How does banner damage reduction work?

Sanford

Terrarian
Is is applied before defense or after? Is it additive to other damage reduction sources, or is it multiplicative?

Depending on where this falls in the damage reduction formula, it could be very powerful, especially in Expert.
 
It's multiplicative. Damage reduction works quite complicated though, especially with damage being doubled in Expert Mode, so I'll break it down.

The order of damage reduction is Banner -> Defence Rating -> Endurance Rating -> Armour Set Effect -> Paladin's Shield.
  • The banner reduction is 25% on Normal mode and 50% on Expert mode (rounded down).
  • The defence rating reduces damage by 50% of the defence value on Normal Mode and 75% of the defence value on Expert Mode (not rounded).
  • The endurance rating reduction is an additive stack of the Endurance Potion (10%), Worm Scarf (17%) and Frozen Turtle Shell (25%) (52% max) (rounded down).
  • The armour set effect reduction reduces damage by a percentage based on which armour you're wearing: Solar Flare or Beetle Shell (rounded down):
    • Solar Flare armour reduces incoming damage by 30%, at the cost of one charge.
    • Beetle Shell armour reduces incoming damage by 15% per charge (max 3), at the cost of one charge.
  • If a nearby teammate is wearing a Paladin's Shield, it reduces the damage by 25% (rounded down).
  • The damage that remains is dealt to the player.
To illustrate this, let's consider an NPC that deals 100 damage hitting a player with banner protection, Solar Flare armour (78 defence) with at least one charge, an Endurance Potion and a Worm Scarf (and no other accessories), with a Paladin's Shield wearing teammate nearby. The number in parentheses is the damage remaining at that step of the reduction chain.

Base DamageBanner ModDefence ModEndurance ModArmour ModPaladin's Shield Mod
Normal Mode100-25% (75)78 * -0.5 = -39 (36)-10% + -17% = -27% (26)-30% (18)-25% (13)
Expert Mode200-50% (100)78 * -0.75 = -58.5 (41.5)-10% + -17% = -27% (30)-30% (21)-25% (15)

Or to put it into a formula:

damage = ((baseDamage * bannerMod) - defenceMod * defence) * enduranceMod * armourSetMod * paladinShieldMod

Hope that sheds some light on things.
 
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First: This means that banners are really powerful in Expert with high-defense builds. Maybe.

Second: The wiki says Paladin's Shield is additive with other damage reduction. Follow-up question, is the damage your ally takes from Paladin's Shield affected by any or all of the damage reductions you mentioned?
 
First: This means that banners are really powerful in Expert with high-defense builds. Maybe.

Second: The wiki says Paladin's Shield is additive with other damage reduction. Follow-up question, is the damage your ally takes from Paladin's Shield affected by any or all of the damage reductions you mentioned?
All of it. The damage gets split after the armour set effect reduction. You take the full 75% without reductions (as you have already had them), but the 25% your ally takes once again goes through the entire damage reduction chain (except banners, it bypasses that).

The Wiki claims that damage gets split before either player's defence is factored in, but this is incorrect.
 
25% your ally takes once again goes through the entire damage reduction chain.

The Wiki claims that damage gets split before either player's defence is factored in, but this is incorrect.

I was never sure about this. This means Paladin's shield is extremely useful with defense and DR, rather than nearly useless, like I kinda thought it was.

Notice how the Expert version still does more damage even with all that damage reduction.

True, but it's very easy for a melee class to get higher than 78 defense (I personally get about 100 when going melee, which is by no means the highest). Also note that most enemies, even in the Celestial Invasion deal less than 100 damage, and with these factord, Expert damage falls sharply.

Let's take a lower damage enemy from the Celestial Invasion, the Drakanian against someone with 100 defense (not sure how Terraria rounds damage off the top of my head, so I'll just include decimals):

Normal Mode: Base Damage 80, Banner Modified 60, Defense Modified 10, Endurance Modified 7.3, Armour Set Modified 5.11, Paladin's Shield Modified 3.8325
Expert Mode Base Damage 160, Banner Modified 80, Defense Modified 5, Endurance Modified 3.65, Armour Set Modified 2.555, Paladin's Shield Modified 1.91

I do want to note that this is hardly an extreme example. Defense can reach 180 in Expert (Although you probably don't want it that high), making it possible to achieve results like this from enemies that deal nearly 300 damage in Expert. In this scenario, even without damage reduction, Expert mode reduces damage by half from a fairly high-end enemy. Sorry if this went on a bit longer than it should have, I'm just really intrigued by the power of banners. In the light of this evidence, I may use them to revitalize my Moon Lord farming.
 
I was never sure about this. This means Paladin's shield is extremely useful with defense and DR, rather than nearly useless, like I kinda thought it was.



True, but it's very easy for a melee class to get higher than 78 defense (I personally get about 100 when going melee, which is by no means the highest). Also note that most enemies, even in the Celestial Invasion deal less than 100 damage, and with these factord, Expert damage falls sharply.

Let's take a lower damage enemy from the Celestial Invasion, the Drakanian against someone with 100 defense (not sure how Terraria rounds damage off the top of my head, so I'll just include decimals):

Normal Mode: Base Damage 80, Banner Modified 60, Defense Modified 10, Endurance Modified 7.3, Armour Set Modified 5.11, Paladin's Shield Modified 3.8325
Expert Mode Base Damage 160, Banner Modified 80, Defense Modified 5, Endurance Modified 3.65, Armour Set Modified 2.555, Paladin's Shield Modified 1.91

I do want to note that this is hardly an extreme example. Defense can reach 180 in Expert (Although you probably don't want it that high), making it possible to achieve results like this from enemies that deal nearly 300 damage in Expert. In this scenario, even without damage reduction, Expert mode reduces damage by half from a fairly high-end enemy. Sorry if this went on a bit longer than it should have, I'm just really intrigued by the power of banners. In the light of this evidence, I may use them to revitalize my Moon Lord farming.
Don't forget however that banners only reduce contact damage. Projectile damage is never reduced.
 
Oh, yeah. Ouch. Is that a bug?
I'm not sure. I've seen this being reported a few times, and it has never been stated by a dev to be intended. However, due to the amount of work involved in making this affect projectiles as well, I think it might just be low on the priority list. Maybe @Leinfors has some insight on this.
 
Its a known bug, which, as you say, "could take a very large amount of work to fix".

What I believe would be required would be to add the banner reduction manually to any relevant projectiles, of which there are hundreds to sort through, and the identities of which aren't always immediately obvious, meaning mistakes could be made unless careful double-checking was done.

Is it possible? Absolutely. Even something that will probably done eventually. But its the sort of bug that would take several people multiple full work days to fix due to the massive amount of categorization and code adjustments (the code changes alone would take many hours).
 
Good to know. Celestial Invasion could potentially plummet in difficulty with such an update. Hope you guys get around to it soon.
 
wont change much but I'm pretty sure that the Endurance modifier applies not additive. so instead -10% + -17% = -27% it would be (0.9)*(0.83), so in total -25.3%.
At least in %damge bonus it does so.
 
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