Defense and Scaling


Aaron123

 

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Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level...

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Wow. Trying to wrap my mind around this.

Looks like I'm not the only one who needs two points of clarification ...

1. Does this affect ALL Defense powers, including power pools and buffs?

2. Judging by the wording, I'm guessing the answer to this is No, but: Will this affect inspirations?


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And why scrappers? Not to be rude, but their "role" is not defensive... perhaps because they ARE changing the way DEF works globally?

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I bet thats just it.


 

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That puts it in a better context. Thanks for the clarification. In that light, it must be that the role of DEF in general will be changing.

But to quote KaliMagdalene, I can't wait to see HOW it's done...

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I hesitate to speculate much at all without elaboration.

I think Arcanaville is on the right track, though.


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To reitterate my post here:

Kind of raises more questions actually.

I thought scaling DEF was promised to the Tank AT, not just certain sets...

And why scrappers? Not to be rude, but their "role" is not defensive... perhaps because they ARE changing the way DEF works globally?

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Why scrappers? Ok, spiderman would be considered a SR scrapper right? He's equaly able to dodge that cosmicly powered being as he is the street punks. If the enemy is way faster then him he's gonna get splatted, but even then he gets hit far less then most heroes.

Iceman would be what, an ice blaster or ice tank? I'd say ice tank since he becomes living ice. He's hit, but most times it just does nothing to him (consider this a miss).

Why shouldn't the Super Reflexes scrapper get scaleing defence too? Our overall defence is lower then an ice tanks defence right? +0 minions are hitting me about 24% of the time due to my increadable agility... but a +2 minion is hitting me 48% of the time? Now I don't care too much about PvP, I do it but don't care. In PvE I've just got to the shadow shard. It's bad enough those eyeballs rip me a new one all the time, the many +2 minions and non-eyeball bosses shouldn't always be ripping me apart as well.


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Wow. Yesterday was great news and today it gets even better. Man this is so good I need a smoke. Any one else need a smoke?


 

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Knowing all things must come with a price, does this mean that defense inspirations will be reduced to an equitable level with their damage resistance brothers?

Namely, reduced to 10/20/30? Please?


Be well, people of CoH.

 

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A Great Change. I'm looking forward to see what else is in Issue 7.

Thanks, States!
-> Scott.


Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?

 

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I'm going to remove that unintentionally inflamatory part of my previous post. The vernacular was all wrong, and I apologize.

On another note, I'm waiting to see how this works before I start getting too excited about this. Hopefully, it will be what most of the Tank community has been looking for.


 

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Some more good news...

Ice Tankers and SR Scrappers have long lamented that Defense doesn't scale with level. Because mobs higher level than a player possess an inherent to hit bonus, Defense isn't as effective over levels as Resistance.

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.

This change is coming in I7

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before you guys get all excited, remember that 0 defence to even level minions and 0 defence to +5 fits into his discription.

I will withold my praise until I see it implemented.


 

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But higher level foes have a greater chance to hit just as higher levels foe hit for more damage.

If a defense power gave you 10% defense, was that 10% only applicable to even-con enemies? Did it give less defense versus higher-con enemies, on top of their already increased chance to hit? Maybe I'm not understanding...


 

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And I have to ask, won't /SR out perform other sets if we have the same defense against +5's?!?


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Regeneration and resistance are both just as effective against +5s as +0s. Why should defense break down?

Since the devs have stated that they balanced defense and resistance based on their performance against even level minions, it only makes logical sense that defense should remain just as effective against higher level villains if the intent is to keep them balanced in higher level settings, particularly big teams and higher slider missions. If anything, this needs to be extended to other areas of scaling tohit, like rank.

If SR becomes overpowered with this change, then in effect *everyone* is, but even so, at least everyone will have the same basic performance across the normal range of villains you're likely to see from heroic solo missions to 8 person invincible missions - minus the LTs, Bosses, and AVs that pop up in those missions, for which SR will still tend to underperform (assuming you believe the devs when they say that the sets are balanced at the even level minion point).

A lot hinges, though, on what is meant by "same defense" as I indicated in my previous post. Once we have a better handle on how that was implemented, we'll have a better handle on calculating what the net effect is, to see if its balanced or not.

My own testing shows that in particular SR and invuln are surprisingly balanced in mitigation if you restrict yourself to looking at only even level minions, which was presumably always the devs goal. You could make an argument both ways at this point. Its the level and rank tohit buffs that primarily unbalance the two in PvE: if this defense scaling effect correctly nullifies those tohit buffs in a proportional way, that would bring all four scrapper secondaries closer in mitigation than they have ever been (although, I should add the disclaimer that I'm talking about comparing the absolute best SR can do, verses only pretty darned good invuln and regen builds, not their absolute best effort).


[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

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I'm going to remove that unintentionally inflamatory part of my previous post. The vernacular was all wrong, and I apologize.

On another note, I'm waiting to see how this works before I start getting too excited about this. Hopefully, it will be what most of the Tank community has been looking for.

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Thank you.

I'll edit my response, because I was overly reactionary.


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Awesome! - Thanks States. /EA is in scope too, right?


 

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MOOOOOOOOOOD!!


 

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It shouldn't be "equal".

Set a "rate" to reduce foes lv acc buff will be much better.


"equal" is too powreful.


But I still have to say, "this is a good idea".


 

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So good to hear some promising news.

I hope this means that my Force Fielders have a chance at having useful powers again.

So here are some preliminary questions, some already mentioned above.

1. Do Def+ inspirations work the same way?

2. What happens after 5+ levels? How does defense degrade from there? Is it based on the old defense scales players have predicted?

3. Does Def+ still increase for -1 and lower mobs?

4. Do Team and non-team buffs have the same Def calculations that you are referring to in this change? E.g. Force Field Insulation and Deflection shield.

5. Have all Def powers been accounted for in the game on the Hero and Villain side? Including PB's/WS's?

6. What about PvP? Is it fully implemented there? In particular, what about being hit with a Def Debuff power when fighting critters nearby? How does Def scale then?

7. Are you all pretty confident that the current standards for Def values in the powers are fine with this change? Most of the values seemed too low, but this change might make Def sets viable now. I'd bet many of us are fearing the nerf coming down the road once you find that, in fact, Def sets don't get crazy damage (if that's possible even with these changes).

8. Does this mean that critter Def also works the same way? E.g. do AVs/Hamidon/Mitos/other critters that have Def armors have the same scaling changes or is it just for players?

I'm sure there are more problems that others will spot, but as always, inquiring players want to know.


 

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OK, this is damned cool.

My wife is probably going to squeel with joy when I tell her this, since she loves her MA/SR scrapper.

Please, pretty please, tell me this applies to to-hit debuffs and force fields as well? I'll squeel as well for my DDD and my poor lamented FF defender.


 

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It shouldn't be "equal".

Set a "rate" to reduce foes lv acc buff will be much better.


"equal" is too powreful.


But I still have to say, "this is a good idea".

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I think that we should wait for actual testing to decide whether it's too powerful or not powerful enough.


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This is truely good news. No, actually great news. But it really does need some more explanation as to the specifics of how it is going to be accomplished. ***Sentence deleted due to Statesman stateting differently in a different post***

Also, I hope there is plenty of time to test these changes as a change like this could easily (in my uninformed opinion) introduce new broken code that was previously working. I could be wrong, I'm not a programmer, but it needs tested greatly. I wholeheartedly volunteer my ice/fire tank's time to test this out once it hits test.


 

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So explain how exactly this works for us if you would. Are all villians up to +5 only given a chance to hit of 50% ?? Or something else?


I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.

 

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I haven't played a low level /SR for a couple of months, so at low levels, this makes a difference. But at higher levels, with SO's...i'm fighting on Invinc...without insp. If you allow my defense to work this good against +5's....that's just too good, imo.

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Maybe, and maybe not.

Right now Resist can go all the way to 90%, and if you found an enemy that was 50 levels higher than you, his damage would still be mitigated to only 10% of what it was meant to be. Off course, less than 10% of that damage may be needed to one shoot you.

With this, its the same. Only diference is, once the enemy hits, it will do a looot of damage.

With this change, if done with the formula i posted a few pages ago, it will mean that a stone tankeer will get a true equivalent of 69.5 smash/lethal resist with the combination of resistance and defense.


 

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Regeneration and resistance are both just as effective against +5s as +0s. Why should defense break down?


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Not exactly. Damage resistance prevents X% of incoming damage, but that damage is a heck of a lot greater from a +5 than it is from a +0. Similarly, regeneration is only good if the rate of incoming damage is equal to or less than your regen rate. Again, higher level enemies do more damage...

I do agree that if a power gives you +X% defense, it should always give +X% defense, however, higher level enemies should have a greater chance of hitting you. So if an even con minin has a 50% chance to hit, a +1 should have like 52% chance to hit, or something...


 

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I doubt accuracy debuffs will be affected at all. Why? Because they *arguably* don't need it.

ALL +defense abilities/sets were hit by the Global Defense Reduction. Although mob tohit values were lowered, it still translated into a direct reduction in player effectiveness.

Tohit values WERE NOT TOUCHED, and if anything were made much stronger by the overall reduction to mob tohit numbers.

On topic: This is a great change to balance out defense based powers. But like others I am curious: how will this change affect +6 mobs? Will this change move over to CoV and other CoX powersets like Cold Domination and Force Fields?


 

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I think this is great news, but I'm a naturally pessimistic person. So, true to form, I must ask: What about PvP?
This seems like a purely PvE change, considering the nature of what was described.
As far as PvP is concerned though, Defense still lacks, primarily because of the abundance of ToHit modifiers in the game and how it all figures into the ToHit equation.

PvP lvl 30 and below is right where it should be as far as Def is concerned (IMO). In Warburg (lvl 38) and upper tier Arena matches though, Defense is a joke unless you have Elude, Overload or that Ninjitsu lvl 38 power maxed out with Defense SOs.

While I certainly appreciate the improvement to the PvE game, I certainly hope the PvP aspect is still being looked at.


 

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Wait a min.... could they simply be adjusting the purple patch so that there is no adjustment to accuracy/tohit for higher/lower level enemies until after +5 or lower than -5?

I can't wrap my brain around this at all.


Be well, people of CoH.