How Armor, Critical Chance, and Dodge Work

Use the short combat rule

1. Read the multiplier shown beside Armor as damage retained. A 0.5× multiplier means the hit keeps 50%, not that Armor adds that much reduction.
2. Compare Armor with effective health, not raw points. 100 Armor gives 2× effective health against damage that reaches this Armor step.
3. Keep Weapon Critical Chance and Ability Critical Chance separate. They start at the same value, but each applies to its own source type.
4. Keep regular Dodge and Projectile Dodge separate. Luck adds to both through different rules, and their percentages are not one combined avoidance chance.
5. For a before-and-after comparison, hold source damage fixed and apply the same Armor steps to both values. Read the Luck guide separately when pickup timing, XP drops, or passive quality also matter.

Armor, Critical Chance, and Dodge all reduce the time needed to finish a fight or increase the time you stay alive, but they do so at different stages. Adding the displayed percentages together gives a number with no reliable gameplay meaning.

Calculate Armor reduction

Armor stores a damage-retained multiplier. The reduction shown to the player is one minus that multiplier. For non-negative Armor, the current rules use three bands:

0 to 100: retained = 1 / (1 + Armor / 100) 100 to 500: retained = 1 / (2 + (Armor - 100) / 250) Above 500: retained = 1 / (3.6 + (Armor - 500) / 500)

The formulas meet cleanly at both boundaries. 100 Armor retains 0.5× damage, which is 50% reduction. 500 Armor retains 0.278×, which is 72.22% reduction. Moving one point across a boundary does not create a sudden loss or bonus.

The bands make every additional Armor point worth less damage reduction than an early point. That does not make later Armor useless. The better comparison is how much more damage your existing health can absorb.

Compare effective health

Effective health against the Armor stage is the inverse of retained damage:

effective-health multiplier = 1 / retained-damage multiplier

At 100 Armor, the multiplier is 2×. At 500, it is 3.6×. At 1000, it is 4.6×.

This is why percentage-point comparisons can be misleading. Moving from 100 to 500 adds 22.222 reduction points, but the Armor-stage effective-health multiplier rises from 2× to 3.6×. If the same incoming hit is your concern, compare the resulting damage or effective health instead of asking only how many reduction points were gained.

Effective health here is not a full survival-time forecast. Shields, parries, healing, avoidance, minimum-damage behavior, and later received-damage modifiers can change the final result.

Bulletproof VestBulletproof VestEnemy projectiles deal -50% damage to Survivors. +30 ArmorUnlock: The Immovable · Item Pool weight 10 shows the boundary. Its +30 Armor belongs in the Armor calculation, while its separate projectile damage reduction applies later. Do not fold both effects into the retained-damage multiplier.

Follow damage rounding

The damage source produces a floating-point value first. That value is truncated toward zero before Armor multiplies it. Later damage modifiers then continue from the Armor result.

That order matters most around an integer boundary. The rule truncates source damage first, so a decimal source value can produce the same Armor-stage result as the integer immediately below it.

Stop the comparison after Armor because a universal final-health-loss formula would be false. A positive minimum-damage rule can raise a result later, and source-specific or player-specific modifiers can also intervene. Treat this as the Armor step, not the final number that must appear over a Survivor.

Separate Critical Chance

Weapon attacks and abilities do not read one interchangeable Critical Chance statistic. The Team has a Weapon Critical Chance value for main weapons and their evolutions, and an Ability Critical Chance value for abilities that are allowed to crit.

The roll can also include the target’s critical-chance-received modifier, the Luck contribution, a contextual skill bonus, and a bonus owned by the damage source. A forced critical bypasses the ordinary roll. A total chance at or above 100% is guaranteed, while a value at or below 0% cannot pass.

This gives you a useful check when two in-game panels show different values. Confirm whether the source is a weapon or an ability before treating the difference as an error. Passive abilities and attack-enhancing abilities do not become independent critical hits just because the Ability Critical Chance value increased.

Luck contributes 0.1 Critical percentage points per point until it adds 20 points at 200 Luck. That contribution is only one part of the total roll.

Separate the two Dodge checks

Regular Dodge can completely evade an incoming damage event. Projectile Dodge uses a separate statistic and check. The two Luck terms are also different:

• Regular Dodge gains 0.05 percentage points per Luck and caps at +15 points at 300 Luck.
• Projectile Dodge gains 0.1 percentage points per Luck and caps at +20 points at 200 Luck.
• Critical uses the same Luck slope and cap as Projectile Dodge, but it remains an offensive roll.

At 200 Luck, Critical and Projectile Dodge have reached their full Luck additions. Regular Dodge has only gained +10 points and still needs 100 Luck to reach its own cap. At 300, regular Dodge reaches +15 points.

Do not add regular Dodge and Projectile Dodge and label the result total Dodge. They are not two names for the same statistic, and the available rules do not justify publishing one combined probability.

Choose the next stat target

Use the decision that matches the damage killing the run:

• Choose more Armor when ordinary hits are consistently reaching health. Compare the new Armor value against the current one with the same source damage.
• Choose Weapon Critical Chance when the main weapon and its evolutions are doing the work. Ability Critical Chance does not replace it.
• Choose Ability Critical Chance when crit-capable abilities carry the build. Check the ability type first.
• Choose regular Dodge when broad incoming-damage avoidance is the goal. Its Luck contribution continues after the Critical and Projectile Dodge Luck terms stop.
• Choose Projectile Dodge for projectile-specific protection. Do not assume the displayed regular Dodge value already includes it.

There is no universal exchange rate between one Armor point, one Critical point, and one Dodge point. Their value depends on the current stat, the source type, and what is ending the run. The exact formulas narrow the choice, but they do not erase that context.

Reproduce one comparison

Choose the current Armor value, the candidate Armor value, and one source-damage value. Apply the same formula band and damage order to each Armor value. Compare retained damage and effective health only after both results use the same source hit.

Keep Team Luck outside that Armor comparison. Use the Luck guide to read its Critical, regular Dodge, Projectile Dodge, pickup schedule, XP drop-pool, and passive-quality effects as separate rows.

This comparison does not reconstruct every modifier in a complete build. It isolates the Armor stage so you can tell whether a changed Armor value explains the result.

FAQ

Is 100 Armor 100% damage reduction?

No. 100 Armor retains 0.5× damage, so the reduction is 50%.

Does Armor have diminishing returns?

Each extra point adds less displayed reduction than an early point. Effective health still rises from 2× at 100 Armor to 3.6× at 500. Compare the damage retained or effective-health result before deciding that a later point has no value.

Can the current Team Armor value go below zero?

The current Team Armor statistic is bounded at 0. Values below that minimum are not a reachable shared Team Armor result.

Why does a decimal hit lose its fraction before Armor?

Source damage is truncated toward zero first. Armor multiplies the resulting integer. Later modifiers can still change the value after that Armor step.

Are Weapon and Ability Critical Chance the same stat?

No. They have separate values and apply to different source types. Both start at 5%, but matching starting values do not make them interchangeable.

Does 200 Luck cap Dodge?

It caps the Luck additions to Critical and Projectile Dodge at +20 points. Regular Dodge is only +10 points there and reaches its +15 point cap at 300 Luck.

Can I add regular Dodge and Projectile Dodge together?

No reliable combined value is published because they are separate statistics and checks. Keep the two rows separate when comparing a build.