Do I Suck or Does Defense Suck

[JackBob]

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.

Wow I’ve gotten it backwards for years.

I thought that
Classic difficulty reduces damage by 1.5*defense
Expert reduces damage by 1.25*defense
and Master mode reduces damage by defense 1:1

But I looked it up in the wiki and I was wrong.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

1.5x defense reduction on classic would be so hilariously busted, a good premech defense setup could easily 0 out all damage from Duke Fishron besides specifically Cthulhunadoes in that case.

Keep in mind that there's a lot of defense lying around where the only tradeoff is effort. Ironskin, t2 or t3 food, and a Bast Statue is 16 or 17 defense to anyone, tying the effects of good earlygame armor. Warding gives 20, 24, or 28 defense depending on difficulty and progression, a massive boost compared to the relatively minor boost from menacing/lucky.

For summoner, though, you can use Valhalla Knight armor. Insane defense and regen to make summoner a better tank than ranger and non-hood mage can manage. You lose out on summon slots, but gain sentry slots, if you're a player that acknowledges that sentries are a thing that exists outside OOA. I personally stan Explosive Trap but Ballista is easier to use in general dodging and Valhalla is a better tank set than Red Riding is.

 

[Fidget]

People typing "defence" instead of "defense" hurts my soul

I probably just never noticed it but this is the first time I'm seeing someone say defense and that hurts my soul

 

[King Jameth III🌳]

I probably just never noticed it but this is the first time I'm seeing someone say defense and that hurts my soul

Defense somehow seems to me to be the stat and root for all words from it (defensive, etc.), while defence is the noun.

 

[Dapling]

Defense somehow seems to me to be the stat and root for all words from it (defensive, etc.), while defence is the noun.

Nah, it’s just an american english vs british english thing iirc

 

[King Jameth III🌳]

Nah, it’s just an american english vs british english thing iirc

yeah sorry I meant for me personally

 

[Mecha_]

Ironskin potion, heartreach potion, etc.
Summoner is supposed to be really weak at the tradeoff of automatic damage
Don't worry, that defense to damage ratio gets a lot better the more you play.
Also consider using warding on your accessories? That's like at least 20 defense...

 

[Asternove]

To add to this:
On Classic, I quit the game for a while because ML was too hard for my Summoner build.
On Expert, I caved and used Melee; my thoughts were exclusively "That's it?" after he was barely doing anything to me.

 

[77ForumBone]

sorbet cafe:

The harder the difficulity, the more defence sucks.

At Master and above, You're better off dodging everything

 

[Asternove]

Ah yes, a friendly reminder of my skill issues several months after I posted this (I still suck btw.)

 

[ThatMossCreep]

Oof, I have felt the summoner accessory analysis paralysis. I prefer sacking ankh for movement, I often don't have the patience for it anyway.

 

[Rezerkity]

Defense is not for tanking everything, it is for reducing the damage you take from being chipped.
If you get hit by the Destroyer's head, The Eye of Cthulhu charging, or the Moon Lord's phantasmal death ray, you're gonna take a ton of damage regardless.

Defense is more for the rest of the things in the fight. Let's say you're a mage using Orichalcum Armour fighting The Destroyer on Expert as an example.
Your armour stat will be 27 at minimum, more likely 59 or so with Ironskin and Warding accessories, and let's round that down to 44 due to Expert using 75% of your armour value.

So that's 44 less damage you're taking from everything.
You get hit by the Destroyer's Head, that's 280 damage reduced to 236, you've taken a bit less damage, but it's still a high damage hit you must avoid at all costs.
You get hit by the Destroyer's lasers, that's 72 damage reduced to 28, which is way more manageable.
You get hit by the Probe lasers, that's 88 damage reduced to 44.

Of course there's still the roughly 15% damage variation, so you could take 15% more, 15% less, and if you use some luck bonuses such as the Galaxy Pearl, Gnomes, or Luck Potions, you're likely to take a bit less damage. You could even use Endurance potions for 10% less damage taken, etc. It all adds up.

Defense isn't there for you to rely on as a way to win every fight, it's there for you to rely on for when your dodging skills fail you or you fall into situations where you MUST take damage.

If you're struggling with the Destroyer, it helps to know that the Destroyer shoots out a probe at a low chance when you hit its glowing segments, which then stop glowing. So if you hit the destroyer a bunch, stop to destroy the probes so you don't get swarmed. You can also build arenas with walls so the Destroyer doesn't have a line of sight to shoot you with, and that works on the probes also. Melee has a pretty easy time against the probes since they like to come into melee range and get knockback stunned.

tl;dr always use ironskin, try to use endurance potions, and learn better arena building + don't rely on defense more than your dodging skills

 

[MoultonLava]

In higher difficulties, Hallowed Armor is actually really good against endgame bosses due to the set bonus giving a free dodge. In the highest difficulty, using the armor, Cross Necklace, BoC, and Cross Necklace is pretty much the only way to be able to live attacks from endgame bosses in Legendary.

 

[TwentY!]

summon isn't supposed to have a lot of defense. the idea behind summon is that you can have something invincible deal all the damage for you. you just have to focus on dodging. if summoner defense is upped too much, summoner becomes the most overpowered class in the game, because you can dodge a lot and also take no damage when you get hit. plus there is the cross necklace that doubles you invincibility frames.

 

[Dapling]

summon isn't supposed to have a lot of defense. the idea behind summon is that you can have something invincible deal all the damage for you. you just have to focus on dodging. if summoner defense is upped too much, summoner becomes the most overpowered class in the game, because you can dodge a lot and also take no damage when you get hit. plus there is the cross necklace that doubles you invincibility frames.

Sunmoner has been extremely centralized around whips for over half a decade at this point so idk what you’re trying to say here. The “idle damage” part of summoner’s identity died a long time ago. Whips are some of the consistently most active and management/micro heavy weapons in the whole game, and also have consistently limited range (even more so than melee).

It had to be changed to this, because all classes can use minions alongside their main weapons, which meant that summoner was doomed to always be objectively worse than all the other classes which had both summons and regular weapons unless you do some kind of bandaid fix like calamity does (which you shouldn’t) or add some kind of active way to bolster your minions like vanilla does. So if your immediate thought on this statement is “It shouldn’t be this” I advise you reconsider.

 

[TwentY!]

Sunmoner has been extremely centralized around whips for over half a decade at this point so idk what you’re trying to say here. The “idle damage” part of summoner’s identity died a long time ago. Whips are some of the consistently most active and management/micro heavy weapons in the whole game, and also have consistently limited range (even more so than melee).

It had to be changed to this, because all classes can use minions alongside their main weapons, which meant that summoner was doomed to always be objectively worse than all the other classes which had both summons and regular weapons unless you do some kind of bandaid fix like calamity does (which you shouldn’t) or add some kind of active way to bolster your minions like vanilla does. So if your immediate thought on this statement is “It shouldn’t be this” I advise you reconsider.

i do think summoner is one of the worse classes, beat only by ranged, so my bias might be creeping in here.

I see whips as a thing you use when you aren't immediately in danger.

 

[Dapling]

i do think summoner is one of the worse classes, beat only by ranged, so my bias might be creeping in here.

I see whips as a thing you use when you aren't immediately in danger.

Minion ai actually synergizes with whips very well as most of them have a “return mode” they enter where they stop attacking if you get too far away from them (which happens a lot if you try to just “focus on dodging and run away” like people say summoner is “supposed” to do), so whips are both relevant more often than you think and don’t actually change a good summoner’s playstyle all that much. You always want to be using them and their range covers a wide enough area that aiming them isn’t particularly difficult.

Also, all 4 damage types are viable throughout the whole game. I’d actually argue mage is the worst not because it’s bad overall, but because getting a mage weapon is inflexible and not very diverse at the start of the game and mage has no good bossing weapons for the start of hardmode. Mage isn’t bad overall, but it’s the only class that significantly struggles at any point even if said points are rare. Summoner is bad in theory but has been buffed so many times in a row that it has the damage to make up for its lack of defense.

 

[Rezerkity]

Sunmoner has been extremely centralized around whips for over half a decade at this point so idk what you’re trying to say here. The “idle damage” part of summoner’s identity died a long time ago. Whips are some of the consistently most active and management/micro heavy weapons in the whole game, and also have consistently limited range (even more so than melee).

It had to be changed to this, because all classes can use minions alongside their main weapons, which meant that summoner was doomed to always be objectively worse than all the other classes which had both summons and regular weapons unless you do some kind of bandaid fix like calamity does (which you shouldn’t) or add some kind of active way to bolster your minions like vanilla does. So if your immediate thought on this statement is “It shouldn’t be this” I advise you reconsider.

Honestly if whips were removed I feel like the natural solution here would be to make Summoner armour very strong with additional benefits.
Like, the issue is that Summon weapons can be used by any class, and it results in Summon weapons being nerfed so other classes aren't too strong with them, because everyone can just slap one on effortlessly for bonus damage.

So what if... minions just... sucked without Summoner armour? Think about it.

If Summoner got most of its strength not from weapons, but from its armour choices, it'd allow Summoner to be its original design without whips, without having to be balanced around other classes using minions. Summoner could even get special set bonuses stronger than what other classes get to help balance things out.
Summoner could still be quite the glass cannon, except now it wouldn't be held back by the rest of the game's balance.

 

[Dapling]

Honestly if whips were removed I feel like the natural solution here would be to make Summoner armour very strong with additional benefits.
Like, the issue is that Summon weapons can be used by any class, and it results in Summon weapons being nerfed so other classes aren't too strong with them, because everyone can just slap one on effortlessly for bonus damage.

So what if... minions just... sucked without Summoner armour? Think about it.

If Summoner got most of its strength not from weapons, but from its armour choices, it'd allow Summoner to be its original design without whips, without having to be balanced around other classes using minions. Summoner could even get special set bonuses stronger than what other classes get to help balance things out.
Summoner could still be quite the glass cannon, except now it wouldn't be held back by the rest of the game's balance.

That creates another issue where now your main hand is open and you can just use a weapon from another class with the insane summoner armor and super powerful minions with nothing stopping you.
It fixes the issue of summoner being worse than everything else by making it blatantly better than everything else.

Calamity tried to fix this by adding an arbitrary penalty to minions while holding a different weapon and it’s become so much trouble for them to balance that I’m not even sure why they’re still bothering anymore honestly (it’s been 5 years of constant changes with no clear or well balanced results). Just lean into whips. They worked out great in practice design-wise even if they sound sketchy on paper.

 

[Asternove]

Defense is not for tanking everything, it is for reducing the damage you take from being chipped.
If you get hit by the Destroyer's head, The Eye of Cthulhu charging, or the Moon Lord's phantasmal death ray, you're gonna take a ton of damage regardless.

Defense is more for the rest of the things in the fight. Let's say you're a mage using Orichalcum Armour fighting The Destroyer on Expert as an example.
Your armour stat will be 27 at minimum, more likely 59 or so with Ironskin and Warding accessories, and let's round that down to 44 due to Expert using 75% of your armour value.

So that's 44 less damage you're taking from everything.
You get hit by the Destroyer's Head, that's 280 damage reduced to 236, you've taken a bit less damage, but it's still a high damage hit you must avoid at all costs.
You get hit by the Destroyer's lasers, that's 72 damage reduced to 28, which is way more manageable.
You get hit by the Probe lasers, that's 88 damage reduced to 44.

Of course there's still the roughly 15% damage variation, so you could take 15% more, 15% less, and if you use some luck bonuses such as the Galaxy Pearl, Gnomes, or Luck Potions, you're likely to take a bit less damage. You could even use Endurance potions for 10% less damage taken, etc. It all adds up.

Defense isn't there for you to rely on as a way to win every fight, it's there for you to rely on for when your dodging skills fail you or you fall into situations where you MUST take damage.

If you're struggling with the Destroyer, it helps to know that the Destroyer shoots out a probe at a low chance when you hit its glowing segments, which then stop glowing. So if you hit the destroyer a bunch, stop to destroy the probes so you don't get swarmed. You can also build arenas with walls so the Destroyer doesn't have a line of sight to shoot you with, and that works on the probes also. Melee has a pretty easy time against the probes since they like to come into melee range and get knockback stunned.

tl;dr always use ironskin, try to use endurance potions, and learn better arena building + don't rely on defense more than your dodging skills

(I’ve beaten Destroyer on Master since this, albeit using Sorbet Café’s cheese lol.)

Summoner has a base 20 defence with Spider Armour. Assuming full Warding, Ironskin, Endurance, and Bast Statue, that goes up to 37 defence with 10% DR. This is effectively 28 due to the x0.75 thing.

The head deals 280. After using defence and DR, that goes down to 219. But that’s easy to dodge, so it shouldn’t really count.

The Destroyer has two separate lasers— one from itself (72) and one from Probes (88)— which I’ll average out to 80 for simplicity.

After all of these effects, the lasers deal 39 damage. When you’re constantly being chipped by these, that’s a lot. When minions attack the body and spawn like 30 probes, thergoi

Even using Forbidden Armor, you get 43 defence and 10% DR, having the head dealing 213 and lasers dealing 33.

Honestly if whips were removed I feel like the natural solution here would be to make Summoner armour very strong with additional benefits.
Like, the issue is that Summon weapons can be used by any class, and it results in Summon weapons being nerfed so other classes aren't too strong with them, because everyone can just slap one on effortlessly for bonus damage.

So what if... minions just... sucked without Summoner armour? Think about it.

If Summoner got most of its strength not from weapons, but from its armour choices, it'd allow Summoner to be its original design without whips, without having to be balanced around other classes using minions. Summoner could even get special set bonuses stronger than what other classes get to help balance things out.
Summoner could still be quite the glass cannon, except now it wouldn't be held back by the rest of the game's balance.

Don’t armors give minions, therefore giving them an advantage? Honestly just increasing the number of minions you can get from armour (I’d love over 11 minions) might work.