A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense.

slainsteel · 03-27-2011 05:43 PM

To start with, my entire guide is based on Arcanaville's guide. It is a super comprehensive and really detailed guide explaining defense in the game. I would highly recommend reading through it if you really want to understand the game's attack/defense mechanics thoroughly. I am posting this guide to make understanding attack and defense simpler.

What this guide is:

A PvE guide to help people understand Key Factors about defense
A collection of data that puts into perspective accuracy/tohit/defense
Key takeaways from Arcana's guide put in a simple form
Links where data can be gotten to use for the derivations I have made are at the end of the guide
A guide to a majority of combat situations you will face in the game, 'when' you are not debuffed (please keep an eye out for enemies that Debuff, a common example being Roman Soldiers on the Imperious Task Force)

What this guide is not:

This is not a guide for PvP, at all
It is not a comprehensive guide to all defense mechanics in the game; formula's that are used are listed in the end, but not necessary to understand the guide
A guide for exception cases like players with beginner's luck (players under level 20), streak breaker or enemies with special defense/ToHit/accuracy bonuses; please do read about special bonuses that your enemy gets if you see these numbers not working well for a situation (I have included an example of Lord Recluse as a possible exceptional case though)
This guide does not take debuffs into account. I can add a section if requested, but at this moment all the calculations are assuming that neither the player nor the enemy are debuffed in any form

Defense

They key number thrown around for defense is called the defense soft-cap.
This number essentially means that if your defense is this high, it won't help much to increase your defense anymore.

So basically, if you are at 45% defense, AND, the enemies do NOT have any ToHit/Accuracy buffs, these are their chances of hitting you,

Code:


+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Rank/Level     |+0     |+1     |+2     |+3     |+4     |
+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Minion         |5%     |5.5%   |6%     |6.5%   |7%     |
+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Lt             |5.75%  |6.325% |6.9%   |7.475% |8.05%  |
+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Boss/Sniper    |6.5%   |7.15%  |7.8%   |8.45%  |9.1%   |
+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Monster/GM/AV  |7.5%   |8.25%  |9%     |9.75%  |10.5%  |
+---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

This does not of course, cover special cases where enemy AV's have ToHit buffs. I'll take the case of Lord Recluse, with the blue tower up which gives him a +30 ToHit. When defending against Lord Recluse with the blue tower,

With 45% defense, his chance of hitting you is 73.5%
With 50% defense, his chance of hitting you is 63%
With 60% defense, his chance of hitting you is 42%
With 70% defense, his chance of hitting you is 21%
With 75% defense, his chance of hitting you is 10.5%

Now if you are level shifted, Lord Recluse is only +3 to you, so these numbers change to,

With 45% defense, his chance of hitting you is 68.25%
With 50% defense, his chance of hitting you is 58.5%
With 60% defense, his chance of hitting you is 39%
With 70% defense, his chance of hitting you is 19.5%
With 75% defense, his chance of hitting you is 9.75%

This means that after 45% defense no matter HOW high your defense is, if the enemy does not have any accuracy/tohit buffs, they will NOT hit you for more than this.
This comes with a caveat, defense typing.

Defense typing - an explanation for "wtf, Rikti hit me even with 50% s/l defense!"

When an enemy attacks you, his attack is of a particular 'damage type' and from a particular 'position'.
When calculating defense, the game will take two of your defensive numbers,

Your defense to that damage 'type'
Your defense to that particular 'position'

The higher of the two numbers will be your 'effective' defense.

So for example, you have these defense numbers,
Smashing: 30%
Lethal: 30%
Fire: 20%
Cold: 20%
Energy: 40%
Negative: 40%
Psi: 10%

Melee: 20%
Ranged: 15%
AoE: 35%

So again for example, if a Romulus Nictus hits you with Hack, a lethal typed attack, which is also a melee positional, the game will see these two numbers,
1.) Lethal defense: 30%
2.) Melee defense: 20%

Since lethal is higher, it will pick your lethal defense and your defense against the attack will be 30%
Note: Keep in mind, that there are some Psi attacks, that do NOT have any 'positional' type. In those cases, ONLY your Psi defense will be used to determine your defense. These attacks though are rare in the game.

Attack

For various reasons, accuracy is probably one of the few mis-understood abilities in the game. To put simply,
ToHit = more effective than accuracy. Something we'll see as I give data.

(All calculations are assuming the enemy has no defense, I'll give another table with defense below)

So assuming that you have NO accuracy bonuses at all, and have NO accuracy Enhancements slotted in a power. On a power of base accuracy of 1.0 (most primary attack powers are at this), your chances to hit an enemy are,

Code:


+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|ToHit/Level            |+0     |+1     |+2     |+3     |+4     |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|None                   |75%    |65%    |56%    |48%    |39%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Kismet (6%)            |81%    |71%    |62%    |54%    |45%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (base 7%)      |82%    |72%    |63%    |55%    |46%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (3 TH IO's)    |86%    |76%    |67%    |59%    |50%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Now, assuming you have one level 50 Accuracy IO, in that power, that's a 42.4% accuracy bonus, your chances to hit now are,

Code:


+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|ToHit/Level            |+0     |+1     |+2     |+3     |+4     |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|None                   |95%    |92.6%  |79.7%  |68.3%  |55.5%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Kismet (6%)            |95%    |95%    |88.2%  |76.8%  |64%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (base 7%)      |95%    |95%    |89.7%  |78.3%  |66.5%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (3 TH IO's)    |95%    |95%    |95%    |84.1%  |71.3%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Now this all _really changes drastically, once you bring defense into the picture, with one level accuracy 50 IO, if the enemy has 15% defense, these are your chances to hit,

Code:


+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|ToHit/Level            |+0     |+1     |+2     |+3     |+4     |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|None                   |85.4%  |71.2%  |58.4%  |47.3%  |34.1%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Kismet (6%)            |94%    |80%    |67%    |55.5%  |42.7%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (base 7%)      |95%    |81.1%  |68.3%  |57%    |44.1%  |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|Tactics (3 TH IO's)    |95%    |87%    |74.1%  |62.%   |50%    |
+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

Key takeaways from Attack
Given this data, let me throw a few facts out,

Except for very low numbers for both, ToHit is way more useful than accuracy to increase your net ability to hit an enemy
If an enemy has defense, ToHit becomes much of higher value to final ability to hit than accuracy
If the enemy's defense gets higher than your inherent ToHit + ToHit bonus (+4 elude, recluse's yellow tower), only accuracy can help, but only slightly
Some caps,
With NO enemy defense and NO ToHit buffs to self, Accuracy caps at,
- for +0 enemies, +27%
- for +4 enemies, +144%
With NO enemy defense and fully enhanced tactics (3 level 50 ToHit IO's) Accuracy caps at,
- for +0 enemies, +11%
- for +4 enemies, +90%
With 15% enemy defense and fully enhanced team tactics (3 level 50 ToHit IO's) Accuracy caps at,
- for +0 enemies, +26%
- for +4 enemies, +139%

Note: Please keep in mind that the accuracy % that you see in a power on Mids, is actually NOT the accuracy bonus. It is some sort of hybrid between total accuracy and tohit buffs. To see the actual accuracy bonus for a power, hover your mouse over the number and Mids will show you your actual 'accuracy' for that power

Data

The basic formula used to calculate final chance to hit is (as taken from Arcanaville's post)
Bounded[ (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (RankBuff) * (LevelBuff) * Bounded[ (BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs + Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ] ]
Where Bounded[] buts an upper bound of 95% and minimum bound of 5%.

Data regarding inherent ToHit of the player and enemies at various and to various levels is given at on Paragon Wiki.

That's it for now. I hope this helps. Please do let me know if you'd like me to put in any additions or make any corrections.
Thanks!

Virtue Speed Junkie
A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense