Defence down change proposal
**NOTE: All information regarding mechanics is acquired from Prydwen.gg and Nikke.gg. If any info is wrong, please correct me.**
# Introduction
**Before we start, I will just have to say that this is just a suggestion. Shift Up doesn't need to implement this or listen to my ramblings. This is just a small suggestion post from a passionate fan who wants to game to be more fun. I understand that game development takes a lot of work and that some of the implementations I suggest can be seen as unrealistic.**
So this will be in a long line of posts regarding mechanical balancing in Nikke. Balancing overall is an important part of the game to keep things fresh by ensuring that no few units are too over-centralizing. As much as I like the Nikkes, seeing the same teams over and over again can be quite annoying since it makes the game stale. It also keeps rerolling to a minimum for new players and keeps wishlists more diverse. I am not advocating for nerfing any of the top-tier Nikkes. It's always better to buff instead of nerf because honestly, no one wants to look at a patch note to see your waifu get dumpstered. I try to buff the unit to too good rather than not good enough due to the gap between the strongest SSR and the weakest.
Rambling aside, defence down is one of the most underused debuffs in the game. Normally, defence down can be seen as equivalent to attack up in other games, however, from what is [calculated from Nikke's damage formula](https://nikke.gg/damage-formula/), defence downs will only overtake attack ups when the enemy defence is higher than the Nikke's attack. This makes defence down basically useless since enemy defence never gets that high.
# Numbers and stuff
**We will only be using the Base damage formula for our calculations since it keeps numbers simple and clean. It also is the only part of the damage that cares about enemy defence.**
Here's the formula for Base damage:
> A = Attacker; B = Defender
> Base Damage = (A.Attack * (1 + Attack Buff Sum)) - (B.Defence * (1 + Defence Buff Sum)) * Weapon/Skill Multiplier
**[I created a graph on Desmos that helps you visualize this](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/6qialzvzui)**
> a = attack; d= def; s = attack buff sum; g = defence debuff sum (defence downs will be negative); m = weapon/skill multiplier
> You can play with the sliders and enable/disable functions to visualize damage.
As you can see from the graph, due to the way the damage formula is laid out, the only time where defence down is equivalent to attack up is when the enemy's defence is equal to the Nikke's attack. The biggest problem ends up happening when enemies' defence is 0 where defence down is basically useless.
# What needs to be changed?
Currently, there are a lot of Defence down units (Eunhwa, Signal, Viper, Anis, Guilty, Mast, Ludmilla, Novel, Centi and Frima), so Defence down changes will improve a lot of units, with more units on the way, there needs to be a way for more team compositions than just Attack buffs. So we need to adjust the damage formula to make defence down competitive compared to attack up.
Here's my solution and be free to drop your suggestions if you feel like it.
So I was looking at the [enemy database on Nikke.gg](https://nikke.gg/damage-formula/) and noticed that certain bosses have 0 defence (Alteisen (Union Raid), Modernia, Nihilister). This means that defence down is completely useless against these bosses. To remedy this, instead of defence down not working with 0 defence enemies, whenever defence down is applied to an enemy with 0 defence, the debuff acts like twice an attack buff. For example, Eunhwa's 29% defence down when applied to a 0 defence enemy will get converted to a 58% attack buff (in comparison, Liter's attack buff is 66%). For simplicity's sake we will just call this **defence shredding**.
What if the enemy has more than 0 Defence? In this case, we need to break the 100% defence down threshold in order to get to the shredding part. For example, a 101% defence down will give you a tiny 2% attack up which is funny against bosses with 1 defence.
**So new suggested damage formula**
> Base Damage = (A.Attack * (1 + Attack Buff Sum)) - (Defence Coefcient(DC)) * Weapon/Skill Multiplier
> If (B.Defence ≤ 0 and Defence Buff Sum < 0%) then DC = (A.Attack * 2 * Defence Buff Sum %)
> If (1 + Defence Buff Sum < 0 and B.Defence > 0) then DC = ((A.Attack * 2 * (1 + Defence Buff Sum %))
> Else DC = (B.Defence * (1 + Defence Buff Sum %))
The new damage formula is slightly more complicated but it allows for defence down teams to get going when bosses have 0 defence or when the team can break the -100% defence down threshold.
# Sample visualization and what does this mean?
Simply, this means that in boss stages where bosses have 0 defence, it's much more economical to stack defence down than to stack attack ups as defence down will outpace attack ups 2 to 1. This also means that defence down doesn't compete with attack ups and instead works together as long as you can shred defence.
**[A Desmos graph that helps you visualize](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/5bsis64sv5)**
Units that can stack defence downs or have high defence down values are quite valued. Most importantly Mast (who can reach the around -100% defence threshold) and Eunhwa (-29% on S2). However, to really see the value of this new change, we need to buff a character.
# Wait, this is an Eunhwa buff post the entire time?
So uh, yes, I ramble for ~5000 words to talk about how this will affect Eunhwa. It's time for the forehead queen herself to get buffed. I will be basing numbers and stuff around the new damage formula and around Maxwell who is supposed to be Eunhwa's Matis counterpart.
## Weapon
Nothing much to change here. Basic sniper rifle stuff. If I have to change anything, I will just increase her burst generation from 2.9% to 3.1% per shot so that she generates energy slightly faster than most Sniper rifles (except for Harran).
> Deals 71.07% of ATK as damage.
> Charge Time: 1 s
> Charge Damage: 250%
> Reload Time: 2.33 s
> Burst Generation: 3.1%
> Ammo 6
## Skill 1
Basically for personal damage. A small increase of the charge damage and speed by +5% for all levels.
> Affects self. Activates after firing the last round. Charge Damage ▲ 23.64/25.71/27.78/29.85/31.92/33/35.07/38.14/40.21/42.28% for 2 shots. Charge Speed ▲ 12.76/13.63/15.49/15.35/16.22/17.08/17.94/18.8/19.67/20.53% for 2 rounds.
Increasing charge damage by 40% and charge speed by 20% for 2 shots at level 10 isn't anything game-breaking since it's only on herself but it's still a good buff to have. It does make manual play smoother when you are trying to get S2 to proc consistently. She's also an attacker unit so high personal damage is good. Ironically, this does make Maxwell good with Eunhwa since she buffs charge speed.
## Skill 2
This is where her bread and butter will be. Previously at level 10, this gives you -29% defence. I will be rescaling this to make her stronger. The base defence down has also been increased to 19%. Instead of increasing by 1.61% per level, it will now increase by 2% every level.
> Activates after firing the last bullet. Affects the target. DEF ▼ 19/21/23/25/27/29/31/33/35/37% for 5 sec.
Why change the defence down to be so high? As noted with the damage formula changes above, if the enemy's defence is equal to 0, the defence down will be converted to an attack buff at twice the defence down values. This means that with a 0 defence enemy, the 37% defence down will be converted into a 74% attack up buff. Combined with Mast's ability to get enemy defence down to near 0 will make Eunhwa a very good defence shredder in situations where defence > 0. At level 8 and defence 0, she is comparable to Liter's burst (both 66%).
## Burst
Before, this was a useless burst as the defence down is minimal, the damage sucks and the crit rate buff doesn't matter. I will just be rescaling the damage of the burst to be not terrible and changing the DEF ▼ to a DEF shred multiplier ▲. So instead of an x2 Multiplier when an enemy defence is at 0, it's now an x2+ multiplier. However, this means that you need to get enemies' defences down to 0 before this becomes viable. The burst damage is not the best but that's not the focus so it's fine to be low. Also note that the Defence shred multiplier is applied before the burst damage now. Crit rate buff stays the same since that's not the focus of her character.
> Cooldown: 20s