Weapon Defense vs. Damage Taken

Well...
I saw the other thread where Ruust found the Heal formula using some data from people testing. He found the formula without an actual number as the base damage.

When finding damage equations, we are given the monster's def and your own attack. Similarly, we are given the monster's attack and our own def. So in a sense, it shouldn't be harder to find the actual formula. It's just that nobody has tried. Why not try then?

I'm curious why the horntail pendant and the zakum helmet combined can give you nearly a 400 damage reduction. (Which goes against the hypothesis that 2.5 def = 1 damage taken off.)

That's not that difficult. Damage taken is harder because we really don't know how it looks, whereas with Heal damage I already was pretty sure it was based off (INT*something+LUK*something)*Magic, etc etc.

Try using Threaten or Disorder. That may help determine how monster attack plays a role.