Arcanaville

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Someone give Arcanaville a cigar!


[/ QUOTE ]

In all the commotion, I forgot to ask: does this mean you're working on adding cigars to the female costume parts, so my SR scrapper can actually enjoy that cigar? She's been kicked, punched, stabbed, jolted, burned, chilled, flung, crushed, tripped, sliced, shot, choked, impaled, chewed on by giant eyeballs, and attacked by more dark tentacles than anyone not appearing in weird Japanese animation, in the service of testing Defense. She's earned that stogie.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to second the request, as my attempts to create a female mastermind modeled on Baron Samedi are stymied by this lack.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sometimes, Kali, a cigar is just a cigar.

[ QUOTE ]

Someone give Arcanaville a cigar!


[/ QUOTE ]

In all the commotion, I forgot to ask: does this mean you're working on adding cigars to the female costume parts, so my SR scrapper can actually enjoy that cigar? She's been kicked, punched, stabbed, jolted, burned, chilled, flung, crushed, tripped, sliced, shot, choked, impaled, chewed on by giant eyeballs, and attacked by more dark tentacles than anyone not appearing in weird Japanese animation, in the service of testing Defense. She's earned that stogie.

[ QUOTE ]
Great explaination, thanks _Castle_

[ QUOTE ]
So when will you be announcing that all +DEF powers have been cut in half?
We've only reduced one power, since it was a kluge fix to the problem that is no longer necessary. Essentially, Super Reflexes power sets Defense will be the same in effectiveness at Melee, Ranged and AoE ranges. Currently, SR has a bonus vs AoE attacks that was added to help them against tougher opponents with higher Base To Hit values.

[/ QUOTE ]

Was this really why SR got it's area attack bonus? I thought it was because most other defense enhancing powers don't work against area attacks, and thus the base defense needs to be higher.


[/ QUOTE ]

Statesman himself explicitly stated that the buff to Evasion (and implicitly lucky) was there to help SR scrappers with *bosses*, who, he said, tend to use AoE attacks more than melee attacks on average, and have higher base tohit.

The problem is that while that is theoretically true: bosses *possess* more AoE attacks on average, the AI in the game tends to cause them to switch to melee attacks when you are in melee range, which is where scrappers tend to be.

Also, its possible that when the evasion boost was put in, the fact that many short ranged AoEs and cones actually count as melee attacks, and not AoE attacks, for the purposes of defense, wasn't fully appreciated or discussed. This was all beaten to death after the Evasion boost: SR scrappers tested this carefully and determined that while Evasion was a nice boost relative to splash damage, it was not so good against anything actually attacking you directly, because AoE defense doesn't come up quite as often then.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I originally suggested that it be scaled down to 3.75%...

[/ QUOTE ] Isn't the whole point to provide them with a penalty? Is the penalty supposed to be offset by the resistance in the power? Then why create something only to cancel the benefit and eat up CPU cycles in the process?


[/ QUOTE ]

The defense debuff in unyielding is -5% for both tankers and scrappers, even though the resistances in unyielding are higher for tankers than for scrappers. It represents a scaling imbalance from tankers to scrappers. Why do it at all? Well, as has often been thrust at me, defense != resistance, so while the net effect of -DEF + +RES might be to cancel out on average, that doesn't necessarily mean the net effect is truely zero. Moreover:


[ QUOTE ]

Maybe the point is to create an effect of an unyielding foe, meaning you're getting hit because you're not moving. Then the resistance is there to create the effect without actually creating a true penalty for using the power. So reducing the debuff would reduce the effect. It would then seem a better choice to increase the resistance in the power. This allows you to retain this "unyielding" aspect of the power, but without an egregious penalty. The only remaining issue is where you set the base resistance considering slotting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Originally, unyielding rooted (cf: unyielding stance). Then it was swapped for the defense debuff. Originally, the penalty was set too high, and it was lowered because the increased damage was seen as too high. Its clear that the debuff isn't meant to make you unilaterally "hittable" but rather "just hittable enough" to roughly, on someone's score card, penalize you in a similar fashion to being rooted. I don't think the -DEF debuff is explicitly meant to cancel out the resistances exactly, although the place where the devs "feel" the unyielding debuff roughly balances the original root might be somewhere around there for *unslotted* UNY.

Part of the problem is that the resistances in UNY are slottable, while the defense debuff is constant, so in effect its actually a penalty on lower level invulns more so than higher level invulns - which in many ways is exactly the opposite of what such a balancing debuff ought to do.

In any case, completely separate from the defense change being discussed, people have long suggested that the UNY debuff be scaled in the same manner as the resistances do in the invuln set from tankers to scrappers. The defense change only *highlights* the imbalance, by magnifying it.

Putting my design hat on, I believe that the -DEF in UNY is not there to balance the +RES in UNY. Its actually there to balance the +DEF in invincibility. Why? Because originally, I believe that the root in UNY was there to balance the DEF in invincibility: being unable to move was the price you pay to have a power that gives you massive scalable defense when surrounded. The devs mental picture of invuln was an immovable object surrounded by foes with invincibility keeping the numbers in check.

But it didn't work out that way. First people simply took teleport. And invincibility was about 10x too strong. People who didn't take teleport and didn't herd Crey's Folly empty were severely penalized relative to power gamers that almost exclusively took teleport. The root was replaced with a -DEF debuff because that was the logical thing to balance invincibility if the root was being taken away. But not everyone took invincibility, and in any case the -DEF was pretty strong for lower level invulns who couldn't possibly *have* invincibility.

Then I honestly think they either forgot to adjust the debuff when the Global Defense reductions went in, or alternatively they decided, as often happens, to apply *every* penalty instead of just one to (in this case) invuln scrappers: lower resistance caps, lower resistances, but in effect *higher* UNY penalty, AND a fixed invincibility, all at once.

Regardless, its probably unnecessary for invuln scrappers to have a proportionately higher penalty.

[ QUOTE ]

If this change goes into effect without altering the unyielding defense debuff we will get the following result.


[/ QUOTE ]

The effect of this change is to scale defense's effects upward relative to level changes. One unfortunate side effect is that it will magnify the unyielding debuff as well, except of course unyielding's defense is negative.

Another effect briefly mentioned is that defense debuffs ironically become stronger (but this is unavoidable: if defense becomes stronger, then in effect taking that defense away *has* to have an overall higher impact). They might need to be numerically toned down to return them to their original net incremental effect.

Parry becomes much stronger.

The disparity between invincibility for tankers and invincibility for scrappers becomes more pronounced.

Defense buffing increases in value relative to resistance buffing (but that doesn't mean defense buffing is necessarily *better*).

Insights and lucks become significantly stronger in net effect on average.

There are lots of little things that I think will take a lot of time to fully appreciate their consequences. But the unyielding debuff, which is an issue in WanderingCat's scrapper thread, probably increases signficantly in importance. I originally suggested that it be scaled down to 3.75%, the same scaling factor as resistances. However, this change will magnify that debuff's effect, so it might need to be further reduced to -2.5% The net overall result, though, will be that the debuff will have the same approximate effect at lower levels, but will be weaker overall at higher levels with TH and invincibility (potentially) stacking on top of it, creating a net overall defensive buff on invuln.

Its not a big one, so I don't think it matters so much relative to the issue of not penalizing lower level invulns too much.

Its entirely possible that this change will come with a basket of small tweaks to powers, though. Consider that they already admitted that lucky/evasion are probably going to be dialed back down to melee/ranged defense values in SR.

[ QUOTE ]

Note however, that according to Statesman, this scaling feature only works for enemies up to +5 levels, after which the engine goes back to calculating the enemy bonus as ToHit instead of Accuracy, so suddenly the enemy is going to start pounding you at +6 levels.


[/ QUOTE ]

Technically, he said it would scale up to +5, he didn't say it would revert to +6 at +6.

What that could mean is that from even to +5, villains get accuracy bonuses, and then from +6 to +12, they start to get tohit bonuses again. I do not think that the tohit bonuses are being "suppressed" but have been eliminated; thus what happens at +6 is entirely up to the devs. The old numbers, though, are almost certainly completely out the window.

[ QUOTE ]
The only time BaseToHit isn't 50% is when players attack mobs, right? At that time its 75%. Otherwise is there even an instance when its not 50%?


[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on how you look at things. In one sense, you could say that *everything* that doesn't have base tohit of 50% has a buff above 50%. But theoretically, the devs could exempt some things from this calculations at their discretion. For example, pets have higher base tohit, and they are not technically "higher rank." A burn patch has higher inherent base tohit, but its a drop (a form of pet). What I mean is really that its up to the devs to decide what things are "buffed upward from minions" and what things have inherently higher tohit (if anything - it could be nothing).


[ QUOTE ]

Forgive me because I'm not used to looking at your exact terms for the formula, I generally use a more simplified version of it because I generally am not dealing with buffs/debuffs or insps, or enhancements.

I'm also trying to not context switch myself too much since I'm deep into something at work.

But can you give me a brief on where insps and enhancements fit into your formula.

[/ QUOTE ]

Insights have been confirmed to be tohit buffs; they would get added to base tohit in the formula as a tohit buff. Accuracy enhancements are confirmed to be accuracy buffs, they would go into the AccBuff term on the left. It seems like in general, heightened accuracy that is inherent for a specific power tend to be accuracy bonuses/buffs, while player accuracy bonuses that affect all attacks the player executes are in general tohit buffs.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Puh-puh-puh-puh-power boost?

Why yes, I'll take power boost.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just the power boosting part. You have elude when you want to up your defense that much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Powerboost wouldn't do much for a SR scrapper as it stands. It improves the secondary effects of powers, and defense is a primary power in the SR set. Unless this has changed at some point.

[/ QUOTE ]

A common misconception amplified by the poor wording of the description for power boost. Power boost does not boost secondary effects of powers because there is no such thing as "secondary" effects. There are no "primary" effects. There are only "effects." No power, effect, villain, buff, debuff, or situation distinguishes between what anyone things the "primary" effect of a power is, and what a "secondary" effect might be.

Power boost boosts all of the following effects on any power triggered or running while it is active:

(credit Pulsewave for the list)

Disorient, sleep, confuse, fear, immobilize, and hold duration
Knockback/up distance
Repel stregth
Run, fly speed
Defense, Accuracy (tohit) Buffs
Heal
Endurance Drain/Modification


This is true regardless of what power has the effect, or whether the power is a primary, secondary, or power pool power. For example, power boost boosts the speed and defense of hover; neither is primary or secondary. It boosts the heal in aid self and aid other.

They really need to change the description of power boost, or award a badge after 100 explanations.


The only time the devs came remotely close to honoring any notion of "primary" and "secondary" (when it comes to effects) was when they were looking at stealth defense suppression, and even there it was not consistent.


Power boost would, if it was consistent, boost the defense of SR toggles. It already boosts the defense of all other toggle defenses that anyone who has power boost has.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

The devs get 20 points for listening to the playerbase, 10 points for giving a boost to SR Scrappers, and 10 points for the same to Ice Tanks.

...however, they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

[/ QUOTE ]

-10 points for not mentioning force field defenders

-7.5 additional points for not mentioning force field controllers.

-20 points to anyone not getting the controller joke.

-10 points for posting a message stating they gave no warning in the thread pre-announcing the change

+15 points for humorous unintentional irony, satisfying one of the three requirements placed on posts in this thread (funny, informative, questioning).

[ QUOTE ]
Indeed I am... it'll take a bit to wrap my head around this...

That said, from what I can tell the basic formula was changed from (CoreAcc is 50%):

(CoreAcc * conmult * levelmult) - DEF

to

(CoreAcc - DEF) * conmult * levelmult

It does raise some questions to me, like where to buffs/debuffs and +Acc now fit into the equation?

Your thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

Although Castle said the tohit formula was changed, I think that he means the Really Big Formula they use, not the simplified version *we* use. What changed was the parts of the formula that determine base tohit, which we consider static in ours. In effect, ours looks like this:

(BaseAcc + AccBuff) * (BaseToHit + ToHitBuff - ToHitDebuff -Defense + DefenseDebuff)

Theirs looks like this:

(BaseAcc + AccBuff) * ((VillainBaseToHit + LevelBonus + RankBonus) + ToHitBuff - ToHitDebuff -Defense + DefenseDebuff)

Castle is saying that it was changed to this (I believe):

(BaseAcc + AccBuff + AccLevelBuff + AccRankBuff) * (VillainBaseToHit + ToHitBuff - ToHitDebuff -Defense + DefenseDebuff)

But really, its still all just:

(BaseAcc + AccBuff) * (BaseToHit + ToHitBuff - ToHitDebuff -Defense + DefenseDebuff)

Its just that now, "AccBuff" has some new terms in it, and "BaseToHit" is now almost always 50%. I believe that all other things, like the other buffs and debuffs, are still in the same places in the formulas.

I'm still thinking through all of the ramifications of the change; although I've thought about it a lot and thought through some of the ramifications already, there are some edge effects that were/are highly dependent on exactly precisely how things like buffs and debuffs are handled. Notice, for example, that if a villain has inherent accuracy buffs (not tohit buffs) the precise proportionality of the rank and level buffs might be just slightly skewed, because of the buffs adding up on the left side.


Edit: an alternative, one which preserves proportionality better, would be this:

(BaseAcc + AccBuff) * (1 + AccRankBuff) * (1 + AccLevelBuff) * (VillainBaseToHit + ToHitBuff - ToHitDebuff -Defense + DefenseDebuff)

Hard to say for sure which way it goes yet. They could have done either, or neither but something related.

[ QUOTE ]

Please combine some of the passives and give us a new power or two, even ones stolen from other sets (AIM, Power Boost, or self-buff versions of Speed Boost, Accel Metab, RA etc.).


[/ QUOTE ]

Puh-puh-puh-puh-power boost?

Why yes, I'll take power boost.

Castle posted the mechanics of the change: basically, rank and level bonuses will be changed from tohit buffs to accuracy buffs. Followers of my now purged Acc v Def and Elusivity threads might remember all of the various pros and cons of such a solution: overall, I thought it was the best way to deal with those two issues related to defense, so of course I'm happy. Circeus must be happy also: his Ice tank spreadsheets just got about 80% smaller.

[ QUOTE ]

PS - when you gonna update that guide?


[/ QUOTE ]

Probably as soon as the I7 changes to defense appear to be set in stone and it doesn't look like any others are coming (i.e. I'm still wondering if something else related specifically to tohit buffs is also in I7; given how significant a change this is to addressing defense concerns, they might be trying for a clean sweep of them).

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I look forward to a detailed explanation of how this will work.
Glad you asked. Basically, Level advantage in PvE, Lts, Bosses, AV's, and Monsters had To Hit bonuses. This made Defense not scale properly. We changed them so that instead of To Hit bonuses, they have Accuracy bonuses. What that means is, Defense is applied before their bonus, rather than after. Since Accuracy is a multiplier, it is multiplying a small base value than before.

For instance, an AV had a base To Hit of 75%. If a player had 25% Defense, the AV would have had a 50% chance to hit. Under the new system, the AV's has a base 50% chance to hit. The Defense is applied, reducing his To Hit to 25%. The Accuracy is then applied, giving a final To Hit of 37.5% -- a 12.5% improvement over the old system.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what you are saying is that we now will floor (or near-floor) *any* mob's accuracy with two lucks, one luck and 3 slotted SR/Ice/Ninjitsu/Bubbles, or any combination that works out to a 50% bonus.

I think this is going to finally show you guys the flaw in the tohit formula, with respect to Acc bonuses vs Def bonuses. Maybe you will get how we feel about a 3 Acc slotted attack only having a 10% (or is it 5%? When is the floor applied?) chance to hit a bubbled Rikti Drone.

I'm both excited and worried about how you will react to this realization.

P.S. You indeed rock, Castle. Thanks for the detailed info.

[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on what you mean by "nearly floored." An interesting consequence of this type of adjustment - a specific one I actually endorse - is that you can no longer floor AVs.

What???

Its a consequence of how accuracy buffs work. Unless they made other unannounced changes, there's *two* floorings that take place in the tohit calculation:


(BaseAccuracy + AccuracyBuffs) * (BaseToHit - Defense)

leaving out some terms, this is floored twice:

Floor[5%, (BaseAccuracy + AccuracyBuffs) * Floor[5%, (BaseToHit - Defense) ] ]

Since the term (BaseToHit - Defense) can never be lower than 5%, that also means an AV, with a 50% accuracy buff, can never be driven lower than

(1 + 0.5) * (0.05) = 0.075 = 7.5%.

Basically, an AV will hit you 50% more often than a minion hits you, always (short of the tohit ceiling), even if you have enough defense to floor them both.


It is *not* exactly true that 50% defense "floors" everything. Yes, it does, but on the other hand, the actual "floor" is automatically raised with accuracy buffs. If accuracy buffs get massively out of hand, this could be a problem (and I'm sure right now a lot of people are reaching to type a response saying it *is* a problem now) but it seems to be small price to pay for tohit scaling to be moderated.

Is it fair? Depends on your definition of "fair." Without this double-flooring effect, SR scrappers with bubbles would hard floor everything (including AVs) which in essence would mean they could completely dodge the entire accuracy buff altogether, while non-defensive sets could not.

Its a non-issue outside of heavy buffing (or inspiration usage) so its not a large balance issue. Its something to look at over time, though.


With respect, its tohit buffs that expose the flaw in the tohit calculations: by leveraging accuracy bonuses, the devs have shifted rank and level buffs to the part of the calculation that actually works *correctly* (in my opinion, of course). It sucks if something that is really hard to hit doesn't suddenly get easy to hit if you 3-slot with accuracy, but for defense to be working correctly, nothing that is easy to do should make good defense into bad defense. There's no way to slot an attack to make good resistance into bad resistance, for example.

If PvE targets get *too* annoying to hit, the solution is to make them have a little less defense: PvE villains don't complain about getting hit too often.

[ QUOTE ]

I would like to see anything done here done with extremely careful consideration to the difference in PvE and PvP.


[/ QUOTE ]

100% agreed.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It also sounds, upon careful read of this, that tohit buffs themselves, separate from level and rank adjustments, are unaffected by this change, which is consistent with Statesman's original wording of the change.

Is there a different change to adjust the effect of high tohit buffs, especially (but not exclusively) in PvP? High tohit buffs were one of the things Statesman mentioned many months ago as being "looked at."

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't they already look at them and make a change accordingly by making ToHit Buff enhancements Schedule B rather than A?

[/ QUOTE ]

Unless they also heavily reduced the base values of the actual tohit buffs in PvP, and didn't say so, switching tohit buffs from A to B balances then against defense enhancements, which they technically should be, but doesn't really do much to powers like Aim or Build Up, which each possess (as far as I know) higher base tohit buffage than SR possesses total defense. Most people I know don't even *slot* Aim with tohit buff enhancements, making a reduction in them ineffective on its own in taming that power.

But its really focused accuracy that is the real killer, since its tohit buff is lower, but continuous, and its base is also high enough that a reduction in slotting power to "just as strong as defense" still makes it pretty darned good against defense sets.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
For non-followers of SR, that power is (almost certainly has to be) evasion.

[/ QUOTE ]
Lucky currently gives 7.5% right? I reckon that'll be dropped down to 5% as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

All the passives as far as I know were a base 5%.


[/ QUOTE ]

I seem to recall Stargazer, ArchTester of Defense, measuring lucky at 7.5% a while back.

It also sounds, upon careful read of this, that tohit buffs themselves, separate from level and rank adjustments, are unaffected by this change, which is consistent with Statesman's original wording of the change.

Is there a different change to adjust the effect of high tohit buffs, especially (but not exclusively) in PvP? High tohit buffs were one of the things Statesman mentioned many months ago as being "looked at."

[ QUOTE ]

There's a way to do that and still be perfectly fair to defense and resistance sets. Just give higher level villains accuracy increases instead of tohit buffs. Higher level foes would now hit more often, but in a proportional manner. Problem solved.
Someone give Arcanaville a cigar!


[/ QUOTE ]

!

Now, since my ego simply has to know: did one of my suggestions finally get stuck on someone's shoe and then tracked into the right cubicle, or was this always on the boards as a potential solution to the problem that simply required sufficient coding time to engineer?

[ QUOTE ]

I definitely agree that if any character has to have an Achilles' heel, they all need to have one -- fair is fair.


[/ QUOTE ]

Just to be clear, I'm not explicitly advocating Achilles Heels in the sense of all *sets* having no mitigation against a particular type of attack at all, but rather something related: the devs should always have the *option* of creating special case villains that are explicitly harder for a particular type of mitigation than normal. Psi does that for many resistance-oriented sets (but they aren't completely defenseless: most have dull pain or healing); tohit buffs do that for SR. The question is one of intensity, and prevalence - SR didn't have an Achilles Heel, it had an Achilles Epidermis.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

So when will you be announcing that all +DEF powers have been cut in half?
We've only reduced one power, since it was a kluge fix to the problem that is no longer necessary.

[/ QUOTE ]

...And that power is? C'mon you can't just leave us guessing here.

[/ QUOTE ]

For non-followers of SR, that power is (almost certainly has to be) evasion.

[ QUOTE ]

But why should ToHit buffs be worse on Defense than Resistance when there are sets like Ice and EA that have little to no defense to psi and toxic anyway?


[/ QUOTE ]

The question is, should there exist "undefendable attacks" as a mechanism, given that there are unresistable (or less resisted) damage as a mechanism for resistance. In my opinion, such a mechanism has to exist in theory, or else Resistance has holes Defense does not. The issue is moderating tohit so that it is infrequent instead of pervasive (like toxic/psi damage), less devastating (DE Quartz eminators must die), and possibly have alternate counter mechanisms (psi resistance does exist, albeit less commonly).

Technically, damage typed defense has a comparable hole to the psi hole in resistance: there's no toxic typed defense. I don't mean no set has it, I mean it does not currently exist in the game engine. It doesn't exist for the devs to give out (short of a significant overhaul to the game engine the devs have previously called "daunting").

Still, I think there has to be a way to create an AV, say, that has heightened tohit that avoids being nullified by the tohit formula, just like there's a way to make an AV that uses all psi attacks (Babbage). We don't want defense-bypassing tohit buffs *constantly* but its important that we have them *occasionally*.


One caveat to all of this. One undiscussed thing not just here but in most discussions of defense in CoH is just exactly how the defense-bypassing mechanism in radiation attacks work. Depending on how they work, radiation attacks could be Defense's version of "psi." But beyond the fact that I know radiation attacks do in fact seem to hit defense more often than normal attacks, I do not have a mathematical description for radiation's "defense-bypassing" effect. It could be as simply as radiation attacks having a high inherent tohit buff. If that is the case, once again its important to preserve that sort of tohit buff's effect, because its important - to be fair - for Defense to have its "psi." It should just be uncommon.

[ QUOTE ]

Yes, the old saving throw mechanic. The only problem with this mechanic is that it does not allow ToHit buffs to "penetrate" defense the way psi and toxic penetrate DMG RES.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is specifically the source of my hesitation to include *all* tohit buffs into the equation, and why I thus restricted myself to rank and level buffs factored into defense only in my Defense scaling formula, which yours quickly converged to.

Strictly speaking though, this idea (and elusivity) isn't a saving throw mechanism, because it doesn't strictly take effect after an initial hit calculation. It functions more like inverse accuracy if you look at the entire tohit formula (it acts like fractional accuracy, or a sort of accuracy debuff - and I'm using the term "accuracy" in its specific usage in the tohit formula here to distinguish it from tohit).

[ QUOTE ]

An interesting thing is, 1def = 2Res only if taken independently, look at what happens if you use 50/50 distribution of def and resist. Based on 1def = 2res that will mean 25resist and 12.5 def.

75acc, 12.5def, 25 res, 100 swings of 90pts
56.25 hits of 67.5 = 3796.875

Suddenly, they are not as strong together as they are on their own, so you cant just say the sruvivability of a character is equivalent in resistance to def*2+resist

Now, mixing high def and low resist:
75acc, 20def, 25 res, 100 swings of 90pts
45 * 81 = 3645

And finaly a low def high resist:
67.5 * 54 = 3645

So its interesting how here two oposite builds are equal but one in between both is inferior, and how these mixed sets are both inferior to pure res or pure def sets.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is that *other* grand design issue in CoH that has been discussed off and on (the first being Accuracy and Defense): Stacking.

To wit: if 12.5% defense and 25% resistance are currently offering roughly the same protection, then adding 25% resistance to both ought to leave them roughly even. It doesn't because the 25% resistance stacks additively to the original 25% resistance, but multiplicatively with the 12.5% original defense (most people colloquially say when two defense mitigation types stack multiplicatively that in effect they "don't" stack, which most of us know refers to the same basic situation).

Its this issue that is ultimately behind the low defense numbers in SR, the very very low numbers in power pool defenses, the notion that defense sets "benefit more" from buffs than resistance sets, and the wild discrepancy between the Defense cap(s) and the various Resistance caps. It all comes down to accelerating returns from linear stacking, specifically the fact that powers can stack higher and faster than the devs want.

It isn't the *powers* that should stack additively, its their *effects* that should stack additively, meaning adding X% resistance to a set adds the same net benefit regardless of what the set originally looked like. There are ways to do that in theory.


In effect, 1 DEF = 2 RES is only true when we are not talking about stacking. Once we start talking about stacking, it isn't even strictly true anymore that 1 DEF is always equal to 1 DEF, or 1 RES is always equal to 1 RES.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Happy Birthday Generic_OoT!

[/ QUOTE ]

I tried to submit new character names as UpGeneric OoT, DownGeneric OoT, etc...actually but after a month or so the GMs replied back "Nono, you cant use Generic in your new names"

[/ QUOTE ]

So if I make a hero called "GenericHero171226" and you petition me, will they rename me "GenericHero47238" until I come up with a new name?