defense builds worthless?

[Wilus]

went full on defense and stil get melted regardless

[Blaukraut™]

what do you mean by full on defens?

[Wilus]

Originally posted by Blaukraut™:

what do you mean by full on defens?

full resistance, melee ranged reduction, ranged damaged reduction increased armor effectivness

[Super-XIX]

The game wants you to avoid getting hit. I did a melee-heavy loadout in normal and hard when the game was new, and you still had to try to avoid most damage.

Did 3pc Leto, Claws and the life steal ring and had fun, but you still can't facetank everything.

[Wilus]

Originally posted by Superjew-XIX:

The game wants you to avoid getting hit. I did a melee-heavy loadout in normal and hard when the game was new, and you still had to try to avoid most damage.

Did 3pc Leto, Claws and the life steal ring and had fun, but you still can't facetank everything.

So there's the leech ring, and the undying reaper weapon if you combine those you can heal for quite a bit. I want the full health regen armor to max it out in armor and see how I fair. Unfortunately you can't melee bosses becasue the fact they just one shot yah.

[DEATHGODZZ]

i play tank melee weapon defense build i focus on defensive traits and item ring's health and regen and increased armor effectiveness. i used the regen armor the twisted armor set upgrade it full i used RIVEN for life leach in combat or the voice of the tempest very fun to play.

[Renamon Simp]

I'm running full Leto w/Twisted Amulet, Keeper's ring, 20 Triage, and Petrified Maul.

When I get them, I plan to switch out the amulet for the Black Rose, then the leggings for a piece of Void or Carapace, and my second ring for Leech.

It's been very effective lately; can run through a hard adventure with no issues.

[Shizofrend]

for higher difficulties you can use defense stuff to absorb maybe one more ranged small attack or barely survival some rare big attacks but all in all yeah.
i play exclusively on apocalypse and i never take off ezlans band and armor boosting amulet cuz even tho it doesn't rly help cuz you still die in one or two hits it can help with smalle nemies ranged attacks so you abosrb one mre before dying or in very rare cases survive an strong attack with tiny tiny bit of health instead of dying. damage builds help better then defens ein general (if you know how to dodge and learnt attack patterns) cuz if you kill the tiny mobs adds before they can shoot you you don't have to dodge or absorb those hit sin first place.
still, that said I'd always reccomend going near but no above 50kilos so you get max armour and still medium roll adn then slap on armor boosting amulet adn health boosting ring with second ring being to your liking (i prefer enpowering loop for 25% extra ranged damage). Scrapers reduces damage in melee vicinity and void reduces damage afte rgetting hit.
and altho carapace armour reduces damage even better I woudnt reccomend cuz when it does and slows you donw you will be too slow (maybe) to dodge the second attack and die so in the end it wouldnt matter. Both attack and defense builds are okay and mostly balanced but all in all you should combine the two rly.

[U_F_N_M]

Defence isn't there to give blanket immunity. You need to pick what you need to deal with what you are most likely to have issues with in a given situation. Things like Evasion bonuses, Rattle Weed, and locking down enemies are often better defence than armor. That said there are a few builds better than most.

Full Void with A scoped weapon is pretty safe and powerful.
A melee build with a Leech effect and speed boosts for all-charged-attacks, with a weapon that does a lot of stagger like the Petrified Maul or the constant Overloads from the Voice of the Tempest.
A full regen build can give you a base health regen rate of 2.5hp/sec at all times (for comparison the base rate for Bloodwort without the trait or Menders Charm is 1.5hp/sec).

[Shurpy]

defense is pointless in this game yes

[Sugmar]

Originally posted by Wilus:

went full on defense and stil get melted regardless

Not Entirely

Messed about with full defence builds, was able to tank quite alot of hits

Although you will still need to do some dodging, dont expect to be able to tank everything

[Wisp Cat]

Here is a novice perspective on this issue (I was a beginner a week ago, I've put in too many hours since then, I am not particularly skilled in this game, but I have noticed my "muscle memory" improving):

A starting character has 100 health here. With traits and the ring you can almost double that -- this gives you almost double the taking-damage-in-combat time. With defenses you can increase your damage time even further.

On normal, against starting enemies this means that you might be able to survive something like 30 seconds of taking damage from some weaker enemy types (but the details vary a lot). This time decreases quite a lot with higher difficulties.

Whether that is "nothing" or "everything" seems to be not just a matter of perspective but also depends on other things. How quickly can you shut down the damage sources? How quickly can you restore health? How often do you take damage? Do you understand the game mechanics well enough to get your necessary actions in? What did the random number generator driven procedures hand you this time? Etc. etc. etc.

If you do not know where to go to avoid damage, the difference between 0.5 seconds of damage and 2 seconds of damage is not going to save you. Etc.

[Bonemiser]

wild card's post nails it. You can go tanky to get more leeway, but this is still a game where the goal is to not take damage. Better armor absolutely helps (because if yours isn't good enough, you can die in one hit-- which means you can't heal reactively, and so on), but it's not the be-all-end-all. You'll need mitigation and recovery to compensate for incoming damage, and the best way to negate incoming damage is killing and dodging.

That said, having Mender's Aura and Life Leech is always helpful when you're out of Dragon Hearts.