Mobs DEF

[pczry]

We have 2 debuff (Crippling Strike, and Anathema) that reduce mobs DEF by certian amount of number.  Can someone explain to me what mobs def is and how it works?  I see a difference when their MIT is reduce, but what difference does it make reducing their DEF? <div></div>

[dea]

The defense skill is one factor in a mobs effective avoidance. Mob agility provides base avoidance while defense and parry provide additional avoidance to factor in. Mob level also plays a part, with orange conned mobs (given that con is level based) being much harder to hit than those that con yellow or lower. Block rate figures in here as well according to our user interface, but I rarely use a shield do I'll decline to comment on blocking and how it works. In the end raw mob avoidance numbers (base avoid, parry, block, etc.), level difference between the player and the mob, and your offensive skill (pierce/slash/crush/ranged) will be factored together to determine if you will hit, miss, be parried, or even be blocked. By debuffing defense you decrease the "dodge" capability of your mob. You do not influence their ability to parry your attacks from the front or behind in any way nor their ability to directly block your attack. The effect will be significant against high yellow con mobs where your effective to-hit chance is not already quite high (as with buffs to your offensive skills). The return on lower con mobs will decrease as your level difference begins to play a greater and greater part. Against orange mobs you will find a similar problem, while you can debuff their avoidance significantly the fact that they con orange or worse will prove the major determining factor in your to-hit chance (this in no way implies that defense/parry debuffs are not useful vs. orange mobs, just that it can take a significant debuff to see an effect due to inability to affect the major factor in the equation derived from level difference). <div></div>

[pczry]

When using the debuffs on lvl65 epic (orange con) it didn't really seem to make much of a difference, the miss attacks ratio were about the same, but thanks for the info Ekard, got a better understanding of how DEF work. <div></div>

[dea]

<b><i>History</i></b> Originally offensive and defensive skill buffs and debuffs made the amazing possible. Each 5 points of buff or debuff was roughly equivalent to an effective character or mob level. Debuffing a red mob by 9 effective levels of defense made an impressive difference in the dodge rate of that mob. Similarly debuffing a mobs offensive skills increased the mobs miss rate. On the other hand, increasing your own offensive skills was an alternative to debuffing a mob's defense and would provide similar changes with respect to your effective hit rate and increasing your own defensive skills provided significant avoidance appropriate to a level increase. The combat revamp made some changes to this system but it was hard to notice for the most part. Mainly the impact was that 5 points of each skill provided a significant bonus but character level now played a larger part in the to-hit equation. Finally the 'orange patch' hit Live and dramatically changed the way to-hit calculations were made. Mob level now appeared as a non-linear factor with level difference starting to override small gains in skill buffs as soon as one party conned orange to the other. This paradigm shift has left some with an incomplete understanding of how these skills work. Let me rehash what I have said, it bears restating in a more organized fashion. This discussion is from the standpoint of the aggressor, feel free to invert roles to realize how these same mob buffs and debuffs placed on you can affect your engagements. <i><b>Defensive Effects: Defensive Skill Buffs, Offensive Skill Debuffs -- The Defensive Aggressor</b></i> You will find that mobs below your level already demonstrate difficulty hitting you. By increasing your defensive skills and debuffing their offensive skills you can bring their to-hit chance very close to zero. What you will notice, however, is that there was relatively little room for improvement and large order of magnitude effects will be required to provide noticable benefit (+20 or more). For mobs that are even or yellow con you will find that their to-hit change is instead quite good. Debuffing these mobs will provide significant benefit as the margin for improvement is large. With enough defensive buffing and offensive skill debuffing these mobs can be effectively made to hit as poorly as mobs slightly below your level. Mobs far above your level (orange con or worse) are already very hard to hit. While this indicates that there is a large margin for improvement in your ability to avoid damage, this gain is offset by the fact that level is now a very significant factor in determining to-hit. The system reveals itself here as being specifically designed to make these encounters hard to trivialize through stacked buffs and debuffs. While there is much room for improvement -- often even minor buffs and debuffs can provide significant gains -- the initial disadvantage is significant and therefore difficult to overcome, often it can be fairly difficult to survive long enough to enjoy these gains. <i><b>Offensive Effects: Offensive Skill Buffs, Defensive Skill Debuffs -- The Offensive Aggressor</b></i> You will find that mobs that con even or are slightly below your level will tend to be relatively easy to hit. By increasing your offensive skills and debuffing their defensive skills you can bring your to-hit chance very close to perfect, of course the inherent randomness of the system will provide a glass ceiling preventing a perfect to-hit chance. Given so little room for improvement, it is little surprise that these effects may not provide very visible benefit (given the length of such fights, it is likely to take a large amount of effort to gather enough data to show a noticable gain in to-hit). On yellow con mobs, particularly on the high end of yellow con, the difference is very noticable. There is a small negative effect brought on by level difference that can be countered quite effectively through offensive skill buffing and debuffing the opponents defensive skills. This provides a reasonable amount of room for improvement, enough to easily buff yourself to a level where a high to-hit chance can be reached. As with the defensive aggressor scenario, orange and higher con mobs become very interesting. Your chance to hit will be extremely low due to a large negative factor induced by the extreme level difference. While this provides an impressive margin for improvement through offensive buffs and defensive debuffs it remains a large cap to overcome. Often these battles will be decided quite quickly or you will die. <b><i>Raiding</i></b> Now, in raid situations the offensive effects have obvious merit in allowing the main tank's attacks to land and provide a source for hate generation as well as allow the combined raid force to deal damage to the encounter effectively. Similarly the defensive effects will prove necessary to avoid a quick death, avoidance is often key. Realize that in most raid situations buffs and, more specifically, debuffs can be stacked to impressive levels allowing you to take best advantage of these large improvement margins. So while small-group tactics may make large buffs and debuffs difficult, the feasibility of large magnitude debuffs in a raid environment allow best exploitation of the margins that typify orange con or higher mobs. <div></div>