Does defense do anything in this game?

[MarkD]

My whole party is level 60 and wearing Diamond armor. I have one character who was built as a tanky warrior, only levelling up in classes that gain HP, Strength and Vitality. There are regular enemies (not bosses) who kill him in one hit with physical attacks. I have another character who was built as a pure mage. There are regular enemies that can one-shot her with spells. BTW I'm playing on Normal difficulty. At high levels, it feels like all my characters are made of paper and they die the second anything touches them.

[Adi]

Due to the way the game calculates damage, at higher levels, especially against enemies with high STR, defense is only useful if you REALLY pump it, while resistance is more or less useless past early game.

That said, you can very much have tanky characters, it's just that most of your defensive power will come from buffing yourself, such as with Armor Up or Kawakage. Or debuffing your enemies, either by directly reducing their damage with something like Power Down, slowing their actions with Daze or Slow, forcing them to miss with Blind or Reflex Stance, or outright stunning them with Sleep or paralysis. There are also more unconventional methods such as stacking counter attacks with a life draining weapon.

HP matters a whole lot due to most damage reductions being % based, so make sure you have the heavy armor that boosts HP since the lesser defense compared to other heavy armor only matters if your using Aegis. Also your tank really really needs crit res in late game, as crits are common and hit hard.

For your tank's levels, STR is only really useful if your a Reaper for increased life drain, and VIT is just garbage, tank or non tank. It's better to focus on HP for not dying, AGI to make sure your debuffs hit, and SPD because tanks have a tight action economy (Beatsmith is very good for this).

Vitality in particular is really bad if your not a Valkyrie, as the effect it has on defense multiplying and DOT% damage is so low it might as well be a rounding error.

Also this all assumes pure tank, if their a hybrid it's much harder to make them both able to tank and deal decent damage.

[darien]

I would like to second Adi's remarks about buffs and debuffs -- they are absolutely essential to your success in Crystal Project. It is a game built without pure "trash" encounters; every single pull needs to be taken seriously, because they can all kill you in short order if things go wrong. With your characters correctly buffed and the enemies appropriately debuffed, you'll find the encounters much more survivable, which is precisely how it's designed.

[MarkD]

Originally posted by darien:

I would like to second Adi's remarks about buffs and debuffs -- they are absolutely essential to your success in Crystal Project. It is a game built without pure "trash" encounters; every single pull needs to be taken seriously, because they can all kill you in short order if things go wrong. With your characters correctly buffed and the enemies appropriately debuffed, you'll find the encounters much more survivable, which is precisely how it's designed.

I am using buffs and debuffs frequently, I wouldn't have made it to (almost) the end of the game otherwise. But I find it ridiculous- especially after reading Adi's reply- that your stats simply don't work. What's the point of even having stats if they don't do anything? The game is basically lying to the player. And there's even a built-in system to respec your characters' level ups to get the "perfect" stats, which seems like a joke now.

[Flux]

You can see exactly what each of the stats do via the tutorial ducks in the House of the Know it All Ducks. None of them are lying to you; It is certain mechanics that makes each more or less useful than others.

[River Running Games]

I made this chart some time ago to compare how much damage certain late-game boss attacks do against both unbuffed Warrior and Wizard. It isn't a huge difference and margins are small, but the Warrior in this situation is on average expected to survive one extra hit over the Wizard. It doesn't seem like a lot, and it isn't, but adding buffs/debuffs increases the margin, and then a passive like Smokescreen on the Wizard helps them especially.

https://i.imgur.com/zstvrR7.png

[Adi]

Originally posted by River Running Games:

I made this chart some time ago to compare how much damage certain late-game boss attacks do against both unbuffed Warrior and Wizard. It isn't a huge difference and margins are small, but the Warrior in this situation is on average expected to survive one extra hit over the Wizard. It doesn't seem like a lot, and it isn't, but adding buffs/debuffs increases the margin, and then a passive like Smokescreen on the Wizard helps them especially.

https://i.imgur.com/zstvrR7.png

Interesting, do you have an expanded version of that chart? I'd be curious to see what you considered when trying to fine tune how much damage should be dealt at specific points.

Also for the damage formula I've been wondering how exactly it works. I think I have a general idea of how it works but I'd like to know how close it is.

1: Get the damage of the attack.

2: Reduce DEF or RES by DEF or RES piercing.

3: If STR is very high and the attack is physical, or MND is very high and the attack is magical, further reduce the effectiveness of DEF or RES regardless of piercing. (this is the step I'm least sure on how it works, I know that at 1000+ STR even with 0 DEF piercing defense does very little but I dunno how the exact numbers for this work)

4: If STR is very low and the attack is physical, or MND is very low and the attack is magical, reduce the damage dealt. (I think this penalty starts around sub 100?)

5: Multiply DEF or RES by VIT or SPI respectively. (I have no idea how much effect this has other than "not a lot".)

6: Reduce damage by DEF or RES. (I actually thought DEF and RES had a small flat factor until I saw the chart, more you know.)

7: Multipliers like Power Up or elemental weaknesses go here.

[River Running Games]

Just a warning, this formula is extremely ugly. It's the worst part of the battle system by far. It was reverse engineered to make the output I wanted rather than coming up with the formula first and then balancing around it, which is how other formulas in the game were made.

4 * ((500 - ((500 * 500) / (500 + UserMainStat * 3 / 2)))^2 / (2 * (500 - ((500 * 500) / (500 + TargetMainStat * 3 / 2)))))

The output is then used in the main formula like this:

(Atk * output) / (output + Def)

UserMainStat is the main stat of the ability. TargetMainStat is Vit for physical attacks and Mnd for magical attacks, so those stats do help with Defense and Resistance, but this isn't shown in-game very well; it is only referenced briefly by the know-it-all-ducks.

[darien]

Originally posted by River Running Games:

4 * ((500 - ((500 * 500) / (500 + UserMainStat * 3 / 2)))^2 / (2 * (500 - ((500 * 500) / (500 + TargetMainStat * 3 / 2)))))

Are all those 500s hard constants? Regardless, I can't criticise. That's how all of my formulae end up eventually too. :-D

[Adi]

You know, for as awkward as the many 500s in that is, it at least makes sense why numbers produce the results they do. Especially why it gets so volatile with large differences in stats.

And yeah, not like I can claim my attempts at formulas end up any less janky.