Agastya said:
And some other people will happily choose the latter. Fun is subjective. If somebody wants to build defense stacking then by all means let them, what they do in single player isn't affecting your single player experience.
Saying one is "better" than the other is an opinionated statement, and has been said, depends entirely on somebody's playstyle.
That was only my response to FlakMaster's single example, which wasn't really a good one. Like I said, as you progress through hardmode and enemies start doing more damage, defense loses its effectiveness. This is a fact. People can still have fun using Warding, and people can still win using Warding, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing to use.
In any case, if you want to go with the tank playstyle, then you'll need damage-reducing items like the Worm Scarf and Beetle armor, not just Warding. Defense by itself simply won't cut it.
FlakMaster said:
No, you're missing my point. That figure is the comparison of Warding vs Lucky/Menacing, which is the topic of this thread. Without the warding set, you'll be taking 43 damage. With it, you'll be taking 25. 42% difference in damage taken, simple as that.
Damage bonuses are simple because they add up. Defence is different, as it is exponentially effective depending on the damage figures.
I understand your point, but you left out a big factor in order to skew the numbers in your favor. The fact is that in that specific scenario, full Warding only adds on 20% damage reduction to the reduction you're already getting. Armor by itself is plenty sufficient to enable you to take a decent number of hits.
Also, while defense might be "exponentially effective" as you increase it, it's also exponentially ineffective as monsters get stronger. And the trend in late hardmode is for enemies to get stronger at a much faster rate than you can increase your defense.
FlakMaster said:
I've already acknowledged that yes, killing targets faster = less damage taken, however with this you have to be under the assumption that the player can handle the target before they die. This is not guaranteed, especially for bosses, because it depends on the player's skill. That DPS boost won't matter if the player co*cks up constantly, but extra defence means they receive less punishment and thus can get past that threshold I keep talking about where they can reliably keep their health up to high levels.
If you're talking about dodging skill, then if you can't win a DPS race against a boss with pure damage, you won't be able to win against it with pure defense. This is because, as I said, damage shortens the time the boss is alive, such that you take less damage overall than if you'd converted those damage boosts into an equivalent amount of defense. This is true even if you just stand there and try to facetank it, in which case, yes, you probably wouldn't be able to beat most hardmode bosses with pure damage boosts, but you won't be able to beat them with pure defense boosts, either. While both would have the same result, however, if you were to take away the factor of death and just look at the amount of damage a player with infinite HP would take from a boss in each scenario, you'd find that the player with the higher damage would take less damage in total than the player with the higher defense. And as the player becomes more competent at dodging, this gap increases, since dodging by its very nature reduces the effectiveness of defense.
As for the "infinite survivability threshold" you're talking about, that's only attainable in late hardmode if you factor in other things besides defense, like health regen and damage reduction. Defense on its own cannot bring you to that point.
And if by "skill" you're referring to aiming skill, I'm assuming that the player is capable of hitting the enemy at least some of the time, yes. Beyond that, though, it doesn't make a difference, since assuming all other factors are equal, a player with maximum damage bonuses will always take less damage during a fight than a player with the same amount of defense bonuses.
FlakMaster said:
You also have to be under the assumption that the player is immediately aware of enemy threats. What about those sneaky casters in the dungeon? What good will bonus damage do if the lost souls have already hit you a couple of times before you get a chance to react? Nothing. What about those Gastros firing from two miles away? Nothing. But with extra defence, you save yourself a chunk of health. And, as I've said before, with common enemies high damage boosts aren't a necessity when they die so fast anyway. Great, you killed that Giant Tortoise 1 second faster, you just saved your skin.
In situations where enemies take you off guard, then yes, defense would be better to have. But those situations happen so rarely, there really isn't much point in planning for them. I'm talking in generalities, not about very specific scenarios where defense might have a minute advantage for a split second. If it were possible, the best thing to do would be to switch immediately to defensive gear whenever you take damage and then switch immediately back to offensive gear, but that's not possible, so the best thing to do is to be as prepared as you can for the most important threats. Which in late hardmode means stacking damage.
And if you're killing enemies before they hit you anyway, then it doesn't matter whether you've got damage or defensive bonuses. Common enemies shouldn't even be a factor in how you build your character at endgame. Their threat is minimal compared to bosses and events.
felis said:
Let say you have a weapon with a 100 damage and 0% crit chance, 1 swing per second. So, its DPS is 100.
Then 100% damage: 200 DPS
Then 100% crit chance: 200 DPS too.
But 50% damage and 50% crit chance: 225 DPS.Then, if the enemy has 40 defence, it would be:
Normally: 80 DPS
Then 100% damage: 180 DPS
Then 100% crit chance: 160 DPS too.
But 50% damage and 50% crit chance: 195 DPS.
Also, the maxium DPS is 60% dmg and 40% crit at 196.Consider that most armor and accessories add damage much more than crit chance, change menacing to lucky may be better for DPS.
Other situation is like using weak weapons like minishark, with a 6 damage, then 1 lucky is better than one menacing.
For 5 accessories, you may want to use 3 menacing and 2 lucky instead of 5 menacing due to round up.
Yeah, that's basically what my calculations showed, too. Pretty interesting, I wouldn't have thought it would work that way. And it makes sense that crit chance would be more effective than regular damage for weapons with low base damage, since the damage bonus has to boost them to a whole number before it does anything, but the DPS increase provided by crit chance isn't bound to integers.
Demogarose said:
one thing I often see overlooked in the Menacing V Lucky debate is attack speed.
I won't get into math (I suck at it), but its fairly obvious that the faster something attacks, the more it is going to benefit from Crit.
I'm kind of loathe to get into that too, but I don't really bother that much with melee speed anyway since very few weapons use it, even within the melee class. On my warrior character my only weapons that benefit from melee speed are Meowmere and Star Wrath, neither of which I'd use in a serious fight.
