue is an important one to clear up. Do we have any consistent numbers on this? I didn't see much change standing on the poison trap in the advanced training hall with a full meter of poison resist. It's possible that a percentage of the time I did not receive poison. Duration was not lessened.
It's also possible that those traps are hardcoded and don't compensate for resistances.

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Defense/Resistance/Damage clarification