From what I read in our forums, defense feels underwhelming. A flat damage reduction of 400-600 means absolutely nothing when bosses hit for 10k+. To me, the problem with defense is not the flat damage reduction itself. The problem lies with how damage is dealt in MapleStory. I've been playing a lot of Risk of Rain 2 and while the games are different, I found a new appreciation for flat damage reduction. Mob hits you for X damage, you take [X damage - (# of Armor Plates*5 defense per plate)]. When the game scales to later stages, this flat reduction means nothing for single target attacks onto you. In fact, you might get straight up one-shot. However, the one time this item shines is when DoTs comes in. Damage over Time in the form of fire damage, poison damage, or any tick-based damage that latches onto you. The flat damage reduction in Risk of Rain 2 applied to the DoT as well and effectively mitigated every single tick of damage, thus making the flat defense item super relevant. So what does this mean for MapleStory? If flat defense is ever to be made more useful, it should be in the form of DoT mitigation or multi-damage mitigation. This way defense can still be relevant in the current HP washing and bossing meta. Unfortunately, most of the damage in the late game comes in the form of single attacks. If new content is to be considered, adding DoT damage skills for the boss (such as fire DoT debuff) and allowing defense to mitigate such DoT skills would make the defense stat more relevant. Imagine a 10x multi-attack for 1k each attack and defense being able to mitigate 200 dmg each tick (2k dmg reduction from 10k initial, not bad at all). This way people might look at defense scrolls for equips/accessories that they can't scroll damage on or use defense potions to mitigate more damage. Defense potions could also be a viable drop item from certain PQs at that point as well. Or, don't and just leave it as is. I'm just throwing an idea out there for people to think about. Food for thought.
I've always liked the idea of making the Defense stat more relevant. Why does 1 point of Int increase Magic Defense, but 1 point of Str doesn't increase Weapon Defense. Never understood that. And I agree that Defense becomes almost an irrelevant stat during the later parts of the game. Honestly, the only time Defense ever made a noticeable difference for me was when I got my Zakum Helm. But we also have to remember, no game can make perfect sense. There is always something about a game we wish was different.
No. These are two separate ideas. This person wants to convert flat defense into % defense as a whole. I'm saying to add more boss damage mechanics that favor flat defense.
Overall, def/m.def should be more relevant and rewarding. There's only two stats that matter here--HP, and range. Avoid only matters to thieves end game for dpm, because there is no dmg mitigation so a boss basically kills you in one hit or not, so avoid isn't useful to any other classes. Im not sure what the min~max range is on mob/boss attacks is but if they had a wider range like adventurers, it would help a lot and not make the bossing meta so all or nothing, and with def/mdef. But the problem is, how do you work it in? All slots are scrolled for damage, nobody will sac their dmg for def because the formula scales badly. M/def scrolls wouldnhave to add like 100+, and I don't know it so I can't confirm but others have said the formula ends up breaking when def is super high anyway (Btw original RoR does an homage to pig beach from original maple but you probably knew that!) Was also thinking, why not just make boss attacks do less damage the farther away you are. What's the point of having range classes that simply must wash to compete because the bosses are all made to threaten the melee classes by standard I know that sounds absolutely radical but the boss/class relationship is really weird in ms and I don't know how to help it, I'm just here, talking about it for fun, seeing what comes of it. But bottom line I agree: armor should protect you, shields work like shields. Only thing I could say that could implement it the easiest is simply give more def for higher lvl equips. This places more value on higher lvl items so folks don't just scroll some random top with the standard 16 total ap from godly stats, and mess with the def formulas, and boost skills that raise m/def, shield mastery, etc Otherwise nobody will scroll for def even if you could get like 300 def on all your eq, unless formulas/skills/eq/monster ranges are changed
This tends to fall to Old School MMO styles that doesn't just occur in Maple at its core, but in other MMOs. At first, things like strength, defense, health, is calculated at launch of the game and it all keeps harmony. However, as the game pushes forward new content like new bosses, new gear, one of the first things to get shelved is the defense. From a developer's point of view, DEF just causes extra problems in calculating damage so they just do away with it all together and take damage points raw to HP rather than spend developer time to balance DEF and its mitigations. They save developer resources doing this.
