Damage soaking

Damage soaking is a recently added update to the Defence skill as documented in the December 2010 Behind the Scenes update. Damage soaking has been added to the majority of head, body, leg and shield slot equipment.

This update was designed to rectify an imbalance between the potential damage per minute (DPM) and damage capacity (DC) of higher-level players. The rate of damage dealt at high levels is far greater than the rate of damage that can be withstood with current armours and prayers, especially when in a multiplayer environment. Currently, NPC's and monsters can deal with this by having life points totaling way beyond 990. This update will help reduce all damage over 200 life points with higher level equipment providing higher damage soaking levels.

Damage soaking is only applied to helmets, legs, chest, and shield areas.

Damage Soaking does not apply to all damage dealt, but the damage which is in excess of 200 life points. The soaking percentage is applied to the excess damage, and does not occur if the hit is under 200. A common misconception is that a hit of 200 activates the damage soaking for a flat soaking rate, or that the soaking effect is random and does not always occur on hits above 200. The actual method of absorbing damage is as follows.

Example
Ranged hit: 450. Full dragon: 30% Absorb Ranged.

Ignoring the first 200 damage, 250 damage is excess, and is applied to the soaking percentage.

$$250 x 0.3 = 75$$ soaking.

$$450 - 75 = 375$$ hit.

An formula to show how much damage is soaked is the following:

s =(d-200)*(a/100)

s = Damage soaked d = Damage dealt a = Total armour soaking percentage

Therefore, to find the total damage received, simply subtract the damage soaked from the damage received.
 * Note this equation only applies to damage dealt over 200.

This formula means that smaller hits from faster weapons will be reduced by smaller amounts, and that multi-hitting weapons such as Dragon claws are able to avoid much of the soaking, as the individual hits are hardly above 200.