Cyane said:
If I'm missing something, let me know.
The way it works is this:
DT is a solid number taken off of an attack's damage. If someone has 15 DT and is attacked with a 20 damage pistol, the attack is reduced to 5. After that, you apply damage resistance. If they have 60% DR, they only took 2 damage from that 20 damage pistol.
So say you're wearing Advanced Power Armor, without any enhancements. By default, your resistance table would look something like this:
DT DR
15 55 Normal
19 90 Laser
16 70 Fire
15 60 Plasma
20 65 Explosive
After Boxing, it would look like this:
DT DR
27 59 Normal
19 90 Laser
16 70 Fire
11 64 Plasma
16 69 Explosive
The -4 DT and +4% DR to Plasma and Explosive effectively offset, you're not taking any more or less damage than you were before.
But the +12 DT to Normal from Boxing makes you effectively immune to nearly any attack that deals normal damage.
And even against the ones you're not immune to, it's very effective: Before Boxing you'd be taking 21-32 damage a shot from Gauss Rifles. Afterward, you're only taking 13-23.
A point blank burst from a Vindicator Minigun is reduced from 82-186 damage to NEGATIVE 226-positive 19.
You went from taking an average of 134 damage from it, to negative 104. Barring criticals, you're now IMMUNE.
(defending against criticals is where Toughness shines as one of the most underrated perks in the game- but thats for later)
Before Boxing, a point-blank Bozar burst would do 97-195 damage.
Afterward, it's NEGATIVE 48 to positive 73.
A reduction of 146 average damage... to 13.
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OKAY, the whole point of this is that boxing makes a HUGE difference in the amount of damage you take from the most common damage type in the game, and doesn't penalize you AT ALL.
Therefore it's easily the best raise to resistance in the game.
So I should take all 3 levels of Toughess despite what Pers guide says?
Most people don't like Toughness. I do. Against Critical hits, it makes a gigantic difference.
Say a Vindicator Minigun hits you with a critical that bypasses your DT, but doesn't have enhanced damage. That's one of the of most common types of critical hits. So all that's left to defend you is your DR.
You'd only have the resistance from:
A: The armor, 55%
B: Boxing, 4%
C: Impact Implants, 5%
D: Subtract 10% DR because of the Vindicator's ammunition type.
That leaves you with just 54% damage resistance protecting you. The Vindicator does 21-28.5 damage multiplied by 25.
You were hit for 284 damage. YOU'RE DEAD.
If you'd had L3 Toughness, you'd have had 84% resistance.
You were hit for 99 damage. NOT dead.
If you upgraded your implants to 10% as well, the damage taken would've only been 68.
That additional resistance from Toughness and other sources is the difference between having to reload (like a whore) and just using a Super Stim.
Addendum:
With Advanced Power Armor Mk. II, you can get up to 74% normal DR before Toughness.
With Toughness on top of that, you're at 90% DR with a 14% buffer to protect against armor piercing. With 90% DR, DT bypass criticals do next to nothing. Not to mention you're immune to all normal attacks except the Gauss Rifle, which hits for single digit damage.
