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How Low Can Debuff Go? [Tested]

myth-bustedDid a little bit of testing tonight… The question arose of whether or not you could go “negative” with enemy troop defense. The Game of War battle simulation algorithm hasn’t quite been cracked… It’s almost there but not quite.

One of the big mysteries is enemy defense Debuff and inherent defense boosts based on quantity/type of troops. A theory is that you could go “negative” and flatten the curve of the rising inherent defense boost of the quantity multiplier. Put another way — If someone had 100 mil troops with 1400 defense — if you went over that 1400 with a higher enemy troop defense Debuff than the target has that this is helpful.

It’s not. Below are the results of 2 attacks against same target with exact same troops and stats. In the first one – the attacker had 20% more defense Debuff (1460 vs 1480)… In theory that surpasses the defenders troop defense. The second hit has the attacker with 1680 defense Debuff vs 1460 defense. As you can see despite an almost 200% increase in defense Debuff the mitigation it achieves is negligible.

Myth Busted




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  1. Question : did both of those tests have the same “other” stats? Attack, health, etc. was it ONLY DD that changed from the attacker? Also, was it the same troop types for each rally? (Strat, wild, mix…)

  2. Some inside baseball for you: We sell a Lag/Crash Debuff to our high rollers. Don’t bother asking them about it because they won’t say anything. The rest of you losers are stuck with our lag/crash algorithm. Hard cheese.

    Your friends,
    MZ Sales

    • Profile photo of B

      What is that supposed to mean?

      • It means you will happily pay for anything that we offer up for sale.

        Seriously, we here at MZ Sales are constantly amazed at what some people will trade for $100.00 If we could figure out how to sell small bags of dog crap in the form of a pack we would do it just to watch you you clods squabble over them. Instead, though, we must settle for peddling packs of speedups, chests and “gold” which are then traded for even more ridiculous items. For instance, we had an office pool going as to how well Xena gear would do…we had you dress your heroes up in gowns, tiaras, toe shoes and other feminine trappings and, sure enough, they were snatched up without so much as peep of protest. We knew then that you would buy literally anything.

        Coming soon: Xena’s Transgender Gear. Can’t wait to see you snatch it up and argue over its effectiveness.

        Your friends,
        MZ Sales

      • Profile photo of B

        Honestly it really blows my mind that someone as I’m your self can be such an amazing duche. If you are actually apart of mz sales and representative of the mz company, I feel sorry for the mind set of the hiring team employee who gave you and others like you a job. If only your incompetent self could put into respective that there are more then a few aliances in this game let alone individuals who could write a Check and buy mz and put little green horn pencil pushers like you on the street.

        Enjoyed the talk,

      • Hmm, not sure whether B is trying to out-troll MZ Sales or just stupid.

      • Nah I reckon B is really that stupid! I know a few people that are just unable to comprehend satire/sarcasm/etc. It’s funny for the rest of us so just enjoy it when you see it (although I understand that it can also be painful to watch)

  3. Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

    For example.
    100% Defense Debuff means 1/(1+1).
    It is 0.5 (50%)
    Enemy troop Defense will be Half.

    • why do you think it works that way?
      my tests so far don’t show it’s like that, cause there really seems to be one point at which all further debuff don’t do a thing.
      though this might explain march speed debuff.

      • I’m also convinced it work that way. Similar to the magister research set. 400% research time debuff trim about 80%, 1000% trim about 90%, 10000% trim 99%. It’s impossible to reach 0%…. So as you can see the more you have have less and less effects.

      • Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

        Yes sir,
        I believe it is impossible to reach Enemy Defense 0%, too.

      • Baal, you mentioned t4 have an embedded Def of 45. Any chance you could tell me what the embedded health and Attack is? And just curious how you know? Thanks

      • Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

        In this time, Attacking twice are same account and same boost.
        Mybe same troops.

        One Hero gear having Troop Attack 100% is 1+1 which means makes troop attack twice.

        It is impossible to increase only Enemy Defense Debuff.
        Increasing Defense Debuff 1480% to 1680%, Doesn’t mean nothing, but Increasing Troop Attack 100% to 300%, or Enemy troop debuff 100% to 200% makes much difference.

        Thinking from original Boost, It is triple, or twice.

        Utan From Japan

      • if it would work like this there wouldn’t be traps. cause the use of 300% defense debuff and health debuff would make my 2k defense and health like 500%. easy to get 300% debuffs, trap with 2k of these values still doesn’t burn. actually using debuffs against good gear or cores isn’t effective.

      • 2000% defense Boosts increase the embedded troop defense. So even after debuff your total defense is still high. T4 have 45 embedded defense. So if you got 30m t4 you still have plenty of defence even if you end up with a 500% defense boost. Also remember that you have attack debuff that will also reduce quite a lot the total opponent attack

      • I will see in upcoming reports if that makes sense. right now i don’t think so. attack debuff i rarely use at my trap, makes no sense in my opinion. of course it would using your calculation. but i got hit by fishermen just a week ago and used colossus boots, mainly because they have ranged attack. they also have 150% attack debuff, so i should have had much lower losses, but didnt. your calc says i decrease attack from 2k inf attack to about 800%, in my calculation to 1.85k. seems more to be the later. i also use attack debuff for the 1k reg attack, usually not much of an efffect. attacking i see much effect at targets with week gear, using our calc i shoud always have half the losses, without regarding troop specific attack.

      • #infantry attack debuff the colossus boots have

      • Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

        I. two type of Troops, Normal and Strategic, each troops Defense and Attack Work,
        200%(Strength); 100%(same); 50%(weakness)

        300%(Strength); 50%(same); 50%(weakness)

        This cause differnt effects.

        II. Traps are also “Troops”, but have much more Health than Troops.

        III. I think death or injure occur when “damage” somehow works against health, and “damage” is just subtract defense from attack.

        I think like this, but I don’t know how damage works against troop’s health

      • Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

        Only I know by test,
        No traps, exactly same boosts and same number of troops fight each other, the result is “Draw” by both dying 1/10 of troops.
        I don’t know how traps works.

    • Is it possible that defense debuff work only on the embedded troop defense instead of the sum of (embedded troop defense + boosted defense)?

  4. Profile photo of UtanBlackTKB

    I Believe I know the reason.
    I think that Defense 1460% means 1+14.6.
    it’s equal 15.8 which is 1560% multiple original defense.

    However, Defense Debuff 1480% means 1/(1+14.8.)
    It’s equal 0.0633% which multiples enemy troop defense.

    1680% Defense Debuff means 1/(1+16.8.)
    It’s equal 0.0562%.

    Negligible Difference.


  5. Will defense debuff also debuff troop specific defense once it exceeds their troop defense or do you need the troop specific defense debuff?

    • you need the troop specific debuffs. those are hard to get.
      this ist btw. the reason colossus hunter and dragooner gear is great …. if gemed correctly.

      • …or standard colossus gear. no cores take away that much troop specific attack. if you don’t gem it with enough general attack debuff you have missed the point of having it.

  6. Cool test but I think traps had figured this out way before. Essentially, in a nut shell, all boosting and debuffing/reduction in GOW work on the multiplicative scale and not linear scale. Boosts add up by (1+x%) and reduction go by 1/(1+x%) and of course the latter can never reach 0, and in fact as anectodally pointed out already there is a reason why 400/500% is a good benchmark. A tid bit more there is pointless in MOST cases.

    • Hi Fishman, I dont get how you calculate the boost with this (1+x%) ?.. In my opinion if I got 1000 T4 and I got an attack boost of 2000% the boost formula should not be: 1000T4attack + (1000T4attack * 2000%)

  7. Profile photo of Ulisses

    Hello, you should add a gear simulator to see the overall stats you get with different gear and their levels.

    Salute, Uli

  8. You also have to put all the troops into the algorithm. If they have 200 mil t4 troops, than that will multiply their defense amount exponentially.

    • no, troop numbers increase the effect of defense proportionally, not the defense value itself. if you have 200m t4 defense, but also infantry defense, ranged defense and cavalry defense save twice the troops as 100m t4 do save. could you take away all of that even a 400b would burn. but the 100% basic always stay, so there is a limit.

  9. The formula to figure out debuffs is very simple. They pretty much become pointless once they exceed 400% or so.

    • for multi purpose gear yes. if you want to burn 10b+ you’ll want to take away all defense and a good portion of troop specific defense too. and lower health to the basic 100% too. 400% won’t be enough then.

  10. the basic 100% of attack, health, defense always stay. you are taking away the extra +xyz% only. actually really simple. only march speed debuff works strange.

  11. Great test but what about going negative on attack debuff? In other words what happens when your attack debuff is greater than their attack boost?

  12. Thanks for sharing. This was busted months ago.

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