Defense

Description

Defense is a status value given to certain enemies and units. Enemies may spawn with this naturally, or be granted this through a litany of means.

Mechanics

There are two types of defense statistic. The main defense statistic is Percentage Defense which is used to calculate Effective Damage.

Percentage Defense is the actual defense percentage you see on an enemy or unit. However, this does not mean that if an enemy has 50% defense damage dealt towards it will be decreased 50%. In reality, the number listed is far closer to the percentage of additional health that Defense gives it.

Effective Damage is the actual damage dealt towards an enemy by a tower once Percentage Defense is applied. Effective Damage is calculated by calculating

Original Damage ÷ (1 + Percentage Defense)

where Percentage Defense is changed from a percentage into its equivalent decimal number (for instance, 50% would be 0.5 in decimal form). For example, a tower that deals 100 damage attacking an enemy with 50% defense would deal 67 damage as 100 ÷ (1 + 0.5) = 66.67 to two decimal places. Due to Effective Damage always being rounded up to the nearest integer, 66.67 rounds up to 67. Prior to the Entity System Update, Effective Damage was always rounded down to the nearest integer.

Unit defense works identically to enemy defense, reducing damage from enemy abilities and collision.

A list of certain Percentage Defense values and how much damage they actually reduce has been provided below. This is not a comprehensive list and the values may not be fully accurate due to how the game rounds up the damage, making the values occasionally lower.

Percentage Defense	Damage Reduced
10%	9.09%
15%	13.04%
20%	16.67%
25%	20%
35%	25.93%
40%	28.57%
50%	33.33%
60%	37.5%
80%	44.44%
100%	50%
150%	60%
200%	66.67%
300%	75%

Countering Defense

Defense can reduce the damage output of most towers significantly.

There are a couple of towers and consumables that can melt the Percentage Defense value of enemies, allowing your towers to deal more damage. A few certain towers can also ignore defense. There are two types of defense melting towers. The first has them decrease Total Defense by a certain percentage. However, if the Pyromancer, which melts defense by 50%, is decreasing defense of Fallen Hero, which has 50% defense, this does not mean its defense will be lowered to 0%. Instead, it is decreased by 25% defense, as which is 50% of 50% defense. The defense removal can stack, so the Pyromancer and Electroshocker can together remove 70% Percentage Defense, but two Pyromancers cannot remove 100% Percentage Defense. Instead, only 50% Percentage Defense can be melted. Additionally, defense melting from burn cannot stack with other burn towers, freeze defense melting cannot stack with other freeze towers and poison defense melting cannot stack with other poison towers.

The second type has them decrease Total Defense by a flat amount. For example, the DJ Booth at maximum power can melt 25% defense. This means that when melting defense of the Fallen Giant, it will will melt its defense from 60% to 35%.

Both forms of defense melting do not interfere with each other and can stack. For example, if the DJ Booth decreases the Vindicator's defense from 100% to 75%, the Pyromancer will reduce it from 75% to 25%, which is the same decrease (50% less defense) as if DJ Booth did not affect it. Likewise, if the Pyromancer decreases the Vindicator's defense from 100% to 50%, the DJ Booth will still be able to decrease it by 25%, from 50% to 25%.

Most splash damage will deal full damage to enemies with defense, no matter the percentage, though not all of them do. If a tower that deals explosion damage has orange indicators appear when it deals damage, that means it should be able to bypass defense. If the tower has the regular, red indicators, this is affected by defense.

In addition, units and the Trapper ignore defense for their collision damage. However, for their other sources of damage (like ranged damage for the Humvee 3, burn damage for the Trapper or melee damage for the Guardian Elf), these damage values are affected by defense. Enemies do not ignore defense by colliding with units, damage dealt to a unit with defense from collision will be reduced.

Due to a bug, poison and electric defense melting cannot melt the defense of any enemies added or updated starting from the April Fools 2024 update, though any of the enemies before that are still affected.

The following towers and consumables affecting defense are listed below.

BurnBurn
File:DefaultPyromancerIcon.png Pyromancer	With each tick, the Pyromancer melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 5% at Level 3-4, and by 10% at Level 5. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
File:DHGoldenPyroIcon.png Golden Pyromancer	With each tick, the Golden Pyromancer melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 5% at Level 3, and by 10% at Level 4-5. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
File:MoltenMonster.png Molten Monster	With each tick, the Molten Monster melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 15%. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
File:MolotovIcon.png Molotov	With each tick, the Molotov melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 15%. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
File:NapalmStrikeIcon.png Napalm Strike	With each tick, the Napalm Strike melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 15%. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
File:HeatwaveConsumable.png Heatwave	With each tick, the Heatwave melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 15%. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other burn defense melting sources.
Freeze
File:ReworkedFreezerIcon.png Freezer	With each tick, the Freezer's freeze melts Percentage Defense by 10% at Level 3+. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
File:KRFrostBlasterIcon.png Frost Blaster	With each tick, the Frost Blaster's freeze melts Percentage Defense by 10% at Level 2+. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
File:OICECryomancerIcon.png Cryomancer	With each tick, the Cryomancer's freeze melts Percentage Defense by 10% at Level 0-4. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
File:JesterIcon.png Jester	With its ice bombs, its chillness can melt Percentage Defense by 1% each tick at Level 3-4. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
File:PumpkinBombConsumable.png Pumpkin Bomb	The Pumpkin Bomb has a chance to melt Percentage Defense by 20%. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
File:Santa'sAirStrikeConsumable.png Santa's Air Strike	With each tick, the Santa's Air Strike melts Percentage Defense of all enemies on fire by 20%. Can only melt 33% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other freeze defense melting sources.
Poison
File:ToxicGunnerNewIcon.png Toxic Gunner	With each tick, its poison melts Percentage Defense by 3% at Level 3-4. Can only melt 50% of Percentage Defense. Defense melting cannot stack with other poison defense melting sources.
Other
File:DefaultElectroshockerIcon2.png Electroshocker	With each attack, the Electroshocker melts Percentage Defense of all enemies in a chain reaction by 5% at Level 0-2, by 10% at Level 3 and by 15% at Level 4-5. Can only melt 20% of Percentage Defense.
File:DefaultDJBoothIconAug2024.png DJ Booth	The DJ Booth melts Percentage Defense by a flat amount with a red track pulse hit, with base decrease being 5%, which increases by 1% for every tower in range up to 25%. Cannot melt defense further than what its defense melt per hit is.

File:DefenseOld.pngPrior to the Frost Invasion Update

There were two types of defense statistic. One was the Effective Defense and the other was Total Defense.

Total Defense was the actual defense number you see on an enemy. However, a tower's damage was rarely reduced by this number.

Effective Defense was the actual number that was taken away from a tower's damage towards the enemy. Each point of Effective Defense melted damage by one point, with Effective Defense varying depending on the difficulty of the match. When calculating Effective Defense, if the number was a decimal, Effective Defense is rounded up. However, the damage of towers could not be lowered below half.

Match Multiplier

Mode	Defense Multiplier
Normal	Effective Defense = (Total Defense × 0.25)
Molten	Effective Defense = (Total Defense × 0.35)
Fallen	Effective Defense = (Total Defense × 0.5)
Hardcore	Effective Defense = (Total Defense × 0.75)
Trick or Threat Town	Effective Defense = (Total Defense × 0.5)

Countering Defense

Defense could reduce the damage output of certain towers significantly, such as the Minigunner or Militant. Likewise, it least affected the damage output for towers that had high damage, such as the Ranger or Mortar.

There were a couple of towers that could melt the Total Defense value of enemies, allowing your towers to deal more damage. Each defense melting tower could decrease Total Defense by a certain percentage. The defense removal could stack, so the Pyromancer and Electroshocker could together remove 70% Total Defense, but 2 Pyromancers could not remove 100% Total Defense. Instead, only 50% Total Defense could be removed. The only towers that could not stack their defense melting was the Frost Blaster and Freezer.

In addition, units ignored defense for their collision damage. However, for their other sources of damage (like ranged damage for the Crook and Humvee 3, or melee damage for the Citizen 1), these damage values were affected by defense.

The following towers affecting defense are listed below.

File:NewPyromancer0.png Pyromancer	With each tick, the Pyromancer melted Total Defense of all enemies on fire by 1 at Level 2-4, and by 2 at Level 5. Could only melt 50% of Total Defense.
File:NewFreezer0.png Freezer	With each attack, the Freezer melted Total Defense by 1 at Level 3-4, and by 2 at Level 5. Could only melt 20% of Total Defense. Defense melting could not stack with the Frost Blaster.
File:NewElectroshocker0.png Electroshocker	With each attack, the Electroshocker melted Total Defense of all enemies in a chain reaction by 1 at Level 5. Could only melt 20% of Total Defense.
File:NewFrostBlaster0.png Frost Blaster	With each attack, the Frost Blaster melted Total Defense by 1 at Level 3-5. Could only melt 20% of Total Defense. Defense melting could not stack with Freezer.

Update History

• 29 October 2020 - Overhaul v1.0.0
  • Defense added.
• 8 May 2021 - Overhaul v1.3.0
  • Defense changed, now melts damage by a percentage based on the Defense value on an enemy, instead of melting it by a specific number of damage based on mode multipliers.
  • Defense now cannot reduce damage to anything lower than 1 instead of anything lower than 50% of the tower's damage.
• 12 March 2022 - v1.1.0
  • Defense on an enemy now rounds up when Defense is reduced instead of rounding down.
  • Defense now rounds up damage dealt instead of rounding down.