Defense or Deflection??

vangiggsy · September 2016

For both pvp and pve contexts what is the best to have, higher defense or Deflection? What level for each do people suggest?

caveck · September 2016

Deflection 100%. Don't even bother with defense.

guille23mx · September 2016

High End Deflection Focus/ Lower End HP

swoods74 · September 2016

Deflection or I like life steal, defense is worthless on TR as armor class is too low to make a diff.

thefabricant · September 2016

In PVE, defense is almost always better than deflect unless you have already achieved 80% DR. This is always true in PVE, there are no exceptions. HP however is probably better than defense and lifesteal likely takes the cake. Deflect is essentially just 75% as effective as defense in PVE.

aaramis75 · September 2016

^^ Very true and accurate. The challenge with TRs, and with all strikers, really, is that raising defense isn't as easy as it is to raise deflect or lifesteal. The gear doesn't really come with a lot of defense, and you're more inclined to take offensive boons (crit, arpen, power, etc.) over defense, nor are you likely to slot azures over darks, radiants, silveries, etc.

The other issue is that with the crazy dps now attainable, it's oftentimes easier to just go full-out slaughter mode than it is to try for a more rounded or defensive build. I wish this weren't the case, though - it would give builds such as Scoundrel a *lot* more love with all the CC they offer.

Another option is to just go with a Pure or Transcendant Shadowclad and you get deflect *and* DR, but that's out of reach for a lot of players due to the AD cost. Negation is another option here, but again that's a bit pricey. A lot of players just tend to go with Soulforged or Elven Battle as it's a bit cheaper and easier to obtain.

The last option I can think of is to use stealth defensively - since mobs won't attack you when stealthed, it'll give that tank a few seconds to grab aggro back; or you can do a stealthed Whirlwind to stun enemies (again, buying you a few seconds), followed by a stealthed Smoke Bomb (damage *and* dazes them). Combine that with ITC (if you're running it) for a short deflect + DR boost and you're usually ok, provided you haven't aggroed a dozen hard-hitting trash mobs.

lirithiel · September 2016

thefabricant said:
In PVE, defense is always better than deflect unless you have already achieved 80% DR. This is always true in PVE, there are no exceptions. HP however is probably better than defense and lifesteal likely takes the cake. Deflect is essentially just 75% as effective as defense in PVE.

Tell that to @hustin1. His archer had over 20k Defense and that did sweet nothing to help his survivability. If he had that much Deflect it would have served him much better. Maybe Defense is good for other classes but not for TR and not for HR.

Also, there is no way my Combat HR would be able to take the beating it does now if I traded my Deflect for Defense. I just don't see it, sorry.

thefabricant · September 2016

lirithiel said:

thefabricant said:
In PVE, defense is always better than deflect unless you have already achieved 80% DR. This is always true in PVE, there are no exceptions. HP however is probably better than defense and lifesteal likely takes the cake. Deflect is essentially just 75% as effective as defense in PVE.
Tell that to @hustin1. His archer had over 20k Defense and that did sweet nothing to help his survivability. If he had that much Deflect it would have served him much better. Maybe Defense is good for other classes but not for TR and not for HR.

Also, there is no way my Combat HR would be able to take the beating it does now if I traded my Deflect for Defense. I just don't see it, sorry.

The equation for how Defense mitigates incoming damage is as follows:

Mitigated damage = Incoming damage-Incoming Damage*(1-Defender Defense/40000+Attacker RI) where 0.2 is less than or equal to (1-DR+RI) is less than or equal to 1

Most opponents in PVE have 15% RI. There are only a few exceptions and they aren't bosses so we can ignore them for now. So, lets set attacker RI to 15% and plot a graph of the effectiveness of defense. If you set the value for incoming damage to 1 (to calculate the average percentage damage mitigated) you get:

goo.gl/GAKoTi

At 38000, defense reaches its maximum effectiveness (Assuming you have 0 DR from other sources including AC). The lower the answer is here, the better.

The equation for the damage reduction for deflect is:

Mitigated damage = Incoming damage*((1-deflect severity)*Deflect Chance+(1-deflect chance))

If you set incoming damage to 1 (to calculate a percentage mitigation) and deflect severity to 75% (for tr) you get the following:

goo.gl/EO0Gz9

Now, assuming you have no DR from any sources other than defense, you would need 24k defense for it to equal to deflect. You can prove that by setting the 1 equation to be equal to the other and then solving for x and you will see as is here:

goo.gl/OKe3Zp

Any values lower and deflect is better. Any values higher and defense is better. But this is not the case. Why? Because you have AC. AC changes the equation to the following:

goo.gl/tHvY66

Suddenly, any value over 16k is better.

This is largely irrelevant though, as I can easily show why HP is better than either if you like. Why did @hustin1 suffer? Most likely because he has a very poor build. Offense also plays a part in calculating your survivability believe it or not and by gimping your offense, you gimping your ability to survive.

hustin1 · September 2016

Ouch! Tough crowd here!

At the moment, my HR has 30k base defense, which I can buff past 31k with food and potions. Without buffs, her DR is 81%. The results are, well, somewhat confusing. Last night I tagged along on a VT run and found that I could stand in the middle of the roaming wraiths all day long and they couldn't dent my HP past 5% (and I could tank as many adds at once as I wished). By contrast, I still have a tough time in a place like eGWD. I'm not sure if it's a factor of enemy armpen or some sort of buff to combat advantage.

Her offense is mediocre, but not terrible: 17k power and RI over 60%. Base crit chance is in the mid-30% range, and archery feats can push it higher if I keep distant from enemies (yes, Thia has been an archer build since way back in mod 2).

Why do I bias toward defense rather than offense? Because in life, things tend to go wrong: Murphy's Law applies in Neverwinter just as much as it does here in Pennsylvania. With a high defense, I can almost always weather a sudden problem (like having to revive the CW while three roaming wraiths are giving me hugs).

silver11 · September 2016

dead things cant kill you

bumarog · September 2016

Lol your right silver a good offense is sometimes the best defense, i play a scoundrel build on ps4 mostly pve and with cc and my dmg its fun and the idea is not to get hit for me at least

therealprotex · October 2016

It is pretty easy for an TR to bring his deflection chance close to 50% without sacrificing too much offensive powers. Combined with a shadow demon (boosts the deflection severity to 100% and is by the way an incredibly good offensive companion) and some points spend for life steal, it is pretty easy to achive a good survivability along with still very good offensive powers. I really doubt that the same combination of offensive potential and survivability can be reached if you ignore deflect/life steal and concentrate on defence/hit points instead. In my opinion it would be pretty silly to ignore the TR's class feature of high deflection and build the TR around defence/hit points instead.

izwor · October 2016

I'd say HP first then Life Steal anything else in Deflection and use Negation Enchantment for Defence

I asked around and there is nothing else worth armour enchant slot.
My TR (pve) have maxed out CHA + DEX (using Infiltrators Action for perma CA). With this setup my Deflection chance is ~50% with only 1.5k in stats. DR is 20% + Negation Enchant.
If you have decent HP pool and at least 10% LS you will be very hard to kill in PvE. You might be killed by one-shot (hello Orcus!), but you can rely on your Deflection most of the time.

lordseth1985 · October 2016

Well... for pvp I use a mix of hp+deflect and some life steal... but for pve full deflect.

trgluestickz · October 2016

Between defense and deflect on a TR, deflect is better by far.

In PVP, I would recommend going mostly deflection and take some HP boons and lots of self healing. You don't need lifesteal if you have lots of other self healing stuff. As for specific values, I would recommend 50% deflection at least but 60%+ is ideal. Its possible to get a lot more even than that and I've seen some TRs with values like 85% deflection chance or even 90%. At that point, TRs are almost indestructible though they don't tend to do much damage. For lifesteal, I would do 20% if you chose to do that. Hpwise, try to get at least 100k HP though values around 120k+ are much better. Obviously, you will need tenacity in PVP too and I recommend at least 4 good up to date pvp gear pieces. Warborn, lionsmane, and prestige are the strongest sets available and you can also use rosegold rings with tenacity on them.

In PVE, I would recommend 10% lifesteal(you could go 20% but that is not required), 50% or more deflect, and at least 100k HP but more is better. You will be able to get away with a lot more offense stats in PVE than you can in PVP and thus you don't need as many assorted self heals + other miscellaneous defenses as you would for PVP.

micky1p00 · October 2016

If I'm already here in the great class forums.
Like trgluestickz said, but if you interested in the how much and why, here is the effective HP (what an average hit you can take without dying)

i.imgur.com/fqF1wxl.png

The only issue in PvE with deflect vs HP is that it's not reliable, you can deflect some 5k poison and fail to deflect that 200k hit. The reason deflect actually works for TRs is because we get deflect chance from ability score (dexterity + charisma), without that it would have been way worse.
(smooth red line vs the way lower dashed red line in the graph)

Defense or Deflection??

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