Talk:Bastion/@comment-174.61.159.70-20140405174736

Still can't figure out exactly how this skill works. Its clear its a direct damage reduction after all other calculations, but the amount varies from user to user and I'm not sure what the differentiating factor is. Maybe its just which enemies we are each testing it on? Maybe its difficulty level?

In my case, in Normal mode in BBI my Warrior would take 135 less damage with Bastion than without, regardless of defense amount or level or what armor I was wearing. In all my tests it was also exactly 135 less damage with Bastion than without it for the final damage recieved by the same attack. Yet with Laserpants it was always 225, and I saw a post on GameFAQs where a guy tested with his level 200 pawns and consistantly it was a reduction of 60 damage (granted his test was likely in vanilla DD so it might have changed in Dark Arisen).

Still, if its a flat damage reduction taken off the end of the formula, and it doesn't seem to be affected by defense, piercing/striking resistance, or level, and seems to be consistant across enemy attack types (I tested a few different ones, as did the guy on GameFAQs) then what's the difference? Normal vs Hard mode? Maybe its by enemy type and if we all used the same ones it would be the same? Maybe its by vocation (I was a Warrior in my test)? Who knows.

This skill can be make a huge difference to your defense or make little difference at all depending on what you are getting hit with. If you get hit by lots of tiny low-damage attacks the flat reduction can reduce them down to 1 damage which is going to be a huge boost to your defenses. If you get hit by big strikes that do thousands of damage a hit its not going to help much. But one thing is for sure, its not a %-based and its also not the same as adding 50 (or any other number) to your base Defense stat, it works on its own weird system as I'm sure similar augments do as well.