DT; MDT ; MDB

Concerning only magic damage;

Ok, as far as I understand it, DT is all damage taken, and -DT reduces damage taken, except for B.S. special cases, which also includes breath. MDT is magic damage taken, and -MDT reduces all magic damage, except breath. So, MDB is factored into the (100 + Magic Attack Bonus)/(100 + Magic Defense Bonus) ratio, and as far as we know, has no cap. DT + MDT caps at 50, with the exception of DT II and MDT II. MDB, however, can be added to -50 DT and MDT to increase magic defense up to a possible uncapped level.

Did I get this right?

So, first cap DT at -50, and if you can't get -50, then add MDT to reach 50. Once you reach 50, then stack on MDB. Is this a good strategy to protect against magic damage?

yes.

Magic evasion is also worth a stat check, but it is less important from a damage standpoint unless you are stacking it very high wit carols etc.

From my understanding (and the blurbs at https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Damage_Taken#Damage_Taken ) -DT does affect -Breath DT.

Otherwise this seems accurate, purely for magic damage, but another thing you'll want to consider is Magic Evasion, which not only lets you resist spells (which goes above -DT cap) but also resist status ailments and the have shorter durations on the ones that do land.

Also even unmerited plain Shell V from any WHMRDMSCH gives -24% MDT which counts towards your 50% cap, so if you're fighting something that isn't going to dispel Shell (or make a gearswap rule that edits your MDT sets depending on shell status) you only need 26% or so MDT on your gear. This frees up more room for magic evasion.

Also take a look at shadow ring, which annuls magic damage 13% of the time, not useful if the magic will one-shot you though.

So I would say first cap DT at -24 or more, then add as much magic evasion as possible, then add MDB if you can't get anymore MEva. Generally MDB and MEva will be higher on the same pieces. Mummu +1 from Ambu and Pinga/Turms Su3 sets have a ton of MEva for instance. The Arke Su3 set has literally 0 MEva so while it looks great on the surface it's a little lacking in that area.

Damage taken covers magic damage taken too:

*PDT=physical damage taken:caps at -50 (epeo has -25PDTII as does
Aettir st -5PDTII)
*MDT=magic damage taken: caps at -50 (Aegis has-50MDTII; shell-type
Spells contribute but do not
exceed the 50 cap)
*BDT= breath damage taken: caps at -50(good note here, the abyssea
Dark rings combine any -mdt
with any -bdt as a total
-bdt augment;lot of weird
attacks are BDT)
*DT= ALL DAMAGE TAKEN caps at -50: this covers all the PDT/MDT/BDT
and contributes to the cap,
making it superior to the
Other forms as it has move
Coverage per piece

The above are ALL ADDITIVE in the equation, cap'ing at -50 (with the exception of the named items, of which I'm sure there's more not picky ones)

MDB: you are correct on, this has no known cap.

Now, all that being said, its harder (or easier depending on job and role) to cap -PDT/-BDT as shellra5 exists and does around -28 -MDT, so now you still need -50pdt, -22MDT, -50BDT.

Ideally, you'll get -50DT off the bat, but if u get -50PDT and -22MDT you'll be capped for most things, breath exceptions aside.
This is why sets sometimes have Vanir battery over staunch tathlum, once you hit 22-50-(M)DT only way to reduce damage, strictly from magic attacks, is MEVA, MDB,lowering mob magic attack stats,or getting out of the way lol.
And for physicsl, increasing defense, vitality, lowering mobs physical attack stats attack

You can also throw in one of the 'absorbs magic damage' items, for a 5% chance to get cured by something that might have killed you. Just keep in mind, they don't stack, so even if you wore all 3 you'd still only have a 5% absorb rate.


Tartarus Platemail
Warder's Charm/Warder's Charm +1
Engulfer Cape +1

I tend to favor Warder's charm since it comes with ele resist+20 (except light/dark) but it has to compete with Loricate's DT-6.

I knew Martel would be here soon lololol

And elemental resists count towards meva?

I made a grammatical snafu when describing BDT. lol
I meant to say that -DT includes -BDT.

I'm dnc/run right now to protect against magic, and -45 DT in gear.

are you sure those don't stack?

Should be noted that the way you phrased it makes it seem like breath dmg is just a special kind of magic damage. It's not breath is breath and magic is magic. Very few things effect both outside of things that effect more or less all damage (like dt or various buffs like phalanx or scherzo for example).

Only things I can think that effect both breath and magic but not physical stuff is resist and elemental damage reduction such as run jas.

But several things that are different like breath doesn't use dstat or mab/mdb while breath can sometimes use casters hp though for monsters often caps low due to their high hp. And of course magic damage taken only working on magic and breath damage taken only working on breath except weird augment situations.

Also to note while mdb doesn't have a cap because it's on the denominator it will have diminishing returns so eventually stacking it becomes kind of meh and really never has the same effect as dt/mdt

Yes, I'm quite sure. Link to testing

Always assumed Shell is magic where Magic def. Bonus is the Physical version of that. Just like Phalanx is magic -dt, pair with our Gear -dt/pdt

Never really tested this but assumed that all magic being dispelled is why we have these stats in gear. to raise the Floor value on all these elements.

Anyway random thought

The MDT and MDB thing you stated is kind of wrong, really.

MDT is a percentage. MDB is also a percentage. People also don't really seem to realize that regardless of what the MAB is of the monster, MDB will always offer the same percentage.

Looking at the math, the MAB/MDB would be the same as writing MAB x 1/MDB. Why does this matter? Because the 1/MDB (for instance, +100 MDB) would lead to multiplying by 1/2, and whatever else goes into the formula is always being multiplied by 1/2.

Examples using 100 MDB:

0 MDT. Assume a 1000 damage magic attack. with 0 MAB of the monster, and you have +100 MDB. The 1000 damage is multiplied by the 1.00 MAB (still 1000), divided by the 2.00 MDB, and it ends up being 500 damage
MDB led to the damage being 50% of what it would have been (500 instead of 1000)

0 MDT. Assume a 1000 damage magic attack. with 100 MAB of the monster, and you have +100 MDB. The 1000 damage is multiplied by the 2.00 MAB (now 2000), divided by the 2.00 MDB, and it ends up being 1000 damage
MDB led to the damage being 50% of what it would have been (1000 instead of 2000)

50 MDT. Assume a 1000 damage magic attack. with 0 MAB of the monster, and you have +100 MDB. The 1000 damage (which in your order would now be 500) is multiplied by the 1.00 MAB (now 500), divided by the 2.00 MDB, and it ends up being 250 damage
MDB led to the damage being 50% of what it would have been (250 instead of 500)

50 MDT. Assume a 1000 damage magic attack. with 100 MAB of the monster, and you have +100 MDB. The 1000 damage (halved to 500) is multiplied by the 2.00 MAB (now 1000), divided by the 2.00 MDB, and it ends up being 500 damage
MDB led to the damage being 50% of what it would have been (500 instead of 100)


So we would have bigger numbers if we had less MDT because of the damage being higher, but the overall percentage is going to be the same and it would not be diminished.

Even I got confused reading through these posts, and I know this stuff

It's not anymore difficult than this, for magic damage

damage = damage - mdt% - (100+enemymab)/(100+yourmbd)%

Yeah, DT is always the first goal. It is significantly easier to get 50 MDT versus getting 100 MDB which would be its equivalent. And you aren't limited to one or the other, as they both work and stack anyways. And MDB starts to diminish as 100 MDB will reduce by half, it takes 300 to reduce by three quarters.

If MDB were available in much larger quantities and DT or MDT were not... things may be different. But they're not.

It kind of is wrong in the way you phrased. DT is more potent simply because point per point it does more (at least in the vast majority of situations) and by it's very nature dt has increasing gains while mdb has diminishing. Even in the way you rephrased it doesn't really make sense. Sure more mdt will lower the amount of absolute damage reduction offered by mdb. MDB also lowers the amount of absolute damage reduction offered by mdt... as does every other multiplier. Which is why it's completely useless to talk about in those terms instead of percentage reduction. And the order of when each reduction happens only really matters in terms of rounding nothing else which could go either way. That said mdb term is actually calculated before mdt so...

That's a really wonky way to state that.

Here is how this works, every Player and Monster in the game has 100 base Magic Defense / Magic Attack. Magic Attack Bonus / Magic Defense Bonus is then added to this value to determine the final Magic Attack and Magic Defense. Those two numbers are divided to form mRatio which is what your magic damage is multiplied by. It's the magic analogue to pDiff only on random value being added or subtracted.

DMG * mRatio * MDT * SDT * MBB * Weather * Affinity * Resist

Exact order doesn't really matter since it's all a bunch of multipliers. The important point is to remember mRatio is where stuff like Malaise really shine because if you can get the target MDEF under 100 then you can get silly results from stacking MAB. And if your on the receiving end of that attack, then please remember it's not 100 MDB = 50 MDT, the exact reduction depends on the targets MATK.


1000 * (150/200) = 750, only a 25% reduction from 100 MDB when the target already has 50 MAB.

Also dSTAT checks (INT/MND/CHR) happen in the MDMG part before all the multipliers and why TPing in Argosy kills WAR's and DRK's.

That last part about MDB is untrue; going from 0 MDB (aka having the standard 100 magic defense) to +100 MDB will always halve the magic damage you take, regardless of how much MAB the monster has. In your mini-example, the reduction from the 1000 value is irrelevant because the player never directly sees that value in either situation.

With your values, 0 MDB translates to 1,000 * (150/100) = 1,500 damage, while +100 MDB translates to 1,000 * (150/200) = 750, which is a 50% reduction from +0 MDB.

Similarly, adding MAB always gives the same amount of damage increase (pecentage-wise), no matter how much MDB the foe has. The less MDB they have, the more raw damage you get, but the percentage increase is always the same. Adding 50 MAB when you have +300 is always going to be a 450/400 = 12.5% increase, whether that's going from 1,000 damage to 1,125 damage or 5,000 damage to 5,625 damage.

Do those stack with Light Sachet? (any element)

Also, is there a lower bound cap on Magic Hit Rate?

5% but mind you that is for full land rate. Also the testing on that was concerning just meva/macc based resist not traits and weird new things like pflug so that might factor separately

For enfeebles on enemies at least, unless there is something I missed, the lower bound on hit rate is lower than 5%. You can have 3 lesser geared/buffed enfeeblers spamming blind for minutes on Maju without a single land if they're not getting immunobreaks, and I've never landed Frazzle or Dispel on any of the Caturae other than Fu.

Dunno. Considering that they're element specific and something like 1~2% proc rate, I don't consider them worth bothering with.

And testing something with a value that small would be annoying. when the value being tested is that small, you need larger sample sizes to make sure the results are accurate.

While it's possible they stack, since it's technically a different stat, I tend to suspect they'd be separate checks rather than additive. Which would make it even less useful, and more annoying to test.

If you're interested in doing some testing I can outline my test methods for you.

I was curious if you had already tested but didn't post because you thought they weren't worth mentioning. Sounds like they aren't worth testing: just 1~2%?

Do you know without doing a bunch of tests which response was correct on magic hit rate? or potentially both correct? (players having a floor where enemies will always land nuke with no resist 5% the time and monsters can be effectively immune if a player is too weak)

Correct, they are all multipliers and the order won't matter.

Concerning malaise... the player typically does not have malaise on them. As we are talking about player DT/MDT/MDB/etc. However, even then, the numbers would work out the same way.

And as Gerlond stated... yeah that last part doesn't add up. It is still a 50% reduction from base MDB because it is still an independent multiplier even if it is always written as MAB/MDB

So far as I'm aware, the magic hit rate floor is 5% whether the target is a player or a monster. However there are additional factors that can push you to an effective rate lower than that. Like resist traits, or out right monster immunity.

That said, this isn't really my area of expertise, and I personally haven't done any tests on the mhit rate floor vs monsters. So take it with a grain of salt.

It's not MAB/MDB, it's Matk/Mdeff, small difference but incredibly important to know.

NM has 50 MAB, so 150 MATK,
Please has 100 MDB for 200 MDEF
150/200 = 0.75, which is a 25% reduction.

Or a bit more realistic,
NM has 80 MAB, RUN has 184 MDB the results are
180/284 = 0.633, 36.7% damage reduction.

0.75 is a 25% reduction from 150 Magic Defense (+50 MDB), not from 100 Magic Defense (+0 MDB). By not explicitly comparing to 100 Magic Defense (+0 MDB), you're by default comparing to an amount of Magic Defense that is equal to the mob's Magic Attack.

For example, if you gave the mob a theoretical 120 MAB, then your paradigm for +100 MDB would come out to 220/200 = 1.1, which is obviously wrong since it's saying 100 MDB makes you take 10% more damage.

Put another way, the Magic Attack/Magic Defense term can be split into two by writing it as Magic Attack/100 * 100/Magic Defense, which by the rules of multiplication, mean they're are independent terms of one another.

Both your maths are right;
Considering 150mATK/200mDEF=.75 is useful when trying to learn the enemy's stats as you need to know both if you want to find out what the enemy's INT or whatever stat is depending on the ability. From memory damage gets floor'd to an integer at every step, and (mATK+mCritDmg)/mDEF is a single step.

For general use however thinking of MDB+100 as 50% damage reduction over base mDEF is easier.

And it's wrong on any boss you fight due to them having MAB and skewing the results. That was only true back at 75 when only BLM or RDM monsters had MAB, but anything 120+ usually has some and the places where your actually "tanking" most definitely has a Matk higher then 100.