Defense and Scaling
By
Aaron123,
Posted on: 2006-01-11 16:47 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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FYI: Darkest Night
Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)
1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.
Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.
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*Blink* *blink*
Well, as mentioned previously, it was on the boards here that a developer told us that it was a 30% (divisible) debuff (which would match the the -15% to the base_to_hit that you were talking about earlier.)
The new numbers you are talking about don't make sense from what we were previously told.
(IIRC, Darkest Night was 30% base debuff accuracy, smoke and smoke grenade were both 15%. They used Cat A SOs, so were 33% each (now up to 95% increase for 3SOs.))
I don't understand your numbers above at all other than Defenders are at 125% of the "base" debuff.
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Bolded for what the heck? I dont think you cleared much up here Castle.
Guides have talked about DN being a 35% base To Hit Debuff unehanced.
For example, this guide
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I'm going to add a third whahuuuuh?
Castle, I'm incredibly confused by how these debuffs are calculated now. I can see that the numbers add up to 37.5%, but what do those numbers mean? What is base Scale? Defender modifier?
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I'm going to add a third whahuuuuh?
Castle, I'm incredibly confused by how these debuffs are calculated now. I can see that the numbers add up to 37.5%, but what do those numbers mean? What is base Scale? Defender modifier?
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Base scale and defender modifier are just used internally at cryptic and doesn't mean anything to us.
37.5 means that an even con minion will have 12.5% chance to hit with darkest night on, and you'll need defence or more debuffs to reach 5%. I suspect a few out of shadowfall, fearsome stare, some dark blasts will do it.
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You also neglect the fact that Invulnerability also had a very powerful Invincibility
[/ QUOTE ] Invinc is irrelevant to the discussion. We are not talking about whether /SR balances with /Inv. We are talking about the +RES caps versus the +DEF mitigation caps. Those +RES caps are extended to all toons, not just /Inv.
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In that specific tangent, you were talking about how Elude is like Unstoppable, and thus not a reason to give a higher floor to scrappers than tankers. I pointed out that when the change was made, Unstoppable could be perma and Invincibility was incredibly powerful, so pointing to that as a reason that scrappers should have a different to-hit floor than tankers completely ignores the factors that made changing the resist cap necessary for balance - those same factors are not present here.
Of course, when it's pointed out, you move the goalposts.
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FYI: Darkest Night
Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)
1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.
Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.
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*Blink* *blink*
Well, as mentioned previously, it was on the boards here that a developer told us that it was a 30% (divisible) debuff (which would match the the -15% to the base_to_hit that you were talking about earlier.)
The new numbers you are talking about don't make sense from what we were previously told.
(IIRC, Darkest Night was 30% base debuff accuracy, smoke and smoke grenade were both 15%. They used Cat A SOs, so were 33% each (now up to 95% increase for 3SOs.))
I don't understand your numbers above at all other than Defenders are at 125% of the "base" debuff.
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Bolded for what the heck? I dont think you cleared much up here Castle.
Guides have talked about DN being a 35% base To Hit Debuff unehanced.
For example, this guide
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I *think* he's trying to say the base of Darkest Night (after the 125% boost from being a defender) is -18.75% to the Base_to_hit.
This is actually a little higher than the 30-35% we were told (it is effectively 37.5%.)
3xSO would get that to -74.25% -ACC debuff (or -37.125 to the base to hit.)
That means the old, pre-ED Darkest Night with 6xSOs was actually a -111.75% debuff! (WOWZA!)
I am no longer totally confused. Just moderately.
Still here, even after all this time!
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FYI: Darkest Night
Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)
1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.
Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.
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Aha! I was right all this time, and most people thought I was crazy. I gauged it at 37.5% (same as the damage debuff), and wasn't that far off.
The 30% bit is for corruptors, as far as I know.
Well it's good to know that Darkest Night hasn't changed, anyway.
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I'm going to add a third whahuuuuh?
Castle, I'm incredibly confused by how these debuffs are calculated now. I can see that the numbers add up to 37.5%, but what do those numbers mean? What is base Scale? Defender modifier?
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Base scale and defender modifier are just used internally at cryptic and doesn't mean anything to us.
37.5 means that an even con minion will have 12.5% chance to hit with darkest night on, and you'll need defence or more debuffs to reach 5%. I suspect a few out of shadowfall, fearsome stare, some dark blasts will do it.
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If they mean something to Cryptic, they mean something to us. 
Knowing how the game views debuffs helps us figure out how they actually work. AFAIK, nobody's gone to the point of testing, say, Rad Infection against 100 mobs at +0, +1, +2, +3, +4, bosses, AV's, controller v. defender v. corrupter, and seeing what actually happens. If there's a way to figure that out, I'd like to know. And knowing that Cryptic doesn't just have a -37.5% number for Defender DN, and instead has a managerie of modifers that get to that number, helps to figure that out.
(AFAIK, btw, you can floor even-level minions w/ just Darkest Night. I've tested it for RI and Hurricane, and w/ 3 debuff enhancements, it does floor them.)
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FYI: Darkest Night
Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)
1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.
Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.
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*Blink* *blink*
Well, as mentioned previously, it was on the boards here that a developer told us that it was a 30% (divisible) debuff (which would match the the -15% to the base_to_hit that you were talking about earlier.)
The new numbers you are talking about don't make sense from what we were previously told.
(IIRC, Darkest Night was 30% base debuff accuracy, smoke and smoke grenade were both 15%. They used Cat A SOs, so were 33% each (now up to 95% increase for 3SOs.))
I don't understand your numbers above at all other than Defenders are at 125% of the "base" debuff.
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Bolded for what the heck? I dont think you cleared much up here Castle.
Guides have talked about DN being a 35% base To Hit Debuff unehanced.
For example, this guide
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I *think* he's trying to say the base of Darkest Night (after the 125% boost from being a defender) is -18.75% to the Base_to_hit.
This is actually a little higher than the 30-35% we were told (it is effectively 37.5%.)
3xSO would get that to -74.25% -ACC debuff (or -37.125 to the base to hit.)
That means the old, pre-ED Darkest Night with 6xSOs was actually a -111.75% debuff! (WOWZA!)
I am no longer totally confused. Just moderately.
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Thanks. Last time I did much math was Grade 12, and that was many years ago. I wasnt very good at it then, and I certainly havent gotten any better.
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I don't even want to try and comprehend all this base scale, defender modifier whatsit.
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The 30% bit is for corruptors, as far as I know.
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That means the Corruptor ToHit Modifier is .1
This data seems to be stored in the client; I think it'd be pretty simple to calculate it across ATs if they would just give us the 'Scale' of each power.
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Castle, I'm incredibly confused by how these debuffs are calculated now. I can see that the numbers add up to 37.5%, but what do those numbers mean? What is base Scale? Defender modifier?
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I'll help out Castle by saying that the game wasn't designed around numbers like 0.37125. Those are not numbers that are easy to scribble around with. They were balanced around "simple" numbers like "this attack does 100 damage, so that one does 50% more; 150" and so forth. The actual "numbers" that the devs use are normalized numbers.
Just like we use the brawl index to compare two damage powers together, instead of their "true" damage, the devs design the game with "Base" numbers, and then the game multiplies them by scaling factors to get the "true" numbers.
In other words, back in the beginning of time, the devs picked a debuff power, whatever it was, and called it "1.0" (or 100, or whatever). And then all other debuff powers were scaled around that, which is easy to do with a pencil and the back of an envelope. Then they figured out how strong they sort of had to be to get the effects they wanted, and used scaling factors to bring *all* the numbers down into the range they want.
And then, of course, because defenders and controller have different strength debuffs (defenders stronger than controllers), defenders have a scale factor that is different than controllers: thus, the "defender multiple" (as opposed to the "controller multiple" which is probably 0.1).
Castle is free, of course, to thwack me if that's completely off the mark in this case.
Mathematically, by the way, if Defense was originally designed that way, that points to how we could have gotten where we are now (because using that methodology partially obscures the true effect of defense, which doesn't "honor" such scaling factors in an intuitive way).
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Actually, this topic got started when Arcana suggested the 90% mitigation floor was linked to the resistance cap of 90%. A comparision that breaks down on a number of levels....one of which is that there is little of or no historical evidence of a consistent treament of +DEF and +RES in that manner. Jack himself argued that +DEF is not the same as +RES. Arcana repeated that very same idea herself. Now you are trying to tell me the two should be linked because on a spreadsheet, they come out to offer the same mitigation
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Well, I say that the two should be linked because:
1. I want defense and resistance to scale in exactly the same way when normalized to average damage mitigation.
2. I want defense and resistance to scale across the same dynamic range, to the best extent possible.
When I attempted to achieve both goals a long time ago, I came up with (among other more complex possibilites):
1. Institute an intermediate floor (assuming one did not already exist).
2. Swap tohit increases with exterior multiple bonuses (today, we call these accuracy bonuses but I didn't know at first).
3. Roughly scale defense numbers to be about half the numerical magnitude of resistance numbers in comparable sets that have them, then tweak the numbers to balance total set performance.
Its questionable if the devs are thinking the exact same thing as me, but clearly they are thinking something at least in the same ballpark as me, because it they are not, the current changes are unfathomable. I'm going to go with the devs think the two goals listed above are both laudable and achievable, until someone comes up with a better idea.
If you want to suggest that the devs have a completely different motive for making the changes they are making, including the changes related to the intermediate floor, because they are a direct consequence of attempting to achieve the two goals I list above, there exists a very high burden of proof to suggest anything different.
Although I talked about this in late '04 a bit, and in random posts in early '05, I first posted this as an actual Suggestion thread in April '05 - I found a copy of the thread I saved in my recovered files. I wish I could repost an entire thread easily: it shows both my remarkable prescience and my amazing ignorance at the time simultaneously. And I don't mean to embarrass Obitus specifically, but I thought within the context of I5/I6 that this comment by Obitus was just too funny - not because his comment is funny, but because it points to just how far we've come in three issues:
Obitus:
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Your reaction is perfectly understandable. From a pure numbers' perspective, Arcana's suggestion does seem more consistent, if nothing else. And again, I don't intend to denigrate the work and thought that he put into his post.
Unfortunately, because of the way the math works, I don't think any amount of tweaking the DEF powers themselves would help much. Basically, anyone with a total DEF of under 100% will be nerfed against reasonable opponents, and anyone with 100% or more DEF will be uber against everything. There's really not much middle ground. They could, I suppose, adjust mobs' BTH values across the board, but that sounds like a rather massive task.
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(Emphasis mine)
LOL at "anyone with 100% or more DEF."
Its interesting when I think about it, that we basically hit on just about every possible reasonable suggestion in those acc vs defense threads, even the notion of tweaking base tohit of villains, because it ultimately spawned this idea in response:
Me:
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Ah, actually, this idea has a lot of conceptual tangles that have to be addressed, and this is one of them. For each +1 level a foe is higher than you, they get an accuracy buff of +7.5% or so, at least that is the number I've read and work with. You assume under my scheme that this number would affect the base to-hit. It shouldn't, because it is, in effect, an accuracy buff. Old style thinking says the 7.5% should be *additively* combined, Arcana-style thinking says that should be *multiplicatively* combined.
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"Multiplicative combined." Hey, younger and more ignorant version of me, thats an accuracy buff, sheesh. 
If Stargazer had found that thread and corrected my goofed up tohit equation, I might have been shouting something a little less gibberishy much earlier. 
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In that specific tangent, you were talking about how Elude is like Unstoppable
[/ QUOTE ] Not really. What I said is that if there were +DEF mitigation caps, they shouldn't be ignored by Elude. You want to dismiss Elude as some anomally, then argue that it is allowed to do such a thing for balance reasons. That argument is lacking. At least five power sets across three AT's have Elude level defense...hardly something you can dismiss for convience of your argument.
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Unstoppable could be perma and Invincibility was incredibly powerful
[/ QUOTE ] That's irrelevalnt to the discussion about whether there are caps. "Caps" are not ignored for balance sake. You seem to act like Elude was never permable at the same time Elude was permable. They were.
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I pointed out that when the change was made, Unstoppable could be perma and Invincibility was incredibly powerful, so pointing to that as a reason that scrappers should have a different to-hit floor than tankers
[/ QUOTE ] This statement doesn't make any sense. I'm not pointing to them as a reason for anything at all. You are the one who is arguing the balance consideration of those powers as justification for why there is no separate +DEF cap for scrappers versus tankers.
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completely ignores the factors that made changing the resist cap necessary for balance
[/ QUOTE ] As I stated, the resist caps were imposed on everybody not just /lnv sporting P-Uns and Invinc. In addition, those caps have not been changed despite massive nerfing of those powers..why? Because those caps have nothing to do with any notion of maximum mitigation of +DEF versus +RES. They are strictly imposed so that Tankers will be the toughest. For that exact and very same reason, the same limitation should be put on non-tankers for defense if you are going to spout notions of dmg mitigation maximums. Hell, Arcana even agrees in theory.
I don't. Imposing mitigation maximums is arbitrary. While I agree that since this is a game, there should always be some risk, there is no reason why a defensive scrapper couldn't be just as difficult to hit as a tanker and arguably more so. While I can understand that no scrapper could be as "tough" as a tanker, +DEF is used for elusiveness...avoidance of damage...not mitigation of it. The mitigation is only applicable when we talk about statistic performance over a long term. +RES and +DEF have fundamental differences in a game with secondary effects.
The problem arises when you use +DEF to simulate something other than avoidance...except that's what it does, regardless of the conceptual justification. As Arcana acknowledges, each AT could argue why it could be the best at deflecting damage.
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Of course, when it's pointed out, you move the goalposts.
[/ QUOTE ] I haven't moved the goal posts one milimeter. You just can't seem to hit them so you're shifting the blame.
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I haven't moved the goal posts one milimeter. You just can't seem to hit them so you're shifting the blame.
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You're not really supposed to hit the goalposts.
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In that specific tangent, you were talking about how Elude is like Unstoppable
[/ QUOTE ] Not really. What I said is that if there were +DEF mitigation caps, they shouldn't be ignored by Elude. You want to dismiss Elude as some anomally, then argue that it is allowed to do such a thing for balance reasons. That argument is lacking. At least five power sets across three AT's have Elude level defense...hardly something you can dismiss for convience of your argument.
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I didn't dismiss Elude as an anomaly. I said that it does not duplicate - now - the conditions that - then - prompted the decision to reduce the resist cap.
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Unstoppable could be perma and Invincibility was incredibly powerful
[/ QUOTE ] That's irrelevalnt to the discussion about whether there are caps. "Caps" are not ignored for balance sake. You seem to act like Elude was never permable at the same time Elude was permable. They were.
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What? I'm talking about the state of the game - now - when we got the news about the change to defense scaling as compared to the state of the game - then - when resist caps were changed. I'm not talking about how Elude worked then, because it does not work exactly the same now, and how it worked over a year ago is not relevant to how it might be balanced now.
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I pointed out that when the change was made, Unstoppable could be perma and Invincibility was incredibly powerful, so pointing to that as a reason that scrappers should have a different to-hit floor than tankers
[/ QUOTE ] This statement doesn't make any sense. I'm not pointing to them as a reason for anything at all. You are the one who is arguing the balance consideration of those powers as justification for why there is no separate +DEF cap for scrappers versus tankers.
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When resist caps were added, some scrappers (invuln) could hit the 90% caps with ease and keep them there. That's why the resist caps were added. That is explicitly why they were added. Now? Without buffing, or without a power that can massively buff defense all the time, the fact that scrappers can achieve the same 90% mitigation as resistance could isn't as big of a deal, because scrappers can't achieve that 90% mitigation all the time without buffing.
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completely ignores the factors that made changing the resist cap necessary for balance
[/ QUOTE ] As I stated, the resist caps were imposed on everybody not just /lnv sporting P-Uns and Invinc. In addition, those caps have not been changed despite massive nerfing of those powers..why? Because those caps have nothing to do with any notion of maximum mitigation of +DEF versus +RES. They are strictly imposed so that Tankers will be the toughest. For that exact and very same reason, the same limitation should be put on non-tankers for defense if you are going to spout notions of dmg mitigation maximums. Hell, Arcana even agrees in theory.
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The reason that the cap was imposed on all non-tankers is because it would be unbalanced and stupid to just apply it to invuln scrappers to keep them from hitting the caps. It certainly wasn't an issue that blasters or controllers were hitting the resist caps at the time.
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I don't. Imposing mitigation maximums is arbitrary. While I agree that since this is a game, there should always be some risk, there is no reason why a defensive scrapper couldn't be just as difficult to hit as a tanker and arguably more so. While I can understand that no scrapper could be as "tough" as a tanker, +DEF is used for elusiveness...avoidance of damage...not mitigation of it. The mitigation is only applicable when we talk about statistic performance over a long term. +RES and +DEF have fundamental differences in a game with secondary effects.
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Yes, I acknowledged this.
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The problem arises when you use +DEF to simulate something other than avoidance...except that's what it does, regardless of the conceptual justification. As Arcana acknowledges, each AT could argue why it could be the best at deflecting damage.
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And potentially creates more problems than it solves.
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Of course, when it's pointed out, you move the goalposts.
[/ QUOTE ] I haven't moved the goal posts one milimeter. You just can't seem to hit them so you're shifting the blame.
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How about this:
I explain the conditions that lead to the reduction of the resist cap. While it was applied to every AT but tankers, the reason was specifically that /Invulnerability scrappers could hit the resist cap against everything but psi and toxic, and the fact that they could also get enough defense from Invincibility to floor just about any enemy made it possible for them to tank well enough to replace tankers and deal ~150% the damage a tanker could. I then point out that defense does not have an extreme outlier that even remotely compares to this, which probably makes the need to give different ATs different "defense caps". You then say, and I quote:
"That's irrelevant to the discussion."
Goalpost. Shifted. You come across points you don't like and dismiss them out of hand.
The sad thing is, I didn't come in to start an argument, but simply to point out why the devs might have chosen to not start with different floors. I don't know how it'll play out on test, and am not trying to predict the future. However, I do remember the past: [ QUOTE ]
2. Tankers damage is way out of whack compared to Scrappers' Resistance. Previously, I stated that Scrappers couldn't reach the Resistance cap. And they can't - UNLESS they resort to the Power Pool. That was my error. A correctly built Scrapper (with a lot of Enhancement slots) CAN reach the 90% cap. But a Tanker can NEVER do the same amount of damage as a Scrapper. This needs to be rectified. A Tanker should be as good at Resistance as a Scrapper is at Damage.
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The sad thing is, I didn't come in to start an argument, but simply to point out why the devs might have chosen to not start with different floors. I don't know how it'll play out on test, and am not trying to predict the future. However, I do remember the past:
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2. Tankers damage is way out of whack compared to Scrappers' Resistance. Previously, I stated that Scrappers couldn't reach the Resistance cap. And they can't - UNLESS they resort to the Power Pool. That was my error. A correctly built Scrapper (with a lot of Enhancement slots) CAN reach the 90% cap. But a Tanker can NEVER do the same amount of damage as a Scrapper. This needs to be rectified. A Tanker should be as good at Resistance as a Scrapper is at Damage.
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Your memory of the past is not in error. The resist caps were originally 90% for everyone because they were not originally meant to be easily reachable - by anyone. That was strongly hinted at back then. In effect the 90% resist cap was equivalent to the 5% tohit floor in the sense that it wasn't meant to be a specific limit on any one AT, but a general limit on the game as a whole. In essence, a "physics" limit.
That changed when the devs decided to reduce the non-tanker resistance limit to 75%; that was specifically done because at the time they did not want to monkey around with powers too much, but did want to in essence *ensure* that scrappers could not reach the same resistance number - and therefore damage mitigation - as tankers: no matter what they did or how they might have been buffed. I almost get the feeling that Statesman, having been wrong about scrappers being able to hit the caps once, decided to trump high resistance scrapper builds once and for all by capping scrapper resists off.
The 5% floor has lasted as long as it has simply because a similar issue between scrappers and tanks hasn't come up for defense as it did for resistance. Weirdly, the tanker set with the best defense was invuln with invincibility (invincibility with normal - for that time - numbers in its field was effectively perma-elude). Its not fair to compare the 75% resistance scrapper cap differing from the 90% resistance tanker cap relative to everyone having the same tohit floor, because the 75% resistance cap was added later. Originally, everyone had the same resistance cap, and everyone had the same tohit floor.
The scrapper resist cap was lowered *specifically* to deal with scrappers approaching tanker mitigation value: SR does not encroach on Ice in quite the same way, because while SR and Ice now have the same defensive mitigation numbers (something that goes a long way towards erasing one of the few differences of opinion Circeus and I have: factoring in elude) but Ice has much more mitigation extras than SR (in particular, hoarfrost - really the only *other* difference of opinion I have with Circeus), SR does not encroach on Ice in nearly the same way that invuln scrappers used to encroach on invuln tankers. The specific triggering reason for adjusting resistance caps doesn't exist for defense so the situation isn't really analogous.
What we are left with is SR gaining too much of an advantage against invuln by having the lower mitigation maximum. But curiously, the only way for SR to really take advantage of that maximum is to use elude and this change *lowers* the effectiveness of elude.
Conceptually, I can see fiddling with the tohit floors - but other compensating adjustments might need to take place. But the specific *reason* for doing it to resistances doesn't exist for defense. The 75% resistance cap was a sledgehammer solution to the problem of scrapper (resistance) encroachment on tankers. No such defensive analogy currently exists to force such a change.
In fact, the *best* example of such a potential problem was really the two invincibilities: both scrapper and tankers could floor villains, making them basically equal in strength if not equal numerically. But the devs elected that time to make a surgical change, and not a sledgehammer one: they altered invincibility. That suggests that any other defense encroachments that *might* exist will more likely be addressed with defensive value changes, and not a change to the tohit floor (had the I5 reductions happened in '04, there might not have even needed to be a change to the resist caps, which further suggests the situation creating the need to alter the tohit floors also might no longer exist).
*IF* they were going to make the tohit floor variable, the time to do so would be now, when they are already making changes to the tohit formula. So I doubt any such change is currently being planned.
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Wow. That has got to be one of the most articulate, well thought-out, and rational posts I've ever read on these forums. Kudos to you!
DS
Let's look at an inconsistent argument you put forth...
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It certainly wasn't an issue that blasters or controllers were hitting the resist caps at the time.
[/ QUOTE ] None the less it was imposed on them...so regardless of the context, a hard limit was set.
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I then point out that defense does not have an extreme outlier that even remotely compares to this
[/ QUOTE ] First off, that's wrong. Perma-Elude allowed /SR to tank as well as anyone in the game in an normal situation. Hell, perma-Elude scrappers were soloing AV's. This is total encrouchment on needing an Ice tanker for anything.
Second, please show what % of stuff an Ice tanker could cap defensively that a perma-Elude scrapper back in I3 could not.
Third, while a scrappers +RES was reduced to 75%...there was no cap placed on how much +DEF a scrapper could get from Invinc.
The bold face truth is the changes were made to /Inv were done strictly to appease people on a mathmatical level. /Inv was still tanking like there was no tomorrow, but the devs could say, "well all their powers are only 75% effective." And they still did not impose any +DEF mitigation max. Invinc scrappers were arguably getting more defense than Ice Tankers.
Even if we accept your argument that there is no +DEF counterpart, so what? Blasters and Controllers got the limit..as well as every other non-tank in the game...regardless of whether they can get that +RES. Your counter is that it would be stupid not to impose it on everyone? Kind of out-of-hand ignores any reason that they might specifically want to impose it on everyone. They could have imposed it just on scrappers...after all Kheldians have a different limit.
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I then point out that defense does not have an extreme outlier that even remotely compares to this, which probably makes the need to give different ATs different "defense caps".
[/ QUOTE ] And we know this is wrong because they nerfed perma-Elude...but they didn't do it by imposing a +DEF mitigation cap.
Putting global caps in the game is an exercise that does not focus on specifics, but on design philosophy. There is a 5% to hit floor regardless because every thing should have some chance to hit you. This is a completely separate concept from +DEF max mitigation. The two can have absolutely nothing to do with one another, evidenced by the fact that we have a 95% accuracy limitation....simply a philosophical based design choice.
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I then point out that defense does not have an extreme outlier that even remotely compares to this
[/ QUOTE ] This whole assertion of yours was based on ignoring Elude. Your rationale "a) overkill...b) not available all the time." Putting Elude back in to the status of the game now, then, or whenever, delivers a karate chop to the neck of your argumnet. Elude/Overload/Moment of Glory..etc... all allow +DEF mitigation equal to Ice tankers. In team of 8, we can take down a Hatched Kraken in under 3 minutes. With Hasten, Fort, Speed, boost, etc, Elude can be up a whole lotta the time, elminating the need for an Ice Tanker..if it were not for Gauntlet. Remember, you can't bring in the more hit point factor because that was true for Inv/ vs /Inv as well and didn't stop the imposition of the +RES cap.
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I explain the conditions that lead to the reduction of the resist cap.
[/ QUOTE ] The conditions were all about how the numbers came out. The devs were simply making the numbers look right. They did not go in and prove that a tanker could still out tank a scrapper because he had more hit points and got more value from Dull Pain, which they could have. The simply made a global decision that scrappers could not hit the same +RES cap, regardless, because they never touched those caps after powers changed.
So even now when /Inv can't reach the cap, or even come close to it in non-S/L, they still haven't removed the caps. Thus, the actual "power" of the powers is irrelevant. It was and remains about the numbers of Tankers vs Scrappers. If it was just about those powers and the context, they could have surgically made the changes.
If we are talking about 'now' where 1==2, then scrappers/stalkers/brutes, are getting the same +DEF mitigation that Tankers are...which by extension is the same +RES mitigation. If the to-hit floor is linked to a max mitigation philosophy in the same vein as that imposed by the +RES cap, then Elude violates those +RES numbers for Scrappers vs Tankers in our brand new 1==2 paradigm.
I see no evidence linking the to-hit floor with any notions of a +DEF mitigation max philosophy. We'll see if that changes.
Goal posts firmly planted. Wide left.
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FYI: Darkest Night
Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)
1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.
Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.
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Are you telling us that Darkest Night has never been able to floor a minions ACC to 5%, even in I3???
Sorry _Castle_ I must call bogus on this. There's even spreadsheats with thousands of samples showing this was possible.
Something is fishy here...
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Are you telling us that Darkest Night has never been able to floor a minions ACC to 5%, even in I3???
[/ QUOTE ] Castle's post is about ED DN.
The 1.98 would be 2.98 under I3 and the debuff would be around 55% if my math is correct...so yeah..it was close to capping +2 minions back in I3...assuming you slotted it with six debuffs.
Let me just restate something from one of my earlier posts for the record.
I can see how the devs might have set the resistance cap based on the minion to-hit floor. They couldn't ever let us cap +0's because we would and then there would literally be zero risk for gaining xp. Once they decided 5% is as low or they were willing to go, 90% would have been the corresponding cap for res against minions
However....if that was their thinking, then they never should have gotten out the front door because their method of implementation never got them past +0 Lt's, Bosses. I have a hard to accepting that the 10% concept would be abandon as soon as one faced a Lt. or Boss of the same level.
The idea that's its taken them over 2 years to discover the formula that allows them to suddenly scale defense and preserve the 10% floor is also less than compelling. It wasn't until recently that Statesman even stated that defensive scaling was a problem.
...and for the record../SR's passive resitance doesn't scale either. As we faced higher level mobs, the higher damage means our health based resistance is in effect for a narrower window of time.
Edit:
Whatever, Mieux. Go on thinking what you want. I'm not interested in fighting with you again over something irrelevant and trivial. That is, arguing with you over what I said vs. your interpretation of what I said. I don't feel my actual posts are irrelevant or trivial.
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Let me just restate something from one of my earlier posts for the record.
I can see how the devs might have set the resistance cap based on the minion to-hit floor. They couldn't ever let us cap +0's because we would and then there would literally be zero risk for gaining xp. Once they decided 5% is as low or they were willing to go, 90% would have been the corresponding cap for res against minions
However....if that was their thinking, then they never should have gotten out the front door because their method of implementation never got them past +0 Lt's, Bosses. I have a hard to accepting that the 10% concept would be abandon as soon as one faced a Lt. or Boss of the same level.
The idea that's its taken them over 2 years to discover the formula that allows them to suddenly scale defense and preserve the 10% floor is also less than compelling. It wasn't until recently that Statesman even stated that defensive scaling was a problem.
...and for the record../SR's passive resitance doesn't scale either. As we faced higher level mobs, the higher damage means our health based resistance is in effect for a narrower window of time.
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Actually, defense versus resistance scaling has been a "known" issue for quite a while. And while determining how to fix it may have taken a while, *implementing* it has taken a bit of time too.
We all wish it could have been sooner, but the fact that it has been (mostly) fixed is very good.
Still here, even after all this time!
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I'm not interested in fighting with you again over something irrelevant and trivial.
[/ QUOTE ] Agreed. Props to you for saying it first.
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You're arguing now, we're talking about the situation that will exist in issue 7, from the information available now.
[/ QUOTE ] Actually, this topic got started when Arcana suggested the 90% mitigation floor was linked to the resistance cap of 90%. A comparision that breaks down on a number of levels....one of which is that there is little of or no historical evidence of a consistent treament of +DEF and +RES in that manner. Jack himself argued that +DEF is not the same as +RES. Arcana repeated that very same idea herself. Now you are trying to tell me the two should be linked because on a spreadsheet, they come out to offer the same mitigation...or do they?
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You point to Unstoppable as allowing Invulnerable scrappers to cap their resists, but you carefully neglect the fact that Unstoppable could be perma at the time .....
[/ QUOTE ] What? There was a point in time when both Un and Elude were both perma and both not perma.
In addition, they lowered the res caps for /Inv...and that was strictly done because of the tank/scrapper encroachment. They didnt' touch Elude even though we have +DEF tankers. They lowered Elude as part of the global +DEF nerf. It had nothing to do with +RES powers.
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You also neglect the fact that Invulnerability also had a very powerful Invincibility
[/ QUOTE ] Invinc is irrelevant to the discussion. We are not talking about whether /SR balances with /Inv. We are talking about the +RES caps versus the +DEF mitigation caps. Those +RES caps are extended to all toons, not just /Inv.
The fact is, arguing the various sets as proof of a link between +DEF and +RES is unprofitable. There was never any straight +RES set, even if there was a straight +DEF set. And remember, the devs got the balances horribly wrong when we look at launch /SR verus launch /Inv. We have to look at what was theoretically achievable.
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mitigation for 1% defense is, under the new mechanic, equal to 2% resistance.
[/ QUOTE ] Only on a spreadsheet.
Honestly tho, the topic is starting lose my interest. It's not that consequential (if it is at all).