Invulnerability, how does the flat damage absorbtion work?

kframe

I’m new to CO and playing a Glacier tank. So far I like it alot, but don’t understand how the flat damage absorption works.

So far at my very low level it is absorbing nothing. You invulnerability absorbs 0 (12)
33(68) piercing damage.

Why is it absorbing 0 damage when it is supposed to absorbs flat amount?

Also where can I see my resistances? Vulnerability right now is giving me +19% to all resistances. But when I go to my character sheet, and I mouse over defense, it says that defense is giving me +18% to all resistances.

I have no idea what my base resistance is are to anything nor do I know where to find those numbers I’ve checked every menu I can find. So how do I figure out what my actual resistance is are? Without having to go to an outside app, I mean? surely have included some form of graph or interface for that right?

thisiscraftaaa

Skip ahead to the TL;DR at the bottom if you don't care about the numbers behind defenses and just want a quick answer. Otherwise...





On your C-button character sheet, the "all damage resistance" shown there is specifically from all your sources of Defense points, which are usually all your gear-pieces and often some of your spec tree picks. This is independent from the all damage resistance given by a slotted defensive passive, Invulnerability or Defiance for example, but those both factor into the same defensive equation. Same for other sources of defense, like the bonus 10% all damage resistance from being in tank role, or the many defense buffs available from different powers out there (none of which will be particularly relevant as a Glacier.)

It helps to think of it this way: almost all "all damage resistance" is something we call Def%, with a few other things, like Block powers, instead giving Block%. So when your Defense from gear+specs is giving you 18% to all resistances in your character sheet, your Invulnerability is giving you 19% to all resistances, and you're in tank role and so getting an additional 10% to all resistances, what you're really getting is 18%+19%+10% Def%, or 47% Def%.

Now, that might seem big at first glance, but it isn't because this is how damage is calced: "ID / (Def%+1) = DT" where ID is incoming damage and DT is damage taken after the calc. So, for example, with your statistics, an incoming hit of exactly 10k would work out as "10,000 / (0.47+1) = ~6802.7" before accounting for the flat damage reduction. Alternatively, 100% total Def% divides incoming damage by 2, 200% divides it by 3, 300% divides it by 4, etcetera. Endgame tanks usually wind up having anywhere from 14kHP to 22kHP depending on their build (Cosmics necessitate having much higher health than lairs do, generally) and usually around 80% to 100% Def% on their Character Overview, plus usually around 80% to 130% Def% from their defensive passive (depending on which one they picked.) I say this to give you an idea of what the defense calculations look like, because you won't need to care about this until you're dipping into Cosmics and/or the endgame.

I mentioned that Block% is different. Namely, your Block, any bonus from Advs for your Block specifically (Ebon Void's Voracious Darkness Adv is Block% while Antagonized's base effect of Cornered is, afaik, Def%) and also the Brilliance defensive core mod will give you Block%, which works the same way as Def% but in a different layer. So you can expand your calculation to the following: "ID / (Def%+1) / (Block%+1) = DT" and you'll get how you take damage while accounting for Block%. Usually you won't have any Block% unless actively using your Block, but like what I mentioned above, there are some ways to have Block% going without actively Blocking, so it's worth considering. I'll get to Flat damage reduction in a moment, bear with me here.

Another tidbit to bring up would be Dodge Chance (Dodge%) and Avoidance (or Dodge Severity / DodgeSev if you'd prefer.) Dodging is simple in concept but messy in gameplay: if you successfully dodge an enemy attack, said attack will be reduced by your Avoidance. (An 80% in Avoidance will reduce an incoming 10k hit to 2k, for example, while the base 20% Avoidance all characters have will reduce that 10k hit to 8k if successful.) However, this only works if you successfully dodge, and lots of things in the endgame hit like a truck to the point where dodge builds- at least for tanking and not as a DPS that didn't feel like slotting Growth Amulets for once (which are BiS except for a Brilliance by the by, or a type-specific if gearing for a specific scenario)- are only successful if you can successfully maintain 100% dodge chance one hundred percent of the time, or 103.4% for fighting Kigatilik specifically; any less and you'll randomly just explode because you were doing everything correct mechanically but the game decided that you should die, what with dodge tanks being made of glass when they fail a Dodge and all. Thankfully, you are a Glacier, and so can pretend dodging doesn't exist.

Now, flat damage reduction! See, it doesn't matter if you calculate it "Dodge > Defense > Block" or "Block > Dodge > Defense" or however you want it; they're all division so it pans out the same no matter the order, but flat damage reduction, or Flat if you'd like to stick to calling it something easy and recognizable, works this way: your total Flat reduction- and there are different sources of it, as much as most only care about the various slotted passives that give it- is subtracted from the damage you take after those aforementioned damage calculations. In the combat logs, it'll be broken up into two parts, first the "absorbs N1 (N2) damage" part that shows how much damage one of your sources of Flat just shaved off the incoming attack, and then the next line will be how much damage you actually took, accounting for all relevant defensive statistics, in this case your Def% and Flat since you didn't Dodge or Block.)

One last quick aside, the way the whole "N1 (N2)" deal works is that whenever anything deals or receives damage, the N1 is the effective damage taken after all calcs and the (N2) in parentheses is the base amount of damage that would have been received before defensive modifiers of any kind, and offensive modifiers like resistance debuffs, damage multipliers, etcetera. That Flat damage reduction gets a whole line showing how much it shaved off (in your case, "0 (12)" means it shaved off 12 points) and then you get the general damage line afterwards that also accounts for Flat is just a weird quirk of the system.





TL;DR your "all damage resistance" from your slotted passive, your defense numbers on your Character Overview, your role (Tanks get an extra 10%) and other sources all get added together to your total Def%, which reduces incoming damage. Your Block% is separate from this and is tied to your Block and some of the Advs for Blocks. Dodging is also a thing but not relevant here and unless you're a dodge tank you'll usually want to ignore its existence entirely. Your Flat damage reduction is shaved off whatever damage you'd take after the game accounts for any Dodges, your Def%, and if you're Blocking or have any other Block% sources. Combat logs just display Flat reduction weirdly by showing you "absorbing" damage and then the damage you actually took right after, accounting for the Flat absorption. There is, sadly, no page you can access to view your total Def% or Block% at any time (all of that's done under the hood and us lowly mortals aren't deserving enough to be allowed to see the truth) so you just have to guess it in your head or look at all your sources of each and add them together to their respective categories to get a good guesstimate of what you have.