Make Defense value work like Damage Reduction instead of “chance to miss”.
Just like in any other game in existence.
Currently Defense is a useless F-tier stat only useful for barb manfight duelling.
Defense is useless for hardcore just like block because it’s chance based.
Also Armor and Shield weight should factor into Damage Reduction.
Didn’t the devs intend the endgame heavy armor to provide some baseline DR? I think it was found as leftover code in the game files.
And I disagree that block is useless, blocking 100% damage at a 75% rate is very OP. I will agree that Defense is poorly tuned in this game, though… too strong for monsters, not useful enough for players.
Many older RPG’s have used the system where defense lowers your chance to getting hit rather than a damage reducer. No I wouldn’t say defense to totally useless but it’s nothing to overly worry about either. Look at Dungeons & Dragons. They go by a defense system where it reduces your chances of getting hit rather than reducing damage. But that could have been the older versions of the game. Not sure about now.
I’ve been testing out different mercenary setups and came to a conclusion that about 4k defense is optimal for a mercenary. Unless you were going with an eth reapers merc where they can use treachery and gface/giant skull depending on the socket in the eth reapers. The decrep gives nice protection where you wouldn’t need the extra defense but the other setups such as insight/obedience/infinity were pale without duress/fortitude.
Most RPGs use defense as avoidance and armor as a physical damage mitigation. That said, D2 generally needs a LOT more sources for physical damage reduction as a stat. It’s plainly stupid that the best way to gear for physical damage reduction is to start socketing Bers into other gear. It’s also why the physical sunder charm is a giant joke item. Nobody is going to take 10-30% more physical damage. That just means being one shot left and right when a hit lands.
If you think that block is useless for hardcore i’d say you have no clue what you are talking about with this suggestion either.
I like how defense works, the only thing i am not sure is why it doesn’t work when you are running.
Say you are at half HP and Amped and Tele into the middle of 5 mobs. You have 75% block. So most of the time you block at least 1 hit and you live.
But
0.25^5 = 0.004 = 0.4% of the times or 1 in 250 times, all 5 hits land despite your max block and you die.
250 occurrences of something is nothing in Diablo.
Block is useless in hardcore.
I would love to see a Damage Reduction linked to the ‘weight’ of armor you use as well as how much AR you have. every 500 AR you should get 1% DR. Medium armors should have a natural 5-10% and Heavy Armors should have a natural 10-20%. Something that makes the movement bonus worth it…
Do you know what kills you faster? No block at all
You are probably right in general.
But if you aim for never dying, the points in Dex for max block are better spent in Vit.
defense is “useless” because they buffed monster stats a while back and never buffed defense values as a result, so now most monsters have a ridiculous amount of attack rating compared to before. on top of that, running sets your defense to 0.
From your numbers, block stops at least some hits 99.6% of the time in that situation. How can that be considered useless?
If you have no defense or block rate on your characters and routinely teleport into the middle of 5 monsters on hardcore then I think we know why you die…
99.6% of the time sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
For a one-time roll of the dice, it is.
I bet most people would gamble their mother’s life for a billion dollars with those odds.
But in Diablo which is a repetitive game, you will inevitably encounter that risky scenario 250 times or many more. Suddenly that 0.4% chance of death becomes unacceptable.
That’s why you cannot rely on the block chance or Defense to save yourself from wrong moves in Hardcore.
This is unlike Softcore mode where they indeed save you from corpse running 99.6% of the time in that situation. And also saves rehiring the Mercenary in both SC and HC.
Instead in theory it’s better to spend the Dex points into Vit because that raises the number of mobs you can Tele into and live where you assume all of their hits land.
i really like them separate. i think more games should keep them separate. Some do in other forms than armor, so that’s good i guess.
Why?
In Diablo you play a character, that engages loads of enemies. I’d take the chance to miss…
And as to Damage Reduction? Learn to balance out the stats in a manner, so that you can squeeze some damage reduction into your build, that can be the difference between life and death.
What they should have done is make it, so that when you run at least half of your defense stat still works (rather than none at all like it currently works). That would make the stat more useful prior to Enigma.
Also, they should have reworked the tooltips. Damage Reduction should have been called Physical Damage Reduction. Defense should have been described as “chance to negate attacks against you” rather than the current description.
Mitigation > avoidance. There’s a reason why percentage damage reduction is stupidly valuable, as well as why the physical sunder charm is abysmally useless. That reason is that you don’t want to be one shot when you get clipped. D2 Hell mode has a massive physical/magic damage problem in terms of mitigation available to players, and melee are very obtusely affected by it.
If defense and dr is combined it will make hc way too easy
Currently you can get one shot at many places, especially if you play a squishy char like sorc
Now imagine def gives you dr and you have 450% def bonus on your shiver armor, suddenly this 10k hit will not hurt enough to kill you. It’s gonna be a walk in the park
Thats just one issue, there are many other issues that will come around if you decide to do something so pointless
Not always.
Actually, things like Shako or Stormshield, or belts that grant Physical Damage reduction are not all that expensive.
I imagine one could ware it comfortably on a Summon Necro, but on a melee character… no way.
Yes, always. Taking less damage is actually a reliable means of mitigation. Even block chance has more value than stacking defense.
On a relative scale to runewords, some of which also grant reduction because they use a ber rune. Ber also remains the best mitigation rune to socket into gear.
Even ranged have to sweat while they’re using it because Hell mode arrows seem to always land unless you have max block.
I don’t hate the idea. Heavy armor needs SOMETHING.