Halls of Torment: Block vs Defense

Halls of Torment: Block vs. Defense

Halls of Torment has a wealth of different stats, and understanding them is paramount in order to build your characters. Block Strength and Defense are two defensive stats that appear to do the same thing, mitigate damage. So, what exactly is the difference between Block vs Defense in Halls of Torment?

While it is true that they prevent damage, the way in which they do so is completely different. Understanding that difference, will help you go a long way towards optimizing your builds.  This article aims to make clear the differences between these two stats, by showing you how exactly they prevent you from taking damage.

If you’d prefer to see this information in a video instead, please see my YouTube video below:

Understanding Block Strength

Your Block Strength stat determines your block chance. The higher the value, the more attacks you’ll end up blocking.

You have a chance to block every single attack that hits your character, and blocking it depends on how much damage it does. Whenever your character blocks an attack, they will negate ALL the damage from that attack. When this happens, you’ll see a shield icon pop up over your character, indicating that you  just blocked an attack.

If you hover over the Block Strength value in the character menu, you’ll see a pop up window with a more detailed view of the stat. There, you will find what makes up the base block value, and what multipliers are being applied. While these numbers are no doubt important, what we really want to focus on are the three threshold numbers listed at the bottom of the window.

Block Thresholds

The three highlighted values tell you your chance to block when a particular amount of damage is done to your character.  As you can see, my Shield Maiden has a total Block Strength of 44. This gives her the following block chances:

• 100% chance to block 11 or less damage.
• 50% chance to block 44 damage, and
• 20% chance to block 110 damage.

There are two important things to note about these values and percentages. First, they are not random damage values. These values are based on your total Block Strength.

• You have a 100% chance to block damage that is less than or equal to your Block Strength ÷ 4 (44/4 = 11).
• You have a 50% chance to block damage that is equal to your Block Strength (44).
• You have a 20% chance to block damage that is equal to your Block Strength x 2.5 (44 x 2.5 = 110).

The second thing I want to highlight is that just because there are three percentages listed, doesn’t mean that damage is blocked at only these values. For any damage you take, there will be a relative block chance.

Here is an example of what I mean by that.

Let’s say I took 80 damage in the above example. You can immediately tell that there is a 20-50% chance that the attack will be blocked, since 80 is greater than 44 but less than 110. In actuality, there is a 27.5% chance to block the attack.

If you’re curious about the full calculation for Block Strength, the Halls of Torment wiki has an excellent explanation.

Understanding Defense

Luckily for us, Defense is more straightforward to digest. Defense reduces damage done by a certain percentage, based on  your total Defense value. The larger the value, the higher the damage reduction will be.

If you do not block an attack, your Defense will kick in and reduce the damage done. This is a powerful form of mitigation, but how does it compare with Block Strength?

Block Strength vs Defense

We can compare the two forms of mitigation by measuring the effective health that they provide. Effective health is basically how much “health” or “HP” you get per point of Block Strength or Defense gained.

Once again, the Halls of Torment wiki has a great pair of graphs that help break down how much effective health you get, so let’s take a look at them.

Block Strength Effective Health

This graph is basically telling you that as your ratio of Block Strength to damage increases, your effective health increases as well. You see significant gains if you’re able to push your Block Strength value to 2.5 or 3 times the damage you take.

Which is the biggest problem. Since the damage you receive is variable, you’ll never know what your ratio really is. Plus, getting and maintaining high values may not be possible for most players.

Your best bet will be to stack Block Strength as high as possible, and just hope for the best.

Defense Effective health

The first 50 points don’t really do much. Defense sees the most significant gains from 50 to 100 points. After that, it provides steady, consistent effective HP per point gained.

This is important because it means that no point in Defense is truly wasted. So you can feel free to stack it and not have to worry about whether it is working or not.

Which is Better?

So when it comes to Block vs Defense in Halls of Torment, which is better? To be honest, there is no clear answer. Like most other things, it all comes down to player preference. Do you like the risk or have the gear to stack Block Strength? Do you like the consistent reduction that Defense provides?

Most likely, the best answer is to get a mix of both. The damage negation provided by Block Strength is too strong to ignore. Even the smallest bit will help you block some attacks if you’re lucky. Supplement that with a bit of Defense, to provide flat damage reduction for anything that gets through your block.

However, one of the most fun runs I ever had was with a Shield Maiden where I stacked Block Strength as much as possible. If you ever want to know what it feels like to be a beast of a tank, I cannot recommend trying that out enough.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Block Strength and Defense increase your survivability, allowing you to progress deeper into runs.

Block Strength will allow you to straight up negate damage from any source. The more you stack it, the more chances you’ll have to block and negate damage. If you don’t block an attack, your Defense will reduce the damage  you take.

In terms of effective health, Block Strength required a bit more point investment (and luck). Defense, on the other hand, is more consistent and provides a nice steady boost. The good news is that neither stat really suffers from diminishing returns, so feel free to increase to your heart’s content.

How are you enjoying Halls of Torment? Have you made a super bulky tank build? Are there any other guides you’d like to see for this game? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Good luck on all your future runs.