Dr vs Defence and armor sets.

[Mark The Devourer]

I thought I was pretty well versed in the differences between defense and damage resistance (DR), but now I'm confused again. You see, I've noticed that there are some mixed armor sets and some accessories that give a lot of defense, but this is in place of items and armor that give you extra damage resistance. For example: I plan on going very defence heavy on accessories, so would I benefit more from the worm scarf or a hero's shield? My gut says to go with the worm scarf, but I've seen so many other defenses build stack shields that I'm not so sure anymore.
But the bigger and more burning question (at least to me) is on armor sets.
When I think "defense," I think of the beetle shell armor set with its high raw defense plus damage reduction. However, there are many mixed armor sets that include high defense without the DR beetle armor gives you; especially with the OOA armor sets and the hallowed mask. Hell, even in pre mech I have some confusion. I usually go for frost armor and slap on a brain of confusion and or worm scarf and call it a day, but now I see that the adamantine helmet, frost breastplate, and Mythril greaves, give you even more defense!
(edit: I realized that while it can be used for melee, it seems more like a ranged thing. Now I'm more curious about the differences between titanium and frost. I dumped titanium a while ago when I decided that frost was infinitely cooler. Although now I see that titanium has 6 extra defense (which isn't a lot but it's something), and more importantly, it has a set bonus that seems like it would be excellent for tankier builds. I'm not so sure anymore.)

I'm very confused about what I should do. Of course, my own personal playstyle and fun factor comes first and foremost, but Optimising can be fun sometimes. Any help?

 

[Stellar Mastodon 267]

This table might help. It’s from the wiki. As you can see, armor points will reduce a carousing amount of damage depending on difficulty, but a set percent like the worm scarf will always reduce it’s stated percent (17% itc).

 

[Mark The Devourer]

This table might help. It’s from the wiki. As you can see, armor points will reduce a carousing amount of damage depending on difficulty, but a set percent like the worm scarf will always reduce it’s stated percent (17% itc).

ohhhhhh. I see.
If I understand correctly, in master mode (which I always play) If I take, say, 50 damage and have 49 damage, I would only take 1 damage. Assuming that there isn't any armor penetration.
If I take 50 damage with 17% damage resistance I'd take 41 or 42 damage.
Also, how do DR and defense interact/work together?

 

[Stellar Mastodon 267]

ohhhhhh. I see.
If I understand correctly, in master mode (which I always play) If I take, say, 50 damage and have 49 damage, I would only take 1 damage. Assuming that there isn't any armor penetration.
If I take 50 damage with 17% damage resistance I'd take 41 or 42 damage.
Also, how do DR and defense interact/work together?

DR and Defense stack to my knowledge.

 

[Mark The Devourer]

DR and Defense stack to my knowledge.

coolio, thanks! I guess the next thing for me to do is decide how much DR and defense I want and plan out my accessories accordingly! Thank you

 

[MurderMitts]

ohhhhhh. I see.
If I understand correctly, in master mode (which I always play) If I take, say, 50 damage and have 49 damage, I would only take 1 damage. Assuming that there isn't any armor penetration.
If I take 50 damage with 17% damage resistance I'd take 41 or 42 damage.
Also, how do DR and defense interact/work together?

“The Solar Blaze, Beetle Endurance, Warmth, and Paladin's Shield buffs calculate damage multiplicative with each other, while all other effects calculate additive. So firstly the raw damage is decreased by the banner's effect (25% / 50% reduction) and Warmth Potion (30% reduction from cold sources), then the remaining damage is reduced by defense (50% / 75% / 100%), the remaining damage is then reduced by all additive damage reduction, then by Beetle and Solar Flare armor's buff, and finally by Paladin's Shield. (Also, each step will round down the damage value, but the value cannot be less than 1.)[1]”

So, while they do stack, defense applies before DR. Therefore, DR has seemingly additional efficiency if you have higher defense. The quote was taken from the official wiki.

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

DR applying after defence makes it less efficient the higher your defence is, not more. Let's say you had 100 defence with the beetle shell (in master for easier calculations) and were hit by an attack that dealt a base of 200 damage. The way it currently is, the 200 would get reduced to 100 from defence, then reduced to 55 from the beetle set's damage reduction.
If DR applied first, it would reduce the 200 to 110, then the defence would reduce the damage to only 10.

Because of this, and since defence becomes better the more of it you have, pure tank setups usually want to focus on flat defence increases rather than DR, whereas less tanky setups usually want to focus on DR rather than flat defence increases. Regeneration bonuses are equally effective survivability tools for both playstyles (though if you are facetanking you'll get less out of it).

 

[J Bame]

People stack shields because the more defense you have the more effective it is

imagine you have equip something that grants 5 defense. You are up against an enemy on master that deals 100 damage, this defense increase makes you go from taking 100 damage to taking 95 damage. 5% less, very small difference.

Now imagine the same situation, but you had 90 defense. You now go from taking 10 damage to 5 damage, you take 50% less than before.

In both cases you only increased defense by 5, but the latter case is 10x better.

so the general rule is that against high damage DR is better than defense, viceversa for low damage, and that stacking defense can lead to you taking single digit damage on even the highest difficulties

 

[Mark The Devourer]

ohhhhh ok ok. That's for the replies guys. Very insightful and informative. I made this theoretical accessory load out several hours ago that combines several accessories that are focused on defense, DR, and even immunity frames/dodging. Here is my (hypothetical) load-out:

Berserkers glove. 8+4=12
Star veil. 0+4=4
Ankh Shield. 4+4=8
Frozen shield. 25% DR when under 50% health 6+4=10
Worm scarf. 17% DR 0+4=4
Brain of confusion. 0+4=4
Celestial shell 4+4=8 (at night, 8+3=11)
50 defense and 53 at night when out of water.
So I thought this was a pretty solid load-out. maybe I could pair it up with armor sets like titanium (or frost, frost has more interesting stat boosts and is cooler IMO but the set bonus for titanium seems to reward a defense heavy play style), hallowed armor, turtle armor, and beetle shell armor. If there are better accessories for my build then please by all means let me know! (Or I guess I could stack shields, but that's not very varied, is it?)

And of course there is the option of mixing armor sets. Now it seems that while turtle and beetle shell gives some nice DR bonuses, if I'm going for a defense oriented build then I want the flat defense then mixed armor sets will be very useful. Things like the...

• Adamantite helmet, Mythrill greaves, and frost breastplate combo (51 defense for early hardmode, better stats than titanium but no useful set bonus).
• The hallowed mask, turtle scale mail, and squires greaves (69 defense for plantera. Good stats and defense, but is giving up the turtles +15% Dr still worth it for the extra 4 defense? Plus I'd also be giving up the holy dodge set bonus if I choose to stick with the hallowed armor set).
• For post golem I can rock either the full beetle shell set OR a combination of the hallowed mask, beetle shell, and squires greaves for better stats bonuses. If I do this I do loose out on the set bonus and an extra point in defense. This one seems the most questionable trade to me.
  • That is, until we get our hands on the OOA tier 3 armor sets. IDK about you guys but this Valhalla chest and leggings seem pretty good to me. Too good, even, but I don't want to speak on game balance. Anyways, we can now dawn a set consisting of the hallowed mask with the Valhalla breastplate and greaves. That way we can get 72 defense and +4 Regen. Wow!
  • But there is still ANOTHER possibility! (I'm sure you guys already knew this stuff but all this armor mixing business is almost completely new to me). I can use the hallowed Mask, beetle shell, and the Valhalla knights greaves for a whopping 80 defense! But I question if that 8 extra defense is worth giving up the extra life Regen.
• And finally for the endgame we get our full solar flare armor. Yeah sure we can always use the vallhalla greaves for extra defense and raw stat bonuses, but the full endgame sets are so coooooool man! Unless Taking those greaves really is worth giving up the seemingly God their full set of solar flare armor.

I hope this was easy to read. I admit I got a bit carried away and excited when talking about this. Again, thanks for all the help so far!

 

[Mark The Devourer]

Defense

Defense is a statistic that determines the decrease in damage taken per hit. The player's defense can be increased by wearing armor and accessories, and temporarily boosted/decreased by various buffs/debuffs. Enemies also have a defense statistic.

terraria.wiki.gg

Alternatively I could just use this build in the wiki. If defense is generally better than damage reduction (at least for tanking stuff) then I assume this set up is better than this one:

Damage reduction

Damage reduction is a hidden player statistic that decreases damage taken. All boosts (except Warmth Potion) affect damage taken after defense.

terraria.wiki.gg

Still it makes me wonder If I should trade any of these in for accessories that increase dodge chance and invincibility frames? The BOC is really nice (don't need the master ninja gear, mounts for life!) and the star veil is too. Add the worm scarf on top and I have some nice accessories! It just worries me that taking these accessories over just stacking shields and raw defense will impact me negatively making me tank worse than most optimal setups. Unless I have unknowingly created a really good side grade build, I'm not to sure.
Or I could just be psyching myself out again. That is the most probable reason I think.

In-depth Hardmode weapon tier list

This guide covers the overall viability and usage details of every weapon that becomes available after the Wall of Flesh is killed for the first time. IT IS CURRENTLY UP-TO-DATE as of 1.4.4.9. Each weapon has different aspects that contribute to viability. I will be using the following...

forums.terraria.org

after reading this lovely fellow and their lovely post on accessories, I realised something I totally forgot: Accesories can get phased out and you can change them on a whim. Why must I hold myself to using one set up? It's like forcing myself to use the same star upgrades in kingdom rush even when a strategy using different upgrades would be better AND I can change them whenever I want to no disadvantage to myself.
I gotta chill, ha ha! Anyways, thanks again for all the help. you guys are great.

 

[CannedPotato]

(I actually wrote about 5 paragraphs before realising I was going off on a tangent about things that are not even relevant)
Very nice thread, hope you learned a thing or two from this. I do not have much to input that has not already been said. Defense is great but in small numbers it does not help survivability, DR is of course better to have than not but due to defense applying first DR is more helpful to grant a little more life to less defensive builds. But if you are subtracting 100 damage from each hit you take you want that over DR any day of the week.

 

[Mark The Devourer]

(I actually wrote about 5 paragraphs before realising I was going off on a tangent about things that are not even relevant)
Very nice thread, hope you learned a thing or two from this. I do not have much to input that has not already been said. Defense is great but in small numbers it does not help survivability, DR is of course better to have than not but due to defense applying first DR is more helpful to grant a little more life to less defensive builds. But if you are subtracting 100 damage from each hit you take you want that over DR any day of the week.

Thank you! I certainly learned a lot from this thread., and not just in simple numbers and optimization, but with how to approach the game as a whole! (Or at least how to approach builds accessories and armor, that is, haha!)

I do want to say one last thing though to make sure I understand everything correctly.
DR is good for characters not building around defense or low defense (like summoners, mages, and maybe some ranger builds)
Pure defense is better than DR if you are building a character built around pure tankiness (Like melee tank builds)
Dodge chance and or invincibility frames are generally good for everyone or nearly everyone as they benefit many playstyles.

I guess those are three things, not one, but I'm feeling much more confident in my understanding of this stuff. Maybe I'll watch some youtube videos or read some guides to be extra sure.

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

Dodge chance should be treated similarly to DR, on pure tank characters you likely skip it in favour of getting more defence, but if not building around defence it's great to have. Invincibility frames (cross necklace, star veil) are nice for everyone, and so is regeneration (though regen gets a bit worse if face tanking)

 

[Mark The Devourer]

Dodge chance should be treated similarly to DR, on pure tank characters you likely skip it in favour of getting more defence, but if not building around defence it's great to have. Invincibility frames (cross necklace, star veil) are nice for everyone, and so is regeneration (though it gets a bit worse if face tanking)

got it. I just figured the star veil would be perfect for face tanking setups, but if need be I can always swap it out for another pair of flesh knuckles if need be. And I think another reason as to why I like it, is because it looks cool, just like how the berserkers gloves look cool!

 

[chewythebigblackdog]

Sorry if I was a bit unclear, star veil is useful on all setups (and probably more so on tank setups since you are more likely to take hits in rapid succession), and it's just regeneration that gets a bit worse if face tanking. Star veil is basically required if you are face tanking (e.g. plantera), since it doubles the amount of immunity frames.

 

[Mark The Devourer]

Sorry if I was a bit unclear, star veil is useful on all setups (and probably more so on tank setups since you are more likely to take hits in rapid succession), and it's just regeneration that gets a bit worse if face tanking. Star veil is basically required if you are face tanking (e.g. plantera), since it doubles the amount of immunity frames.

ohhh ok! Thanks for reiterating. Will Definitely get my hands on a star veil.

 

[Mark The Devourer]

Also, uh. I've entered hardmode in my drunk world medium core playthrough and I need better gear. Especially defense. Should I go for the Titanium mask+frost breastplate+adamantite for the 55 defense? Adamantite helmet+Frost Brestplate+Mythrill greaves for 51 defense and good offensive stats? Or Full titanium for the set bonus? Trying to go for defense tank load-out but I think that's already obvious!
The reason why I chose these three armor sets is that they all seem good for what I'm trying to do, BUT I can't decide if I want the max defense, set bonus, or a bit of both offense and defense.
Edit: I'm thinking of going full titanium and rocking the star veil for those sweet sweet invincibility frames and damaging stars. I think it's worth giving up the slightly extra defense for.

 

[CannedPotato]

Theorising what the highest defense stat or similar can be is fun and all, but by the point you ask that question you have for sure surpassed the level where it is actually useful and you are giving up other potential bonuses and honestly becoming weaker in general.
What I am saying is survivability is cool and all but I think you would benefit from using a star cloak instead of a star veil, yes you will get hit more but you will get hit more causing more stars to fall, it can basically be a secondary damage output.
But that is just a suggestion, do whatever.

 

[Mark The Devourer]

Theorising what the highest defense stat or similar can be is fun and all, but by the point you ask that question you have for sure surpassed the level where it is actually useful and you are giving up other potential bonuses and honestly becoming weaker in general.
What I am saying is survivability is cool and all but I think you would benefit from using a star cloak instead of a star veil, yes you will get hit more but you will get hit more causing more stars to fall, it can basically be a secondary damage output.
But that is just a suggestion, do whatever.

That’s actually a very good point. I have heard that because of the increase immunity frames you’ll be causing less stars to fall on your enemies. Although I think I’m confterable with that trade Off. but thank you for bringing that up, I’m sure it will be very useful to anyone else reading this thread!