About Defense rate

defense rate is only intended to resist auto attacks (good against speed fighters using thunder or PvE) and applied the following effects:

• Auto attack: The higher your defense rate, the higher the chance there is to reduce the damage received by auto attacks from any opponent. This damage reduction is 50%.

Quote from gojonoku

There are some hidden passives such as defense rate, block rate, status resistance, status succes and guard (passive):

• Defense rate: Defence rate reduces the damage taken from auto attacks by 50%. The higher the defence rate, the higher the chance of reducing damage (no guard needed).
• Block rate: Block rate only applies when using the passive skill guard. The higher your block rate is, the higher the chance is of blocking incomming attacks (reducing the damage to 0) and blocking knockdowns.
• Satus resistance: Status resistance ignores the effects of debuffs. The higher your status resistance is, the higher the chance is of resisting debuffs.
• Status success: Status success makes the chance of landing a debuff on your opponent higher. The higher your status success, the higher the chance that a debuff will apply succesfully onto your opponent.
• Guard (passive): Guard allows you to guard yourself from incomming attacks and knockdown. The more skill points put into the passive, the higher the chance is that skills, autoattacks and knockdown will be blocked.
• Attack/defence properties: Attack properties will deter your damage done to your opponent and defence properties will deter your damage taken from your opponent. The properties of attack is determined by the property on your gloves and defence is determined by the property on your jacket.

Defense Rate is not working, because otherwise Cluster Bomb's Debuff would increase my auto attacks which it doesn't. So either way, Cluster Bomb is bugged or Defense Rate, but I think it's Defense Rate itself, because Cluster Bombs x1.5 Damage from Behind works, same as applying the debuff and the damage

Quote from Danuvius

Defense Rate is not working, because otherwise Cluster Bomb's Debuff would increase my auto attacks which it doesn't. So either way, Cluster Bomb is bugged or Defense Rate, but I think it's Defense Rate itself, because Cluster Bombs x1.5 Damage from Behind works, same as applying the debuff and the damage

I have no comment on that, some skills have been changed over the long run of DBO retail but never have been adjusted. Like the fighter bleed on their needle attacks have been removed but still we have increased duration as RP. I do not remember exactly if any changes to cluster bomb has been made, but it could be they have removed the debuf or it hasn't applied in DBOG itself yet. Stating that it works or does not work is always a big gamble if we don't know for sure what the intention really is.