Can someone please explain how defense works?

"DarthxMaul;98684" wrote:
I was looking at sith trooper and his unique gives him 100% defense. I have no idea what it does for him. Can someone explain or send a link to a thread that explains?

Defense is damage reduction that's applied to an attack as a percentage. So if you have 20% Armor (which mitigates physical damage) and take an attack for 1000 damage, then you lose 800 life. It's complexified by the fact that all you'll see on your screen is the big 800 number since there's no damage lig.

Armor reduces physical damage, Resistance reduces special damage. "Defense" refers to both Armor and Resitance. So if something increases your Defense by 10%, both will go up equally.

Here's where stuff gets wonky. When you look at a piece of gear, it says (for example) +5 Armor. Your defense stats are a flat number, but when you go to a character stat screen you'll see it expressed as a percentage. There's a formula that converts the raw number into the final value. Whenever an effect affects your defense (or armor or resistance specifically) it applies to that raw number. So in the example you asked about, if a Sith Trooper's Armor was 100 and Resistance was 50, the end result would be 200 Armor and 100 Resistance. If the mitigation percentages were 20% and 10% (making up numbers now) then that doubled Defense doesn't necessarily mean 40%/20% because the formula is whatever it is, and you can't assume it's totally linear.