This is not an in dept guide to an specific protection, instead its meant to generaly explain how everything comes together to keep you alive. Also this guide has no math in it, if you want the one with math you can find it here
Introduction
There are multiple layers that stand between you and death, many players just account for Def and Res, and give only Resist all credit and glory, but there are quiet a few other things that can be used to prevent kissing the ground.
Keep in mind that each type of protection is like a big wall between the enemy and you, something will not get to be affected by the third wall if it was stoped flat by the second one.
Lets go through them in the order they affect you, shall we?
Holds
Holds are status effects that entirely disable the enemy so that there is no attack coming your way at all. This is the first line of defense, and here we count not only literal holds, but also soft holds like Sleep and Fear, or Mini holds like Vomit and Knock backs. I dont bother quantifying this one factor as basically no melee set other than Dark Aura has it as a mean to protect itself, and its just too hard to quantify. It's not impossible simply hard and beyond the scope of this guide.
-Recharge
-Recharge slows down the recharge speed of enemies attacks effectively reducing the amount of hits you can suffer in any period of time. Recharge suffers of three disadvantages:
<ul type="square">[*] The first wave of hits (the so famous Alpha Strike) is unaffected by it, as all attacks there are already charged up the moment you jump the enemy.
[*] The effect is of lower impact against higher level enemies, since it is a debuff.
[*] Although it increases the recharge time of an attack, it does not increase the activation time. Meaning that an attack that takes 2 seconds to hit, and 4 seconds to recharge will only have the 4 seconds increased, not the full 6 seconds, making the benefit a bit more random[/list]
Only melee set that relies heavily on this effect is Tanker's Ice Armor.
-Acc and Defense
Defense increases your chance to entirely deflect an attack.
-Accuracy lowers the chance of the enemy hitting you.
-Acc and Defense both act together. Since I7 they will be affecting all enemies equally and basically 10 Defense really means 20% chance to deflect. I wont get on the reason for this here, all you have to know is 1 = 2 once it comes to defense.
Defense is not extremely reliable, not because it does not work, because it works amazingly well, but because you never know at what point your luck will run out. My point with this reliablity is, if you are on the red, dont think "i can take 3 more hits" because chance may dictate those next hits be the ones to hit you and kill you. Its one of the few things in this game that is truthfully random. The differences between Acc debuffs and Defense are:
<ul type="square">[*]-Accuracy is a debuff, and therefore is less effective against higher level enemies
[*]-Accuracy affects all of the affected enemies' attacks while Def usualy only help against specific types of damage or method of attack.[/list]
As noted on the introduction, this type of protection only works on the attacks that did go through the slow effects of Recharge.
-Damage
Damage debuffs are rather simple: They reduce the damage an enemy can do by a percentage. If an enemy can do 100 and you debuffed his damage by 10% he will now hit for 90.
Again, as all debuffs, this protection suffers a penalty the higher level the enemy is compared to you.
Resistance
Very similar to Damage, Resistance lowers the damage an enemy inflicts upon you. The difference is, it is lowering the already lower damage. So, using the above example, if the character has 10% resistance and is already doing 90 points of damage (since it went down on the example above,) he will now do 81 points of damage. As you can see, despite them doing the same thing, we cant just sum the two numbers.
A disadvantage of Resistance is that it tends to only cover up certain damage types, while Dmg Debuff lowers all incoming attacks.
HP and HP buffs
All damage that was going to be mitigated has been mitigated at this point. Now on you get the reminder of the damage. But there is another thing to keep into account and its your HP. You see, not all ATs have the same HP, and some power sets have means to boost their base hp. To understand the true benefit of HP you have to entirely forget about it as a fixed number and start to think about it in terms of percentages. All that truly matters is that the little progress bar that indicates health doesnt go from 100% to 0%.
So, to truly measure the impact HP has on your damage mitigation you first need to know what is the HP of your AT relative to others. Here is a table that shows just that:
As you can see, Corruptors, Controllers and Kheldians are the baseline. Anything above that is considered to have a bonus, while anything below it is considered to have a penalty.
Skipping all math, an attack that lowers hp by 20% to a Controller will just lower 8.75% to a tanker that is running no armors or buffs, thats basicaly an inherent 56.25% resistance buff!
Regeneration and Heals
OK, simply told, an enemy must do more damage per second (DPS) to you than the hp per second (HPS) you can heal up.
The more regeneration and self healing power per second you get, the more DPS the enemy has to do to kill you.
Unlike all other protections this one actually becomes more useful the more mitgation you had on the other areas. Basicaly the highest DPS you can survive is equal to your HP recovery per second. And off course the more damage you mitigate with the other protections the more damage must be initiated against you to meet this HP recovery.
Now there are some differences between regen and heals you must take into account.
<ul type="square">[*] Heals are based off your base HP, HP do not affect it.[*] You always regen 0.4% of your HP bar per second so it is affected by HP bonuses.[/list] Closing
Well this is it boys and girls! THAT is all that stands between you and death. If you look closer at your abilities you may find that you are not as weaky and woosy as you thought you were, and at the same time you may find the absurd slotting on that Resist power is not yielding as much benefit in the end as you thought it was, since you only considered two aspects of the character. Finally, you will be amazed to find out that powers you thought were just there just because, are doing a huge impact on your survivability once they stack with your defenses, (like Health for example.)
Calculator:
But how am i meant to know what is affecting me without any math?!
Well, just for that I have made a very useful Excel sheet that allows you to fill in the blanks so you can analyze your builds against the different damage types and even compare them to many default builds.
Be cautious while using the Buff Box once you want to add healing per second since right now the calculator bases the number you enter there off the base of the ATs HP, while truth is the base for these buffs is a different one.
What is your character's HP value? Well you can use the same numbers i gave above and that i will repeat here:
I got a message asking me to run a macro, do i have to enable it?
No, the macros in the Excel file are only to allow you to convert your build into an HTML file for easy web display. You dont have to enable macros to be able to use the application, only if you want to use the export buttons.
I used the calculator and I got a very odd number under CCK Score, what does this number means?
There is a baseline you used to run this calculations, the standard baseline are Corruptors/Controlers/Kheldians. As stated in the Regenerations and Heals sections, an enemy needs to exceed in DPS what the player can heal up per second. CCK is what I call the maximun ammount of DPS a naked/unbufed Corruptor/Controller/Kheledian can sustain before their HP starts declining. So CCK is basicaly how many times that can you take before your HP starts to reliably move down over time. However do note that, especially once it comes to Heals per second (not regen), it can get very tricky, because those dont really come in constants but in bursts. A small burst in the DPS of the enemy may be enough to throw you off your feet and get you killed before that burst of healing is ready.
What if I got a CCK Score of zero?
This means you can take exactly the same DPS as a naked Controller.
What if you got a CCK Score of -0.25?
That means you can take only 75% of the DPS of the naked Controller.
What if I got a CCK Score of -1.00?
You should start thinking about getting Life Insurance
What do the bars at the right mean?
The bars are visual representation of the survivability. The area is colored in 4 shades of blue.
First shade represent the point where a Fire tanker with self heals performs against energy damage.
The second shade is the point where stone tanker performs against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and the regen.
The third shade is the point where Ice Armor tankers perform against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and Chilling Embrace, plus hitting 10 targets with 3 sloted Energy Absorbtion.
The last is the Smash/Lethal value for Invuln.
Why use Energy as the base for the visualization instead of Smash/Lethal?
Simply, because Invuln goes off the chart and makes every other damage type mitigation (even its own) too small and hard to compare fairly. You may notice it on how big the fourth area is.
Is it normal that X set goes off the chart?
Yes its normal, Ice is extremely tough against cold damage, same with Fire Aura and fire damage.
Nice little mini guide, I think it will make a nice complement to my own. I think it would have been perfect if you would have included some mention of positioning as well, but that's just my opinion. Four stars from me.
Between You and Death: A Guide to Survivability
Disclaimer:
This is not an in dept guide to an specific protection, instead its meant to generaly explain how everything comes together to keep you alive. Also this guide has no math in it, if you want the one with math you can find it here
Introduction
There are multiple layers that stand between you and death, many players just account for Def and Res, and give only Resist all credit and glory, but there are quiet a few other things that can be used to prevent kissing the ground.
Keep in mind that each type of protection is like a big wall between the enemy and you, something will not get to be affected by the third wall if it was stoped flat by the second one.
Lets go through them in the order they affect you, shall we?
Holds
Holds are status effects that entirely disable the enemy so that there is no attack coming your way at all. This is the first line of defense, and here we count not only literal holds, but also soft holds like Sleep and Fear, or Mini holds like Vomit and Knock backs. I dont bother quantifying this one factor as basically no melee set other than Dark Aura has it as a mean to protect itself, and its just too hard to quantify. It's not impossible simply hard and beyond the scope of this guide.
-Recharge
-Recharge slows down the recharge speed of enemies attacks effectively reducing the amount of hits you can suffer in any period of time. Recharge suffers of three disadvantages:
<ul type="square">[*] The first wave of hits (the so famous Alpha Strike) is unaffected by it, as all attacks there are already charged up the moment you jump the enemy.
[*] The effect is of lower impact against higher level enemies, since it is a debuff.
[*] Although it increases the recharge time of an attack, it does not increase the activation time. Meaning that an attack that takes 2 seconds to hit, and 4 seconds to recharge will only have the 4 seconds increased, not the full 6 seconds, making the benefit a bit more random[/list]
Only melee set that relies heavily on this effect is Tanker's Ice Armor.
-Acc and Defense
Defense increases your chance to entirely deflect an attack.
-Accuracy lowers the chance of the enemy hitting you.
-Acc and Defense both act together. Since I7 they will be affecting all enemies equally and basically 10 Defense really means 20% chance to deflect. I wont get on the reason for this here, all you have to know is 1 = 2 once it comes to defense.
Defense is not extremely reliable, not because it does not work, because it works amazingly well, but because you never know at what point your luck will run out. My point with this reliablity is, if you are on the red, dont think "i can take 3 more hits" because chance may dictate those next hits be the ones to hit you and kill you. Its one of the few things in this game that is truthfully random. The differences between Acc debuffs and Defense are:
<ul type="square">[*]-Accuracy is a debuff, and therefore is less effective against higher level enemies
[*]-Accuracy affects all of the affected enemies' attacks while Def usualy only help against specific types of damage or method of attack.[/list]
As noted on the introduction, this type of protection only works on the attacks that did go through the slow effects of Recharge.
-Damage
Damage debuffs are rather simple: They reduce the damage an enemy can do by a percentage. If an enemy can do 100 and you debuffed his damage by 10% he will now hit for 90.
Again, as all debuffs, this protection suffers a penalty the higher level the enemy is compared to you.
Resistance
Very similar to Damage, Resistance lowers the damage an enemy inflicts upon you. The difference is, it is lowering the already lower damage. So, using the above example, if the character has 10% resistance and is already doing 90 points of damage (since it went down on the example above,) he will now do 81 points of damage. As you can see, despite them doing the same thing, we cant just sum the two numbers.
A disadvantage of Resistance is that it tends to only cover up certain damage types, while Dmg Debuff lowers all incoming attacks.
HP and HP buffs
All damage that was going to be mitigated has been mitigated at this point. Now on you get the reminder of the damage. But there is another thing to keep into account and its your HP. You see, not all ATs have the same HP, and some power sets have means to boost their base hp. To understand the true benefit of HP you have to entirely forget about it as a fixed number and start to think about it in terms of percentages. All that truly matters is that the little progress bar that indicates health doesnt go from 100% to 0%.
So, to truly measure the impact HP has on your damage mitigation you first need to know what is the HP of your AT relative to others. Here is a table that shows just that:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tanker 175%
Brute 140%
Scrapper 125%
Blaster 112.5%
Kheldian 100%
Corruptor 100%
Controller 100%
Defender 95%
Stalker 95%
Dominator 95%
Mastermind 75%
</pre><hr />
As you can see, Corruptors, Controllers and Kheldians are the baseline. Anything above that is considered to have a bonus, while anything below it is considered to have a penalty.
Skipping all math, an attack that lowers hp by 20% to a Controller will just lower 8.75% to a tanker that is running no armors or buffs, thats basicaly an inherent 56.25% resistance buff!
Regeneration and Heals
OK, simply told, an enemy must do more damage per second (DPS) to you than the hp per second (HPS) you can heal up.
The more regeneration and self healing power per second you get, the more DPS the enemy has to do to kill you.
Unlike all other protections this one actually becomes more useful the more mitgation you had on the other areas. Basicaly the highest DPS you can survive is equal to your HP recovery per second. And off course the more damage you mitigate with the other protections the more damage must be initiated against you to meet this HP recovery.
Now there are some differences between regen and heals you must take into account.
<ul type="square">[*] Heals are based off your base HP, HP do not affect it.[*] You always regen 0.4% of your HP bar per second so it is affected by HP bonuses.[/list]
Closing
Well this is it boys and girls! THAT is all that stands between you and death. If you look closer at your abilities you may find that you are not as weaky and woosy as you thought you were, and at the same time you may find the absurd slotting on that Resist power is not yielding as much benefit in the end as you thought it was, since you only considered two aspects of the character. Finally, you will be amazed to find out that powers you thought were just there just because, are doing a huge impact on your survivability once they stack with your defenses, (like Health for example.)
Calculator:
But how am i meant to know what is affecting me without any math?!
Well, just for that I have made a very useful Excel sheet that allows you to fill in the blanks so you can analyze your builds against the different damage types and even compare them to many default builds.
You can download the calculator here.
Be cautious while using the Buff Box once you want to add healing per second since right now the calculator bases the number you enter there off the base of the ATs HP, while truth is the base for these buffs is a different one.
What is your character's HP value? Well you can use the same numbers i gave above and that i will repeat here:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tanker 175%
Brute 140%
Scrapper 125%
Blaster 112.5%
Kheldian 100%
Corruptor 100%
Controller 100%
Defender 95%
Stalker 95%
Dominator 95%
Mastermind 75%
</pre><hr />
Calculator FAQ
I got a message asking me to run a macro, do i have to enable it?
No, the macros in the Excel file are only to allow you to convert your build into an HTML file for easy web display. You dont have to enable macros to be able to use the application, only if you want to use the export buttons.
I used the calculator and I got a very odd number under CCK Score, what does this number means?
There is a baseline you used to run this calculations, the standard baseline are Corruptors/Controlers/Kheldians. As stated in the Regenerations and Heals sections, an enemy needs to exceed in DPS what the player can heal up per second. CCK is what I call the maximun ammount of DPS a naked/unbufed Corruptor/Controller/Kheledian can sustain before their HP starts declining. So CCK is basicaly how many times that can you take before your HP starts to reliably move down over time. However do note that, especially once it comes to Heals per second (not regen), it can get very tricky, because those dont really come in constants but in bursts. A small burst in the DPS of the enemy may be enough to throw you off your feet and get you killed before that burst of healing is ready.
What if I got a CCK Score of zero?
This means you can take exactly the same DPS as a naked Controller.
What if you got a CCK Score of -0.25?
That means you can take only 75% of the DPS of the naked Controller.
What if I got a CCK Score of -1.00?
You should start thinking about getting Life Insurance
What do the bars at the right mean?
The bars are visual representation of the survivability. The area is colored in 4 shades of blue.
First shade represent the point where a Fire tanker with self heals performs against energy damage.
The second shade is the point where stone tanker performs against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and the regen.
The third shade is the point where Ice Armor tankers perform against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and Chilling Embrace, plus hitting 10 targets with 3 sloted Energy Absorbtion.
The last is the Smash/Lethal value for Invuln.
Why use Energy as the base for the visualization instead of Smash/Lethal?
Simply, because Invuln goes off the chart and makes every other damage type mitigation (even its own) too small and hard to compare fairly. You may notice it on how big the fourth area is.
Is it normal that X set goes off the chart?
Yes its normal, Ice is extremely tough against cold damage, same with Fire Aura and fire damage.