Ugh, WHY KM!?

I agree to a point: that "point" will be how high a recharge will cause the damage output of KM to plateau do to animation lengths. I am building a KM/SR (even though I believe KM/SD is probably better since damage output augmented by AAO - and at what saturation - would be better than very high recharge). I am shooting for a ShredMonkey-like build with around 200%* global recharge. The other caveat to this is how good is the sacrificing of crit at the tier 9 level in favor of recharging PS via concentrated strike. I think it very well favors sacrificing crits, but again anmation length is the feature that will bottle-neck performance, IMO. I guess my study will seek to better isolate what levels of recharge would favor SR over SD, being critically important at >20% (at least quickness) over max SD builds. Why do this? Umm... fun ?

*Yes, I'm aware most of the player base dosen't care about such high recharge, and no, I'm not doing this to see if it will lower animation times. I'm curious about animation times bottle-necking performance in this set.

I see what you are saying - since the -damage is applied before the damage hits you, then your resistance is applied they don't actually stack, where -to hit and def are all figured in the same formula.

So if I had 50% resistance to damage and an attack did 100 points, I would take 50 points. If I added 10% resistance to that (like from tough), I would only take 40 points. However, a -10% damage debuff would reduce the incoming damage to 90 points and I would then take 45 points instead of the 40 I would have taken if I had stacked resistances.

Now, this is probably just my ignorance, but this doesn't seem to make sense. Shouldn't the -DMG in essence ... reduce damage dealt to you, and having that add to your resistance values (of which are also reducing damage)?

It seems like it should, unless there is some hidden formula to resistance that could explain it. Otherwise, this concept just isn't clicking for me!

EDIT: Eric seems to have figured it out. The -damage is applied before resistance mods. That makes sense ... but it still seems like -DMG would help out resistance sets more than defensive ones for that reason; it still is reducing said damage farther than before, right?

Who gets the most out of it is debatable. I will say that it's a good way of pushing down any damage after your at rez-cap tho. 90% smash/leathal resistance plus (what is it for tanks?) 10% = 100%. Even if its not 10%, being able to mitigate a few % past cap is just cool!

Player A has 50% resistance. Player B has 25% defense. A critter attacks both 100 times for 100 points of damage each attack (just to make the numbers simple: its the same on average no matter how many attacks it is - even if that number is one).

Player A gets hit 50 times (base tohit of critters is 50%) for 50 points each attack (50% resistance) for a total of 2500 points of damage. Player B hits hit 25 times (25% defense) for 100 points each for a total of 2500 points of damage. On average, both take the same amount of damage.

Add 10% resistance to both. Now, Player A gets hit 50 times for 40 damage each or 2000 points. Player B gets hit 25 times for 90 points each, or 2250 points. Notice the resistance helped player A more.

Now apply -10% damage to both attackers. This time Player A gets hit 50 times by attacks that were reduced to 90 points, and its 50% resistance reduces them to 45 points each, for a net of 2250 points total. Player B gets hit 25 times for 90 points each, for a net of 2250 points total. The -DMG helped them both by the same amount, at least on average.


One simplified way to think about what is going on is that in the case where you add resistance to defense, some of the resistance goes to reducing the strength of attacks that then miss anyway. So some of the effectiveness of that buff is "wasted" in a sense. But when its allowed to be focused on only the attacks that hit, that buff ends up being much stronger. When you add resistance to resistance, you're concentrating the buff. When you add resistance to defense, you're diluting it a bit on attacks that wouldn't have hit anyway.

Here's another interesting mental model. Imagine both defense and resistance are two deflector shields in front of you, one in front of the other (it doesn't matter which is which). Imagine those shields are designed like checkerboard meshes, but with 100 squares. Both shields start off empy, with none of the squares filled in, so they basically do nothing: attacks go right through both of them and hit you for full strength.

Now imagine I give you 50 little squares and tell you to put them into shield #1. So now, half the squares are filled in, and thus half the attacks get blocked by shield #1. The other half get through.

Now I hand you 50 more squares and I say you can put these anywhere you want. Question: would you put them into shield #2, or shield #1.

If you put them into shield 2, then shield 2 will block half of all attacks that try to pass through it. So half will get blocked by shield 1, and then half of those that get through will get blocked by shield 2. One quarter, or 25%, of all attacks launched against you will get through and hit you. 75% will get blocked.

If you put them all into shield 1, however, you'll completely fill up that shield. Now, none of the attacks that hit that shield will get through. Its clear that its better to fill in the remaining 50 holes in shield 1 than fill in 50 out of the 100 holes in shield 2, right?

That's basically how defense and resistance work together. Each takes its own bite at the attacks, and having two shields is better than having one. But if you have a *choice*, and the choice grants an equal amount of squares, its always better to use them to fill in the shield will less remaining holes, because filling in 50 of the last 50 is better than filling in 50 of the last 100. Similarly, its better to fill in 10 of the last 20 rather than 10 of the last 50, which is why small defense buffs help people who already have lots of defense, and vice versa for resistance.