Defense Lacking?

[D. Edwards]

Is it me or does defense just not scale well? I feel like none of the other stats matter other than SPD, ATK/MD. You could probably add crit but DEF and RES really lacks stopping power.

I notice I focus nothing but ATK or MND, or even just dual wield. I don't really see the point in classes such as Knight or Templar (though Righteous Blade has its place).

My character just keep getting one shot on Level II spells or skills even when they have pretty high defense. Granted I am playing on very hard but even then I recon Defense would be worth something at least.

Just considering dropping it and also my Knight. I mean from a aesthetics point the knight should be slow due to heavy armor but if defense is going to lack then make the Knight have high SPD maybe then I can use it as cannon fodder with the protection skill.

[Conan The Librarian]

D. Edwards-

To be clear, there are two stats for this: Defense for physical damage and Resistance for magical damage. You mentioned "getting one-shot by level 2 spells", which would be relevant to Resistance as opposed to Defense.

But really, the fact of what you're talking about is actually why defense / resistance is so important -- if you neglect it too much on your equipment, you will die far too easily.

Also, use buffs and debuffs! Buffs to increase your defensive capabilities work well, and debuffs to crowd control / reduce the strength of enemies is key.

[D. Edwards]

Thanks for the reply, however I said spells or skills. I understand that Defense is for Physical and Resistence if for magical.

What I am getting at though is I think ATK/MND is too strong you have a plethora of ways to make attack stronger but not so much defense. For example, Dual wield makes ATK very strong, but you don't have much defense to counter that, it's not like you can get dual defense. Sure you can buff DEF but you can buff ATK too.

Then there's just skills, skills add an ATK Bonus, but there are none or little defensive skills that add defense bonsus and are useful. I mean there's the skill like Defend but eh we know how useful that is.

I think protect is a good skill but the knight is too slow to use and the knight can be countered easily with magic, but even without magic the knight still take a lot of damage from physical.

As for CC, i get that but this isn't about CC it's about the game favoring ATK/MND over DEF/RES. In other words there's no incentive to bring a defense type chara, just go ATK/MND and spam attack everything. Of course CC here and there when needed. But that's all you have.

My best characters are all ATK/MND focus characters outside the healers but even they use MND and they often blow things up prior to being attacked. But my defense characters uhh yeah why are they there again?

I am surprised DEF or maybe even RES doesn't reduce crit chance to balance it out a little more.

[Mechalibur]

Defenses scale at half the rate attack stats do, so yes, they scale slower. This is intentional since characters are also increasing their hp. If defense scaled as much as attack stats did, fight would progressively take longer and longer as you reached the endgame since damage would stay roughly the same, but hp would increase.

[ΑΩ]

I do agree that Defensive type characters feel a bit more lacking compared to the offensive type characters, I think if the Shields did as much Def boost as the Weapon do Atk boost it might have helped balance things out better a bit, maybe having an equivalent for Res would also have been a good thing, a sort of 'magical shield', would have been good for the magicals employing shields, I mean sure you have the Spellbook, but I mean a regular magical equivalent to the Shield rather than a single special type of item.

However that being said obviously the Offensive builds are likely always going to feel to be more succesful than a tank due to killing more stuff, a tank is meant to basically just be a meat shield for the fragile spellcasters and rogues, not a damage dealer. Likely at higher difficulty it become nearly necessary to keep one around to protect your vulnerable characters, but at more normal difficulties you can more likely do without.

[D. Edwards]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Defenses scale at half the rate attack stats do, so yes, they scale slower. This is intentional since characters are also increasing their hp. If defense scaled as much as attack stats did, fight would progressively take longer and longer as you reached the endgame since damage would stay roughly the same, but hp would increase.

You can balance this out easily. Perhaps reduce the amount of CC or turns per CC which can reduce the length of fights. Also having defense scale half the rate of ATK then the problem you have is DEF become useless after a certain point, which means that HP probably should be scaled a little higher than currently to prevent characters getting 1 shotted (even when they have good DEF/RES).

Also if DEF was going to grow 1/2 the rate then there should be a secondary bonus such as reducing Crit chance as well, can have RES reduce magical crit chance.

I mean there's so many ways you could of balance the DEF/RES stat out to make it not useless. There's no point in having DEF/RES just stack SPD/ATK/MND and glass cannon everything and/or CC when needed.

[D. Edwards]

Originally posted by Lydia XIII:

I do agree that Defensive type characters feel a bit more lacking compared to the offensive type characters, I think if the Shields did as much Def boost as the Weapon do Atk boost it might have helped balance things out better a bit, maybe having an equivalent for Res would also have been a good thing, a sort of 'magical shield', would have been good for the magicals employing shields, I mean sure you have the Spellbook, but I mean a regular magical equivalent to the Shield rather than a single special type of item.

However that being said obviously the Offensive builds are likely always going to feel to be more succesful than a tank due to killing more stuff, a tank is meant to basically just be a meat shield for the fragile spellcasters and rogues, not a damage dealer. Likely at higher difficulty it become nearly necessary to keep one around to protect your vulnerable characters, but at more normal difficulties you can more likely do without.

I agree with your tank role statement, but they can't even do that in this game. They're too slow and DEF/RES lacks in any type of reduction power.

I think it's the opposite in higher difficulty. In normal setting DEF scales pretty good with ATK IMO but when you play on very hard and higher that's when you see the discrepancy.

[Mechalibur]

The way the game calculates damage is that base damage is additive (the ATK - DEF calculation) while every other modifier (facing, element, passives, etc) is multiplicative. When using additive base damage, it's absolutely necessary for attack to scale faster than def to prevent attacks dealing minimum damage (1 in this game), especially since HP is increasing as well.

I also disagree that increasing defense is useless because the scaling is difference. The def difference between a vangal and a tangrel, for example, is very noticeable. With all the possible multiplicative modifiers you can receive to damage in this game, reducing the base damage by a flat amount can be quite useful.

[Yian Yan]

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

...
What I am getting at though is I think ATK/MND is too strong you have a plethora of ways to make attack stronger but not so much defense. For example, Dual wield makes ATK very strong, but you don't have much defense to counter that, it's not like you can get dual defense. Sure you can buff DEF but you can buff ATK too. ...

Well, actually, you can totally dual wield shields in this game. It's not super practical, I'll admit, but you can totally dual defense, as it were.

[Fair]

I do have to aggree with the sentiment. I'm not going to argue about defense as a stat but the role of defensive characters. My take on them is that they lack the tools to do what you expect of them. In most case I build what you might call off-tanks, they can take a hit or two but they are not designed to be a full on tank.

The reason why I think that is because the game doesn't give the defense characters the tools to redirect attacks consistently nor protect very well against them. Basically every character is at risk of getting hit at any time. Even characters in the back risk getting hit by a flying enemy, a gunner, sorcerer, ... . Not too mention of all the counters that are offense orientated. Knights can protect one character but that means that the rest are setting ducks, plus the knight you're not sure that character is going to get hit. Plus there is just too much stuff they have to deal with: multiple statuses, attacks with high boosts, people that can attack multiple times, ... . And the tank doesn't have tools of that magnitude as well.

Finally is the design of the (human) classes. They're very offense orientated, I think maybe three can be classified as tanky if you are really generous: knight, mercenary and templar. But even these are offense orientated. The knight is the clear example of that. they have some defensive abilities but at the same time, around half of their actions are just pure damage dealing.

[crate]

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

I notice I focus nothing but ATK or MND, or even just dual wield. I don't really see the point in classes such as Knight or Templar (though Righteous Blade has its place).

Both Knight and Templar are pretty terrible classes to level in, but they have useful skillsets. Knight has two absurdly powerful abilities in Taunt and One for All, and Templar has Purge and a really good finisher.

Definitely don't level up as Knight or Templar though. DEF is actually an okay stat if you want to use lots of status effects but Knight can't make up for the worst SPD growth in the game. Templar's stat growth is just not very good, especially since Evade Magic makes RES a poor investment.

[D. Edwards]

Originally posted by crate:

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

I notice I focus nothing but ATK or MND, or even just dual wield. I don't really see the point in classes such as Knight or Templar (though Righteous Blade has its place).

Both Knight and Templar are pretty terrible classes to level in, but they have useful skillsets. Knight has two absurdly powerful abilities in Taunt and One for All, and Templar has Purge and a really good finisher.

Definitely don't level up as Knight or Templar though. DEF is actually an okay stat if you want to use lots of status effects but Knight can't make up for the worst SPD growth in the game. Templar's stat growth is just not very good, especially since Evade Magic makes RES a poor investment.

You don't have to level up in Knight, can level up in Warmage? For balanced stats, I can't remember the DEF stat or maybe Gadgeteer since it has 4 of everything, with excellent HP growth.

But that's not the optimal leveling strategy, do to that you level werewolf to 99 or maybe late 70s then go vampire for the speed. You can also go Princess to 90 and Alche for the last 10 levels. What those classes lack? DEF and even RES (not the Princess).

But that's the best build strategy for optimal stats, ALL ATK/MND, and SPD.

DEF and RES are the weakest stats in the game. They're practically useless and are only in the game because they're a staple stat for RPGs. However, in most RPGs (such as this one), DEF is actually one of the weakest stats. Mainly because it provides no synergy to classes.

We have a Knight class and a Templar, but like you said, they suck because they lack speed, and I would say they also lack synergy with their primary stats. Righteous Blade is an excellent skill, one of the best actually, but guess what it's better to use it on my werewolf than my Templar; why? Because it's based on ATK.

My werewolf can use it and crit for 1k damage while my Templar a measly few hundred if that. Yeah, Templar in the trash bin, a waste of a roster spot.

Edit: I do want to add another problem with DEF/RES is that no other stat synergizes with them. For example, ATK/MND can synergize with CRIT, same goes for SPD because all the glass cannon classes have good or decent speed where as the DEF classes don't.

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

My werewolf can use it and crit for 1k damage while my Templar a measly few hundred if that. Yeah, Templar in the trash bin, a waste of a roster spot.

...if it wasn't for the fact that Templar is one of the best classes in the game...

[Siphon] and [Righteous Blade] are amazing abilities, since stealing mana and hitting super hard are both valuable, not to mention how utterly fantastic Holy element is against all the demons n such in this game. Also Scythes are great weapon type, stat growths are good, I really have to disagree.

[D. Edwards]

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

My werewolf can use it and crit for 1k damage while my Templar a measly few hundred if that. Yeah, Templar in the trash bin, a waste of a roster spot.

...if it wasn't for the fact that Templar is one of the best classes in the game...

[Siphon] and [Righteous Blade] are amazing abilities, since stealing mana and hitting super hard are both valuable, not to mention how utterly fantastic Holy element is against all the demons n such in this game. Also Scythes are great weapon type, stat growths are good, I really have to disagree.

Except my werewolf has all those with a Templar subset, but with better SPD and ATK and yeah....

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

...if it wasn't for the fact that Templar is one of the best classes in the game...

[Siphon] and [Righteous Blade] are amazing abilities, since stealing mana and hitting super hard are both valuable, not to mention how utterly fantastic Holy element is against all the demons n such in this game. Also Scythes are great weapon type, stat growths are good, I really have to disagree.

Except my werewolf has all those with a Templar subset, but with better SPD and ATK and yeah....

And then dies due to lack of defense. Contrary to what you're saying defensive stats are REAL in this game and have meaning. Sure, you CAN get by with certain kinds of "glass cannon" strategies on Veteran or below, but no, defense is still important.

Edit: as an example from a friend, his level 31 Templar using [Righteous Blade] https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/485835859942309889/720660486936461452/unknown.png

922 damage against a demon.

[D. Edwards]

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

Originally posted by D. Edwards:

Except my werewolf has all those with a Templar subset, but with better SPD and ATK and yeah....

And then dies due to lack of defense. Contrary to what you're saying defensive stats are REAL in this game and have meaning. Sure, you CAN get by with certain kinds of "glass cannon" strategies on Veteran or below, but no, defense is still important.

Doesn't matter if it dies it took out 2-3 enemies prior to death. I am not playing on Veteran or below I am playing on the hardest level with a +5% enemy stat bonus and one below elite for enemy addons.

Also I forgo to add that even the mission bonuses add more to ATK bonuses, my wolf hits 100% crit and everyone has what +15% hit chance? So I can easily focus on more ATK/SPD related accessories. Oh yeah +19% more dmg, Hmm why are there no defense bonuses? Gee golly, i wonder why.

You know I didn't even get into my dual wielding gunner or archer/warmage they actually perform better than my wolf.