A Few Strange Goings On

Recently on my second profile, I was in Gelibord with an oak wood wand and no armor (don't ask) and I had no strength points. I was farming decay roots, when a Cosmic Weird attacked me. Having no (good) weapon, I ran. I used meteor (because Gelibord Guard Golems are useless) but I did nearly 1000 Damage. I killed the weird in only 3 meteors. This made no sense: I'm supposed to be doing only about 16 damage with meteor. A guild mate explained that elemental defenses are additive, not multiplicative. This...doesn't make sense to me. I tested it, and indeed, since Cosmic Weirds are weak to everything, I did 16 neutral damage, and 500 earth and fire damage. But why are the defenses additive, instead of multiplicative? This means that arrow storm would do huge amounts of damage to an enemy weak to your element, and bomb arrow would hit once and thus only benefit from weakness once. This also allows for shenanigans like doing 1000 damage at level 26, with nothing but an oak wood wand. But the strangeness doesn't stop there! I have recently noticed that through my extremely underleveled and undergeared journey through Gavel, I often take a hit that should have killed me and survive. Of course, when the enemy hits me again I die, but why are the enemies (which should be doing upwards of 500 damage) doing only 160 damage to me? I only have 2 points in defense and none in agility. Why am I surviving first hits? I'm assuming it's due to a soft cap to prevent oneshots, but I might be wrong. Well time to go grind rice in CotL. :D

 

Ele defs are multiplicative with spell multipliers and attack speed multipliers; Meteor has a 500% multiplier, so, if the mob had, say -100 weakness in a certain element, it would instead take 500 extra damage if the source of that damage was a Meteor, and then you would multiply that number with attack speed (if it was on a super fast wand, 500 x 4,3 = 2150) Same works for reducing damage with positive ele defs.

How do you know that they should be doing upwards of 500 damage? Did you measure the value of that mob's damage with that certain attack beforehand? Keep in mind that for some mobs the damage dealt is a roll between certain numbers (the gaps between min. and max. damage are quite low most of the time though). Ele defs still exist.

btw there is no oneshot-preventing mechanic