Protect Spell and Values

Hey folks,

I was playing around a bit today, taking hints from equal level creatures, both physical and magical, with and without the Protect spell activated. I'm a level 39 White Mage, I'm not sure if the strength of this spell changes based on level or gear, but my finding was that in pretty much all cases enemies dealt the same amount of damage with or without the spell activated.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it just making up so small a portion of defense that it's not noticeable against equal level creatures? Has anyone done any experiments in dungeons to see if the effects are more noticeable?

Right now I gain 19 defense and 37 magic defense out of Protect.

295>339
60>69
100>115

It's a straight +15% to your current (magic) defense from gear. Low increases won't have a noticeable effect unless you're judging a large sample size of averages.

Ah okay, that's pretty interesting. 15% of the defense value suggests it's a lot more impactful when you're placing protect on your tanks or armored DPS. They should see a more noticeable impact out of the protect spell then the caster would. Thanks for this info!

Keep in mind, defense/magic defense aren't very good stats. Tanks get a cooldown that increases their defense by 20%, and it's considered one of the trashier cooldowns they get. Not that you shouldn't cast protect - it's damage reduction that's essentially free! - but it's sometimes hard to notice when you don't have it up.

One fight where it is extremely noticable is Ultima whose special abilties consist of mostly, if not all, magic based moves. Defractive laser hits so hard without the shell effect from whm's protect, and eating the Ifrit-type plumes during Titan phase becomes risky without it aswell.