How good is a softcap defense?
By
American_Knight,
Posted on: 2009-06-09 14:07 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
If your soft cap defense is vs the attacks incoming you'll be nearly unkillable compared with someone with minimal to no +defense against those attacks. Put another way for every 100 damage aimed at someone with no defense they'll take that 100 damage, on average, half the time. You will, on average with capped defenses, take that damage 1 in 20 times.
In game turns, AWESOME!
I have two scrappers (lvl 47 spines/SR and lvl 42 claws/SR) that rule whenever I team. I jump into mobs tanks fear to tread, I am the pace setter, and I take notice whenever I dip below %50 health because it rarely happens. Neither has self heal and I rely on greens if I ever do get hit.
I am now trying to soft cap my shield brute, my EA brute and a ninja stalker.
Good luck.
The thing about defense is it works great...until it doesn't. 
What I mean by that is that defense is binary - it either works or it doesn't. Resistance, on the other hand, always works. If you have resistance to a damage type - and your resistance hasn't been debuffed to nothing - that resistance will always reduce incoming damage. Defense can fail, in which case you take all the incoming damage.
That said, what you have to watch out for is "cascading defense failure". Say you get hit by a defense debuffing attack (for example Radiation Blast attacks), that makes it more likely the next attack will hit, which debuffs defense even more and makes it even more likely the next attack will hit and debuff defense more...and so forth.
With the Super Reflexes set, the powers provide resistance to defense debuffs, which mitigates cascading defense failure. As a blaster you will not have this defense debuff resistance. Something to keep in mind.
How good is softcapped defense without any self-heals or resistances?
The simple and most complicated both together in 1 answer:
As good as the player behind that toon.
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How good is softcapped defense without any self-heals or resistances?
The simple and most complicated both together in 1 answer:
As good as the player behind that toon.
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A better answer:
Depending on the prevalence of defense debuffs and personal regeneration, excellent to middling. If you're running without regen, you're going to have much better staying power than someone without it, but without some way to get your hit points back (self heals or regeneration), you're going to go down. If there are defense debuffs about, you could quite easily go down. Defense debuff cascade is not your friend.
You will get hit 1/10 as much as someone with no defense. It's not "1 in 20" except against even-con minions, but it's below 1 in 10 pretty much all the time.
Against a +2 boss I think you get hit just about 8% of the time.
The important thing is the "chance of doubletap" because one hit won't drop you to 0 hp. And unfortunately, the dice have no memory, so your chance of getting hit RIGHT after you just got hit is... 8%.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Softcapped defenses are good, but they're not the end of all be
You WILL get hit, and with no damage resistance or healing you will get hit very hard. Unlucky strings of hits also happen more often than you'd think...
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I know that softcap defense is around 45% but I want to ask how good it is without any form of healing or damage resistance except inspiration. It would be a blaster fighting level 52 LTs.
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Soft capping def is what allows my DM/SR scrapper to be a one man AV killer. Certain combo's are just NASTY GOOD!
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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I know that softcap defense is around 45% but I want to ask how good it is without any form of healing or damage resistance except inspiration. It would be a blaster fighting level 52 LTs.
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Soft capping def is what allows my DM/SR scrapper to be a one man AV killer. Certain combo's are just NASTY GOOD!
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Keep in mind that, if you're using the Smite>MG>Smite>Siphon, you're getting an extra 21 hp/sec unenhanced simply by using Siphon Life.
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I know that softcap defense is around 45% but I want to ask how good it is without any form of healing or damage resistance except inspiration. It would be a blaster fighting level 52 LTs.
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Bolded the key part. Yes, softcapped defense plus intelligent use of inspirations will get you through regular-sized groups of enemies, including 52s, just fine.
Now, if you're referring to those silly "fight ridiculously large ambushes of 50 lts or more" AE missions, it will take more than that. I managed to do one of those with a defense-based fire blaster by using lots of tactical maneuvers to corner traps with rain of fire and bonfire (to limit how many enemies could get line of sight on me), as inspirations alone would not keep up. Don't expect to win those missions by only push buttons with no strategy.
The Bacon Compels You.
How my soft-capped characters feel
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
I recently tried to do a numerical study in response to a different thread. So I can at least describe the mechanics.
Critters have a base 50% chance of hitting you if they are anywhere between even level and your level +5. However after defense and to-hit modifiers are applied, the result first capped between 5% and 95% multiplied by accuracy modifiers, and then capped between 5% and 95% again. As an example, if you were fighting a lieutenant +2 levels to yourself, their base accuracy becomes:
50% * 1.15 lieutenant accuracy * 1.2 level accuracy = 69% hit rate.
Get 45% defense and the formula looks like this:
(50% - 45% defense) * 1.15 * 1.2 = 6.9% hit rate.
You would be taking 1/10th the damage you would be taking without defense. If your opponent used Build Up, then for the next 10 seconds:
(50% - 45% defense + 20% to hit) * 1.15 * 1.2 = 34.5% hit rate.
Yeah, build up is that dangerous.
From what I have experienced, having that 45% soft-capped defense or similar to-hit debuff is almost required for lieutenant farming on a team. But you can't quite get away with just defense alone. You are going to need at least some level of resistance, healing, or control on top of that to truly stay ahead of the game in even a medium sized team. But if you are solo or on a small team fighting no more than roughly 3 at a time, 45% defense should be fine, barely.
A good offense will win games, but defense wins championships!
As others have said, its good for what it is, but the moment something gets past it...it sucks
You will need some other form of migitation as a backup nless you wanna allways roll the dice
Thanks guys for all the info. I was able to tweak my Elec/Psi blaster and I love it. 3 AOE attack chains was good enough for me.
Was able to reach like 40 or 41 melee defense and I'm happy with it.
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How my soft-capped characters feel
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I thought you were gonna use this clip.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I recently took a soft-capped Nin stalker to an AV-filled MA mish just to test the waters. I could stand toe to toe against several of them for several minutes, but it was too easy for them to get in a lethal hit that just floored me instantly. Most AV's hit for more than my HP total (just over 1200), so whenever those hit and I don't have absolutely full HP, I'm insta-dead.
Mako just seemed to kill me dead really easily, not sure why, but he did it twice.
Numina got in a lucky lift + psi tornado that killed me after a few minutes of fighting.
Ice Mistral - I shouldn't have even tried it with all of her terrible -rech debuffs, but we just both stood there for a really, really long time.
Positron not only debuffs defense, but his Cosmic Burst was about 1340 dmg, well in excess of my total HPs.
In 'normal' encounters, I can jump into almost anything without trouble.
If you softcap, you'll find most things you can breeze through. Keep in mind that for all technical purpose, you already have some defense. Same-level minions and such only hit you 50% of the time. Unlike what Doomguide said, an enemy goes to hit you with 100 damage, there's only a 50/50 chance he'll hit, meaning you already have 50% mitigation. From regular mobs.
Many mobs have defense debuffs. Those with rifles and swords usually debuff your defense to some extent. You'll find out in Cimerora when you get cocky and take on a dozen of them on the wall. When a couple of the hits do get through, your defense will drop, meaning more will get through, and you'll be taking on damage. You'll still be better off than you normally would be, but you won't be virtually untouchable all the time. When you suffer a cascading defense failure, it happens pretty quickly and it's hard to recover from.
The thing about blasters is that they normally have almost no defense. Since the normal to-hit ratio is 50%, the worst a blaster has to experience is when that gets lowered even more and damage is coming in twice as fast. With a defense-based toon like a tank or scrapper, they're used to getting hit much less, so when they lose their defense, it's MUCH more drastic as they're taking many times more damage.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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How my soft-capped characters feel
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I thought you were gonna use this clip.
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This seems so much more fitting.
I know that softcap defense is around 45% but I want to ask how good it is without any form of healing or damage resistance except inspiration. It would be a blaster fighting level 52 LTs.