Lucky vs. Warding one expert mode

[felis]

Celestial Shell and Stone are some of the best defensive accessories in the game, since each one actually grants 120 HP of regen per minute

The health regeneration effect seems not stack with each other.

 

[FlakMaster]

I understand your point, but you left out a big factor in order to skew the numbers in your favor. The fact is that in that specific scenario, full Warding only adds on 20% damage reduction to the reduction you're already getting. Armor by itself is plenty sufficient to enable you to take a decent number of hits.

Alright, since you seem to be repeating yourself, I'm going to have to explain how 20% extra reduction bonus is not all that it seems to be.

When you resist 25% of enemy damage, you survive 50% the amount of hits (100 damage split into 75/75)
When you resist 50% of enemy damage, you survive double the amount of hits. (100 damage split into 50/50)
When you resist 75% of enemy damage, you survive quadruple the the amount of hits. (100 damage split into 25/25/25/25)
When you resist 100% of enemy damage, you survive 'infinite' amount of hits (In Terraria's case, all of the 1s)

Each time, the damage reduction goes up by 25%, however the effect it has is exponential. With the case of bringing up the 42% difference, I keep referring it to a comparison. To take another example from above, 50% resistance - 75% resistance is only 25% more resistance, but is doubly more effective in comparison.

When you do this for damage, it's all just simple additive bonuses.

Also, while defense might be "exponentially effective" as you increase it, it's also exponentially ineffective as monsters get stronger. And the trend in late hardmode is for enemies to get stronger at a much faster rate than you can increase your defense.

For the former, you're right, but you're also somewhat wrong that every enemy does eventually 100-200 damage. 100 damage, sure, but defence subtracts that immensely in Expert Mode due to the 3:4 ratio. The majority of projectiles in the Martian Invasion do ~120 damage, the point of which you have access to high defence equipment. Even if you use Shroomite armour (which has a base of 54), 24 defence from Warding and let's say 8 from a random assortment of Celestial accessories and shields and the figure becomes 62 for damage and 86 for defence. Somewhat similar figures to what I presented earlier; the comparison figure'll probably be floating at around 27%.

The kind of attacks that are in excess of 200 are those of which you should be learning to avoid or prevent altogether, such as the Tortoise charges, Saucer Death beams as well as Crawltepede attacks. Failure to do so will result in quick death regardless of defence or damage boosts with appropriately tiered gear.

I also need to clarify that I'm not trying to prove Warding as the obvious winner, rather that the usefulness varies on situation and experience. As opposed to yourself, which I believe you still think of Menacing/Lucky as the obvious winner.

If you're talking about dodging skill, then if you can't win a DPS race against a boss with pure damage, you won't be able to win against it with pure defense.

Why not? You seem to be presenting this as if your health always just whittles down to 0, which is certainly not the case. Alas, I will have to explain again what I mean by the 'infinite survivability' threshold, which is a similar situation to the defence reduction topic above.

Regeneration is considered an innate part of boss fights, so I'll be assuming that someone is using a camplantern with a regen pot. That's accessible right from the start of the game. I can't get precise figures, so I'll assume it will be in the region of 5hp/s. Additionally, if we were to throw in a standard healing potion consumed every 60 seconds, this figure gets raised to 6hp/s (It's a little more than that, but I'm adding a little tolerance for moments when you don't need to have a healing potion).

So, let's say you get hit once every 4 seconds (that's a period of 3.33 seconds without getting hit each time, or 2.66 with Cross Necklace because of invincibility frames). That means theoretically, you can consistently survive as long as the damage dealt to you is no more than 24 because you'll regenerate it over that period of time. To take the Destroyer Probe laser example, with 60 defence (43 damage) you'll be losing 19 health every 4 seconds, which will result in death (with 400 max health) in just over 84 seconds. However, with that beefy 84 defence figure (24 damage), you'll be losing no health overall as it evens out with the regeneration. Bam, infinite survivability. In comparison to having 84 seconds to kill the Destroyer, instead you'll have all night.

This is because, as I said, damage shortens the time the boss is alive, such that you take less damage overall than if you'd converted those damage boosts into an equivalent amount of defense.

While both would have the same result, however, if you were to take away the factor of death and just look at the amount of damage a player with infinite HP would take from a boss in each scenario, you'd find that the player with the higher damage would take less damage in total than the player with the higher defense.

See above. Overall damage taken is irrelevant if you can regenerate it back up.

You can't really take regeneration out of the question, particularly for boss fights, because, likewise to armour, it is something you'll always have regardless of whether you have Warding or not. I mean, you can do without, but it's a serious handicap to the majority of players. One of the key things in every boss fight for pieces of advice is the Camplantern and Regen pot.

And as the player becomes more competent at dodging, this gap increases, since dodging by its very nature reduces the effectiveness of defense.

This only further proves my point that whether defence is useful or not relies on the player, rather than one factor being blatantly better than the other in nearly all cases.

But those situations happen so rarely, there really isn't much point in planning for them.

Firstly, again, it depends on the player, especially newbies that have little to no experience or encounters with what is considered a new mob to them. Secondly, HM Dungeon and Jungle is chock full of those situations. You need decent reaction times to counter a Ragged Caster/Necromancer when they teleport real close before they strike you (the former being more potent than the latter). Moss Hornets spawn en masse and their projectiles are hard to see, especially from the dark corners of unlit jungle space. Same goes with Tortoises.

And if you're killing enemies before they hit you anyway, then it doesn't matter whether you've got damage or defensive bonuses.

No, it doesn't. However, when you do get hit (we're all not perfect'), the punishment you take will be less.

Common enemies shouldn't even be a factor in how you build your character at endgame. Their threat is minimal compared to bosses and events.

We're not discussing end-game, we're discussing the game as a whole. Quite frankly, I don't like discussing end-game balance as it is, because it is pretty volatile. Furthermore, end-game isn't the only important part, I'd argue to say that it is the least.

 

[CellarDoor96]

Alright, since you seem to be repeating yourself, I'm going to have to explain how 20% extra reduction bonus is not all that it seems to be.

When you resist 25% of enemy damage, you survive 50% the amount of hits (100 damage split into 75/75)
When you resist 50% of enemy damage, you survive double the amount of hits. (100 damage split into 50/50)
When you resist 75% of enemy damage, you survive quadruple the the amount of hits. (100 damage split into 25/25/25/25)
When you resist 100% of enemy damage, you survive 'infinite' amount of hits (In Terraria's case, all of the 1s)

Each time, the damage reduction goes up by 25%, however the effect it has is exponential. With the case of bringing up the 42% difference, I keep referring it to a comparison. To take another example from above, 50% resistance - 75% resistance is only 25% more resistance, but is doubly more effective in comparison.

When you do this for damage, it's all just simple additive bonuses.

The thing about that is that it takes a lot of defense to get you to the thresholds where it'll make any difference in the number of hits you can take, and until you reach those thresholds, it's basically just dead weight. Most of the time, even 24 defense from Warding will not reach any important thresholds once you get to endgame, though you're slightly more likely to get there in expert mode than in normal mode.

For the former, you're right, but you're also somewhat wrong that every enemy does eventually 100-200 damage. 100 damage, sure, but defence subtracts that immensely in Expert Mode due to the 3:4 ratio. The majority of projectiles in the Martian Invasion do ~120 damage, the point of which you have access to high defence equipment. Even if you use Shroomite armour (which has a base of 54), 24 defence from Warding and let's say 8 from a random assortment of Celestial accessories and shields and the figure becomes 62 for damage and 86 for defence. Somewhat similar figures to what I presented earlier; the comparison figure'll probably be floating at around 27%.

86 defense in expert mode means a reduction of 65 damage, which would reduce a 120-damage attack down to 55 damage. Assuming you have 500 health, that's about 9 hits until you're dead.

With 62 defense, you still get a reduction of 47 damage, which would reduce a 120-damage attack down to 73 damage. That's 7 hits until you're dead. That 24 defense made a difference of a whole two hits, and meanwhile the damage loss you suffered probably allowed the bulkier enemies to survive longer so they could hit you at least two more times than they would've otherwise.

The kind of attacks that are in excess of 200 are those of which you should be learning to avoid or prevent altogether, such as the Tortoise charges, Saucer Death beams as well as Crawltepede attacks. Failure to do so will result in quick death regardless of defence or damage boosts with appropriately tiered gear.

And in situations where you avoid taking damage, damage bonuses of your own are superior by the simple virtue that defense does nothing if you're dodging.

I also need to clarify that I'm not trying to prove Warding as the obvious winner, rather that the usefulness varies on situation and experience. As opposed to yourself, which I believe you still think of Menacing/Lucky as the obvious winner.

I'm not trying to claim that Warding should never be used, nor that damage is superior to defense in every single circumstance, but just that the math lends itself to the fact that, in general, damage increases survivability more than defense does once you get to endgame.

Why not? You seem to be presenting this as if your health always just whittles down to 0, which is certainly not the case. Alas, I will have to explain again what I mean by the 'infinite survivability' threshold, which is a similar situation to the defence reduction topic above.

Regeneration is considered an innate part of boss fights, so I'll be assuming that someone is using a camplantern with a regen pot. That's accessible right from the start of the game. I can't get precise figures, so I'll assume it will be in the region of 5hp/s. Additionally, if we were to throw in a standard healing potion consumed every 60 seconds, this figure gets raised to 6hp/s (It's a little more than that, but I'm adding a little tolerance for moments when you don't need to have a healing potion).

So, let's say you get hit once every 4 seconds (that's a period of 3.33 seconds without getting hit each time, or 2.66 with Cross Necklace because of invincibility frames). That means theoretically, you can consistently survive as long as the damage dealt to you is no more than 24 because you'll regenerate it over that period of time. To take the Destroyer Probe laser example, with 60 defence (43 damage) you'll be losing 19 health every 4 seconds, which will result in death (with 400 max health) in just over 84 seconds. However, with that beefy 84 defence figure (24 damage), you'll be losing no health overall as it evens out with the regeneration. Bam, infinite survivability. In comparison to having 84 seconds to kill the Destroyer, instead you'll have all night.

Okay, but I'm talking about overall performance. The goal is not to die and to kill the boss, so if I can do that, then it doesn't matter how low my health is when I put the nail in its coffin. If I can do this with both pure damage and with lots of defense and regen, then great. But then, if both achieve the same result, the question of which one is more effective becomes one of how long it takes for them to do so. In which case, the damage build is the clear winner.

So basically, while lots of defense might allow you to survive indefinitely, an equivalent amount of damage will not only allow you to survive the same encounter but help you end it faster. This means that damage still has the greater overall performance.

You can't really take regeneration out of the question, particularly for boss fights, because, likewise to armour, it is something you'll always have regardless of whether you have Warding or not. I mean, you can do without, but it's a serious handicap to the majority of players. One of the key things in every boss fight for pieces of advice is the Camplantern and Regen pot.

Regeneration doesn't matter for our purposes because any player can use it, not just ones who also stack defense. Therefore the advantage it provides to a defensive player is canceled out by the exact same advantage it provides to an offensive player. Remember that I'm talking about the merits of the defense stat, not defense as a style of play.

This only further proves my point that whether defence is useful or not relies on the player, rather than one factor being blatantly better than the other in nearly all cases.

I never claimed that defense was equally useful for all players, just that by late hardmode there comes a point when, regardless of their skill level, damage will become more valuable to a player than defense. Both defense and offense are ineffective in the hands of a bad player, but what I'm saying is that if a player is bad while running damage, they won't be any better if they switch over to defense, and may in fact be even worse off.

Firstly, again, it depends on the player, especially newbies that have little to no experience or encounters with what is considered a new mob to them. Secondly, HM Dungeon and Jungle is chock full of those situations. You need decent reaction times to counter a Ragged Caster/Necromancer when they teleport real close before they strike you (the former being more potent than the latter). Moss Hornets spawn en masse and their projectiles are hard to see, especially from the dark corners of unlit jungle space. Same goes with Tortoises.

Unless we're talking about a really, really incompetent player here, as in one so incompetent there's no way they should have even made it to mid-hardmode, those enemies shouldn't be hitting you in such rapid succession that they'll put you in danger of dying. In any case, as I said, I'm mainly concerned with bosses and events, since regular enemies are generally much easier than those. Some players might find it useful to switch to Warding accessories when they go spelunking or dungeon raiding, but once it comes time to fight the next boss, they'll be better off switching over to damage.

No, it doesn't. However, when you do get hit (we're all not perfect'), the punishment you take will be less.

And then you'll kill the enemy and by the time the next enemy manages to hit you you'll have regened all the damage it did anyway. And in cases where a bunch of enemies happen to gang up on you, just like with bosses, you'll be better off taking them out more quickly than trying to reduce their damage (assuming their damage isn't reduced to 1, in which case I don't know why we're even talking about them).

We're not discussing end-game, we're discussing the game as a whole. Quite frankly, I don't like discussing end-game balance as it is, because it is pretty volatile. Furthermore, end-game isn't the only important part, I'd argue to say that it is the least.

Well I'm not sure why you're discussing that, because I've been talking only about late hardmode through endgame this whole time. I even said in one of my earlier posts that Warding is useful in pre-hardmode and early hardmode, and it's only around mid-hardmode that it starts dropping off in effectiveness.

The health regeneration effect seems not stack with each other.

I actually went and tested how long it took me to regenerate a certain amount of health with the Celestial Shell and Celestial Stone, then with just one of them, and then with none of them, and I found that... it actually didn't make much of a difference. Huh. In all three cases I recovered 250 HP in about 45 seconds. It was on a normal mode world, and when I tested the same thing near a campfire and heart lantern I recovered the same amount in around 30 seconds.

Are the tooltip and the information on the wiki a lie, then? Have I just been fooling myself into thinking I was sturdier this whole time? Or am I missing something? Has anyone else tested this as well, or is there anyone who can give us some insight into the game's code? This is really weird and honestly baffling.

 

[FlakMaster]

Okay, but I'm talking about overall performance. The goal is not to die and to kill the boss, so if I can do that, then it doesn't matter how low my health is when I put the nail in its coffin. If I can do this with both pure damage and with lots of defense and regen, then great. But then, if both achieve the same result, the question of which one is more effective becomes one of how long it takes for them to do so. In which case, the damage build is the clear winner.

So basically, while lots of defense might allow you to survive indefinitely, an equivalent amount of damage will not only allow you to survive the same encounter but help you end it faster. This means that damage still has the greater overall performance.

That's great that you can do that. But I'm talking about a whole spectrum of players here, not just one individual. You're still putting this under the assumption that the player is capable of dealing enough damage before they die.

Regeneration doesn't matter for our purposes because any player can use it, not just ones who also stack defense. Therefore the advantage it provides to a defensive player is canceled out by the exact same advantage it provides to an offensive player.

I proved the exact opposite with this:

So, let's say you get hit once every 4 seconds (that's a period of 3.33 seconds without getting hit each time, or 2.66 with Cross Necklace because of invincibility frames). That means theoretically, you can consistently survive as long as the damage dealt to you is no more than 24 because you'll regenerate it over that period of time. To take the Destroyer Probe laser example, with 60 defence (43 damage) you'll be losing 19 health every 4 seconds, which will result in death (with 400 max health) in just over 84 seconds. However, with that beefy 84 defence figure (24 damage), you'll be losing no health overall as it evens out with the regeneration. Bam, infinite survivability. In comparison to having 84 seconds to kill the Destroyer, instead you'll have all night.

Unless we're talking about a really, really incompetent player here, as in one so incompetent there's no way they should have even made it to mid-hardmode, those enemies shouldn't be hitting you in such rapid succession that they'll put you in danger of dying.

Right, so let's just rule out those that don't have great reaction times for those pesky tortoises and Ragged Casters. While also being under the assumption that people are consistently at the top of the game or somewhat close.

and meanwhile the damage loss you suffered probably allowed the bulkier enemies to survive longer so they could hit you at least two more times than they would've otherwise.

Uh...no? You kill them 24% faster than without Warding. Two hits is either 1.33 seconds or 2.66 seconds. There are few common mobs that 24% damage increase makes it take longer to kill by that amount, barring early game.

I'm not sure why you're implying that 'surviving an additional two hits' isn't a big deal as well.

And in cases where a bunch of enemies happen to gang up on you, just like with bosses, you'll be better off taking them out more quickly than trying to reduce their damage (assuming their damage isn't reduced to 1, in which case I don't know why we're even talking about them).

No, you'll be better off depending on which percentage figure is higher.

 

[felis]

I actually went and tested how long it took me to regenerate a certain amount of health with the Celestial Shell and Celestial Stone, then with just one of them, and then with none of them, and I found that... it actually didn't make much of a difference. Huh. In all three cases I recovered 250 HP in about 45 seconds. It was on a normal mode world, and when I tested the same thing near a campfire and heart lantern I recovered the same amount in around 30 seconds.

I tested again and found the mechanism of the celestial shell/stone is strange. If let the health regenerate to a certain degree, like firstly get hurt to 100 health, then let the health regenerate to 250, next, test the time for it restore to 500, it makes no deference.
However, if tested right after taking the damage(I use the fall damage, about 320 point, as it's a fixed damage when fall from the same height, also used some accessories to adjust the defense), the celestial shell/stone does make difference. I was wrong as I though they doesn't stack, they does stack.
My test for the 320 damage result:
no: about 65 s.
Celestial Stone: about 57 s.
Celestial Shell: about 57 s(at day time).
Both: about 51 s
both with a sun stone: 44 s.
Also, use the regeneration potion only gives a 50 s time. So, the mechanism of it may be different.
So, this may used for increasing the accelerate of natural regeneration speed, but does not affect the final regeneration speed.
And the regeneration potion may actually give a 2 hp/s.

 

[Aurora3500]

I generally prefer getting damage modifiers for my Expert Accessories because for the most part I have good faith in my dodging abilities which reduces the need to negate damage.

I still use accessories like the Worm Scarf and Melee Armor mostly to negate defense to a degree, but my other accessories and modifiers are focused for the most part on increasing damage as much as possible so I will try to get Menacing for my Accessories, but may still have some as Warding. I dislike relying on Luck too much during battles so I don't try to get Lucky Modifiers as much.

I'm still in the middle of an Expert Crimson World Playthrough so I'm not sure how well I'll progress without the Worm Scarf which I never removed on my Corruption playthrough. But I'll really see what modifiers will be ideal from continuing through that playthrough.

 

[Khaelis]

I like having at least two accessories with the Warding prefix, the rest are Menacing or Lucky.. depending how I feel.

 

[DicemanX]

Just to clarify something regarding Lucky versus Menacing modifiers:

Against a 0 defense mob, maximum DPS is reached when the total boosts to Lucky and Menacing are distributed equally. However, as the mob defense increases, the boost to damage needs to exceed the boost to crit chance. In expert mode, mobs have effectively 50% more defense (the flat damage reduction jumps from defense*0.5 to defense*0.75) so the boost to damage should be favored even more. The other factor is weapon damage - the greater the weapon damage, the closer the boosts to damage and crit chance should be.

So in other words, it's not so clear cut whether Lucky is preferrable to Menacing if your goal is to max your DPS - it depends on your boosts from gear, your weapon damage, and the range of mob defenses you expect to face. However, this is all rather academic - the differences in DPS among, for instance, 6/0, 3/3, and 0/6 Menacing/Lucky reforges are relatively small so long as weapon damage exceeds monster defense by a fair margin, which it will for the most part.

As far as Menacing/Lucky versus Warding, it's a tough call. You'll likely get a lot more benefit from the extra 24 defense (especially if your dodging skills are poor) than from a 24% damage boost in early to mid hardmode. All Warding accessories means taking 18 less damage every hit, while a 24% extra damage boost for an early hardmode weapon (that deals, say, 50 damage per hit) is an extra 12 points of damage per hit. This relatively small boost will of course be quite significant for low usetime weapons, so weapon choice obviously factors into consideration.

As you progress into late hardmode and get your hands on weapons in the 100-200 damage per hit range, that extra 24% will have a much greater impact - a 150 damage per hit weapon, for instance, will do 36 extra damage each hit on weapons that will likely have very low usetimes. This number increases even more for rangers because the helms that boost damage do so multiplicatively, not additively (assuming this wasn't changed or fixed in 1.3). Personally, I would never equip a single warding accessory in the endgame unless I'm going to be hit often (versus the Moon events for instance, or while doing crazy multi-boss challenges to amuse myself), but even then I'd look for some alternate strategies such as using heart stations or trying to kill event bosses asap for heart drops.

Conclusion? It all depends. You need to consider what you're fighting and how good you are at dodging, and you also need to keep in mind that warding merely adds to defense while menacing/lucky boosts multiply your damage, so you get more value the stronger your weapon with menacing/lucky.

 

[felis]

In expert mode, mobs have effectively 50% more defense (the flat damage reduction jumps from defense*0.5 to defense*0.75)

Just want to point out, this doesn't seems true, at leat when I test the Flintlock Pistol with Musket Ball on Mimics, there is no difference in normal and expert world.

 

[Dragrath]

I don't usually spend to much effort on accesory prefixes early game as tquite a few have less effect due to being percentage based and the opportunity cost on reforges is far worse though I will often use accesories with warding prefixes if avalible over other prefixes.

As of 1.3 I would only pick warding if running a full tank build with damage reduction accessories/potions/buffs as for any other playstyle damage is best though my main charecter currently runs a tank build primarily using the solar eruption as damage reduction can make defense work better and solar weapons do a good chunk of their damage via a debuff that doesn't scale with damage.

Mages and rangers late game should almost certainly go for menacing/lucky though if they haven't patched it summoner can get the best of both worlds with a set full menacing and warding accessories(they should never use lucky as summons can't crit...unless they want to forgo the warding boost)

 

[gwaooay]

PROOF: Pedguin said in one of his recent videos in his mage playthrough that he thinks that in Expert Mode all enemies do a ridiculous amount of damage, and the best way to counter this is to equip full warding accessories.

 

[Vitrolic Medicine]

Nope. If you achieved full Ninja gear you will dodge 10 % of the times. There would be combos of 2 or 3. Titanium Armor will work well, too.
Full warding is 9 time before Death
But Master Ninja gear W-O Warding is 7-12 hits before death, which is rounded into 9,5 hits.
W-O both is 7 times
With both, survivaliblity further incerases into 9-15, which rounds up into 12 hits to death.
Potions is helping too.

 

[MrFlamingo]

I like glass cannon lol

 

[Shrek On My Deck]

I feel warding is the best since in expert mode, enemies do a ton of damage and it just seems to help a little bit if i have warding accessories.