Defense debuff stacking 1.8 vs 1.9

These are small sample sizes and there is variation on strike damage so this isn’t exhaustive nor 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination. If others with either 1.8 or 1.9 and Jackal plus Grimm/Gore/Tibby and/or Athena want to contribute more data I’d certainly appreciate it.

Test cases for 1.8 vs 1.9 - 20.4 for all runs, jackal alone, jackal and tibby, jackal and athena, and some wayward tile strikes against mobs that weren’t debuffed and some hits with only Athena or Tibby alone.

Notes:

  • In all cases jackal was applied first as to not generate a stack on Athena
  • In the Jackal + Athena cases the tile damage in was the first hits after the debuffs
  • A level 2 (non-crit strike) troop was used for Jackal as only yellow, no attack / crit strike buffs were used in any of the testing
  • Jackal was level 70 max skill; Athena / Tibby both max skill.

Tibby: 34% defense debuff
Athena: 41% defense debuff base, +4 for each hit stacking 6 times.
Jackal: 54% defense debuff

1.9:
Naked (no debuff): 48, 47
Tibby alone: N/A
Athena alone: 79, 84
Jackal alone: 100, 90, 89, 90, 90
Jackal and Tibby: 105, 108, 105
Jackal and Athena: 111, 117, 113

1.8:
Naked: 45, 46, 45, 49, 49, 49
Tibby alone: 73, 75
Athena alone: 78
Jackal alone: 101, 100, 102, 100
Jackal and Tibby: 138, 148, 146, 138
Jackal and Athena: 150, 170

Some conclusions: first not enough data for real analysis this is just a small sample; that said, the Jackal Alone data on 1.8 is suspiciously consistent for in game damage and need to get some more data to really determine if the new defense mechanics are changed at this level or not.

Athena and below (do need more data here too) looks consistent between 1.8 and 1.9.

The stacking is where it gets interesting, using average hit values:

Jackal and Tibby 1.8 = 142.5
Jackal and Tibby 1.9 = 106 /// 74.38% of the 1.8 value

Jackal and Athena 1.8 = 160
Jackal and Athena 1.9 = 113.67 /// 71.04% of the 1.8 value

Does appear on limited data that the more you reduce the defense the greater the difference with the old 1.8 values. Also this isn’t as bad as I thought but the data set is still very small and not certain if there are attack stacking issues.

I will try to get some additional data points tomorrow to get better resolution, please feel free to contribute if you can whether same setup as this or an entirely different dataset.

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I play the german version and dont know jackal and athena. I know that boldtusk called in the german version as Sturmfang. But which hero is jackal and which is athena please help

Lol from this point of view, i can consider to switch athena for a quartet in yellow/green titans.

So extreme.

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Before I say this, I want to emphasize that the developers listened to the beta testers with this update. At first, there was an Athena and a Wu Kong nerf. They altered that dramatically to just a defense stacking nerf (leaving isolated Athena alone) when many beta testers objected, and they also did other modifications to the beta. They said that future game development depended on them limiting extreme damage.

I am adding the data that I generated during the beta. The big difference between this trial and the one that Revelate posted are that my Athena was at 65% for all of these runs, and that plus Panther makes big damage.

Panther plus Gormek = 78% of 1.8 values (but my data was limited)

Panther plus Athena at 65% = 59% of 1.8 values

My only wish is that the developers consider putting Athena plus elemental damage be a bit higher than it is when Athena is at 65%, maybe 70-75% of values, and Panther plus Gormek be put back to close to regular levels but in any case I am much happier than I was during the early beta.


Here are more trials added to the previous ones, again limited by the fact that I didn’t do multiple runs, plus my Panther advanced a bit as did my purple troops from the Athena trial to the Gormek one. The bottom line is this:

Things work like they should:
Gormek < Panther < Athena @ 65% < Gormek + Panther < Athena + Panther

Panther provides quite a good improvement, perhaps a 50% increase with Gormek, whereas the increase with Athena is only 10-15%. The final tallies (Gormek + Panther vs Athena + Panther are very close) mean that for titans, I will feel great going with Gormek/Tiburtius + Panther and Athena will no longer need to be tied to every team. For challenge events, there is still some benefit to Athena because of her greater damage to other colors and that very slight extra boost to combined damage.

Version 1.9: 4* titan, damage from special attacks

Athena + Panther + Hel special = 1850 (varied between runs)
Athena + Hel special = 1530

Athena + Jackal + Leonidas special = 1560
Athena + Leonidas special = 1380

19-2 level boss, damage from purple tiles

Version 1.8 tile damage:

Athena + purple tiles: 200
Athena + Panther + purple tiles – 390-400

Purple tiles only - 110
Gormek + purple tiles – 145
Panther + purple tiles – 175
Gormek + Panther + purple tiles – 270 (varies)

Version 1.9 tile damage:

Athena + purple tiles: 200
Athena + Panther + purple tiles – 230

Gormek + purple tiles – 145
Gormek + Panther + purple tiles – 210 (varies)

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Here are Jackal and Athena:

These pictures are old; the game may have updated these cards with slightly different abilities. Just saying. :wink:

Maybe wrong place for it but, would it be so hard for them to just tell us what numbers/formulas they just used for these changes…?

Im so glad the community is wanting to find out so badly! Just proves how WE VALUE things like this!

Thanks everyone!

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I hate that Gormek, Grimm, and Tibertus don’t stack with one another, and yet any one of them paired with Athena or Panther do.

I feel the same regarding Wu Kong and his stacking with Boldtusk or Kiril, despite the fact that Boldtusk and Kiril don’t stack together themselves.

If defensive debuffs or offensive buffs stack for some, then they should stack for everyone.

As for the newest update, I have no problem with it. It makes sense to have the stacking scaled or graduated in some way, to prevent anything too gamebreaking. I just wish the stacking wasn’t singled out only for certain heroes and not others.

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Athena doesn’t stack with the Pulverizer mouseketeers.

General defense debuff + color specific defense debuff stack, two general defense debuffs don’t (as of current releases, when Athena was released she did stack with pulverizer).

Wu is just an odd duck; since they split out buffs on Kiril, he and BT (and now Ares and Brienne too) have not stacked.

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Sadly my stupid phone autoupdated even though it was disabled and phone was in power save mode anyway where allegedly not auto-updating is a battery life feature and therefore disabled anyway.

Won’t be any more data sadly from me, thanks Apple.

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I always prefer to push the button myself. I hear ya!

I offer my sympathies both to you and this community who found your data interesting and on point.

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I’ve a question: how do you calculate the combined debuffs from Athena and by example Evelyn? If i just add up the 65% of Athena with the 54% of Evelyn it makes a Debuff of more than 100%. That can’t be true.

Can anyone please text me the correct formula?

Example: Def minus Athena minus Evelyn doesn’t work. Maybe it’s Def x Athena-debuff x Evelyn-Debuff (or Panther, Jackal, …)?

@Kerridoc could you help me with that?

It’s multiplicative:

Defense% = (100% - Athena_Debuff)*(100% - Evelyn_Debuff)

And, yes, that can get to be some pretty serious numbers, especially when you remember that the expected value (center point) of the damage is:

Damage = (modified_Attack / modified_Defense)^1.35

A typical raid team for me will be Kiril, Athena, Panther, Khiona, Sartana. A target with Athena + Panther debuffs facing Sartana with Khiona buff doesn’t stand a chance.

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You can use this formula to calculate the final defense of a hero:

hero_defense * (100 - defense debuff %) * (100 - elemental defense debuff %) / 100^2

For example:

1000 * (100 - 44) * (100 - 54) / 100^2 = 257.6

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Super; thank you very very much @Kerridoc und @Argon !!!

You guys need to look at the posts at the very top of the thread. Over a year ago, some folks with Athena were routinely hitting for >100K per hit. Therefore, a large nerf was done. The nerf hit the combo of Athena and elemental debuffs quite hard. The result was a mathematical smoothing that makes those multiplication formulas invalid.

From my post, which was done on the 1.9 beta but which I believe is still valid:

–V 1.8 - Athena damage = 200 in one situation (at -65%)
Athena + Panther = ~400

–V1.9 - Athena damage = 200 in same situation (at -65%)
Athena + Panther = 230

The result is that there is effectively an asymptotic cap on debuffs at anything more than -70%, which is why one has to be careful interpreting any damage formula.

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Thanks, you’re correct. They put in some damping function that hasn’t been Sussex out yet.

There’s some new evidence at the bottom of the Damage Calc thread. It clearly gets more linear as the Att/Def ratio goes up

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