Curious if defense increases spell resistance. Specifically, a spell missing. As defense is a set stat that increases as you level, it acts as the marker for all higher and lower level hits against you. When fighting a boss who is 3 levels higher than you, your defense needs to be not only equal but higher than his respective level to mitigate more damage, essentially making it seem like you’re a higher level than the boss when being hit, only the boss cant have glancing blows and hits like a truck.
So the question is if Spell hit then is also affected by defense. Specifically in PVP. If you have the equivalent to 3 levels higher defense then would they suffer the same penalties as attacking a higher level mob and therefore need more spell hit rating to reach cap?
Defense only increases your chance to Dodge, Block, or Parry (assuming you can do all of those things), increases the attacker’s chance to Miss, and decreases the attacker’s chance to Critically Strike. It has no direct effect on Crushing Blows. All of this relates exclusively to the PHYSICAL hit table.
Are you absolutely sure? If it increases your chance to be missed, then a spell that misses you would be a resist correct? When casting on a higher level mob, your spells are effected the same way physical attacks are in that they miss (Full resist) and are partially resisted (glancing blows). Defense increases with level. Is there anyway to test this? Maybe have a spell caster with no plus hit shoot at a defense capped player.
No. Defense has no interactions with Resistance whatsoever. Spells have their own chance to hit, and their miss chance is only based on level difference and the caster’s spell hit chance.
Your spells are not affected in the same way as physical attacks, especially as spells are on a two-roll system, while melee attacks are on a single roll. You’re making a mistake by equating a partial resist to a glancing blow, which is not a similar mechanic in any way.
Your spell resistance is only increased by the resistance stat.
However, if you want to be technical, the level difference between you and your enemy also affects your full resistance (spell hit/miss) and partial resistance (which folks refer to as level based resistance) chances. While you can mitigate full resist chance with spell hit, and regular partial resists with spell penetration, you cannot mitigate level-based partial resists at all. This level-based partial resistance does not exist in PvP either, since you asked specifically about PvP.
Nothing different would happen. The player would have a 4% chance to fully resist the spell regardless of what their defense level is. If they have no resistances, they’d have a 0% chance to partially resist.
This game is broken down into combat tables that are separate from one another. Spells and Physical Attacks have their own tables, respectively. Defense only has an impact on the latter, not the former.
As people have said, defense has no effect on spells whatsoever.
Just to clarify something you asked, spells do not “miss”, they are “resisted”. In reality it works similarly, but its treated by the game as a completely different mechanic.
The rough equivalent of defense for spells would be gear/talents/abilities that say “Increases your resistance to x spells and effects” / “+50 x resistance”. i.e. spell resistance.