SE: if it aint broke, dont fix it (War)

[Kabooa]

So this still leaves me with the question of why defiance seems to raise upheaval by so much (well over 25% and closer to 50%) when thrill of battle does not produce such results in deliverance.

No idea, but apparently it's also not 'ignoring Defiance' as Unchained gives it the expected damage increase that other skills enjoy. The highest unchained Upheaval I managed at the time of testing (This was admittedly a couple months ago) was something like 12kish noncrit with Berserk, Thrill, Defiance, and Unchained running.

My best guess is that Upheaval is coded differently from Inner Beast, and the damage formula looks more like:

DamageMultiplier = 1 * (Health Bonus) * (StanceBonus) * (Unchained)

Where Health bonus = Total Health / BaseMaxHealth, StanceBonus is If-Deliverance = 1.0, If-Defiance = 1.25 (25% more to put the 80% penalty at 100%), and Unchained If-Active = 1.25, If-Not-Active = 1.0

Where Inner Beast is

DamageMultiplier = 1

And other skills are

Damage Multiplier = 1 * (Unchained)

So Upheaval, putting it through Defiance is

Health bonus = 1.25 (125% health / 100% base max health)
Stance bonus = 1.25

1.25 * 1.25 = 1.56 multiplier just for being in Defiance compared to 1.05 for being in Deliverance. an almost 50% increase by comparison. And because every other bonus (Berserk, Crit, Direct Hits) are also multiplicative, a DCrit Defiance Upheaval is going to be monstrous.