In this guide, we are going to talk about three hidden mechanics in Lost Ark, the defense gate, item level gate 303, as well as non-existent attack power gate that was removed over a year back. 

Lost Ark Defense & Item Level Gate 303 Guide - 3 Hidden Mechanics Explained

Attack Power Gate

The attack power gate does not exist anymore, it's an old system that got removed over a year ago because a lot of the complaints from a lot of the Korean players and it was very unfair and overly punishing for no good reason. So there is no penalty for having your attack power being too low. Back in the day you would lose exponential amounts of damage the further away your attack power was from the content what it requested from you. So that's not a thing anymore, if you have less attack power, it's just less attack power which is a little bit less damage but it's no longer an exponential punishment anymore. 

Defense Gate 

On the other hand, the defense gate and the item level gate still exists to this day and you might have experienced them. The defense gate means that if your defense is too low for a given content say you've under enhanced your armors, you take exponentially more damage than what you should be. You might have experienced this if you entered aureja pravasa under item level like you went to the 1341 at 1325 and you noticed that the attacks were one-shotting you, whereas once you got to 1340 maybe they did like 20% of your health, this system still exists for all contents in Lost Ark to this day even in Korea. So if your defense is too low, please make note that you will take a lot more damage. This is factored before engravings, so things like heavy armor and whatnot will not mitigate the punishment, the same thing applies to defense down reduction the malice. 

Item Level Gate 303

The item level gate is what causes blocking, when you attack the enemy and your attack is fully negated doing no damage or stagger damage, This happens when your item level is too far away from the contents. There's only certain contents in the game that allow you to enter under item level for example going to world bosses or have prevaza, and when you do go into these the further away your item level is from the target item level, the more likely it is for your attacks to just outright be blocked. They're not t related to the attack power thing in any way, so having low attack power does not cause your attacks to be blocked, it's just based off of item level and only item level.

Tips 

How would I ever know what defense I need to overcome the defense gate? Also, does this disproportionately affect squishier classes at comparable ilvl? So not only do they have less defense on their armor, not only do they get less class armor bonus, but then they take extra % damage on top of that?

A fair assumption is that if all of your equipment is enhanced evenly to meet the content item level, you are at the right amount of defense where there is no penalty. Squishier classes have the same defense as tankier classes, but that defense is then translated differently based on each class to form % reduction. The physical and magical reduction % is what determines what is squishy vs. what is tanky naturally.