Out of experience:
Excluding the specific kryptonite combos that are the Bane of DEF/RES, the def capped brute can consistently waltz around the aggro cap kicking [censored] and taking names simply because of the fact that you actually dodge/deflect the mez/debuff component attached to incoming attacks (when applicable). And we all know the insane amount of slow/drain/confuse/-perception/etc found in the red side.
The def brute does suffer from the oh [censored] condition where while walking around in the aggro cap, three bosses can chain smack you to the mediport room faster than a delaurean can zip through time. The resist capped brute has the foresight of seeing things going sour, and that he will die against certain odds, and that he should high tail out of there unless he wants to carpet munch. Of course, provided he is not snared, slowed or mezzed due to the aggro cap wailing on him.
Res cap is not really possible outside of godmodes (which usually give you some extra status prot and recovery buff or drain resist) unless you've been buffed to it by a sonic/therm team, in which case they should have put those mez shields/status protects on you anyway unless you were simply testing stuff.
If we're not talking about the aggro cap of not so friendlies, but against single AV type situation, both do great unless it is a high accuracy AV. The res capped brute has an advantage, if he is capped to the damage type of the AV, and has enough regen, he cannot be killed outside of a crash or the GW hold o doom by the AV. The Def capped brute can get hit twice within a short period or get hit with a massive blow with dot attached to it and almost-instaneously get zapped out of existence.
So nothing mathematical from me on this matter...
lol who says u cant have both? (well S/L at least)
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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.
There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.
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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.
There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.
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Assuming you turned off diminishing returns in the arena (which I'm still not sure if it works, I've heard mixed stories), it's not an even comparison. Even with DR it's not valid, it's just closer to "even".
Were you at 90% smashing resistance the entire fight (assuming the /SR was softcapped)? Or, if you were at the 41% that /Elec hits with SOs, did the /SR never go above 20% defense?
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.
There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.
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That example doesn't show a clear win for defense, namely because it was a PvP example which is wildly divergent from PvE (which is what most people in this thread were talking about). I mean, in PvP...
*) ...there is no status protection (so Seismic Smash would hold you through your status protection, albeit briefly)
*) ...there is diminishing returns, so Power Surge isn't operating at full strength.
*) ...SR gets Elusivity.
Those are just a couple points off the top of my head. It doesn't factor in other variables, either. (Did he have Aid Self? Did you? Did either of you have an IO advantage? etc)
I don't think either one always wins - there is good and bad with both.
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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.
There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.
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All this shows is how neutered resistance based mellee armors are and how over-buffed defense sets are relative to resistance sets. Elusivity and DR are the culprits here.
Electric Armor is probably the worst secondary in the entire game for PvP. It lacks layered mitigation having no heal, no regen, and no defense. Most importantly, every single set gets resistance to all in both their toggles and in weave, so the benefits of actually HAVING psi resistance, which was once a boon in PvP, is now given to every other set in the game. On top of this, the only form of mez protection is now a "miss," meaning that resistance is being over-penalized relative to defense with the new mez system. (Fire, DA, and ELA would ideally recieve higher mez resistance values than defense sets.)
ELA's shortcomings are exacerbated in PvP and this anecdote has no bearing.
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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.
There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.
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All this shows is how neutered resistance based mellee armors are and how over-buffed defense sets are relative to resistance sets. Elusivity and DR are the culprits here.
Electric Armor is probably the worst secondary in the entire game for PvP. It lacks layered mitigation having no heal, no regen, and no defense. Most importantly, every single set gets resistance to all in both their toggles and in weave, so the benefits of actually HAVING psi resistance, which was once a boon in PvP, is now given to every other set in the game. On top of this, the only form of mez protection is now a "miss," meaning that resistance is being over-penalized relative to defense with the new mez system. (Fire, DA, and ELA would ideally recieve higher mez resistance values than defense sets.)
ELA's shortcomings are exacerbated in PvP and this anecdote has no bearing.
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Also, if he had been a well built SS/ELA, the story might have been alot different...as SS can pretty much hit through an SR outside of Elude anytime it wants. Even inside Elude, if built very well, an SS can land hits pretty consistantly.
Besides that, I don't think it's that Defense sets "OP" or anything (not at all) because my Defense toons get crrrreamed plenty in zones/duels. It's more that +res sets have been junked thanks to the new pvp system. My ELA Brute has only a "few" points more +res to most damage types than my Fire Armor Brute...and my Fire Armor Brute has a heal that's available every 12 seconds...
Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.
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Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.
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Quintuple the PvP value of Power Sink (base drain of 10) and triple the %chance of -recovery (currently 30%) to player targets.
Problem solved; they can't kill you if they never have endurance.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
|
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Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.
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Quintuple the PvP value of Power Sink (base drain of 10) and triple the %chance of -recovery (currently 30%) to player targets.
Problem solved; they can't kill you if they never have endurance.
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That could definately work.
The balance being that they would "still" have to get into melee with you to drain you and that some sets have decent amounts of end drain protection so they wouldn't be affected very badly by the end drain. So with that change, ELA Brutes woud still have a couple "achilles heels" that people could work around.
I'd back that change 110% FOR SURE.
Also, maybe boost Lightning Field's end drain to a base of about -5 end per "tic" and I think we'd be set.
can go either way...
I've died in Unstoppable *Roman crits add up...*
I've died while Mind Link is running *though this was during a RSF and Statesman was being a [censored]*
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Assuming you turned off diminishing returns in the arena (which I'm still not sure if it works, I've heard mixed stories), it's not an even comparison. Even with DR it's not valid, it's just closer to "even".
Were you at 90% smashing resistance the entire fight (assuming the /SR was softcapped)? Or, if you were at the 41% that /Elec hits with SOs, did the /SR never go above 20% defense?
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Well, here's the deal. There were 4 of us in the arena match. We often did a free for all, but there were times when we dueled. I dueled my friend twice, once without (40% smashing?) and once with Power Surge (90% Smashing?). Obviously with Power Surge I was able to last a bit longer than without... but the end result was the same. I had self heal with 2 interrupt IOs and 2 heals, he had that blasted dark anchor power (Darkest Night, I think it's called). I could hardly even touch the [censored]. I tried draining him as much as possible but it really only proved to be a minor annoyance.
I don't even know for sure if he was using Elude or not....
This fight did prove one thing, though. All those regen bonuses I slotted in this build are pretty much worthless... Although... I'm not sure slotting for defense bonuses would have helped much here either.
if you saw the word "ELUDED" over his head, there's your answer 
I can't say I did see it..... although... I have a hard time seeing pop ups (eluded, deflected, etc) while fighting. I'm mostly watching my power tray, the color of the numbers to see if a hit went through and my opponents moves. I'm afraid I have difficulty paying attention to anything passed those 3 elements.
this kinda seems like a silly argument to me.
actually..it's an old argument.
this argument came up in the scrapper forum pre i1. and this was before defense was even worth it on it's own.
mostly it was regen vs. resistance. the conclusions from many tests done by a lot of us were that
1) regen on it's own isnt enough
2) resistances on their own arent enough
one needed regen with resistances or defense, and resistances needed regen or defense
that hasnt changed, and is prob why willpower is proving to be much more survivable than anyone would have thought.
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one needed regen with resistances or defense, and resistances needed regen or defense
that hasnt changed, and is prob why willpower is proving to be much more survivable than anyone would have thought.
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This
-Dragons
"I burn my candle at both ends, it will not last the night. But Ahhh my friends and Ohh my foes it makes a lovely light!"
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Overall having caped resists is about the same as caped defense. They perform the same mathmatically. Defense does better with controls/debuffs that are not auto hit since they can be avoided, while resists does not have to deal with the random number generator to survive.
The only real reason to want defense over resists I can think of is the defense is far easier to cap.
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Which always confused me. Small +defense(All) powers are everywhere, along with piles of set bonuses in recipes, especially for positional defenses. Resist seems to get so little by comparison. Has there ever been a reason given for this?
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I'd say the two main mitigating factors are:
*) Defense debuffs are the most common debuff in existence, unless you have high def resistance, defense can cascade fail.
*) ToHit buffs (while rarer than def debuffs) are as rough on defense as unresistable res debuffs (ie: Nullifiers' old sonic grenades) are on resist based sets.
Having said that, I've said before that the amount of +def available by set bonuses is getting silly. (Pools don't really bother me since it's taking up a precious power slot and pool slot, not to mention endurance to run.)