Thread: 4.0 abilities

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Enemies still have Defense just like our characters.

Armor Penetration/Ignore in RPGs often have a much larger damage buff effect than a direct % damage increase buff on enemies with High Defense, such as bosses and the more sturdy monsters in dungeons.

It part of the reason why when a game offers a way to ignore a certain percent of enemies armor/defense that buff is often chosen over direct damage increase buffs.

For example,

if there is a 10% armor penetration/ignore on a enemy with 1000 armor then the enemy is only at 900 defense when attacking it. Then more on to a enemy with 2000 then that enemy is now at 1800 defense.

Direct damage buff is more set and the damage output is often weaker than armor penetration/ignore.

Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Enemies still have Defense just like our characters.

Armor Penetration/Ignore in RPGs often have a much larger damage buff effect than a direct % damage increase buff on enemies with High Defense, such as bosses and the more sturdy monsters in dungeons.

It part of the reason why when a game offers a way to ignore a certain percent of enemies armor/defense that buff is often chosen over direct damage increase buffs.

That's the thing though. At the same gear level, my 300 relative potency (factoring in buffs) attack does the same average damage to a wimpy AoE-burn trash mob or to a boss, unless that boss has a specific form decreasing damage taken, as far as I've seen. Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes, for instance, have identical effects on one's damage.

(Just went ahead and tested this for a few minutes to confirm I wasn't crazy, and every Bootshine and True Strike fell within the same range of damage from either a Dragon Kick alone or Twin Snakes alone, often even the exact same number. Jumped into a DF group for M4N, apologized for being a shitter for a minute in the name of science, and found the same.)

(Testing on multiple levels—53,55, 57, and 60—and mob types in each level has found the same average damage per potency so far.)
Pretty sure the main reason the debuff is preferred in ST group content, just as the self-buff is preferred when AoEing, is that you can adjust more damage with it. Additionally, different calculation layers (your own damage dealt modifiers and then the target's damage received modifiers) will stack multiplicatively (just as with buffs affecting different sources of damage).

(I'm fairly sure buffs affecting the same type, such as simply +%dmg or +%attack speed were confirmed to stack only additively instead.)