What's the reasoning behind Set Bonus Values?
By
AncientSpirit_NA,
Posted on: 2009-06-08 15:25 in Player Questions
I guess the intention is to allow players to use the bonus to patch up their weakness. It's pretty clear by looking at resistance, where there are a lot of sets for psionic and toxic. These 2 resistance types are usually the weakness of melee characters. I think the defense bonus is probably a bit too good. But it is not so good as to make non-defense characters soft capping all defense. If you have a character with no defense to start with, you can only soft cap 1 or 2 types of defense, but not everything. In this sense, the bonus might be too good, but still ok.
I think the recharge bonus is ok. As you mentioned, there is diminishing return. If people like to acquire a large amount of recharge bonus, I think it is a good project for them to work on for their 50s. The only thing that I have a problem with is that if a power is designed not to be perma-ed, then something needs to be done such that people can't perma it.
I do hope you continue. I learned more about set bonuses from this post than I have in a couple of months.
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The reason for the huge gap between defense and resistance bonuses baffles me as well.
The damage thing makes more sense though. You can't really compare it to accuracy. People usually slot enough accuracy to hit reliably. Any more above that is wasted in typical scenarios. So sure having a bunch of accuracy bonuses can allow someone to be more flexible with their slotting, but it's unlikely to allow them to hit more often.
Damage bonuses allow you to do more damage, which unlike more accuracy, is always a good thing and not wasted at all unless you're capped. So damage bonuses allow you to exceed the ED cap, which can be quite valuable, especially on ATs with high base damage. Damage bonuses have more value than accuracy bonuses, so naturally they will be smaller.
I'm going to give my [no devs were interrogated in the making of this post] views on 'how the system was probably thought out'.
And to annoy EVERYONE I miss with my pompous mind-reading I'm going to start with ED.
Back in "the day" (I4, say) Invulnerable tanks were three hundred, or more, times tougher than Blasters. They had capped Defense (invincibility was hideously brokenly strong), 90% Resist to everything and they were fighting things so tough that they had about 95% To Hit.
So INV was TWENTY times harder to hit than a squishie, took TEN times less damage, and 50% more hit points [roughly], 300 times tougher.
The Devs, I like to think, learned something from that. Don't let people get close to the Defense cap AND the resist cap, for it shall multiply brutally.
They picked one kind of protection for IO's: Defense. Used to be almost all positional defense, with typed getting pretty much screwed. (All tanks use typed defense, I think. ) They eventually supported positional, because INV was "about balanced" compared to other things with SO's, but pretty screwed with high end IO builds.
Another thing that I have mind-read is that there are some sets, and some bonuses, that are DELIBERATELY BAD.
The difference between, say, a Crushing Impact Acc/Dam and a Focused Smite Acc/Dam, is pretty much only set bonuses. Crushing Impact goes up to level 50, so you can get 2.5% more Acc and about .5% more dam, but at level 39? Same damn thing. EXCEPT that one has lousy set bonuses and the other has really, really good set bonuses. Why would they do that?
... Maybe so you can buy one for 25,000 inf and not have to figure out how to save 2 million inf or whatever the other one's going for.
"No set bonus" frankenslotting can give you 7 slots worth of SO's in 5 slots. Cheap cruddy sets let you frankenslot for REALLY CHEAP. (At one point I did an entire level 50 over a weekend for 6 million inf to make a point.)
So, yeah. There are things nobody wants (sleep resistance), things almost nobody wants (runspeed), and things everybody wants (recharge.) Some things are better than others and more expensive.
Damage- I think Damage was expected (by the devs) to be valued more highly than the players actually did. For most of your core powers, damage is in the 4-slot, the "you can't get two of these in the same set" bonuses. They were so worried about players putting together +67% Damage and bringing back the bad old pre-ED days that they pre-nerfed it into worthlessness. I could be wrong about this. Note that I think there are very few purple sets that give +4% Damage... they're still watching it.
So there's my theories.
I have lots of theories. Like "it's really hard to get both a lot of 5% rech, and a lot of 6.25% rech, on purpose" and "regen is pretty worthless even in big percentages in slot two" and "they give out a lot of the same bonus for Rule of Five purposes- like 1.5% HP, 5% Rech, etc."
But I'm already going on even longer than you did.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
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The resistance numbers baffle me as well. They need to apply the defense-resistance balance rule to those bonuses (of course the real question is: balance defense or balance resistance?). And fix oranges while they're at it.
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http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Set_Bonuses
Has the math behind them.
Each value has a basis, the a multiple according to the tiny, small... ultimate.
Def and Res have the same actual basis (1.25%)
This was created before the typed/positional defence adjustment a couple of issues ago, and several bonuses from the PvP sets just dont' fit into this scheme.
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It just seems a bit off considering Defense only has to raise the number to 45% (not the actual hard-cap, I know), while resist caps off at, what? double that?
Although, it gets a bit harder to quantify when you consider that resist will ALWAYS provide the same mitigation; while defence is at the mercy of a few (un?)lucky RNG rolls.
"My inner mind has become a reality-cracking overgod. He torments me! Help!"
I will repeat my theory:
YOU DO NOT WANT PLAYERS TO HAVE ACCESS TO BOTH HIGH RESISTANCE AND HIGH DEFENSE AT THE SAME TIME.
Softcapped Defense, minor Resist: 10x tougher.
capped Resist, minor Defense: 4x tougher [10x for tanks]
Capped both: 40x tougher [100x for tanks]
You cannot balance a game where one character is forty times tougher than another. I was there in issue 4.
The only reason Granite [50x, actually, tougher] "works" is that it also does about half damage and it actually slows gameplay because the tank can't physically move fast. But Granite is kinda famous for having the entire team die around it.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
I agree with Fulmens 100%
Did you make this post with FOE, or the old fashioned way? 
Not sure what effect this will have on your analysis, but what you seem to be forgetting is that the strongest typed defense bonuses are available as 3 or 4 slot bonuses. Sure, they appear at 5 or 6 slots, but that's because of the decision to pair positional and typed defense bonuses. IMO, anyone wanting to really boost their typed defense goes for the 3 or 4 slot bonuses.
For instance:
Kinetic Combat gives a 3.75% S/L, 1.88% Melee defense bonus with 4 slots; to get 3.75% Melee defense bonus, you'd need 6 slotted Touch of Death.
Similarly, Eradication gives 3.13% E/NE and 1.56% Ranged defense with 3 slots, but it takes 6 slots to get 3.13% AoE defense.
There are many other examples, too. I've heard many here say that it's easier or better to go for positional defense over typed, but IMO the fact that it takes far fewer slots to get the same amount of defense bonuses is quite well balanced against the fact that typed sets usually have a weakness to Psi and always have a weakness to Toxic.
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I'm really curious about this. Since I first started using Set IO's, I've been kind of baffled at how hard it is to get certain set bonuses, and how others are common but give practically no benefit.
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You kind of explained the reasoning here. Or to add in Fulmens' two cents' worth, in some cases the devs chose one or the other to give "no benefit" because they didn't want the combination of the two of them to imbalance the game.
Interestingly, the proliferation of Defense compared to Resistance is common in the Power Pool as well. There are plenty of powers that give Defense, but only one that gives Resistance, and it is only Smashing and Lethal. Which I find interesting, since the devs themselves have claimed that Defense is a better effect than Resistance, and they are concerned about builds that have too much of it. (Mainly because it allows you to avoid status effects as well as damage)
I will say about the Damage bonuses that while the devs did originally limit them to the 4th slot in most cases, they introduced most of those that have the damage bonus in the 2nd slot in the next Issue. (When they added Knockback IOs) SO they may have realized that Damage boosts didn't effect the balance as much as they were afraid it would.
Personally, I have found that Damage is kind of the opposite of Defense and Resistance in that with Defense as you get closer to the cap you get more effect from the Defense, while with Damage the first bonuses you slot have the greater effect. Like Recharge it is diminishing returns. However, with Damage the lower damage you have to start with, the better it is.
On my FF Defender, just a few of the +Damage Sets started to make a difference, and once I got my bonus up to about 15%, it made for a major change in the playability. If your damage is really low, you have to deal with your foes regenerating while you're fighting them, so at that level, any additional damage means less time, which means the foe regenerates less. So in effect you're getting more damage out of it than just the bonus.
In short, a Scrapper or Rad Defender isn't going to have much use for it, but an FF Controller or Defender is. The same isn't true for Defense, a Blaster who needs Defense more than anyone isn't going to get much use out of those tiny bonuses.
Resistance set bonuses are just horrid. My Electric armor brutes would certainly like getting more smashing/lethal resistance instead of melee defense sets.
My guess is that you couldn't both softcap defense AND gain resistance. When going for a range-defense-capped blaster, your build is already going to be tight, and you don't have room to focus on defense. If you decide against tough/weave on SR, it's also going to be pretty tight capping all three positions. As an owner of several electric brutes, I would like to buff my resistance, but there honestly is no practical way after I have taken tough.
Why is it that I can four slot kinetic combat and get +3.75% defense to S/L, which certainly will help an typed defense set while the best I can find is 2.5% smashing resistance(and without the lethal) for a resistance set.
I am aware of how abundant defense debuffs are. But, given that the general idea is that 1% of defense = 2% resistance, I'm not seeing that same correlation. I would LOVE to see a 7% S/L resistance bonus in a set. I bet if it did show up, it would be in a confuse set so by electric brute can't use it, just to taunt the set even more
BRB - Buff Resistance Bonuses.
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[u]Let's get right to Damage Set Bonuses[u]:
Damage Set Bonuses make me sad. Let me make you sad about them too.
So the question here is: WHY?
Why is damage so crappy of a set bonus, while Acc and Rech are so good?
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Damage is King.
Nothing will move you forward but damage.
Aside of a very few exceptions, the only solution to our all problems is "skullbash it till it stops moving".
No amount of control, healing or mitigation will get you through the day if you dont have damage to complement it.
I suppose the Devs limited the access to damage bonuses to limit our ability to get back to pre-ED level of uber damage.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself." ~Midnight Flux's former boss.
There are usually two sides to every argument but no end.
Everything placed above this line is always IMHO, YMMV and quite certainly not to be taken too seriously....
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I do hope you continue. I learned more about set bonuses from this post than I have in a couple of months.
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Thanks! ^^
I kind of went on a giant public transportation nightmare yesterday, but now I am back. Should have some dead time tomorrow to continue.
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Did you make this post with FOE, or the old fashioned way?
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Right as I was finishing the post, I went "Is this beyond the maximum post length? Damnit, FOE does that, doesn't it? And it would have made all these damn hex codes and crap a lot easier! I need to remember to try that out." And then I didn't. @_@
Great post, Moo. Informative and well written, and especially important to me as I have just rolled my first ever Super Reflexes toon.
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[u]Let's get right to Damage Set Bonuses[u]:
Damage Set Bonuses make me sad. Let me make you sad about them too.
So the question here is: WHY?
Why is damage so crappy of a set bonus, while Acc and Rech are so good?
[/ QUOTE ]
Damage is King.
Nothing will move you forward but damage.
Aside of a very few exceptions, the only solution to our all problems is "skullbash it till it stops moving".
No amount of control, healing or mitigation will get you through the day if you dont have damage to complement it.
I suppose the Devs limited the access to damage bonuses to limit our ability to get back to pre-ED level of uber damage.
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I think there's a little more at play. Let's pretend they add a wide array of new sets and you can get 5 of each level of % damage bonus (1, 2, 3, and 4%) that nets a total of +50%.
If I can borrow Fulmens technique of mind reading the devs without really mindreading the devs, I think they know we will never reduce the slotting of our damage on any character, ever.
Never.
We might pull out an accuracy if we get enough set bonuses, but lets be honest, what did you put in that newly vacated slot? It was almost certainly a recharge or damage or proc. We will never pull out a damage enhancer unless we somehow find a way to hit the cap without temporary buffs (or on a build that can self-buff to the cap regularly).
And this gets directly to the difference between Accuracy and Damage: Accuracy is binary, damage is scaled. You either hit or miss, there is no bonus for "hitting really really accurately". Any extra accuracy is wasted. Extra damage is only wasted on the one blow where the enemy dies. Until you can 1-shot AVs there is no such thing as "too much" damage.
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I'm really curious about this. Since I first started using Set IO's, I've been kind of baffled at how hard it is to get certain set bonuses, and how others are common but give practically no benefit.
So, I'm going to give a vague overview of the current set bonus distribution (courtesy of Mids' Hero/villain designer), and then complain about how I deserve better Damage and Resistance bonuses.
[u]Let's start with Defense Bonuses[u]:
Defense bonuses generally come in three flavors: Melee/Smashing/Lethal, Ranged/Energy/Negative, and Area/Fire/Cold- Weighted with the positional being twice as powerful as the elemental defenses.
AoE/Fire/Cold- Almost always 5th or 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 2.5% per bonus.
Ranged/Energy/Negative- Almost always 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 3% per bonus.
Melee/Smashing/Lethal- Almost always 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 2.75% per bonus. There are considerably less sets that give this bonus than there are of the AoE and Ranged ones.
Using the Super Reflexes Standard, these bonuses are retardedly strong. Just one of these is like adding a full-on +Defense SO to an unslotted Super Reflexes toggle. 20% of a SR toggle. Not bad, not bad at all. Also, they're worth about 50% of an unslotted SR passive. Quite nice indeed.
Not quite so strong when seen from the Tanker's perspective: an Ice Tanker scoffs at their pathetic elemental defense bonuses (and then snaps them up anyway, where else are you go to shore up your Fire Defense or flail around trying to softcap?), but a Shield Tank still finds their Almost-one-SO of defense useful.
Keep in mind that Defense Set Bonuses become *more* visibly powerful the more defense you have. Each one you stick on makes you tougher to hit than the last, until you reach your friend the Soft Cap (45% defense).
Also keep in mind that it's pretty okay for Defense bonuses to be up to three times better than other Set Bonuses, because you really need one of each flavor of Defbonus to keep it rounded out. And because they're primarily 6-piece bonuses.
[u]Now we leap to Accuracy Bonuses[u]:
Accuracy Set Bonuses only differ in the amount of accuracy they grant you. The bonus goes into ALL powers that need a check to hit something. It's better with To-Hit bonuses to team with, but beefy accuracy makes most of your stressfull MISS!'s go away.
Accuracy bonuses are overwhelmingly present as 4-piece bonuses, though there are several that are somewhere else in the bonus list. 4-piece bonuses are wonderful, because your average Rare 6-piece Set has two recipes in the Task Force Drop pool. You can ignore those and still get the handy 4-piece bonus.
Most of your Accuracy Bonuses will come in the flavor of 7% or 9%. Most characters have a place where they can slot Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact (both 7%), Scirocco's Dervish, Obliteration, or Positron's Blast (all 9%). There are plenty of other Accuracy bonuses scattered throughout Mez and Buff/Debuff sets, but those are not always useful to put into your powers.
So, let's call Accuracy an average of 8% per Set Bonus. Because it is, so long as you ignore the seven purple sets that each add 15%. I mean, who cares about those?
So, one ACC set bonus is comparable to one Accuracy TO in ALL of your powers. Hey, that's not bad! Four of them gives you roughly 32% Accuracy to everything. The equivalent of the "golden standard of accuracy"-- one SO in everything that checks chance to hit. Wow, that's actually pretty impressive. With four Accuracy set bonuses, you can either remove your Accuracy Enhancements from most of your powers and still do just fine, or you can keep them in and be quite accurate even against the +3's and +4's that you folks seem to love so much.
In a word? Worthwhile.
[u]It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Recharge Set Bonuses![u]:
Now here's a popular one. Recharge is extremely desirable, because it's a great benefit to everything but Toggles and Autopowers. And even some toggle powers enjoy it (like Hibernate!)
If you were to research how many people try to fit Hasten into their already tight builds, you'd understand.
Recharge bonuses are usually found in their natural habitat of 5-piece bonuses, though they are fond of migrating to 4-piece and 6-piece locations for special occasions.
Most Recharge bonuses are found in the 5% and 6.25% range, so I'm going to call it an average of 5.75% per recharge set bonus. This is, again, ignoring the fact that there are nine purple sets with +10% recharge. We all know they're broken. Why else would they cost so friggin much?
I don't have a whole lot to say about recharge bonuses. Yeah, they're good. I suppose it's worth noting that they have both diminishing returns (each bit of recharge cuts the time required for a power to recharge by less and less) AND totally-worth-it returns (a high-power attack chain or perma-insert-power-here is pretty good yes?). But I don't know what else to say about that. This is some fatiguing typing stuff, you know?
[u]Let's get right to Damage Set Bonuses[u]:
Damage Set Bonuses make me sad. Let me make you sad about them too.
The damage set bonus is a wanderer... never settling down, never finding a place to live. There's no place where you're really guaranteed to find one. They show up in Bonus Slot 4, in 5, in 2, and once in a while in slot 3. Nobody cares about slot 3.
Damage doesn't have the versatility that Recharge or Accuracy do. There are plenty of powers that have to hit something or have to recharge that don't directly deal damage. So, you could expect Damage to be pretty easy to stack set bonuses on, right? Wrong.
On average, a Damage Set Bonus will give you 2.5% Damage, maybe less. That is less than 1/3 of a single [censored] TO. Now, considering that my "holy generic blast setup" is something like 33% Acc, 33% End, 33% Rech, and 95% Dam... how in the hell am I even going to notice something so pathetic? I can use Flares, and the [censored] Defiance buff is more than twice that pathetic set bonus. And don't think that those precious purples will make up for it! Only 3 of them bother to improve damage (Ranged damage, pet, and cofuse. Really.), and you know how much they give? 4% bonus damage. Yippee. That's a whole half a TO. Not even.
Just pop a small red. It's ten times more effective than your silly set bonus.
Seriously, what the hell. Damage also diminishes like a [still censored]ing [censored]. Damage bonuses always add from the base damage. So, no matter how what your slotting or current buffs are, you're still getting like SIX extra damage from each of those set bonuses. On a NUKE. Froma BLASTER.
And if you get hit with Fulcrum Shift or something? Bye. Your puny damage set bonuses don't even count anymore, the +Damage Cap will see to that.
Okay, I'm done.
[u]Please don't throw fruit- Resistance Set Bonuses[u]:
Resistance already gets kinda shafted by inspirations. Apparently the Resistance Cap is more desirable than the Defense Softcap. Anyway. Letting the numerics speak here. Purples are, as always, ignored.
Fire/Cold Resist: Slot 3, 1.26%ish average, six whole sets use it.
Energy/Negative Resist: Slot 3, 0.8%ish average, three whole sets use it.
Smash/Lethal Resist: Slots 4,5,6; 1.4%ish average, three whole sets use it.
Toxic/Psi Resist: Slot 6, 1.26%ish average, seven whole sets use it.
The only single-element resistances worth mentioning (read: are in more than one or two sets) are Negative, Toxic, and Psi.
Negative: Slot 3-6, 3%ish average, 6 sets.
Psi: Slot 6, and a couple Special IO's. 3%ish average, 9 sets, and one Aegis Dealie.
Toxic: Slot 6, 2.5%ish average, 9 sets.
Why would I ever actively seek them resistance bonuses out? I don't have anything else to say, I'm tired of researching and typing and "thinking". Draw your own conclusions. (Hint: Resist Set Bonuses suck)
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So the question here is: WHY?
Why is damage so crappy of a set bonus, while Acc and Rech are so good?
Tune in later for when I remember to come back to this thread and add in +HP, +Regen, +END, and +Recovery. Then, I'll say that Mez Resist and Debt Protection are not worth thinking about! Then I'll complain some more! Or maybe I'll forget to ever finish this post! Maybe it's already past the maximum character limit! OH, THE POSSIBILITIES!
See you later, folks.