Suggestion: Introduce More Damage Reduction Instead of Defense

[Fufuji]

I've fought Crystal Deerclops, Armored Bearger and Possesed Varg quite a lot these days, and I realized that they deals pretty much damage to most characters. Fighting against them is rather a risky mission. 

Crystal Deerclops Ice Lance attack deals 100 physical damage and 30 planar damage. If hit on a player with one piece of BS armor that is 35 damage, which can easily kill a player with 4 Ice Lance attacks in a row. Or you can die of Ice Lance combined with melee attacks which reaches as far as 8 units and can also easily freeze and kill a player. If you choose to wear 2 pieces of Void armors, there will still be 30 damage. 

Given that currently even the most powerful planar mobs deal only 30 planar damage per hit, I think simply adding planar defense of players in the future will be somehow dumb. Since if you could have planar defense equals to planar damage received against even Bosses, this planar damage mechanic simply loses all its meaning despite making you choose that high planar defense armor.

Damage reduction however don't have this problem. It's because that most of damage reductions work AFTER armor's planar defense. Take Wig's 25% internal damage reduction and BS set's Tag damage reduction as example:

If you are about to receive 30 planar damage from a lunar aligned mob, playing as Wig and wearing Void set gives you 20 planar defense and 25% normal damage reduction. Firstly, the armors receive 10 planar damage each, the rest 10 damage can be reduced by normal damage reduction, the final damage being 7.5.

If you are playing as Wes who has no skill tree, and wears BS set, this gives you 20 planar defense and 25% Tag damage reduction. Tag damage reduction works BEFORE planar defense, so firstly the 30 planar damage is reduced to 22.5, then the armors receive 10 planar damage each, final damage being only 2.5.

We can have 2 different designs on the basis of this. The first is that Tag damage reductions works significantly against certain aligned mobs. So future armors could have more Tag damage reductions to encourage players using the same side's armors against aligned mobs, to survive much longer than using the opposite side's. There's one worry for this is that due to Tag damage reduction works before planar defense, it is much like simply adding planar defense, which may lead to planar damage being totally meaningless.

The second is what I want to recommend, that is add more ways for players to acquire normal/special damage reductions. They works after planar defense so there won't be the same worry. And different damage reductions multiplies instead of flat adds, this means that the more damage reduction you stacks, the less benefit next damage reduction will give. 

Letting the players choose between damage reduction and damage multipier, or adding more obtianable damage reductions which have fair restrictions or bad side-effects (like reducing damage delt), will probably make battles more fun. 

 

[Sacco]

1 hour ago, Fufuji said:

I've fought Crystal Deerclops, Armored Bearger and Possesed Varg quite a lot these days, and I realized that they deals pretty much damage to most characters. Fighting against them is rather a risky mission. 

Crystal Deerclops Ice Lance attack deals 100 physical damage and 30 planar damage. If hit on a player with one piece of BS armor that is 35 damage, which can easily kill a player with 4 Ice Lance attacks in a row. Or you can die of Ice Lance combined with melee attacks which reaches as far as 8 units and can also easily freeze and kill a player. If you choose to wear 2 pieces of Void armors, there will still be 30 damage. 

Given that currently even the most powerful planar mobs deal only 30 planar damage per hit, I think simply adding planar defense of players in the future will be somehow dumb. Since if you could have planar defense equals to planar damage received against even Bosses, this planar damage mechanic simply loses all its meaning despite making you choose that high planar defense armor.

Damage reduction however don't have this problem. It's because that most of damage reductions work AFTER armor's planar defense. Take Wig's 25% internal damage reduction and BS set's Tag damage reduction as example:

If you are about to receive 30 planar damage from a lunar aligned mob, playing as Wig and wearing Void set gives you 20 planar defense and 25% normal damage reduction. Firstly, the armors receive 10 planar damage each, the rest 10 damage can be reduced by normal damage reduction, the final damage being 7.5.

If you are playing as Wes who has no skill tree, and wears BS set, this gives you 20 planar defense and 25% Tag damage reduction. Tag damage reduction works BEFORE planar defense, so firstly the 30 planar damage is reduced to 22.5, then the armors receive 10 planar damage each, final damage being only 2.5.

We can have 2 different designs on the basis of this. The first is that Tag damage reductions works significantly against certain aligned mobs. So future armors could have more Tag damage reductions to encourage players using the same side's armors against aligned mobs, to survive much longer than using the opposite side's. There's one worry for this is that due to Tag damage reduction works before planar defense, it is much like simply adding planar defense, which may lead to planar damage being totally meaningless.

The second is what I want to recommend, that is add more ways for players to acquire normal/special damage reductions. They works after planar defense so there won't be the same worry. And different damage reductions multiplies instead of flat adds, this means that the more damage reduction you stacks, the less benefit next damage reduction will give. 

Letting the players choose between damage reduction and damage multipier, or adding more obtianable damage reductions which have fair restrictions or bad side-effects (like reducing damage delt), will probably make battles more fun. 

 

i notice that no one talks about the fact that bone armor still negates every damage, planar too.

i honestly think that there's no point in using any of the "planar reduction suits" that are in the game at the moment only because bone armor exists.

i think the planar dealing enemies are ok as they are, they SHOULD deal more damage than normal, even with the best planar reduction armors.

[Fufuji]

22 minutes ago, Sacco said:

i think the planar dealing enemies are ok as they are, they SHOULD deal more damage than normal, even with the best planar reduction armors.

They are fine now. I think even with more normal/special damage reduction, future bosses can still deal more damage than normal. They are only the first wave of planar bosses and we are probably still in the first stage of FB arc. 

[Fufuji]

24 minutes ago, The Box said:

high planar defense armour does not equal to planar damage received against bosses so you would still get hurt badly if you get hit(Just not THAT bad),

If you have 30 planar defense, the current bosses' 30 planar damage will be nothing to you. BS set having significant damage reduction due to that it's 25% Tag damage reduction equals to reduce that 30 planar damage to 22.5, effectively adding 7.5 planar defense. Only 2.5 planar damage is dealt to players.

27 minutes ago, The Box said:

What in a world is a Tag damage reduction

There are 3 categories of damage reduction: Armor's damage reduction, special damage reduction, and normal damage reduction. Armor's damage reduction calculates BEFORE planar defense, and special damage reduction later than planar defense, lastly normal damage reduction. Tag damage reduction refers to damage reductions related to lunar/shadow aligned mobs, Armor's damage reduction and 10% damage reduction from skill trees are the only 2 currently. Damage reduction from skill trees belongs to special damage reduction.

35 minutes ago, The Box said:

Where is the 25% tag damage reduction coming from???

BS helm has 10% damage reduction against lunar aligned mobs, BS armor 10% too. When equipped together they offer an extra 5%, in total 25%. 

[Maxil20]

4 hours ago, Sacco said:

i honestly think that there's no point in using any of the "planar reduction suits" that are in the game at the moment only because bone armor exists.

You could make an argument for the void robes. Immunity to sanity auras is a very strong perk, especially since 2 of the 3 new bosses have very strong insanity auras. Sure, the BQ crown can both do it and get a positive sanity net gain, but isn’t repairable, gives no planar defense (and just has less defense in general), and sacrifices the ability to use the brightshade helm/void cowl for their perks to their respective weapon.

I really think the brightshade armor in particular just feels so lacking, unless you are wormwood. I cannot see anyone realistically using the armor to reflect 10 damage hits to enemies. It is quite an underwhelming perk, and I really hope they look into it some day.

[Fufuji]

5 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

You could make an argument for the void robes. Immunity to sanity auras is a very strong perk, especially since 2 of the 3 new bosses have very strong insanity auras. Sure, the BQ crown can both do it and get a positive sanity net gain, but isn’t repairable, gives no planar defense (and just has less defense in general), and sacrifices the ability to use the brightshade helm/void cowl for their perks to their respective weapon.

I really think the brightshade armor in particular just feels so lacking, unless you are wormwood. I cannot see anyone realistically using the armor to reflect 10 damage hits to enemies. It is quite an underwhelming perk, and I really hope they look into it some day.

It is somehow much more useful in the current version. When paired with BS helm, you only receive 15 damage from Crystal Deerclops Ice Lance attack, and 2 pieces of Void armors makes you receive 30. That's quite a lot damage reduction. 

This advantage over Void Robe will definitely disappear when shadow rift bosses go live though.

[Arcwell]

5 hours ago, Fufuji said:

There are 3 categories of damage reduction: Armor's damage reduction, special damage reduction, and normal damage reduction. Armor's damage reduction calculates BEFORE planar defense, and special damage reduction later than planar defense, lastly normal damage reduction. Tag damage reduction refers to damage reductions related to lunar/shadow aligned mobs, Armor's damage reduction and 10% damage reduction from skill trees are the only 2 currently. Damage reduction from skill trees belongs to special damage reduction.

Lunar/Shadow alignment bonus from armor and from player skills actually work differently. Armor alignment works how you think it would, before planar defense is calculated. Player alignment on the other hand takes the same place in the equation as modifiers like Wigfrid's and Weremoose's.
(I totally misunderstood this, my bad. Thought you were saying all tag damage takes the same place in the equation )

For reference, I made a table on this recently for all the damage values a Jitters Ink Blight could deal to a player using various armor combinations and alignments. I made sure to test each of these in-game so that the values are correct:

Edited October 21 by Arcwell

[Cassielu]

Ah, thanks to my recent work for planar damage page, I get it.

Yes, it's a really good direction for planar damage and defense, and I especially like the idea of using the other side gear.

But planar damage and physical damage often go hand in hand, the physical part might go some way to addressing your concerns.

[CaptainChaotica]

I am...SO dead if any of these things walk up and smack me at my base, I think. Because so much stuff has been added to the game in categories that normally don't apply to me at all (I suck at combat and usually tend to play alone) that...I literally have NO idea _what the words you're saying even mean_. PLANAR damage? I...what?

I guess at this point my plan if any of these super-powerful, hard-hitting, ultra-insanity monsters shows up, is to.....hope something nearby can take care of them for me before my own shadows eat me alive. Yikes. (I also guess it's just as well that my longest run happened way BEFORE all this new Lunar wild-rift stuff. There's no way I'd get to Day 613 in a mostly-winter world all by myself NOW--wild rifts would've opened up much earlier.)

There was no real point to this post, I guess. Other than to say...WOW has the Don't Starve Together lategame? meta gotten _dense_. I now feel like I have to take college-level courses to understand conversations about one of my own favourite games. Yikes.
(and goodbye to the idea of EVER redoing the "March of Civilization" challenge. There are so many items in the game now, I'd be sure to miss tons while writing up the new rules!)

...Notorious

[Hupo]

After the combats with new three bosses these days, I find that if I want to do more damage, I need to use void set with shadow reaper. But if I want to take less damage, I need to use the BS set with BS sword. It all depends my skill...

[Valase]

The only changes that I want are name changes so I know what the hell are you guys talking about without entering the topic.

I have no idea if planar defense is the armor's planar defense or the mob's defense. Or if planar damage is the same for players and enemies.

[Cassielu]

14 hours ago, Valase said:

The only changes that I want are name changes so I know what the hell are you guys talking about without entering the topic.

I have no idea if planar defense is the armor's planar defense or the mob's defense. Or if planar damage is the same for players and enemies.

I made this image to make it claer to understand:

Edit: Replaced with a more complete version

Edited October 22 by Cassielu

[Fufuji]

8 hours ago, Arcwell said:

Lunar/Shadow alignment bonus from armor and from player skills actually work differently. Armor alignment works how you think it would, before planar defense is calculated. Player alignment on the other hand takes the same place in the equation as modifiers like Wigfrid's and Weremoose's.
(I totally misunderstood this, my bad. Thought you were saying all tag damage takes the same place in the equation )

For reference, I made a table on this recently for all the damage values a Jitters Ink Blight could deal to a player using various armor combinations and alignments. I made sure to test each of these in-game so that the values are correct:

Thank you very much. Figuring these out really makes me brain dead. 

5 hours ago, Valase said:

The only changes that I want are name changes so I know what the hell are you guys talking about without entering the topic.

I have no idea if planar defense is the armor's planar defense or the mob's defense. Or if planar damage is the same for players and enemies.

I think in Wiki mobs' planar defense is called "planar entity resistance". This only negates physical damage. 

Planar damage from mobs and players are all the same.

[lenship2]

14 minutes ago, Cassielu said:

I made this image to make it claer to understand:

interestingly eating damage (monster meat, red caps, etc.) is resisted by damage reductions (wigfrid/moose/garlic)

Edited October 22 by lenship2

[Arcwell]

8 hours ago, Valase said:

The only changes that I want are name changes so I know what the hell are you guys talking about without entering the topic.

I have no idea if planar defense is the armor's planar defense or the mob's defense. Or if planar damage is the same for players and enemies.

It is confusing isn't it 

• If planar damage is dealt to a player, it's reduced a flat amount by planar defense. (ex: I have 10 planar defense and enemy deals 30 planar damage. I take 20 damage.)
• If physical damage is dealt to a planar mob, it's reduced by a scaling amount according to the formula below (This is often called planar defense even though it isn't)

Spoiler

damage = (sqrt(damage * 4 + 64) - 8) * 4
(sqrt means square root)

[CaptainChaotica]

Yeah...whenever I come to this topic, I feel like how I do when total sportsfans are going on and on and on about jargon this, slang term that, acronym so-and-so, statistic statistic statistic, about their favourite sports, and my eyes....are glazing......o v e r....But I'm sure they'd feel the same way if I started going on about Dungeons and Dragons terms. :P

When I went to look up this topic on the actual DST Wiki, I still didn't get any explanation as to what the word "planar" MEANS in this context, but I did see a lot of the same stuff you guys are talking about.

...then as soon as I saw  thing saying :"watch this video about the MATH EQUATIONS behind this", I was like NOPE. I'm out. I mean, I'm sure that if I was a lategame combaty player, and did run into these things so that it was relevant to me, it wouldn't seem as abstract anymore, but...

TL;DR: I will _never_ actually "get" this, so I'm back to my original opinion: I hope to heck that these "planar" creatures taste good to other big, mean creatures,or that they're still allergic to a big ol' field of tooth traps. :P

...Notorious

[Fufuji]

10 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

what the word "planar" MEANS in this context

The Constant is composed of many smaller worlds and one center world. DST takes place in this center world called "the Hub". Any other world like SW, HAM, the Gorge, the Forge are smaller worlds surrounding the Hub, and are also part of the Constant. Each world can be called a "plane", and things transdimensional can be described as "planar".

So planar damage is damage which can travel freely through space, and it ignores the protection provided by armors. Planar defense is something only the players have, from skill trees and certain armors, and it negates planar damage from mobs.

Planar entities (BS, Ink Blights, 3 new bosses and more) takes much less physical damage, their "planar" nature protects them. This is called "planar entity resistance" or "planar entity protection". Planar damage from players ignores this resistance too and can deal full damage to them. 

You can check whether or not a weapon/armor/mob has planar damage/defense, and how much are they in the Scrapbook:

[Masked Koopa]

I know this isn't fully relevant but I think brightshade could generally use a buff. I know Klei said the update was incomplete or sthn and we didn't have the full picture, but I'm assuming that was in reference to the skill trees, and I'd hardly say Wormwood's perks make it insanely strong or anything.

Brightshade body armour sorely needs additional perks - the reflection is beyond worthless, it's straight up worse than the bramble husk for no reason.

The staff is also extremely underwhelming - for a weapon that depends on multiple enemies to work properly, it should be dealing more to the group than a single target attack, ESPECIALLY with a full set.

The smasher is probably fine, but the shoevel is also incredibly silly. Why not give it a faster dig speed or something to make it more than just a durable shovel. Or even just add axe functionality to it so it can bring some compression value - hoes aren't a tool that's common enough to where compression brings any value, you can very, very easily just leave a hoe near your farm plot.

I'm also not at all a fan of all of the damage bonuses going to the head slots. We have the void cowl, the brightshade helm, the enlightened crown, and now warbis - all in the head slot.

[MoonWormwood]

5 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

The staff is also extremely underwhelming - for a weapon that depends on multiple enemies to work properly, it should be dealing more to the group than a single target attack, ESPECIALLY with a full set

50 to 100 potential safe damage without BS helmet and 70 to 140 safe damage with BS helmet with CC crown sinergy

i dont see how it is underwhelming, it shouldnt be meta, just a tool, a ver strong tool. Hounds, ink trio and BS are joke because this weapon and you can easily farm NF/recover sanity with bone helmet plus spamming the staff

is also great for fuelweaver and a nice tool to stunlock crowds of enemies. It also triggers the stun for the new 3 bosses

 

too much power for something that was suppose to be a tool rather than a strong weapon

to add better ranged weapons klei first needs to rework 99% of mobs since is really dumb to just spam F and move a little without feeling any danger

6 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Yeah...whenever I come to this topic, I feel like how I do when total sportsfans are going on and on and on about jargon this, slang term that, acronym so-and-so, statistic statistic statistic, about their favourite sports, and my eyes....are glazing......o v e r....But I'm sure they'd feel the same way if I started going on about Dungeons and Dragons terms. :P

When I went to look up this topic on the actual DST Wiki, I still didn't get any explanation as to what the word "planar" MEANS in this context, but I did see a lot of the same stuff you guys are talking about.

...then as soon as I saw  thing saying :"watch this video about the MATH EQUATIONS behind this", I was like NOPE. I'm out. I mean, I'm sure that if I was a lategame combaty player, and did run into these things so that it was relevant to me, it wouldn't seem as abstract anymore, but...

TL;DR: I will _never_ actually "get" this, so I'm back to my original opinion: I hope to heck that these "planar" creatures taste good to other big, mean creatures,or that they're still allergic to a big ol' field of tooth traps. :P

...Notorious

simple, the more damage you deal the less damage the enemy takes. If the enemy is planar part of the damage they deal would pierce throw regular armor

anyways you can only experience these stuff if you activate it after beating end game bosses or via settings and you have claimed already how little interest you have on it

[CaptainChaotica]

Thank you, Fufuji. At least, now that I have a definition for the main confusing word everybody was using, I understand mentally a bit more what you're talking about.

...still doesn't mean I'll have much chance actually FIGHTING it, but what else is old. :P

...Notorious

[Capybara007]

Planar damage is a mistake