Debuff Question

MntMan - Lost City

I have a question about the two debuff skills. One being magic and the other being physical. (Not the seal/sleep ones).

The skills are described as reducing the target's defense (be it magic or physical) by X% of the equipment defense. I think my question is with regard to how significant is the importance of them specifying "equipment" in the description?

This raises 2 questions:

1) Does this mean that it does not include the inherent defense not related to equipment? Meaning the defense attributed to attribute points (STR and MAG respectively) do not count towards this. So to clarify the spell would NOT be x% reduction in total defense, but only the defense associated with armor. So as a very rudimentary example if your total defense is 100 and 50 of that defense is due to armor and the spell is to reduce 50% then it really only reduces your total defense to 75 (50% of the 50 associated to armor) so in reality it only reduced your total defense by 25% (in this example)

2) If the example/statement above is correct how does it work on mobs who presumably don't wear armor? Or if they do how do we know what portion of their defense is associated with it? Or for mobs does it just do the % applied across total defense? To me this question would be especially important regarding bosses, specifically TT.

So I guess my question is how it reduces in PvP and how in PvE vs bosses.

Any hard evidence not just speculation is appreciated.

Thanks in advance. I'm at lvl 65 so I'm starting to look back at those debuff skills and re-evaluate their worth for TT runs. I'd like to level them if they are worth it (and proven with numbers) If not then I'll wait just a bit longer.

Rinnve - Lost City

Yes. These debuffs (and AFAIK all other that have similar effects) affect only basic defence and don't touch any add-ons from buffs. In pve, it affects all defence, so effect is stronger. I had both debuffs on my cleric; effect is nice but nothing spectacular. +15-20% dmg in pve, +10-15% in pvp. I'd suggest you to level pvp debuffs first, especially sleep. Maxed sleep pwns.

MntMan - Lost City

Thanks, but I didn't mean add ons from buffs. Sorry for the confusion. I guess to get more granular there are 3 things that give defense.

1) Defense from attribute points. STR give physical defense and MAG gives Elemental(magical) defense
2) Armor & Gear
3) Buffs

In my questions I am only referring to 1 & 2. meaning the description says that the debuff only works against #2.

Elemental Seal Level 1

Manipulate one's energy to form the Elemental Seal. Reduces your magic defense by 12% of equipment value to reduce the enemy's magic defense by 12% of equipment value. Lasts 11 seconds.

and

Dimensional Seal Level 1

Manipulate one's energies to form the Seal of Dimensions. Reduces your own physical defense by 12% of equipment value to reduce enemy's physical defense by 12% of equipment value. Lasts 11 seconds.

In both descriptions it specifically states "equipment value". So in my example in PvP if an opponent has 100 total physical defense made up of 50 from attribute (STR) points and 50 from armor then Dimensional Seal would only reduce their total defense to 94 or 6% in this example. (12% of the equipment value which is 50 here would equal 6 points. 6 points of the total defense of 100 is 94)

So if this is how it actually works then in PvP it isn't as useful. I say this because atribute points help more on defense then armor/gear value does so my 50/50 example above is not accurate. As a level 65 LA cleric I have about 1000 physical defense. My armor only makes up 350 of that.(very roughly). So really the 12% would be applied against my 350 if it were used on me, which would only be 42 points of defense or roughly 4% of my total physical defense. Obviously it increases as you level it, but still for pure math explanation.

Also how would it work against mobs? What percentage of a mobs total defense is attributable to armor? So when I cast the dimensional seal on a TT boss even at level 1 does it really reduce it's ENTIRE physical defense by 12% or is it some fraction of that because it is only reducing an equipment value equivalent?

Does anyone know for sure here how the math is working and not just speculation? I mean I suppose you could measure the damage across 20 hits on a TT boss without and then 20 hits with and see if it's roughly 12% difference. (or whatever it should be for your skill level) Of course 20 hits isn't the best number. You'd really need a much higher pool of hits to get to 12%, but you could see how it's trending.

Thanks

Rinnve - Lost City

It will NOT be 12% difference, 'cause lowering defence by 12% does not lower damage reduction by 12%, so works rule of diminishing returns. As i said, i've tested it on mobs. Maxed mdef debuff (-30% defence) gives about 15-20% additional damage (i've tested it with m.sword, only about 50 hits, hence this imprecise "15-20").

As for pvp, i did not tested it, but i've seen mantavip debuff on me and i think all debuffs work the same way. Without any buffs, my water def became 75, 0% dmg reduction. So it seems that it affected all defences except that was gained with buffs - with water shield on, defence was 20XX instead of 75.