Arcanaville

Its difficult to add anything new to *this* conversation, but I'll point out that the last part of the article is the part that I've always found the most interesting about the subject: specifically the point of view that some people have that objectifying women is objectionable to women, but objectifying men is not objectionable to men so the situation is simply axiomatically unfair.

That's a very interesting point of view to have, where in this case "interesting" is a synonym for "pathologically strange to the point of warranting further study."

Let me back up a bit.

There are basically ten defense types: Melee, Ranged, AoE, Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Psionic. They correspond to the ten attack types of the same name. Basically, if an attack is typed "Melee" then melee defense works against it. If the attack isn't typed "Melee" then melee defense doesn't work against it. Simple enough.

Attacks themselves have anywhere from zero to three types generally. Some attacks have no type: no (typed) defense works against them. Lets ignore those for now (Hamidon has attacks like this). Most attacks have one of the "positional" types: Melee, Ranged, or AoE. That makes sense. No attack has more than one of those. Some attacks have none of those: Mind Control attacks typically have none of those. Most attacks also have one or two of the other types, almost always based on the kind of damage the attack does.

So Power Bolt is typed Ranged, Smashing, Energy. That means Ranged, Smashing, and Energy defense all work against it.

The rule for defense is: you always get to use the highest of your defenses against each attack that are applicable.

So in the above case, you get to use the highest of your Ranged, Smashing, or Energy defense. Different attacks have different typing, and will engage different defense types.

Now why the "positional" and "typed" distinction? Mainly, its because players recognize that most attacks have one positional type, and one or more of the other so-called damage-typed attack types. That means for most attacks, you'll always be using the higher of your positional defense or damage-typed defenses. So players tend to build for positional or typed to concentrate their efforts. Its better to have all three positional types high and all the rest low than to have all of them be average - remember you only get to use the single best defense type you have against each attack.

Some powersets tend to focus on one set of defenses or the other. Super Reflexes, Shields, and Ninjitsu focus on the three positionals. Stone, Ice, and Energy focus on the other types. Because the highest is what counts, its usually considered better to stack like on like: stack more damage-typed defenses on Stone, and more positional defenses on Shield.

That's the basic rules. There are exceptions: for example the previously mentioned mind control attacks that tend to be typed Psionic only. No position, so no positional defense works, so they tend to slice right through positional sets. Although: most (not all) damage-typed defenses *also* omit Psionic defenses, so that's a problem for a lot of defense sets in general. But in general, most players build for high positional defense or high typed defense, remembering that what matters is the higher of the two for most attacks, because most attacks will have at least one positional type and one damage-type. So having high positional or high typed will give you high defense against most attacks.

For the record, this:

One point of reference in attempting to guestimate how much actual influence is in circulation in the game is that Paragon reported the amount of influence held by player characters on or around the seventh anniversary of April 2011 as about 56 trillion. At least, I'm assuming that's what they intended to report; they actually reported it as 56 billion which is of course obviously too low.

If we accept 56 trillion as the correct April 2011 value, that suggests the current amount of influence in the game is likely to be far lower than some of the projections being tossed around: its more likely to be closer to 100 trillion.

I believe part of the discrepancy between the estimates being generated and this value is that marketeering, which is one of the most common means to amass large fortunes, inherently destroys influence, it doesn't create it. Every 100 billion inf person out there likely destroyed at least approximately 10 billion inf to get there. Of course, they might have also created influence from other activities, but its very hard for a strong marketeer to create more influence through gaming than they destroy through marketeering.

Every rich player represents a lot of influence, but also very likely represents a significant influence sink unless they are also doing very heavy PvE farming.

Super Segway