User blog comment:Mathmagician/Wall of Flesh Solo Guide/@comment-24.61.148.248-20120825212120/@comment-4674838-20120825223336


 * This type of 1 on 1 comparison is not an accurate reflection of typical single-player gameplay (the perspective from which this guide was written). In single-player, is your character against a group of mobs.
 * Percentages can be a convenient metric, but keep in mind that it doesn't make a difference if you do 2% more damage but it still takes you 23 hits to kill something with or without the 2% boost. Damage is incremental, what truly matters is the number of hits something can take before death.

Safety measures your survivability, nothing else. Specifically, this means your character's ability to not die. Measurably, it means your character's ability to conserve HP. Killing enemies faster (more DPS) is only safer than having more defense if you can kill them so fast that they hit you less, and, as a result, you conserve more HP than you do if you had the extra defense instead.

The gameplay mechanics are generally not in favor of "more DPS safer than more defense". Mobs continuously spawn. There's always after you. Potions have a very long cooldown.

If you want to hide in hole or use the magic mirror to augment your survivability, by all means! Just keep in mind that this hinders you from using your superior DPS (because you can't generally kill things while hiding / teleporting away). The amount of time you spend hiding / teleporting that I don't have to because I have more survivability due to defense is more time for me to adventure / deal more damage.