This guide is still a work in progress. More sections will be added over time.

Welcome to my first guide. Throughout my Dungeon Defenders career I have always heard about general rules of thumb that most people end up following; you only need a 3k booster, EVs don't need stats, you should have high radius, you should have high attack rate, ect. I, just as most of us have done, followed these more or less. It was just assumed that people figured out this information for themselvevs and we all just followed it. WELL I WILL BE A SHEEP NO LONGER! But all kidding aside I wanted to make a databse of knowledge that would give actual data to support these claims. Buckle your seatbelts kids, we are going on a ride through information town!
Also if you want to look at the raw data yourself you can do so here[docs.google.com]. However, I probably will not be making an effort to keep the data neat and organized for public viewing to keep that in mind. There is a method to the madness and it all makes sense to me lol.

One major thing to know is that all of these numbers are calculated without a buff beam. Since buff beams multiply stats, the scaling would fall off even harder than depicted in the charts. I talk more about this in the buff beam section.

Another important thing to know is the way the game shows its information. The game displays its information on stats like attack rate and effective radius with two decimal points. However, when the game is calculating things it does not round, it uses the full number, but how does this affect you? The real answer is not at all. However, it may not appear that way. With rounding, 0.0750 and 0.0849 both appear as 0.08. However, 0.0849 will do quite a bit more dps than 0.0750.

Now onto my method for collecting data. All data was collected in open with a stat editor. All towers were max upgraded and nothing was on a beam. This was to eliminate as many variables as possible.

You may think, why would you calculate data up to 10,000? Well, 10,000 is the last real possible stat achievable without modding. 958 from hero stats, 1,500 from capping accs, 999 from pet, 999 from weapon, 5,500 from an ult++ set. This gives you 9,956. If you are on an ev or squire, 10k is an even more obtainable number. While I understand nearly no one will be able to achieve this figure, I thought it would be interesting to see the endgame.

Hero boost is a stat that we all rely on. Some people make boosters that have impressive stats and others just use their DPS monk. The real question is where does the scaling fall off? Before we get to that it is important to know how the boost works. Like many things in dungeon defenders, it is a flat multiplier. It takes the regular damage of the person it is boosting and multiplies it. It is not affected by cats or hero damage.


From this data we can see that the real gains in boost start to fall off around the 2k range.

I, for one, always believed that tower boost was very nicely scaling ability. I believed that higher boost was always better. I never really looked at the numbers to back it up though. It is time to put that to the test.


As it turns out, Tower Boost is very similar to Hero Boost. It does scale a bit better than Hero Boost though, but not much. Major gains in Tower Boost seem to fall off, again, around the 2k mark.

Auras, possibly the most important towers there are. They are the backbone of any build, but just how good does an aura monk need to be? Where should they focus their points? Do they really need all 4 stats as high as possible? Let's find out!

*Note that all stats are with a maxed aura not on a buff beam*


Now you may ask yourself, what the heck is radius multiplier? Well, the way tower radius works is through a multiplier. Each aura has a base radius (Ensnare 5.25, Lightning 5.37, Strength Drain 5.50, Healing 6.14, Enrage 4.67). Your tower radius stat determines the value that the base number gets multiplied by. AKA a 3000 radius ensnare aura has a radius of about 13.55 since 5.37*2.58=13.55. I say about because all of these numbers are rounded so it is more of estimation rather than a actual figure.

Damage

Rate

Radius

From all this data I think these are the things to take home:

1. Aura damage starts to decrease in scaling around 2k although it doesn't really fall off.
   
2. Aura Rate starts to fall off around the 2k-3k range.
   
3. Aura Radius starts to fall off around the 2k range.

Since I ran out of lines to work with, here is part 2 where I go over the health of auras.


Legend: Blue=Lighting, Green=Ensnare, Black=Strength, Red=Heal

Healing and strength drain auras seem to fall off around 3k. However, lighting and ensnare auras on the other hand, seem to scale rather well. There is a slight dip in the curve around the 2k mark, but it seems to get more linear after that.

Let's face it, without these most of us would have a very hard time beating a level, and for a very important reason. They buff everything about a tower. They make it harder to kill, more damage, more range, and a higher attack rate. Although, have you ever wondered how it does it? Well my friends, the way a buff beam augments towers is by adding a multiplier to the tower stats. Now, it doesn't take into account the hero's stats, but rather the stats of the tower itself. Let's give an example. With 3k tower damage a lightning aura will do 7,417 damage per hit. A buff beam with 3k tower damage has a multiplier of 2.27. This means that the aura will now do 16,837 damage per hit (roughly). This applies to all the modifiers of a buff beam. However, it is harder to estimate the changes in rate/radius of a tower due to the very small number and the rounding of the information to two digits.


Legend: Red=Resistnace Bonus, Orange=Damage Bonus, Green=Rate Bonus, Blue=Radius Bonus

Ah the glory of buff beam scaling. Every stat of a buff beam falls off HARD after about 2k.

Let's find out just how usefull my waller is!
Note that data was collected on a 5du wall and a 3du reflect.


Physical Wall Health

Reflect Beam Health

As it turns out my waller is actually useful. The Physical Wall health starts to scale worse around 2k but it doesn't really ever fall off. Reflects on the other hand fall off around 2k.

Before the very, very overpowered ember scepter came into the game, the proton beam was not a very widely used DPS method. However, now that it is becoming more and more popular it is nice to see what makes it tick.


This table shows the damage modifiers for proton beam damage. The way that proton beams work is by taking the base damage of the weapon and multiplying the damage by th proton beam modifiers. The proton beam damage is calculated by multiplying the weapon damage with the hero damage modifier and the hero power 2 modifier. EX if your weapon does 100k damage (actual damage not base damage) and you have 3k hero damage (6.93) and 4k hero power 2 (10.60) your modifier will be 73.46 and your damage per tick will be ~7.35M (give or take due to number rounding in calculations).


Legend: Orange=Hero Damage, Red=Hero Power 2

From the given data it appears that both tower damage and hero power 2 scale about evenly; however, hero power 2 has a larger base value.

-December 22, 2016: Guide posted.
-December 24, 2016: Edited notes about aura rounding (special thanks to Pjtor) and also added health section to auras.
-January 2, 2017: Added in sections about buff beams, reflect beams, and physical beams.
-January 12, 2017: Added in in graphs for sections that didn't have them and changed a few errors.
-April 30, 2017: Added in section about proton beams.
-January 25, 2018: Fixed some typos and clarified some sections.