Warkupo

Well played, sir.

Regardless of the adjective, noun, or verb used to describe the event, I would still be irritated with the design. i don't like having to start over to gain more power, and such a system would ensure that I would have too, less my frail little ego is challenged by someone being better than me at what I'm doing without any consent to my actual skill.

As I said (albeit very briefly), without going through every single Primary/Secondary for both AT's, I can't come to a conclusion either way. I would have to sit down and make a comparative build of everything to decide that "this has better survivability with scorpion shield" or "this is buffed by defender so much that it is better." I am going to assume that sets that start with fairly large numbers of defense gain favor on a defender because of the nature of buff values, but even that is just guessing until I make an actual comparison of every single combination for both AT's that I consider fairly balanced, which is not something I'm going to do unless I'm actually going to play as the set. Call me self-centered, but I like what little mental stability I have left.

I've never found resistance on a squishy overly useful, which is primarily why I ran over to Corr's to see if they had a defense toggle, and sure enough they did. When I build for defense, my primary concern is evading mez effects, as these are usually the quickest method to my downfall. Resistance has no method of addressing this problem, and you will get hit with mez effects of every variant more often, resulting in a lot of cascade failure that can make your resistance seem paltry. Defense, on the other hand, has the ability to evade the mez effect entirely, while simultaneously reducing the amount of incoming damage. While I am in no way stating that defense is entirely safe from mez effects either, you are hit with them with far less frequency than if you had only gathered resistance. As such I consider defense the true method of mitigation building for a squishy, with resistance being nice to have until such a point that the squishy in question actually HAS mez protection, at which point I am prompted to take another look at which value is giving me the most benefit.

Keep in mind too that, given the way defense and resistance are calculated, significantly lower values of defense are equal to comparatively higher levels of resistance. What I mean by this is that when calculating To-Hit "most" enemies only have a 50% chance to hit you to begin with, where as they will "always" do 100% damage to a resistance set. For defense, half of the work has already been done for you by the enemies own incompetence. We could infer that 2 defense = 1 resistance, and thus Scorpion Shields 12.8% defense vs, say, Charged Armour's 20.2% actually has a 2%-ish value advantage in Scorpion Shield's favor. We'd probably be wrong in several cases, but we could infer that.

Scorpion Shield is a point in Corr's favor, but I in no way mean to imply that it is the leading factor that allows Corr to stomp all over Defender's lovely rose garden. It is definitely worth addressing, but until I've personally gone through and done a numerical analysis, I'm not going to say anything other than "it seems like it's easier to build defense for a Corr because of Scorpion Shield."

Ah, my apologies then.

Well, maybe it'll help someone else, at any rate.

Mayhap I didn't explain it clearly or you missed my post but I'll try again;

'Stealth' or 'Negative Perception' allows you to get closer to the enemy to attack. The more stealth you have, the closer you can get before the enemy attacks you. How close?

* Minion, pet, Mastermind henchmen (all tiers): 45
* Lieutenant: 50
* Boss, Elite Boss, Archvillain/Hero: 54
* Turret, Giant Monster: 100
* Sniper: 149
* Player: 500
(paragonwiki.com)

Mask Presence and being in the 'Hidden' Status is all you NEED to land a critical, but Mask Presence only has a stealth radius of 40 feet. This means that you do not have the luxury to stand in the middle of the group deciding which enemy to attack as a Stalker would; rather you must pick that target before you get in there, and hit them quickly and aggressively before their little computer brain has time to react.

Smoke Grenade, however, alleviates this by lowering the enemies PERCEPTION by 90, thereby giving YOU 90 more stealth, putting your total stealth, with Mind Link, at 130 ft, which is more than enough for your run of the mill encounters.

Smoke Grenade makes it easier to land the critical by ensuring that nothing is going to knock you out of your hidden status before you manage to attack, but it is not necessary that you have it in order to land the Critical, you only need Mask Presence.

There are other methods of getting stealth that do not require Smoke Grenade, however. Super Speed gives another 35 ft (75 total), and the 'Stealth IO' which would grant 30 ft (70 total). Considering that either of those methods will allow you to have complete invisibility from Minions, Lt's, and Bosses, many would consider it enough stealth for general encounters. Yes, Giant Monsters will see you, but how often do you go about soloing those?


Disclaimer: My own Widow is only at level 12, and as such, this is all analysis from previous game interaction (mostly from playing AR/Dev and Stalkers) and number databases such as RedTomax.Com and Paragonwiki.com

I actually went TOO Freedom, but I can see how six years of Freedom's particular brand of "fun" might cause a mass exodus (atm machine, I know) away from the place.

I think my Lich would click 'No' because he's a little ****.

I might challenge this. While Defenders can buff their defense values a wee bit higher than Corr, I think only Force Fields has a big enough number to make a very noticeable effect. Meanwhile Corrupters have access to the Epic Power Pool power called Scorpion Shield, which grants a rather large defense bonus to S/L that I could not get defenders to emulate.

Unless you meant debuffs as well, which isn't something I've fully calculated for.

It was the quickest example that came to my head that was also the most dramatic damage enhancement I could think of.

Listen to Frosticus though, he's smart.

Point is that defenders biggest advantage is their buff multiplier, not their inherent.

Except that in this case you aren't getting a free car until you pay for gas. Meaning that, while they may have SAID "Free car" they really meant "14.95 a month."

I don't really beleive analogies made this any easier to relate...

You are so willfully ignoring the point that it hurts. We can pretend your paying for the box, the point remains, unless you pay for it, you aren't getting what is inside it.

But I digress, go cancel your subscription and try logging in. You might be quite amazed to find that all your "free" content is suddenly barred from your use. More than this, you would then be quite shocked to discover that, upon reactivating your subscription, your free content is suddenly restored! It is almost as though the two are connected in some unfathomable way.