Well, here's version 1.4 of the Guide to Defense. I've significantly reworked the explanation of the tohit formula to simplify it (to the extent possible), and to reflect some better understanding of certain background issues. Also, I added pritty colors and some examples so its easier for people to see where the numbers are supposed to go. Hopefully, the colors won't look too crappy on anyone's monitors.
Updates from 1.3:
* The I7 scaler is described within
* Updated explanation of tohit formula
* Sample color-coded calculations
* Updated info on invincibility
* Info on the problem with insights and lucks being mislabeled
* Info on attacks that are not positionally defense typed, and what that means for SR
* Discussion of AT modifiers and scalers
* Lots of miscellaneous little corrections
The Guide is now big enough that its pretty likely I'll make a typo here and there, but hopefully it incorporates all the comments and suggestions from the previous version correctly. I was thinking of cleaning up some additional sections, but since I7 is out now, I'll post this and save the clean up for the next version.
Defense in CoH
Defense, and its relationship to the basic tohit equations, is one of the least understood mechanisms in City of Heroes. This guide will try to explain Defense, how it functions, how it relates to tohit probabilities, and how it interacts with the other elements related to Defense in the game.
DEFINITIONS AND THE BASIC TOHIT EQUATIONS
The basic tohit formula
NetToHit = Accuracy * (BaseToHit - Defense)
where:
NetToHit: the probability that one thing will hit another thing with an attack. If net tohit is 45%, then 45% of the time when A attacks B, A will hit B.
BaseToHit: the probability, associated with the
attacker that represents the base probability that attacker has of hitting any target in general, before buffs, debuffs, and defense are taken into acount.
Defense: the ability, or power, to reduce the chances of an attacker from hitting you. Defense is normally expressed in percentage points, and is the number of percentage points that the defensive ability will reduce your chances of being hit by an attacker.
Accuracy: the effect of any buff that specifically affects the ability for a single power to hit its target. This includes accuracy enhancements, and things like inherent attack bonuses (i.e. weapon draw bonuses). Accuracy is a bit complicated: see the advanced tohit formula below.
The advanced tohit formula
The advanced tohit formula (my terminology - there isn't really a term for it) takes into account accuracy enhancements, tohit buffs, tohit debuffs, and defense debuffs. It is:
NetToHit = (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (1 + AccuracyEnhancement) * [ BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - (Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ]
Tohit buffs and
defense debuffs
One way to improve your tohit chance is to use, or have cast upon you,
tohit buffs. Tohit buffs are, according to the devs, additive:
BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs
So if your base tohit is 75%, and you use or receive a 60% tohit buff, your modified tohit becomes:
0.75 + 0.60 = 1.35 = 135%
Note that this is higher than 100%: see
tohit floors and
tohit ceilings below.
Tohit debuffs have the opposite effect, they reduce your chances to hit anything, and they subtract from base tohit.
Defense debuffs are subtractive from defense: if you have 40% defense, and you are hit with a 10% defense debuff, your effective defense becomes: 40% - 10% = 30%.
Inherent Attack Accuracy and
Accuracy enhancements
Both Inherent Accuracy bonuses and Accuracy Enhancements are
Accuracy Buffs. Accuracy Buffs work differently than tohit buffs. As shown in the formula, accuracy buffs take effect
after defense, while tohit buffs take effect
before defense. The difference is that tohit buffs are much more effective than accuracy enhancements when defense is high. If your tohit on a target is 30%, a 33% accuracy enhancement SO will boost that percentage to 40% (30% * 1.33) regardless of what the defense of the target was (as long as the net effect of base tohit and defense was 30%). Another difference is that all separate accuracy buffs/modifiers are
multiplied together, not added together. There have been many posts by devs with examples that show accuracy bonuses as being summed together: these appear to have been inaccurate: in specific discussions regarding accuracy, its been repeatedly stated to me that accuracy is multiplicative, not additive.
All attacks have what is sometimes referred to as "Base Accuracy" or sometimes just "accuracy" and I've called "Inherent Attack Accuracy" for clarity purposes. Inherent Attack Accuracy is the "inherent accuracy" of an attack power. A "normal" attack has base accuracy of 1.0, or 100%. Attacks that are less accurate than normal have base accuracy values less than 1.0, and attacks that are more accurate than normal have base accuracy values more than 1.0. For example, archery attacks are said to have a higher inherent accuracy: they have accuracy 1.15. AoE mez attacks are said to have lower inherent accuracy, they have accuracy less than 1.0.
Note on accuracy buffs and tohit buffs: it seems that the general rule is that anything that buffs (or debuffs) the accuracy of an individual power is an accuracy buff, while anything that buffs or debuffs the player - and all attacks he or she performs - is a tohit buff (or debuff).
I am currently unaware of anything that is an accuracy debuff (and not a tohit debuff) but I'm told that they theoretically exist in CoH. However, I'm also told that the game engine doesn't currently do anything with player accuracy buffs. In other words, so far as I have been told, no power can give the entire player an "accuracy" buff, only tohit buffs. Any power that was set to give an accuracy buff would (as of this writing) have no effect.
"Base Accuracy" and "Base ToHit" is very frequently confused. Base ToHit represents the intrinsic accuracy of an
attacker: its the chance that he or she will hit a target, in general, assuming all other factors are absent (defense, buffs, debuffs, etc). Base Accuracy represents the intrinsic accuracy of an
attack relative to other attacks, and is scaled to 1.0: "normal" attacks have Base Accuracy of 1.0, which means they have no effect on the overall accuracy of the player. Attacks inherently more or less accurate have Base Accuracy values of more or less than 1.0, which increase or lower the overall accuracy of any attacker using them.
The best analogy to distinguish Base Accuracy and Base ToHit is to consider two people shooting firearms. One of those individuals might be inherently a better shot: he will have higher
Base ToHit than the other. Separate from that, both of them will have different accuracies when firing snug nose revolvers and sniper rifles: the actual weapons have an intrinsic relative accuracy separate from the shooter, and thus the sniper rifle would have a higher
Base Accuracy than the pistol.
Floors, ceilings, and caps
There is a maximum net tohit value and a minimum tohit value honored by the CoH game engine. No power or set of powers can drive your net tohit higher than 95% or lower than 5%. In other words, there is always at least a 5% chance of hitting anything, and always at least a 5% chance of missing something.
The 5% minimum chance to hit something is referred to as the
tohit floor.
The 5% minimum chance to miss something, or alternatively the 95% maximum chance to hit something, is referred to as the
tohit ceiling.
It used to be thought that there was no cap on the amount of defense that a hero could achieve. It turns out there is, but it is very high and not normally applicable to most reasonable combat situations: its in the range of 300% defense at high levels (it scales upward with increasing combat level of your hero).
The full tohit formula
Taking into account accuracy, defense, buffs, debuffs, and floors and ceilings, its this:
Bounded[ NetToHit = (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (1 + AccuracyEnhancement) * Bounded[ BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - (Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ] ]
Where Bounded[x] is the result of setting x to be 5% if x is lower than 5%, and 95% if x is higher than 95%. Notice that bounds checking is done twice: first after tohit and defense are combined (cf: the simplified tohit formula) and then again after accuracy buffs and debuffs are factored in.
(In excel terminology, Bounded(x) is MIN( MAX(x,0.05), 0.95) )
[ QUOTE ]
Example Calculations
To help people trying to make sense of this formula, I have two examples that show where all the numbers are supposed to go.
Example #1: Player attacking even level minion with thunder kick slotted with 1 acc SO; minion has 5% defense.
Net tohit = Bounded[
1.05 * (1 +
0.33) * Bounded[
0.75 -
0.05 ] ] = Bounded[
1.05 * (1 +
0.33) * 0.70 ] ] = Bounded[ 0.978 ] = 0.95 (capped) = 95%
1.05 = Martial Arts inherent accuracy bonus on all attacks
0.33 = Value of slotted accuracy enhancements
0.75 = Base tohit of player verses even level critter
0.05 = Defense of critter
Example #2: Player attacking player with thunder kick slotted with 2 acc SOs, attacker has +8% tohit buff from tactics, target has 55% defense.
Bounded[
1.05 * (1 +
0.66) * Bounded[
0.5 +
0.08 -
0.55 ] ] = Bounded[
1.05 * (1 +
0.66) * Bounded[ 0.03 ] ] = Bounded[
1.05 * (1 +
0.66) * 0.05 ] = 0.087 = 8.7%
1.05 = Martial Arts inherent accuracy bonus on all attacks
0.66 = Value of slotted accuracy enhancements
0.08 = Tohit buffs on the attacker
0.5 = Base tohit of player verses player
0.60 = Defense of target
[/ QUOTE ]
Rank and Level scaling, and the I7 Defense Scaling Update
Base tohit of villains
The base tohit of villains prior to I7 was:
minions: 50%
LTs: 57.5%
Bosses, Snipers: 65%
Monsters, Giant Monsters, AVs, Controller Pets: 75%
These numbers are for
even level villains: villains equal to your own combat level.
This increase in tohit based on the type of villain is sometimes referred to as the
rank bonus or more colloquially "higher ranked villains have better tohit."
In I7, all critters have base tohit of 50%, and instead have accuracy increases:
minions: 1.0 (i.e. no bonus)
LTs: 1.15
Bosses, Snipers: 1.3
Monsters, Giant Monsters, AVs, Controller Pets: 1.5
Tohit based on level
Tohit bonuses based on level prior to I6 were additive tohit buffs. If the villain/critter was higher level than you, their base tohit increased by the following factor:
+1 +5%
+2 +10%
+3 +15%
+4 +20%
+5 +25%
+6 +30%
+7 +35%
+8 +41%
+9 +48%
+10 +68%
+11 +80%
+12 +95%
+13 +110%
+14 +120%
There is a table with these numbers (shown as 1.05, 1.10, 1.15, etc) in the values that Iakona finds them: the first 12 have been confirmed to me to be true independent of Iakona's tables.
In I7, critters now get accuracy buffs from +1 to +5, and then tohit buffs from +6 higher.
The level scaler in I7 for even to +10 is:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>lev acc tohit
+0 1.0 0
+1 1.1 0
+2 1.2 0
+3 1.3 0
+4 1.4 0
+5 1.5 0
+6 1.5 +5%
+7 1.5 +10%
+8 1.5 +15%
+9 1.5 +20%
+10 1.5 +40%</pre><hr />
Base tohit of heroes (players)
The base tohit of heroes in PvE is 75%. In PvP (arena combat and player vs player fights in PvP zones) base player tohit was recently reduced (in I6) to 50%. This improves the performance of defense sets in PvP combat substantially, although tohit buffs (being additive) are still a significant issue. Tohit buffs maybe also have been affected or reduced in I6, but this has not been confirmed. The devs have stated that high tohit buffs severely impacting defense sets is a problem they are working on a solution for.
Question: is this a "nerf?" Answer: no, its a proper balancing of defense sets. Defense sets performance were balanced against even level minions, which have a base 50% chance to hit. Furthermore, it is just as reasonable to view this as a +25% buff to player defense across the board, instead of a base -25% tohit chance.
[Note: as of 11/16/05 a patch note was added which specifically stated this exact thing.]
Because there is now a Rank Accuracy Buff, and a Level Accuracy Buff, this is how the I7 tohit mechanics will work for critters:
Bounded[ (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (AccuBuffs) * (RankBuff) * (LevelBuff) * Bounded[ (BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs + Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ] ]
Note the position of the Rank and Level buffs, and note that all accuracy modifiers are multiplicative (in discussions with pohsyb, he specifically told me that overrode anything else he might have said about them earlier).
Its important to note that
the defense scaler does not affect how tohit buffs work in any way (directly). Tohit buffs are just as dangerous for defense sets as before. What the change does is remove the tohit increases from higher rank and higher level foes: anything that nevertheless still possesses high tohit buffs is still a major threat to defense.
Its also important to note that because it changes villain tohit/accuracy,
the defense scaler does not affect player's ability to hit critters or other players, in any way.
There is an interesting quirk to how this works now. In I7, the "floor" will no longer be 5% for all villains. In fact, even now the 5% tohit floor is
before accuracy is factored in. In other words, even in I6, there are villains that are IMPOSSIBLE to floor to 5% (i.e. Gunslingers) because they have inherent accuracy. In I7, this will become more prevalent as higher level and higher rank critters lose tohit and gain accuracy. This means "normal" defenses will become more effective against higher level and higher ranked foes,
but ultra-high defense like elude and MoG will actually become somewhat less effective.
[ QUOTE ]
Sample I6 verses I7 calculations
Example #3: +2 AV attacking player with thunder kick; Player has 30% defense; I6
Net tohit = Bounded[
1.05 * Bounded[
0.75 +
0.10 -
0.25 ] ] = Bounded[
1.05 * 0.50 ] ] = Bounded[ 0.525 ] = 0.525 (capped) = 52.5%
0.10 = +2 Level Bonus (I6)
1.05 = Martial Arts inherent accuracy bonus on all attacks
0.75 = Base tohit of AV
0.25 = Defense of Player
Example #4: +2 AV attacking player with thunder kick; Player has 30% defense; I7
Net tohit = Bounded[
1.05 *
1.5 *
1.10 * Bounded[
0.50 -
0.25 ] ] = Bounded[
1.05 * (
1.5) * 0.25 ] ] = Bounded[ 0.3938 ] = 0.3938 (capped) = 39.38%
1.10 = +2 Level Bonus (I7)
1.05 = Martial Arts inherent accuracy bonus on all attacks
0.50 = Base tohit of I7 critter
1.5 = AV Rank Bonus
0.25 = Defense of critter
[/ QUOTE ]
DEFENSE MECHANICS
Typed Defense and Defense Stacking
Every attack power is classified based on how the attack is delivered, and based on the type of damage it delivers, and every defense power has an associated type or types that represents what types of attacks that defense power is effective against. There are two basic kinds of attack and defense typing: damage types, and vector or positional types. An attack can theoretically be tagged with anyone one or all of these types, or be left untyped (Hamidon attacks are apparently completely untyped - no damage *or* positional typing).
In general however, most attacks will have exactly one vector type and one or two damage types.
Positional, or attack vector classes
Every attack is (generally) classified as either a
melee attack, a
ranged attack, or an
AoE (area of effect) attack (cones are generally AoE attacks). In general, melee attacks are attacks that are limited to melee range (typically 5 to 10 feet maximum). Ranged attacks are attacks that will work to larger ranges. AoE attacks are defined as attacks that affect multiple targets. All attacks in CoH are classified as exactly one of these types: no more and no less.
There is a special case issue that comes up with these basic definitions: melee cones and PBAoEs (point-blank area of effect attacks). It seems that in general, melee cones and many PBAoEs are generally considered melee attacks, but other PBAoEs (i.e. PBAoEs of giant monsters) are considered AoE attacks. There is apparently no sure-fire rule guaranteed to predict what a melee-ranged AoE will be classified as, although if its net range is less than 10 feet, it is very likely to be classified as a melee attack for the purposes of defense.
One thing is certain: how an attack is typed for the purposes of defense is entirely up to the designer of the attack. *Any* attack could be typed as *any* of melee/ranged/AoE if the designers wanted to. This is why the decision to type headsplitter - a small cone attack - as a melee attack for the purposes of defense was, and is, purely arbitrary (for the developers). You cannot "know" with 100% certainty how an attack is typed by characterizing how it works or how many targets it hits, but only by testing it against various typed defenses.
[ QUOTE ]
*** New for Version 1.4 ***
There ARE attacks that are not typed with any positional defense type. These include some mind control powers, like Dominate and Mesmerize. These attacks, because they have no positional type, will bypass positional defenses competely. This has significant consequences for SR scrappers, SR stalkers, and Ninjitsu stalkers, all of which rely on positional defenses.
[/ QUOTE ]
Damage-type classes
Every attack has one or more (usually no more than two) components of damage: each component has a particular type of damage associated with it. The damage types in CoH are:
smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative energy, toxic, and psionic
An attack can be all of one damage type: electric attacks are generally all energy damage. An attack can have multiple damage components: most energy blast attacks have smashing damage and energy damage.
Damage-types are often thought of as coming in pairs: smash/lethal (physical damage), fire/cold (elemental damage), and energy/negative (energy damage), because damage resistances are usually organized that way (but not always: cf Dark Armor). Toxic and psi are both considered special cases (see the special note on
toxic defense below).
Defense types
Just as every attack is classified as melee, ranged, or AoE, and also, smashing, lethal, etc, each defense power is classified based on what type(s) of attacks the defense power is effective against. In City of Heroes, most defense powers in (self) damage mitigation sets (such as SR, Ice, etc) are either
attack-vector typed (also referred to as positionally typed, or ranged-typed), or
damage-typed, but not both. Thus, a particular defense power might be effective against melee, or melee and ranged, but not melee and fire, for example. Defenses in buff sets and power pools are usually typed with both damage typing and positional typing, to ensure that they will stack in some beneficial fashion with other sets' defenses. Parry in the broadsword set (and divine avalanche in the katana set) appear to be an unusual exception: its defense is melee/lethal.
There is also a special type of defense called "Base Defense." Base defense is defense to all attacks, period. A confusing issue in CoH/CoV is that when a defense is called Defense to All, it could refer to Defense to All damage types (which means it does not include toxic attacks), or it could refer to Defense to Literally All Types (power pool defenses are now typed this way), which means they are defense to smash/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative/psi/melee/ranged/AoE, or it could mean that it is Base Defense. It is theorized that Elude, and possibly lucks, are base defense, and PFF was once said to be base defense.
*** SPECIAL NOTE ON TOXIC DEFENSE ***
If a power is listed as defense to All but psi, then (as of this writing)
that does not include toxic. The explanation is long and historical, but there is no toxic-specific defense in CoH. This does not mean that no power provides such defense, but rather that no such defense can exist due to a complication in how defense was originally designed. If a power is listed as "melee defense" this implicitly works against all melee attacks, even ones with toxic damage, but a power listed as "all
damage types" does not include toxic.
Untyped attacks
Untyped is another special case: there used to be a significant amount of "untyped" damage in City of Heroes, most of which eventually became toxic damage. The main source of untyped damage left in CoH is the damage dealt by the Hamidon (nucleus), and the Hamidon Mitochondria. It appears Hamidon's attacks are truly untyped: they are not melee, ranged, or AoE, and they are not smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative, toxic, or psi. As such,
no defenses of any type will work against Hamidon attacks. There is a defense that will:
Base Defense which is defense to all. However, its unclear which powers (if any) currently offer Base Defense. We'll ignore untyped damage in this guide unless specifically mentioned.
For more information on the specifics of defense within particular power sets, see the section DEFENSE IN POWER SETS below.
Defense Stacking Rules
If you have multiple defenses running (either your own powers or defense buffs cast on you by other players), certain defenses
stack. Defense in CoH stacks
additively, which is to say, if you have Defense A, and Defense B, and they stack, your net defense is A+B.
Which defenses stack and which do not is slightly tricky. Fundamentally, the following is true:
* All defenses of exactly the same class stack (melee stacks with melee, fire with fire, etc).
* A single defense that protects against multiple classes of attack functions like multiple defenses, each of which protects against a single one.
* You are only allowed to use the
best defense you have against an attack with multiple classes.
For example, if you are attacked with a power bolt (from the energy blast set), that attack is ranged, and has smashing and energy damage associated with it. You are only allowed to use the best of your net ranged defense, your net smashing defense, or your net energy defense.
There was an issue a while ago in which the game engine was considering, say, someone with smashing defense and energy defense to get smash+energy defense against energy attacks with both smashing and energy components. This was considered a bug by the devs and corrected.
The Bottom Line
If you want to know how much defense you have against an attack, the game does this:
First it figures out how much base defense you have.
Then it looks at the way the attack is typed (for example, ranged/smash/energy)
Then for each type, it sums up all of the defense you have to that type (for example, your total ranged defense, your total smashing defense, and your total energy defense).
Then it picks the biggest of those, and adds it to your base defense, if any.
That's your defense to that attack.
Defense enhancements
Each defensive power can be
enhanced using defense enhancements. Defense enhancements (along with resistance enhancements) are one of the few enhancements that do not follow the general 8.33%/16.7%/33.3% TO/DO/SO (training, dual origin, single origin) enhancement progression. Defense enhancements are worth 5% for training, 10% for dual origin, and 20% for single origin enhancements.
The way enhancements work in defense powers (and in powers in general) is that the power has a base defensive value. Enhancements increase that value by a percentage amount equal to their value. To be precise: if a defense power's base value is +5% defense, and an (even level) defense SO is slotted into it, the defense power's new enhanced value is 5% * (1 + 0.2) = 6%: the power is increased in value by 20% (and
not 20 percentage points, which would be 5% + 20% = 25%).
Defense enhancements themselves vary in strength based on your hero's level relative to the enhancement: enhancements are 10% weaker than their base value for every level lower than your combat level they are, up to three levels lower, where they are 70% of effective strength (they are worthless if you are more than three levels higher). Conversely, they are 5% stronger for each level higher than your level they are, up to 15% stronger when they are three levels higher than you are (enhancements more than three levels higher than your character's level cannot be slotted). For example, a -2 defense SO (normally +20%) is +16% (20% * 0.8) while a +3 defense SO is +23% (20% * 1.15).
Inspirations
Luck inspirations appear to be +Defense to all, and additively stack with any other defense powers you might be running. This has not, to my knowledge, been conclusively tested, but appears to be either explicitly true, or very near true.
Insights, it has been confirmed, work like tohit buffs: they are exactly the opposite of lucks in effect.
[ QUOTE ]
*** New for I7 ***
Lucks and Insights are mislabeled. According to the devs, lucks and insights are REALLY these values:
DEF
S - 12.5%
M - 25%
L - 33%
ACC
S - 7.5%
M - 18.75%
L - 37.5%
This is considered a bug that is being worked on. What's unclear is whether the values are wrong and the labels are right, or the labels are wrong and the values are right, or if *neither* are what the values of the inspirations really *ought* to be.
[/ QUOTE ]
***Enhancement Diversification***
New to I6 is a change in how enhancements work called "enhancement diversification." Basically, it works like this for defense SOs: however you slot, and whatever you slot, you get the first 40% benefit (i.e. 2 even level SOs) at full strength, any benefit above 40% and below 60% at 0.85 (85%) of their value, and any benefit above 60% at only 0.15 (15%) of their value.
This is tricky, so an example should help illustrate what's going on. You slot (presume even level SOs) one defense SO. Defense SOs provide 20% benefit, so you get 20% bonus to the defense power you slotted it in. The second SO adds 20%: you now have 40%. The next SO provides benefit above 40% (and below 60%), and so you get 85% of its value. 85% of 20% is 17% (0.85 * 20%). So SO #3 adds 17%, not 20%, and your net benefit is now 57%, not 60%. The fourth SO you slot is providing benefit above 60% (note, this is calculated based on the raw values of the SOs, not the
reduced value). So you only get 0.15 (15%) of its value. 15% of 20% is 3%. So you now have 60% total benefit, instead of 80%. The fifth and sixth SOs would similarly provide 15% of the SO strength, so SO #5 brings you to 63%, and #6 brings you to 66%.
Notice the extremely sharp cut off in benefit after enhancement #3. The basic rule on ED is: do not slot more than three SOs *worth* of enhancements. Its based on *benefit* and not on the little round thing you slot. So if you slot three SOs, and then one DO, the DO gets hit by ED. If you slot 3 HOs (Hamidon enhancements) of */*/defense and then an SO of defense, the SO gets hit by ED, even though "I didn't slot more than three of anything."
What matters is *benefit* - you simply aren't going to get much more than 3 SOs *worth* of benefit on anything, no matter what crazy combination of enhancements you try to use to dodge it.
Other enhancements, such as accuracy and damage, follow a different, but proportional scale (i.e. 3 SOs worth is where ED kicks in, even though 3 SOs of damage is about +100%, and not +60%).
I6 introduces something else: you can now tell *exactly* how much benefit your powers are getting from enhancements, by hovering your mouse cursor over the blue bar of the power in the enhancement screen. Also, you can "hover" (without dropping) an enhancement over a slot, and see in a popup window what the net overall change to the attributes will be if you chose to slot there.
One final note on I6 change to enhancements: tohit buff enhancements were originally schedule A enhancements (i.e. one even SO was worth +33% buff). They are now schedule B enhancements (i.e. one even SO is worth +20% buff) just like defense enhancements are.
Resistance to defense debuffs
As of the writing of this guide, supposedly resistance to defense debuffs have been added to hero and villain sets. The powers themselves now state that they include such resistance in the in-game power descriptions. Castle posted that to the best of his knowledge, the debuff resistance is in. However, careful testing has not demonstrated conclusively that they are working properly, and several tests appear to suggest that it isn't working correctly, or is working at a much lower level than originally specified. The thread where the concept of resistance to defense debuffs was originally put forth by Statesman is
here. Castle has also stated that the mechanism might not be as simple as we were lead to believe: sometimes the resistance reduces the duration of the debuff, and sometimes the magnitude (but most of the time, the magnitude - see
this post for more info. I believe the jury is still out on whether or not this effect is really working properly.
*** New for Version 1.4 ***
SR defense debuff resistance has been listed in the Prima Guide update, and confirmed by the devs. Each SR toggle offers 13.85% resistance to defense debuffs, each passive 6.925% resistance to defense debuffs (half that), and (I believe) Elude offers 34.625% resistance to defense debuffs (2.5 times the toggles, exactly). This is at level 50: the debuff resistance scales upward from lower levels to higher levels, but I do not know what the scaling curve is. There are similar posted numbers for the debuff resistances in the Prima Guide update, but I have not been able to confirm them as well, although there is no reason to doubt them at the moment.
These numbers are *much* smaller than originally described by Statesman.
THINGS RELATED TO DEFENSE
What is mez defense?
"Mez defense" is the generic term sometimes used to refer to powers that protect against mez. (Using terminology originally used by geko when explaining mez) there are two types of mez "defense" :
mez protection and
mez resistance. Neither of these is directly related to Defense in terms of damage mitigation, but its worth reviewing.
The basics of mez are: everyone has a threshold that mez effects must break through in order for the mez effect to take hold. Without any mez defense, everyone has a base mez level of -1. All mez powers have a
mez magnitude. When a mez power lands, it adds its magnitude to your mez level. A hero with mez level of -1 that gets hit by a magnitude 3 hold has mez level of 2 (-1 + 3). Any mez level higher than zero means the target is mezzed.
Mez protection continuously subtracts its associated defense magnitude from your mez level while the power is running. Someone running a mez defense power with mez protection magnitude 10 has a mez level of -11 (-1 - 10). If hit with a mag 3 hold, mez level increases to -8 (-11 + 3). It would take 3 more such holds for the mez level to reach +1.
Mez effects last for a certain period of time, then expire.
Mez resistance allows a target to shake off mez effects faster. So instead of a mez effect lasting ten seconds, it might last eight.
Mez protection and mez resistance are not true Defense or Resistance, but its useful to understand and is often confused with true Defense and Resistance.
All mez protection powers in melee defense sets scale up with level, with tankers getting maximum protection at level 35, and scrappers at level 45.
*** Note: in I6 mez protection powers were reduced from their previous levels. Maximum protection for tanks and scrappers used to be about magnitude 15, which in effect means controllers needed 6 holds to break protection. In I6, this has been tested to happen at 3 or 4 holds, which implies mez protection has been roughly cut in half.
DEFENSE, ACCURACY, AND VILLAINS
Some villains possess tohit buffs (either inherent ones, like those attributed to rank and level, or power-based ones, like Behemoths that use invincibility), and some behave like their attacks are slotted with accuracy enhancements. Rularuu Watchers appear to have significantly higher than normal base tohit (the precise value is unknown to me). Malta gunslingers have an
accuracy buff instead of a tohit buff on their pistol's cone attack. Its been approximately measured as about +65% - comparable to two accuracy SOs of accuracy boost.
Also interesting: Paragon Protectors that use MoG have *massively* higher defense than the ones that (apparently) use Elude. Its unclear precisely why the large difference exists.
Villains seem, over time, to be acquiring defense powers and abilities. That could be a large source of people believing that "accuracy" has been reduced, when accuracy is unchanged, but the defensive capabilities of the villains has improved.
DEFENSE IN POWER SETS
Its important to note that the information related to Defense in the printed manuals is, as with all things, both dated and often inaccurate. Again: this guide is not focused on the numbers, but as this information appears to be difficult to find, power set-specific Defense issues (especially what stacks with what) are listed here. Note: just as the manual is out of date, so to this guide might be out of date at the time its read. Force Fields, for example, had positional defense added literally a few weeks before this guide was finalized. For specific details, numbers, and other set information, consult the links provided at the end of this guide.
Super Reflexes defenses (scrapper and stalker) are all positional or ranged-typed. Every SR defense power is effective against one attack vector only: melee (Focused Fighting, Dodge), ranged (Focused Senses, agile), or AoE (lucky, Evasion). The exception is Elude, which is effective against all vectors. Because SR defenses are typed with positional types, SR defenses do not stack with any defense claiming to defend against a particular damage type or types. However, after recent changes to defense powers, no defense buffs or power pool defenses are typed with only a damage type, and should in some way stack with SR defenses. SR defenses do work against attacks that do toxic damage, because positional defenses work against all attacks within their range band, irrespective of damage type. SR defenses also stack with all power pool defenses, because all power pool defenses now offer defense to all.
Note: SR defenses do not work against attacks that are not positionally typed. Some attacks, like dominate and mesmerize in the Mind control set (which includes attacks from critters like Rikti Mesmerists) are not positionally typed. They therefore bypass all SR defenses.
Ice Defenses are all damage-typed. Ice defense powers are generally typed against two damage types (as is generally true for many damage-typed resistances).
Ice Defenses now stack with power pool defenses, because all power pool defenses now offer defense to all types (this is a relatively recent change). Ice defenses work on any attack that has a component of damage within the defensive scope. For example, Frozen Armor provides smashing/lethal defense. Glacial Armor provides energy/negative defense. If attacked with an energy blast attack that does smash/energy, both defenses potentially apply. As with all damage-typed defenses that overlap, Ice tanks will always use the greater of the two - they do not stack together. Ice has one of only two "scalable" defenses in the game: energy absorption is a click power that boosts Ice tanker defenses based on the number of villains it hits with a PBAoE "attack." For more information, consult the links at the bottom of this guide.
Granite Armor has a power that functions differently from the printed manual. Rock Armor provides Defense, not Resistance. Granite Armor has four defense powers. Three are stackable defenses (in the sense that they can be run simultaneously - they do not stack defensively with each other): Rock Armor (smash/lethal), Crystal Armor (energy/negative), and Mineral Armor (psionic). One cannot be used with the others: Granite Armor, which has defense to all but psi (as well as resistance to all but psi). Granite Armors, like Ice Armors, now stack with power pool defenses (which are now defense to all).
Force Fields used to be damage-typed. They are now both damage-typed and positional typed. Specifically, Deflection Field provides both smash/lethal defense, and melee defense. Insulation Field provides both fire/cold/energy/negative (energy/elemental) and ranged/AoE defense. Dispersion Bubble provides both defense to all types (meaning melee/ranged/aoe/smashing/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative/psi). This means Force Fields will stack with anything (specifically, the right bubble will stack with any conceivable defense). It also means that Force Fields now implicitly protect against toxic attacks (since Deflection Field *should* protect against melee-based toxic, Insulation Field should protect against ranged or AoE toxic, and Dispersion Bubble should protect against anything except untyped damage).
Invulnerability has two defense powers: invincibility and tough hide. Invincibility and TH both offer defense to all damage types except psi (and toxic). Here's the bottom line on invincibility. Invincibility offers Base 5% defense for tankers (3.75% defense for scrappers) so long as there is at least one thing in range. It then offers +1.5% defense per target in invincibility's aura range, to a maximum of ten. So, with nothing in range, invincibility offers zero defense. With one thing, its 6.5% defense (for tankers). With two things, its 8%. With 10 things, its 20% defense. Invincibility also has a tohit buff: its +2% per target in range, for a maximum buff of +20% (unslotted) tohit. Interestingly, the Invulnerability set also has a self defense
debuff. Unyielding (the power originally called
Unyielding Stance) originally rooted you to the ground when activated. It now has a self defense debuff, of -5%. This defense debuff appears to be a -DEF to all attacks, and its the same for tankers and scrappers (and any AT with Unyielding).
Stalkers
All stalkers have a power called hide. Hide appears to offer defense to melee/ranged/AoE. The defense appears to be about 3.75% to melee/ranged, and 37.5% to AoE (that's not a misprint: thirty seven point five percent) when hidden, and 1.875% to melee/ranged/AoE when hide is suppressed (these numbers come from a dev posting from the CoV beta boards). Hide also provides the highest -perception (i.e. stealth) of any power, and while hidden stalker attacks critical (double damage) and assassin's strike powers do six times bonus critical damage.
The Ninjitsu stalker set has positional defenses similar to SR. Ninja Reflexes is similar to Focused Fighting (melee), and Danger Sense is similar to Focused Senses, but Danger Sense has both ranged and AoE defense.
The Energy Aura stalker set has damage-typed defenses. Supposedly, the energy aura version of hide offers defense to all but psi, instead of the positional hide everyone else has, but I haven't confirmed that yet (if energy aura has the same hide as everyone else does, it wouldn't stack with its own defenses because hide would be positional, and energy's defenses would be damage-typed). Kinetic Shield offers defense to smashing, lethal, and (to a lesser extent) energy. Power Shield offers defense to fire, cold, energy, and negative. Overload offers defense to all damage types except psi (remember, "all but psi" excludes toxic) [note: Overload also has a dull pain component].
*** New for I5/I6 ***
Power Pool defenses are now supposed to offer defense to all, to guarantee that they stack appropriately with any defense that might be possessed by a hero/villain from their primary and secondary sets. This change was made to ensure that power pool defenses did not discriminate for or against any particular defense sets. Originally, most power pool defenses offered melee/ranged defense, and for a short while power pools offered melee/ranged and smash/lethal to try to address some stacking issues. They were changed to defense to all when it became clear that limited typing was not going to fully address the stacking issues, and was going to make stacking highly complex.
Power pool powers with defense components:
Concealment/Stealth
Concealment/Grant Invisibility
Concealment/Invisibility
Fighting/Weave
Flight/Hover
Leadership/Maneuvers
Leadership/Vengeance
Leaping/Combat Jumping
What other powers provide defense?
The following additional powers provide defense:
Devices/Cloaking Device (all types)
Illusion Control/Superior Invisibility (all types)
Illusion Control/Group Invisbility (all types)
Dark Miasma/Shadow Fall (all types)
Empathy/Fortitude (all types)
Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist (all types)
Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness (all types)
Regeneration/MoG (all damage types except toxic/psi)
Cold Mastery/Frozen Armor (smash/lethal) [note: this power also has cold resistance]
Force Mastery/Personal Force Field (base defense)
Warshade/Shadow Cloak (melee/ranged ?)
Katana/Divine Avalanche (melee/lethal)
Broadsword/Parry (melee/lethal)
Note: Hasten used to have defense; it was removed in I5
This list hasn't been confirmed with regard to typing since the stacking changes post I5. Its very possible that some of the powers listed as melee/ranged are actually defense to all. Parry and DA have been confirmed, powers listed as all or all types have been confirmed.
Special Note on Stealth
Stealth powers generally break their concealment component when you either attack or are attacked. When the stealth is broken, most stealth powers that have a defense buff component will have about half their defense also suppressed while the stealth component is broken.
The following stealth powers appear to suppress a portion of their defense when the stealth is broken:
Devices/Cloaking Device
Illusion Control/Superior Invisibility
Illusion Control/Group Invisbility
Concealment/Stealth
Concealment/Grant Invisibility
Concealment/Invisibility
According to Statesman, stealth powers in "Primary Defensive Sets" do not suppress their stealth when concealment is broken. The following stealth powers appear to
not suppress any of their defense even if concealment is broken.
Dark Miasma/Shadow Fall
Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist
Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness
Warshade/Shadow Cloak
Special Note on Power Boost
The power Power Boost (both the blaster energy manipulation version, and the epic power pool version) boosts defense powers while power boost is active. The boost is equal to the base value of the defense power being boosted. For example, if you have hover running (2.5% defense) and you trigger power boost, hover gains 2.5% additional defense. If hover was 5-slotted with defense SOs (net 5% defense) the boost would still be 2.5% (to 7.5% total defense).
What is the Streak Breaker?
The streak breaker is a bit of code within the tohit calculator that is designed to prevent very long strings of misses. There is a lot of misunderstanding about how the streak breaker works, so I'm going to be very specific in terms of detailing how I know what I know about the streak breaker.
First, the streak breaker only breaks streaks of misses, not hits. Confirmed by my own testing, dev postings, and red name PMs.
Second, the streak breaker affects both heroes and villains. Confirmed by my own testing, dev postings, and red name PMs.
Third, the streak breaker "decides" to break a string of misses when the string of misses exceeds a particular value. That value is dependent on the tohit probability between the attacker and the target. Here is Weirdbeard's specific statements on how the streakbreaker works:
[ QUOTE ]
Final to-hit : misses allowed
>.9 : 1
.8-.9 : 2
.6-.8 : 3
.4-.6 : 4
.3-.4 : 6
.2-.3 : 8
0 -.2 : 100
Auto-hit powers are not included in the system.
Critters get the benefits of the system as well.
The system does not track each power individually; instead it tracks every miss you make in a row, regardless of power (or target). Otherwise you could have nine different powers, each with a 0.95 to-hit, and if you executed them all in a row you could miss each attack (note a caveat at the bottom of the post regarding this).
AE attacks are considered distinct sequential attacks on indivudual targets for the purpose of the system (so if you AEd two targets and had 0.95 to-hit for both, you be guaranteed to hit one of them).
To determine the to-hit used in the table above, you take either the current to-hit, or the worst to-hit in your current miss series, whichever is lower.
[/ QUOTE ]
This basically matches all the testing I've done to measure the streakbreaker, correcting for some errors in my testing methodology that Weirdbeard was able to detect in my discussions with him.
DEFENSE ISSUES
These are some of the issues related to how defense and tohit works in City of Heroes
Autohitting attacks
There are attacks that automatically hit, bypassing the tohit floors and ceilings. Typically, these things are damage auras, such as the aura emitted by Circle of Thorns Death Mages, or patches, such as the damage due to caltrops. No amount of defense reduces the damage of autohitting attacks. Note: some people used to think burn (firey aura) was autohit, but in actual fact it simply has a very high accuracy.
*** Update from version 1.1 ***
It seems that autohitting attacks are being slowly removed from CoH, to address this issue. In fact, it appears that the damage aura from Death Mages is now considered an AoE attack, defendable with AoE defense. This agrees with dev statements that autohitting *damage* (but not necessarily autohitting debuffs) were being toned down or removed from CoH in the long run.
Special Note on defense debuffs
Although defense debuffs were covered earlier, its important to note that the subtractive nature of defense debuffs makes them extremely dangerous. Up to the writing of this guide, defense sets did not have any resistance to defense debuffs (such resistance is currently being added in some form). Their only means of defending against them was defense itself. This creates a problem whereby any defense debuff that manages to land decreases defense and makes the hero both more vulnerable to damage, and more vulnerable to more defense debuffs - a spiralling downward situation.
This is significant because resistance does not work that way. All resistance powers have an inherent resistance to resistance debuffs. When someone with 40% defense is hit with a 10% defense debuff, defense is reduced to 30%. When someone with 40% resistance is hit with a 10% resistance debuff, 40% of the debuff is resisted, and actual damage resistance drops to 34%, not 30%. Furthermore, the resistance to debuffs remains 40%. If hit with another 10% resistance debuff, resistance drops to 28%, not 20% (like defense would be) and not 27.4%, which would be the case if resistance was truely dropped to 34%.
*** Update from version 1.1 ***
There are more specific statements about Defense Debuff Resistance, which are covered in this guide. However, I have yet to be able to construct a test to measure the Defense Debuff Resistance, nor has anyone else posted tests confirming its effect (that I'm aware of). So I think the jury is still out here.
Quartz eminators, quicksand patches
Quicksand patches are autohitting slow and defense debuff patches. These were highly lethal to defense sets, because their defense debuffs couldn't be defended against or otherwise avoided, and once hit, the slow made it difficult to escape (Super Reflexes has a resistance to slow, but it didn't fully mitigate the -fly -jump which could trap a scrapper between villains and friends alike, and it didn't necessarily allow for quick escapes from the patch). Quicksand was also spammed by Earth thorn casters - a CoT minion - in CoT missions from levels 35 to 39. Although this was supposedly fixed (by lessening the frequency of earth thorn casters as well as reducing their propensity to cast quicksand) its still an example of a highly powerful defense-unfriendly power that has few analogs for resistance or regeneration.
Quartz eminators - the eminators dropped by DE LTs - is even more exceptional. Quartz eminators emit a tohit buff to all DE within its buff radius. The tohit buff eminated from quartz eminators is extremely large - by some estimates
several hundred percent. To put Quartz eminators into perspective, I3 SR scrappers running perma-elude and the toggles combines were running with more than 150% defense - and still being easily hit by Quartz-eminator buffed DE minions. Once again, there is no analog to the quartz eminator for any other form of damage mitigation, such as resistance and regeneration.
Team scalers and difficulty sliders
Important to note for defense sets: the
difficulty slider (also known as the reputation slider) increases the level of villains within your missions, and therefore increases the base tohit of those villains (it doesn't generally increase the ranks of villains, except for the fact that heroic suppresses bosses). The
team scaler increases the difficulty of missions based on the number of heroes on the team, and it increases rank
and level
and numbers of villains. With much lower defenses in I5 than earlier issues of CoH, high level missions can be less than friendly to defense-oriented sets, moreso than other damage mitigation sets.
*** Update from 1.1 ***
In I7, this problem should vanish when tohit increases for both rank *and* level basically go away.
Is Defense really inferior to Resistance?
Not especially. Defense and Resistance both have pros and cons in terms of their inherent effects. Defense's main problems are three-fold:
1. There are sets that rely heavily on Defense, but most other protection sets do not singularly rely on a single mitigation effect.
This is not a critical issue, but it amplifies the others.
2. Defense is - in the opinion of some - scaled too low (at least in some situations)
The argument goes that because Defense avoids status effects, Defense has an inherent advantage that more than balances the fact that the damage mitigation of sets that rely on Defense is significantly lower than other sets. Most testing, analysis, and review of a transparent nature (i.e. open to review) suggests this is false. The devs, who do not generally reveal their own analysis, testing, or reviews, disagree.
3. What Defense is most vulnerable to, is plentiful in the CoH environment.
The most common secondary effect in CoH besides DoT (damage over time) is defense debuff. Defense debuffs are more common than resistance debuffs and regeneration debuffs combined. And Defense debuffs are undoubtably more dangerous to Defense sets than resistance debuffs and regeneration debuffs are to resistance and regeneration sets, respectively (regeneration debuffs would be significantly more dangerous to regeneration sets if they prevented things such as reconstruction and dull pain from functioning). Defense is also vulnerable to tohit buffs, and
every single villain of higher rank than minion, and every single villain higher in level than even con, has an effective tohit buff.
To say that Defense is inferior to Resistance, given the large environmental disadvantages that Defense faces in CoH, would be comparable to changing all the damage dealth by villains to toxic and psi, and then claiming that Resistance was inferior to Defense. What is true is that the threats to Defense are generally more plentiful, and stronger, than the threats to Resistance in general. But that is a situational difference, not a fundamental one between Defense and Resistance.
*** New *** Will I7 make Defense superior to Resistance?
Not especially. The I7 scaler will normalize the accuracy of higher Rank and higher Level critters so that the proportional mitigation of Defense and Resistance is the same across the "normal" range of critters (minions, LTs, Bosses, AVs, +0s through +5s). However, Defense still has all the problems it used to have, just to a much less ridiculous degree. Defense is still vulnerable to tohit buffs (critters increasingly use tactics, for example), and still (based on testing) much more vulnerable to Defense Debuffs than Resistance is to Resistance Debuffs. Defense, so far as I can tell, still has more situational vulnerabilities than Resistance, and I7 will lessen, but not eliminate, that.
What's up with tohit buffs?
Good question. Very high tohit buffs are, at least, uncommon in PvE. They are very common in PvP, because high order tohit buffs are extremely common in player power sets.
The two most common tohit buffs are build up and Aim, and both are high order tohit buff (the exact numbers are being currently debated: its quite possible that both BU and Aim have much lower tohit values than originally assumed, but even the lower debated numbers are still very high relative to most defense numbers). Virtually all blasters, most defenders, almost all scrappers, and most tankers have access to either Build Up or Aim, and many blasters have access to both. Only controllers as a class lack BU or Aim (and pets have a tohit bonus).
If you are relying on defense in the arena, here's the score. If you have SR or Ice, and a couple stacked bubbles, someone who elected to 6-slot Aim with tohit buff enhancements to kill defense sets will hit you no matter what defense level you think you have. Realistically, that one power, and 5 extra enhancement slots, can effectively nullify an entire team's worth of defense buffs (7 stacked bubbles will beat Aim, of course, but all reasonable levels of defense and most unreasonable ones are going to be beat by 6-slot Aim). Without significant buffs, anyone with either build up or Aim will hit you.
It is unclear why Defense was lowered as part of the Global Defense reductions in I5, but tohit buffs were (apparently) not. If they were, this fact was not reported, nor has it shown up yet in anyone's testing.
*** New for I6 ***
One change made to tohit buffs in relation to balancing them with defense is that tohit buff enhancements are now schedule B (like defense: +20% for even SO) instead of schedule A (like damage: +33% for even SO). This at least places tohit buff enhancement and defense enhancement on a relatively even footing, although for high tohit buff powers, the net benefit of even an equal strength SO will be higher than a similar enhancement in a lower numerical strength defense power.
Continued Next Post
), they altered Player accuracy in PvP combat: Players attacking Players all have base 50% tohit, instead of 75%, which is exactly what the I7 Critter Accuracy Scaler does to critters in I7.
).