Defense vs. Armor vs. Hitpoints

[lawyer riiz 0]

So I'm a Melee Inquisitor, and I rely on Purifying Chastisement. It's awsome and it's a Cthulhu inspirated build. So I'm having fun, blah blah, and and now I'm level 96, and in niob I sometime just get obliterated. I just get dropped like a (insert tastless simile) and it makes me sad inside. So I wanted to do some research and couldn't find too much on the forums in other topics, if this topic has been discussed, I apologize and hopefully someone can just point me in the correct direction. So here's what I know:

 

From sacred wiki:

 

Defense Value: The additive value of a character's armor, shields, and defense modifiers

Armor / Armour: An item worn on the body to provide defense and other benefits.

Hitpoints: Units of health. Character dies when HPs reach 0

 

Alright, so when my hitpoints reach zero, I die. Awsome, I know that. I'd like to stop reaching zero. What is the best way to do that?

 

Does anyone know how these stats relate to each other? It looks like armor feeds into defense, but in what way? I have 955 defense right now and 7660 armor. I have 16,104 hit points. Is there an easy equation that states something like

 

x points defense = x dmg mitigation

x points defense = x% chance to evade

x points in armor is like an x increase in hitpoints?

 

I was under the impression that defense value gave some base % evade. So my problem is I'd really like to be hit - I don't want to evade or PC doesn't kick in. So just pump points into vitality and consitition until I've just got such a huge hitpoint pool that I can survive? That's my current plan.

 

Also, on a totally unrelated note, the "Chance to inflict serious open wounds bug" from the Ilgard set does not seem to be a problem on the xbox - I tried farming bosses and checking my hp during the fight every 2 or 3 seconds and never saw a detrimental effects. Has anyone else been able to investigate this?

[leadboots5 0]

More like:

x points armor = x dmg mitigation

x points defense value = x% chance for them to miss

 

Edit: Guide(Copy/paste w/ some editing)

 

Defense/Attack Value:

First, you have your weapon selection, and 4 types of damage you can inflict. Obviously, the higher damage you have, the more your opponent will be hurt.

Your opponents have the same thing, weapons and 4 damage types. The higher damage they have, the more you will be hurt.

Defense affects how much you get hit. You have an attack rating and a defense rating, as do all enemies as well.

The formula is: ToHit = Attack / (Attack + Opponents Defense)

Say my attack is 500 and a goblin has 250 defense, then the formula is 500/750, or 66% chance I will hit.

If his attack is 250 and my defense is 500, then his to hit is 250 / 750, or 33% chance. You can look in your overview, on the last page to see stats of recent enemies.

Agility and Dexterity both affect defense rating, as does Parry. The defense values on equipment do this as well.

 

Armor/Resistance:

You have 2 ways to reduce the damage that your enemies will do to you. One is to increase your resistances, which reduces the damage when you get hit but does not affect how often an opponent's blow lands. The skill Armor increases resistances, as do the built in resistance values in equipment, and all the % resist modifiers

The formula is: damage taken = damage dealt * (damage dealt / (damage dealt + resistance))

As resistance goes up, the fraction decreases in value, so the damage inflicted goes down.

 

The order of chances:

Evade -> Defense -> Armor

With skills: Evade -> Skills -> Defense -> Armor

Edited July 7, 2009 by leadboots5

[Zinsho 0]

For damage resistance the equation is:

 

Damage * Damage / (Damage + Resistance [Armor])

 

There is also Mitigation +X%, which reduces damage by a fixed percentage (I'm uncertain if it is before or after resistance, I'd have to test to see)

 

As to Defense... the equation should be something akin to above although not quite identical.

[lawyer riiz 0]

leadboots5, your math works out great. It's easy to see that from the Opponent - Chance to hi on the opponent overview screen. This seems to be a floating value that is calculated based on your current att / def

 

Both of you seem to have the same equation for hit points lost, but I'm not seeing that in game. Perhaps I do not understand how much extra dmg a critical strike does. Here's what I'm seeing:

 

in the orc cave on niob, there are 4 orcs and 2ish spiders

 

The orc dmg is 1230-1738 (all physical), my armor is 3923 (physical)

 

so, I should be losing 1738 * 1738/(1738+3923) = 534 hitpoints per non-critical melee attack, but it seems (after some testing) that his normal swings are doing between 3500 and 5500. This would make his dmg 5850-8150.

 

or perhaps the orc is using a combat art? Any additional insight guys?

[Zinsho 0]

The best I can say to that is... the damage listed for enemies doesn't seem to reflect the actual conditions in the game.

 

A) values under last enemy disregard damage/hp/etc scaling due to multiple players (5 player game, monster with 300 life in last player, 400 damage not coming near killing it)

B) It's quite possible those values are completely off as to what they actually are, I haven't done enough testing of them to be certain (the damage formula was as stated in Sacred 1, and that portion of the mechanics seems to have remained constant)

 

C) Enemy chance to hit is a factor of multiple things:

* Att vs Def

* %Evasion vs (-%Chance to evade)

* % Enemy cannot evade

* Chance to reflect vs (-%chance to reflect)

* Chance to block

 

All these values (or at the very least the first 3 for definite certain) are reflected in last opponent window (for both you and them, I've listed both the positive and negative effects)

[lawyer riiz 0]

Thanks Zinsho, it's very frusterating, but at least I understand the mechanics of the game a lot better now.

 

Perhaps I should have picked my skills differently (speed lore use to seem like a great idea), or perhaps I will be able to hunt around and find some nice mitigation rings / necklaces to socket into my gear, that or stack some more + all skills and lose my + experience stuff.

 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[Spyrus 0]

I have to add to these that it is best to reduce the chance to be hit than to increase your defense.

For my experience, when entering platinum, the more hitpoints will save you than more armor/defense attributes

[lawyer riiz 0]

Thanks Spyrus. In plat, I did just fine. the problem I have with my current build is that it's sort of built around the fact that I need to take dmg in order for my PC to kick in so that I can do enough dmg to take down the mobs. In hind sight, I think I would have made the build very different, and am currently trying to decide if it's worth re-grinding another 100 lvls to get back to where I am. I did make a couple of poor mod decisions early on but they didn't really effect the build in the long run, and should have probably taken toughness over speed lore as my final skill.

 

I enjoy playing the game so much, I probably will start over. It's just feels so good when a character really starts to come together and the skills are high enough to do what I intended them to do.

 

I just wish there was a respec button. Even if I had to give up my survival bonus or pay 100 million gold or had to complete a long boring quest to get a "respec stone" or something lame like that.