How does damage reduction stack?

[Sjustus548]

I've been wondering how damage reduction stacks in the game and to what percentage does it actually stack to.  I wear heavy armor, have 5/5 points in Pain Tolerance, and use Fort Bites during big fights.  I have an armor rating of 70 so 70% damage reduction, 25% HP Loss from Pain Tolerance, and the 50% from Fort Bites.  I've read on the wiki that 90% is the cap for damage reduction so I'm wondering how these different aspects of damage reduction stack and if I'm wasting points or the Fort Bites by eating them.  My guess is that the 70% from armor and the 50% from the Fort Bites easily reach the 90% cap and then of the 10% damage that I still take, 25% of that is reduced by Pain Tolerance.  It would also be the other way around.  So I'm just curious if anyone knows for sure how this works?

Also now that I'm looking at the numbers I'm wondering how much damage the average zombie does.  Because if my armor is reducing the damage I take by 90% and then Pain Tolerance is removing 25% from that 10% left, it feels like it would be a waste of points with better armor.  For example we will look at the Demolisher, information gathered from the wiki so my apologizes if it isn't correct anymore.  It does 20 Entity Damage.  So the 90% reduction would drop that down to 2 damage so the 25% reduction from Pain Tolerance wouldn't remove any extra damage if I'm looking correctly.  It seems like Pain Tolerance is a great skill early on but should be gotten rid of later when you have better armor.  Am  I looking at this wrong?

[theFlu]

I haven't checked Fort Bites ever, but I did some testing on Pain Tolerance a few alphas back. Things may have changed, but this is how it was:

 

PT was implemented as a "heal after a damage event."

So at PT 1/5 (5% reduction), you would take 20 damage, and quickly thereafter heal 1 point.

This would stack fine with armor, even at 90%.

EDIT-add: The armor would reduce the damage first, and PT would work on the reduced number; at 50% armor reduction, you'd have to take a hit for 40 => reduce it to 20 by armor => get healed for 1 by PT. At 90% you would need to take a hit for 200 => 20 => 1.

 

If you were to take less than 20 damage in a single event, 1/5 PT did nothing - the rounding would negate any amount below 1.

Also, if you took 100 damage at 100 health, you would die before the heal took effect.

 

I might end up rechecking this at some point, but that's what I'm going by for now (and never spending a point in PT if not going 10/10 fort... )

Edited January 17, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)