PvE physical dmg interactions?

[SmolShibe]

1.
So...about Physical resistance usefulness in PvE...

(a) the only obvious ranged mobs are post 75+ maps with bows/guns, so do normal mobs do slash, strike, or simply calculated based on def?

(b) boss physical dmg, same issue as above tbh, some bosses have ranged basic atks but i dont feel like they count as pierce dmg? and the skills just say physical dmg with no indicator.

(c) and that leads to the final point. as much as I like having every res overcapped, is phys res even a thing for PvE?


2.
And theres this thing about Def too, wats the floor/lowest value most bosses can get? 0? wats their dmg reduction cap, I dont think its 55%?

(If the flat def on bosses is not high, then it doesnt take much def shred to reach a threshold that drops the reduction to below their cap.
But if the reverse were true, like if an enemy has 99999 def, then even an assassins' toggle wud only drop it to 50k, which is still 55% reduction regardless of def shred)


3. I suspect Def only lowers PHYSICAL crit dmg, but is that tru?

[Jordan]

1a. Completely depends on the mob's set attribute. Monsters can even deal elemental type physical dmg.
1b. Same as above.
1c. A large amount of monsters deal Physical Resistance and so it does matter. Some examples would be from HoO Nerokas deals slash damage and Beryl deals pierce damage. When I personally work on bosses I tend to make sure they deal the damage that is most suitable for appearance/skills.

2. I believe its the exact same mechanic as player vs player as they run through the same system. I dont remember if a player can go below 0 points but if they can so can bosses. Most bosses tend to have between 10k and 30k defence. For example 5 bosses in HoO have 23k def, 4 bosses have 25.5k def and 2 have 30k def. Where as Abyss all bosses have 21k def.

3. Defense lowers all physical damage. It does however give bonuses against physical crit dmg as stated in the tool tip text. The formulas take each reduction 1 step at a time. So -50% def and -50% resistance doesn't equal -100% but rather -75% as its -50% and then the result -50%.

[SmolShibe]

damn did not expect their Def to be that low...
I noticed that def doesnt go below 0 for players so I suppose the same for boss. This also means the 15% def shred necklaces are incredibly weak, if not entirely redundant (zerk+sin+5740 > boss def value), so I dont have to take those anymore.

As for the reply to 3, I guess im right in guessing that physical dmg goes thru def first, before calculating phy res.

This will greatly help my gear planning, thanks Jordan.