For some time I have been combining the stats of Reduced Target’s Damage by 24% and my 20% Damage Absorption. I imagined that this will be very useful for my facetanking builds. However, I always had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. In my earlier builds I completely neglected Reduced Target’s Damage and still managed to create a decent build (however it is outdated by now).
Today I tried facetanking Callagadra with a version of a build I am working on. I tried it with a point in Light of Empyrion which should have a 100% uptime and I tried again without it. To be honest I did not notice much of a difference. From experience I am starting to believe that combining Reduced Target’s Damage with Damage Absorption yields a negligible defense bonus. Does anyone truly know how it stacks? It feels like it’s weaker than just two multipliers (damage x 0.76 x 0.8).
I had to sacrifice a lot to get Light of Empyrion and now I feel like it is a complete waste. Having 22 points in Primal Bond seems good enough. I also tried experimenting with Stone Form and also found it to be unimpactful… Though maybe that is because it doesn’t a 100% uptime and when I facetank I prefer not to move. Either way something feels off to me in the way these things stack. Investing instead into health seems much more impactful.
Is there any concrete evidence for this? It really doesn’t feel like I am avoiding 20% of damage when I pick up Light of Empyrion. I will continue experimenting with the ideal defensive combinations but for now using both Damage Absorption and Reduced Target’s Damage seems like a waste to me.
If you compare completely different devotion maps, and potentially sacrifice a lot of good stats just to get the %DR, then you might have problems seeing any improvement.
But you are also comparing apples to oranges, metaphorically speaking.
Try the fight with the devotion proc unbound, make a recording the fight, then compare the damage taken.
Only way to be objective.
I meant that I had to sacrifice a lot in terms of potential damage. In my test I did not change anything other than not take Light of Empyrion. The whole devotion path was the same except one point.
LoE has 20% chance to trigger
Calla hits slow
it’s probably unlikely you’ll have 100% uptime on it
*atleast on appearance seems like her wind farts doesnt’ count as trigger against LoE
Your test has a big flaw which is you not standing still and sometimes getting hit by the wing attack and sometimes dodging it. If you stood still the test would be more useful.
I downloaded that DPS tracker that you have and I did it myself while standing still. Without Light of Empyrion I saw the max damage value before her damage boost at 12,900. With Light of Empyrion it was around 10,900-11,300. With these values in mind it would appear that light of Empyrion reduced the damage I received by 12-15%. This is a lot higher than I expected but it still falls short of the 20% that it should have been performing at.
And yes it is pretty much permanent. If you stay still Callagadra will always damage you. You can see the animation play every 3 or so seconds. It’s a bright shining light coming down from the sky. On the other hand this animation is never seen if you don’t have a point in Light of Empyrion (even if you forgot to unbind it from an ability… that bug would be OP if it worked).
no, it’s not a flaw, because it still shows the decent dmg between them - if anything evading sunder highlights the effectiveness even more
*reason it’s not standing still is it doesn’t have enough regen to survive the sunder
and no it’s never eating wingflap after the 6.19 mark (otherwise i would get sunder)
reason i’m saying it doesn’t appear to have 100% uptime is that’s what i viewed “when i had it on”/tried to check LoE trigger - and yes you could even see it not having 100% uptime by the debuff simply disappearing from Calla’s debuff row
*that was my observation, debuff going off her bar, hence mentioning it in the post after trying to see if winds on their own would even trigger it
i obv took the point out for the manual test “this was deliberate”
i’d say you can’t really rely on single peaks, my own test even shows why, you can however see that it does work as a whole across the fight dmg/“on avg” if you will
it’s kinda funny that you will now accept that DR does indeed work with absorb - but now it’s the amount that’s off/“bugged”
The only real way to test these things is through modding. Any test on a monster that uses various skills with attacks and debuffs makes it difficult to check. The devotion proc but it can still miss (depending on your OA ofc). Iirc, calla also has some DA shred. Depending on your current DA value, this can also mean you take a little bit more damage once your DA is lowered.
Mod a monster to use only a single slap dealing exactly 1000 damage, then work from there using absorbs or damage reductions.
But both work, as stated by many already.
So just use a build that can survive it while standing still. That way you can clearly see the average damage dealt to you over a period of time as opposed to randomized slivers of damage coming in between dashes. The longer you take the damage the less randomized your data becomes.
The damage absorption was just an idea I had but of course it could be weakened by very many factors. It could be the damage blocked by the shield or maybe just the defenses. Or maybe my data is wrong and it is actually 20% instead of 15% and the feeling of how impactful it is is misleading.
i’m telling you, it’s not necessary to build like that, the video is already clearly demonstrating the DR working in effect with Absorb, i’m not sure what/why you’re trying to argue eating sunder is necessary?
it’s the whole reason the sequences are 3-4minutes… - and it’s clearly showing the DR is working with absorb/double absorb even…
what you want/if you want something “better”, you go mod an enemy to deal a fixed amount of dmg, so there is no variable on that front, then do DR and Absorb test
(spoiler it will come out as result working correct, because other people already did this)
not the data, the part of it you hinge on, again, my own test demonstrates this, and it’s because of massive variable in the potential dmg output, that’s why a few peaks wont tell the whole story - you can’t guarantee you’re taking the same type of peak hits, my own video shows this.
At 7.30 you can see i miss with war cry so there is 4 secs without DR, and my dmg spikes to the non war cry range, and again at 8min i have a spike which i attribute to an unfortunate unlucky RNG sand hit since it works a bit janky.
But the overall dmg through the 3+mins is not only much lower than non war cry, it’s even staying within regen amount/health isn’t struggling
Then on the non war cry test there is a consistent inability to stay within regen range, and only during/after evade does it get a breather. The “peaks” are now higher/more consistent at +2k/increased frequency then equated to being more the “norm” , we can see this even without the dps meter; just on the char HP bar struggling way more than with war cry.
The dmg then happens to somewhat match on the avg +2k without war cry to 1600 with war cry/“in regen range” which then seems to line up a bit with the war cry doing its DR
- dmg with War Cry at 35% DR
