Taking more damage with higher defense and resistance ( very hard )

[Zettai]

So i wanted to try out the new very hard difficulty with a new save. Everything was going fine until i got to the Crown fight. He ended up being a big spike in difficulty compared to everything else up until him, so i decided to do some grinding and raising my stats a little bit, and get some better gear to try and win without too much item spam during combat.

The result was certainly interesting considering how the fight went worse for me after raising my defense and resistance stats. If i fought him with only a weapon and nothing else equipped, i took significantly less damage than if i engaged with armor/shield/boots equipped. This all seemed very counter intuitive to what one would think raising your defense would do.

Patch notes did say some boss stats would scale proportionally to the player's but this way of interacting with your stats almost seems unintended. Now fighting without any equipment, and focusing primarily on DPS stats seems like the way to go about doing things. Even entering defense stance doesn't reduce any damage apart from the heaviest hit of a boss' kit.
Didn't manage to test damage taken with different HP totals because i don't have a fast way of changing that.

I might be missing something obvious here, but this really is a strange way to balance harder difficulty. Although it does make using recovery items during combat feel less like an easy way out which is fun.

[Valmond]

Fun fact, Crown is one of the few bosses that scales to your stats, even before this update.

And in comparison, this game is far easier than Witch Spring 4. Witch Spring 4, the end game bosses scales to your stats and gets stronger per turn. There was a smaller version of this in Witch Spring 3's post game as well.

Similarly to the rest, you are meant to carefully plan when you attack and when you defend. Your pets are your lifeline, so carefully choose them.

The difference in this game, is that this is done on a much lower scale. So, it isn't hard to brute force over time.

[Zettai]

I feel like i'm approaching the difficulty in the wrong way, but i don't really see how you have to plan when to attack and when to defend, due to how defending only seem to negate attacks from the turns with the red indicator. Even then the only attack getting some form of negation is the heaviest of the hits. Even combined with the white fox debuff or shieldstones, the amount of damage taken doesn't change at all.

Defending in most cases just turns into a small heal, with no damage negated, unless used against powerful attacks.

[Valmond]

Originally posted by Dweeby:

I feel like i'm approaching the difficulty in the wrong way, but i don't really see how you have to plan when to attack and when to defend, due to how defending only seem to negate attacks from the turns with the red indicator. Even then the only attack getting some form of negation is the heaviest of the hits. Even combined with the white fox debuff or shieldstones, the amount of damage taken doesn't change at all.

Defending in most cases just turns into a small heal, with no damage negated, unless used against powerful attacks.

A tip I have to help with this is to increase your HP value quite high. This game is on an easier level, so if your HP is high enough. You'll be able to take a few hits before you have to heal. You should be able to soak up enough of the damage this way.

However, by end game on Very Hard, you can pretty much lose like a third to a fourth of your HP at times.

[Zettai]

Originally posted by Valmond:

Originally posted by Dweeby:

I feel like i'm approaching the difficulty in the wrong way, but i don't really see how you have to plan when to attack and when to defend, due to how defending only seem to negate attacks from the turns with the red indicator. Even then the only attack getting some form of negation is the heaviest of the hits. Even combined with the white fox debuff or shieldstones, the amount of damage taken doesn't change at all.

Defending in most cases just turns into a small heal, with no damage negated, unless used against powerful attacks.

A tip I have to help with this is to increase your HP value quite high. This game is on an easier level, so if your HP is high enough. You'll be able to take a few hits before you have to heal. You should be able to soak up enough of the damage this way.

However, by end game on Very Hard, you can pretty much lose like a third to a fourth of your HP at times.

Yea, i've been focusing purely on HP after the Crown fight when i saw that increasing defensive stats just made him hit me even harder. Been having little to no issues after that so far. While also increasing my AGI and MAG/STR.

Kinda funny though how unequipping gear to lower my stats made the fight much more manageable.

[Valmond]

Originally posted by Dweeby:

Originally posted by Valmond:

A tip I have to help with this is to increase your HP value quite high. This game is on an easier level, so if your HP is high enough. You'll be able to take a few hits before you have to heal. You should be able to soak up enough of the damage this way.

However, by end game on Very Hard, you can pretty much lose like a third to a fourth of your HP at times.

Yea, i've been focusing purely on HP after the Crown fight when i saw that increasing defensive stats just made him hit me even harder. Been having little to no issues after that so far. While also increasing my AGI and MAG/STR.

Kinda funny though how unequipping gear to lower my stats made the fight much more manageable.

lol

Yeah, in my case. My stats were high, so it would have made little difference if I unequipped. I'm not quite sure how they do the damage calculations in this game. At least for sure we know we need a lot of HP.

[Mika]

Crown was impossible for me on very hard. Raised HP/Def, didnt matter since his damage also scales the same way and he does one shot move when not defending or having a defense item up every turn. Used a full physical build so his blocking and not having access to any good pets yet was also a problem.

Turned it down to hard and killed him without a need to heal.

[Zettai]

Originally posted by Mika:

Crown was impossible for me on very hard. Raised HP/Def, didnt matter since his damage also scales the same way and he does one shot move when not defending or having a defense item up every turn. Used a full physical build so his blocking and not having access to any good pets yet was also a problem.

Turned it down to hard and killed him without a need to heal.

Hes definitely a difficulty spike compared to everything that came before. I only managed to beat him on very hard without healing items by the skin of my teeth, with clever use of stuns and managing his defensive shield ability to maximize damage.
Would probably have been easier if i focused more on HP through the early game instead of raising the defense stat, since raising it is just a downside, whether it is through training or equipment.

[That's ich!]

I played on very hard and didn't face this problem at all - despite running around with high level armor
I, however, never trained Defense, focused on Agility and Magic during training.
Let me get a pic of Equipment and training log
Endgame Build[i.imgur.com] (sometimes Dark Shield instead of Ice Shield) - don't forget you can change equipped weapons during battle!
Ran Life Staff most of the game[i.imgur.com]
Growth Log[i.imgur.com]

I did face danger a lot, and bosses usually 1-3 shotted me, and battles came down to the right use of Blessings (especially Revival and Reflect had to be timed right during their ult), Agility/Defence combat tools from Black Joe, Extra HP from life staff, defense command, and then later on Ice Pets/magic to slow down enemies.

I defeated everything in the game, including Nightmare - played most of the game on very hard - only early on on hard as i was getting used to the system and switched over to very hard at mid ch2 or so. Defo a fun and challenging experience

[Zettai]

Originally posted by That's ich!:

I played on very hard and didn't face this problem at all - despite running around with high level armor
I, however, never trained Defense, focused on Agility and Magic during training.
Let me get a pic of Equipment and training log
Endgame Build[i.imgur.com] (sometimes Dark Shield instead of Ice Shield) - don't forget you can change equipped weapons during battle!
Ran Life Staff most of the game[i.imgur.com]
Growth Log[i.imgur.com]

I did face danger a lot, and bosses usually 1-3 shotted me, and battles came down to the right use of Blessings (especially Revival and Reflect had to be timed right during their ult), Agility/Defence combat tools from Black Joe, Extra HP from life staff, defense command, and then later on Ice Pets/magic to slow down enemies.

I defeated everything in the game, including Nightmare - played most of the game on very hard - only early on on hard as i was getting used to the system and switched over to very hard at mid ch2 or so. Defo a fun and challenging experience

The first Crown fight might simply have been a special case. Nothing really after that has been as challenging, or showed such a blatant scaling against defense levels.

But there are a lot of encounters where i've tested receiving damage with max equip and high defense, and without any equipment and low defense. In many cases the amount of damage received is the exact same.

[That's ich!]

I don't remember the first Crown fight being that special/tough ngl - had much more trouble elsewhere.

[Valmond]

Originally posted by That's ich!:

I don't remember the first Crown fight being that special/tough ngl - had much more trouble elsewhere.

You see the difference if you get hit, when your stats are high enough. The problem that made him really easy, was his low HP. Which Very Hard sorta remedies a bit.

[Archound]

Originally posted by Valmond:

Originally posted by That's ich!:

I don't remember the first Crown fight being that special/tough ngl - had much more trouble elsewhere.

You see the difference if you get hit, when your stats are high enough. The problem that made him really easy, was his low HP. Which Very Hard sorta remedies a bit.

I play very hard and train from begining, but crown strong but not very tough as everyone tell. Also i can confirm boss scale total stat, not only defensive stat, because i buy all stat boost item from merchant even not hybrid build.
I recommend use magic shield if you are magic build because mana have very high HP effectiveness especially with item refund mana.