Do I Suck or Does Defense Suck

Asternove

Asternove

Retinazer
3/10/25 Note: I really sucked back when I posted this and have improved since. I still think defence and class balance is a bit wonky, but now I mostly just hate the Destroyer as a boss. Moon Lord isn’t great either.

I play summoner. You can tell if you read my signature.

I die SO FAST to ANYTHING. With Forbidden Armor and nearly every potion of use, the Destroyer kills me at half its health. There’s like 30 probes, and the Destroyer’s body covers the hearts. This was in Expert, not Master.

In another Classic play-through, I compared Melee and Summoner’s performances on ML. Melee took HALF the damage, and albeit I was using Zenith, outperformed in damage. I can only assume the damage is about equal under normal circumstances.

The amount of hits you can dodge doesn’t matter because of ML’s stupid design. So why does a certain class outperform all the others? This game is 13, that’s plenty of time to get that balance right.

Also, Melee has nowhere near Summoner’s reliance on accessories. You NEED Scroll and Scarab on, and Pygmy Necklace is really good, too. On Classic you have room for two more accessories. I use Emblem and Ankh Shield. You have to sacrifice your Pygmy Necklace if you want wings.

Melee needs Molten Glove, and a Paladin’s Shield upgrade. That’s it.

Sorry for the rant.
 
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The harder the difficulity, the more defence sucks.

At Master and above, You're better off dodging everything
 
Summoner sets have awful defense. Dodging is the only real way to avoid damage as Summoner.
 
The fact that melee took half as much damage as summoner in your playthroughs proves that defense (the stat itself) doesn't suck. But I do think that summoner has no good reason for its defense to be as bad as it is. Every single full summoner set with minion capacity bonuses is a glass cannon set, and it really shouldn't have to be that way.

That said, you can build a summoner to be defensive, but you probably won't be doing so while wearing any of the standard armor sets. I usually run titanium mask+forbidden robes+spider greaves for pre-mech, and as many Flesh Knuckles as I can fit. Yes, you will have less room for capacity-boosting accessories. No, that's not a crippling loss.
 
I feel like it's really reliant on the difficulty.
In Classic Defense can become quite "OP", in Expert it feels balanced and in Master defense doesnt matter too much; it's more about dodging and learning the boss pattern perfectly.

And it kinda makes sense to me, so you can't cheese everything there with a bunch of defense but instead need to dodge in master.

But apart from that, I feel like Summoner isnt supposed to have high defense. With your minions doing most of the job, you have all the time to focus on dodging.
 
Yeah, defense alone isn't the issue, the issue is summoner being a glass cannon. Dodging is the only way to dien't in master mode.
 
ppowersteef said:
The harder the difficulity, the more defence sucks.
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Funny enough it works the other way around, the harder your difficulty is, the more effective defence becomes.
But that is just a measure to make defense less bad in harder difficulties than an actual boon. Unless you are tanking lava damage which is consistent on all difficulties.

Defence reduces damage taken by a certain fraction of your actual count, depending on difficulty. In classic mode you take half of your defence total less in damage on each hit, on expert it is three quarters of your defence, on master your defence count is exactly how much less damage you take.

This does not actually change anything about what is being said, but I thought I would mention it. :p
 
Defense is very, very good, but players on Melee loadouts don't have to full send it as much as others due to having naturally stronger armors.

On higher difficulties most battles become a war of attrition against you being able to avoid big damage single hits (Destroyer head) while being peppered by consistent smaller hits (Probe lasers). The smaller hits add up over time and cause you to need to heal or be in bad shape for situations such as being stuck in The Destroyer's coil at low HP with Potion Sickness (you die) or hitting its head (you die) or just getting clipped by too many strays (you die).

The goal of Warding is fully investing in it so that these unfair consistent sources of chip damage stop dealing 80 damage to you and instead only deal 25-30 damage instead. Combined with a Cross Necklace this gives you much more breathing room to deal with constant boss barrages, even in Master or Legendary mode.

ppowersteef said:
The harder the difficulity, the more defence sucks.
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This is a common misconception. Defense (combined with life regen) is currently accepted as the most powerful stat in the game due to how much investment in it can make you unkillable. While Defense is not saving you from contact damage in Master/Legendary, it is saving you from boss projectiles, and those are arguably the most important thing to be saved from.

Each point of Defense is more valuable than the last, reducing a projectile attack from 100 damage to 30 damage is a reasonable feat by combining a full set of Warding reforges with other defense boosts to the point even a Summoner can do it.

20 Defense from Spider Armor
8 from Ironskin
3 from Plenty Satisfied

With this alone, a Master mode enraged Retinazor Death Laser deals anywhere from 60 to 82 damage.
Full Warding brings this down to 37 to 49.
If one of those accessories is an Ankh Shield, 33 to 45.
Add a Bast Statue, 29 to 39.
If you're still using Shield of Chalupa, further reduce it to 27 to 37.
If you go all in and put on a Flesh Knuckle after all of this, you further reduce the attack to a mere 20 to 28 damage.

This is just scraping the surface since this particular setup still technically has a few accessory slots available.
We assume Ankh Shield, Cross Necklace, Shield of Quesadilla, and Flesh Knuckles in this case, so you can still squeeze out some more bulk by adding a Worm Scarf to pad out damage taken from bigger hits, or just dedicate the rest of your slots to the standard Wings, Emblem, and Boots.

Overall, my opinion is that if you're worried about dying, you shouldn't be worried about your potential damage. Other damage archetypes get even more out of defense because they aren't sacrificing Minion slots to stack it and thus are losing a lot less paper DPS, which in turn leads to a net gain in DPS since you can play more recklessly and trade hits with a boss more often.

Stacking Warding takes a lot of the game's teeth away, though, and can get fairly boring. Menacing and Lucky builds are fun because of the risk of death, but they're not automatically better because the displayed damage number on your Terra Blade went up.

Either way, do what you find fun. This game is old enough to be in high school, it's not anyone's job to tell someone "USE WARDING OR YOU'RE BAD AND THE PRINCESS WILL CALL YOU STINKY" or something.

I personally think in an ideal world most armors would just have a similar defense stat based on tier and the variation would be much narrower, but that's a Terraria 2 discussion.
 
CannedPotato said:
Funny enough it works the other way around, the harder your difficulty is, the more effective defence becomes.
But that is just a measure to make defense less bad in harder difficulties than an actual boon. Unless you are tanking lava damage which is consistent on all difficulties.

Defence reduces damage taken by a certain fraction of your actual count, depending on difficulty. In classic mode you take half of your defence total less in damage on each hit, on expert it is three quarters of your defence, on master your defence count is exactly how much less damage you take.

This does not actually change anything about what is being said, but I thought I would mention it. :p
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It's an interesting metric, and you're right. defense technically becomes more effective than equipping nothing. But the damage scales larger than defense, so the amount of damage you take with the same defence will be higher depending on the difficulity chosen.

I probably should change my wording though, as I was playing around with the thread's title:

It's *really* good on classic, and still preferable on Expert too. Just on Master I feel the investment is better spend on resistance or dodge accessoires.
 
Class defence differences are kind of weird and unintuitive. Summoner whips have less range than several melee weapons, and summoner DPS without whips is often kind of low, but summoner armor still has the lowest defence by far.
Then ranged armor has the second highest defence values, and it's for a class that can deal very high DPS without needing to go near the enemies at all.
 
People typing "defence" instead of "defense" hurts my soul
 
Meowlegend said:
People typing "defence" instead of "defense" hurts my soul
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I'm well aware of that effect it has on people, if that makes it any better (or worse).
 
Meowlegend said:
People typing "defence" instead of "defense" hurts my soul
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Both spellings are valid, similar to "Saber" and "Sabre."

"Defense" is primarily used in American English while "Defence" is used in British English.

math lesson and english lesson in the same thread lets go i'm going to master all the elements in no time
 
Mille Marteaux said:
Both spellings are valid, similar to "Saber" and "Sabre."

"Defense" is primarily used in American English while "Defence" is used in British English.

math lesson and english lesson in the same thread lets go i'm going to master all the elements in no time
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^ That.

It is just how I was taught to say it, at the end of the day the way I type words should not make an impact on how my messages are understood.
Also, what would the other elements be, let's see if we can actually steer the conversation into those :D
 
Kinda late but I meant “suck” as in “imbalanced as crap.”

Meowlegend said:
People typing "defence" instead of "defense" hurts my soul
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I always get auto-corrected so I just deal with it.
 
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This video not only shows the value of defense, but also gives hints on how to optimize defense.


Of course I would like to add to that. What I recommend, is to kill a boss you can handle to farm it for stuff, like the twins, because they offer great upgrades (the ocular staff especially if you're a summoner). Summoner has the lowest defense BUT it's still a good idea to beef up your defenses with star-viel, charm of legends, an ankh shield (tedious to build but worth it), and a Brain of Confusion (which is a crazy good accessory that I think is overlooked). If you can get a berzerker claw, that would also help.

Summoner is actually very powerful but yes...you will be squishy. The good news is that you can focus on dodging while your summons do the work, but they need to be fast summons that can get hits, like the Oculus staff or the Blade Staff.
 
CannedPotato said:
Funny enough it works the other way around, the harder your difficulty is, the more effective defence becomes.
But that is just a measure to make defense less bad in harder difficulties than an actual boon. Unless you are tanking lava damage which is consistent on all difficulties.

Defence reduces damage taken by a certain fraction of your actual count, depending on difficulty. In classic mode you take half of your defence total less in damage on each hit, on expert it is three quarters of your defence, on master your defence count is exactly how much less damage you take.

This does not actually change anything about what is being said, but I thought I would mention it. :guidetongue:
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What dudes face is that? I keep seeing it, random.
 
Mille Marteaux said:
Both spellings are valid, similar to "Saber" and "Sabre."

"Defense" is primarily used in American English while "Defence" is used in British English.

math lesson and english lesson in the same thread lets go i'm going to master all the elements in no time
Click to expand...
Don't you mean Freedom English and English English?

Also, I hope the author of the thread doesn't misunderstand. Defense doesn't suck, but I'm not implying that any players suck either. I offered the video to help deepen the understanding of defense and how to truly min/max it for survival. You will still need movement and accurate attacks to survive, especially for Master Mode Moon events (and Moonlord).

If you're not finding success, always remember it's just a game, and it doesn't matter if you're good or bad at it. If you like the game, you'll keep playing it, and eventually you will know what you're doing.
 
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