Defy Pain - Possible Bug

I finished a testing session just now and it seems that in WvW at least the Warrior trait Defy Pain is functioning in an inconsistent manner. The tooltip advertises that the trait should activate Lesser Endure Pain when you get hit at below 50% hp. However, if you simply take damage, the trait only activates at or below 40% hp.This is confusing behavior, as it seems that since the trait also breaks stuns, if it actually breaks a stun while taking damage at or below 50% hp, the trait activates correctly. This behavior is inconsistent.

I'd appreciate if others could also test and see if they can get similar results.

The trait isn't inconsistent, its the nature of incoming damage. The 2 conditions are "be below 50% HP" and "when struck". That means any hit that takes you from _above _50% to below 50% does NOT trigger the trait...... but any hit after that will. Also Keep in mind that Condition damage does NOT count as a hit, as its not dealing direct damage on ticks.

So if your HP is 20k, and you take a 12k hit, Defy Pain doesn't trigger from that damage; but its the next hit that will (and you still take damage from it). If your HP is at 10.1k, and you take a 12k hit, the trait also fails to trigger, because you've already revived enough damage to go straight to downed state. While this makes certain triggers difficult to leverage, the fact that you're taking a 5k hit and going straight to down is apt punishment for trying to tank a big hit using a passive defense. And, yes, the trait still will break stun because the skill itself breaks stun. But unlike Last Stand, it doesn't trigger on disable, so its not intended to be reliable as a passive counter to hard CCs.

Its not well explained in game mechanics, because its only really relevant to PvP as extremely precise counter play, and only otherwise exists as an edge case in PvE. WvW has a more universal problem due to action volumes; as its the only game mode where you can suffer upwards of 20 strikes per server tick, and the order the server processes in can effectively skip triggers due to very high deltas.

it wont cut off middamage, so if you get 6k dmg and would drop under 50% from just 3k you still get 6k dmg. it wont cut off the remaining 3k and after the 6k endure pain will trigger, so you see it activating below 50%