Aett_Thorn

Well of course it was a low chance of it happening. That doesn't mean you can't say that you agree with it.


I like that the universe decided not to implode today. Much better than the alternative. Of course, it didn't have much of a chance of doing that, but I'm still glad it didn't.

You're reading it wrong.

He's saying that he'd rather have it go the way it is (the PPP version of PFF going away) than the other way (the /FF controller version of PFF going away). He knows that it's the PPP version that is going away, and he's glad that they went that way than the other way they could have gone.

Considering that knew about this problem before it went live, and told people not to take the power, I'd say that this isn't encroaching (too much) on the cottage rule.

Could be, but I tend to get logged out a couple of times per day, which is much less than 24 hours.

Sands of Mu does WAY more damage than brawl does. Brawl will not kill a -1 minion, which Sands of Mu will at level 2.

Well, I guess my point is more that IF the current situation with Def is okay, then it should be okay to do the same with Res, as well. IF it is not, then something should be done with Def to adjust it, and then bring Res in line, too.

I definitely understand where you are coming from, but something should be done on either side of it. Because right now, Res-based sets can gain more survivability with minimal investment than Def-based sets can.

That's 90% (actually over) S/L Resistance, 31.7% F/C/E/NE Resistance, and 31.4% Defense to S/L/F/C/E/NE with one mob in range of Invincibility, using only the two set IOs that you did, and taking similar power pools. That's my problem here. It seems okay for resistance-based sets to be able to do these kinds of things, but Defense-based sets can't, and it's not okay for them to try.

If that is solely because of DDR, then that is a problem with DDR.

I saw your update just after I posted, and I thank you for doing that. I'm a very visual person, so I like to be able to see it. Thanks for doing that. I'll respond to that in a bit.

I agree that your build above could become a monster with only slight investment. However, my problem is that something like Invuln could do the same, just the other way around, for slightly more investment. Granted, they wouldn't have as much DDR as the Shield user would, but if that is the only thing that is working for the Shield user, that might be a problem with DDR and the prevalence of Def debuffs more than the IO system.

DDR wasn't as much of a part of this game for a long time. Defense sets got a lot of that because there were so many Defense debuffs in the game, compared to Resistance debuffs. I think it was a huge mistake to give so many mobs -Def debuffs in the early game, which necessitated the high levels of DDR, which then led to the situation we're in now, where Defense sets can't build for more toughness as easily as Resistance sets, because they have DDR. They're basically being punished because of something they got to prevent them from being useless earlier in the game's lifetime.

I mean, at this point, I really do agree with you that adding better resistance sets isn't that easy considering all factors involved. However, my problem is more with the "why" that is than the "how." I think that Defense in general needs a good looking into, and that the Devs have basically dug their own grave on that issue, but they didn't do it all at once. They've been very slowly digging it for a long time now, and each shovel of dirt just made it tougher to correct. Now, if they try to do it, it's going to make a lot of people angry. But I think that it needs to be done.

Lower DDR on Defense sets. Remove a LOT of Def Debuffs from enemies. Then you can either lower Defense bonuses or make Resistance bonuses worth going for. But you can't do the latter without doing some of the former.

So DDR is the only thing that is balancing the current situation out? How much content is that actually balancing out right now? The ITF certainly has a lot of -Def in it, but how much difference is there in something like the Statesman TF, where -Def isn't as prevalent.

The ITF seems like it was almost specifically designed to even things out between native Defense sets and non-native defense sets. But does that mean to continue doing that, we need to keep creating mobs that debuff defense?

Can I see this build? It's not that I don't trust you, I just would like to see it.

I see it just as bad as resistance-heavy sets that can get a huge amount of Defense, a self-heal, debuffs, etc. Stacking more and more defenses can be a problem. I just don't understand why resistance-based sets should get to do it, but defense-based sets don't.

This is a decent point, and I'm not really sure how to get around that. I think that you could do it by not having resistance-based set bonuses be equivalent to the Defense ones (as in my last post, where you'd only get 1/2 of the protection instead of a 1:1 ratio), to handle that.

I also think that it is partially handled at least by the fact that even if you built for 90% S/L resistance, you'd still be taking all of the E/NE/F/C damage that comes with those attacks.

I'm not saying to just do it with Kinetic Combat, though. And yes, it does open up more avenues for power creep, but it does even out the power creep across sets. You don't even need to make them even variables, if you're worried about DDR versus -Resistance debuffs being affected by Resistance. What I mean is, you don't need to follow the 1% Def = 2% Resistance formula. But right now, in set bonuses, you've got 3.13% Defense = 1.26% Resistance (comparing Aegis with Red Fortune for the Fire/Cold Def/Res numbers).

That, against most enemies that you'll be fighting, is 1/4 of the protection, for the same slot investment. I would say that you could bring that up to 1/2 the protection for the same slot investment, and still be fine. You'd make it decently worthwhile to slot for Resistance, but still better to slot for Defense.

Not many sets other than Defense-based sets would be able to get to the soft-cap for Defense and attain anything like 90% resistance without a ridiculous slotting investment somewhere. Kinetic Combat is the one I mentioned because it's one of the easier ones to get (requiring only 4 slots). But if you need to build some for Defense, then that takes slots to do. Adding on trying to slot for Resistance on top of that would be an even larger commitment (and would only yield you the resistance bonuses, if you do what I suggested and made all of the other bonuses exactly the same, so that you'd hit the rule of 5 on them), meaning that you'd have to give up slotting for other things.

I will try to do this after lunch here, but if you were to create a duplicate of the Defense-based sets and swapped out the Defense bonuses for Resistance, what's the highest Resistance bonuses you could get on a character and still have it be functional?

70% Resistance is attainable by every Tanker only in certain aspects. Certainly, Ice Tankers can get to 90% resistance to cold, but definitely not to S/L, for instance, or Energy/Negative Energy, or Fire.

Fire Tankers can do that to Fire damage, and if they take Tough, to S/L, but can't do it to Energy/Negative Energy. Even Invuln Tankers can't get to 70% in anything but S/L.

However, unlike Defense, if you're faced with a dual-type attack, resistance doesn't block both portions of something. For instance, if you have 45% Defense to S/L, and 5% to Fire/Cold, and you get attacked by a Fire/Lethal attack that does 50 Lethal damage and 50 Fire damage, the S/L Defense is going to mean that you don't take any damage a decent amount of the time.

Meanwhile, if you do get to 90% Resistance to S/L, and 10% to F/C, the S/L resistance doesn't help with both parts of the attack, and you end up taking 5 Lethal damage and 45 Fire damage 50% of the time (assuming an even-con enemy). As such, you can't build for one aspect in Resistance like you can in Defense, and get coverage against anything associated with that. Add in that you can't build for positional resistance, and you end up with a case of Resistance still being not that useful for most ATs to build for. Defense would still be better.

Right, but my point is this: if you find out how most people are gaining Defense now, and only use similar sets to put resistance in, you make the player have to choose between Resistance and Defense.

Defense-based sets will be able to gain Resistance in the same way that Resistance-based sets can now gain Defense. Other ATs will have to choose between going Defense or Resistance, since they will be unlikely to be able to get both, if you do it right.

So then just put them in similar sets. That way, you can't build for both realistically, and get high values for each.

For instance, Kinetic Combat provides great S/L Defense. Make another melee set like it that provides 5% S/L Resistance as the only difference. Unless you have 10 melee attacks that you can spend slots on, you won't be able to max out both. Most builds that I've seen on these boards have maybe 6-7 attacks, so you could get 12.5% Defense, and 10% Resistance, but that's generally not too bad. And it would allow for Defense-based builds to slot more for resistance to put them more on par with current Resistance-based sets that can still soft-cap Defense.

And how is this any different from the current situation with Defense-based sets? Especially when those allow people to soft-cap to various damage types even when they start with next to nothing?