Afraid to ask: Soft-Capping.

Hey folks,

Hope all is well. Before I open my mouth and ask what is an absolutely stupid, blashpemous and face-palming question...I am not a COX guru like Aracanaville, BillZbubba, Werner, EvilGeko, PowerForge and a few others. For me, imho, having to "study" COX numbers and popping out data makes "fun" become "work". Atleast at my real job, I get a paycheck, heh.

With that said, I know what Soft-Capping is, the general concerns of Defense Debuffs and why someone should/want to Soft-Cap and so on. In fact, my Invul Tank is near Soft-Cap (he is because I am part of the craze. Do I know any better? Not sure....).

I have ran the ITF a few times with my four year old, retired DM/SR who has only SOs (50-53), Elude and Aid-Self. I face-planted only once because of simultaneous hits while being the last one standing on a team of 8. Looking at this toon and seeing what I did makes me think:

"Having /SR numbers and Aid-Self...isn't this good enough for PVE minus attempting to solo AVs?" Am I foolish in thinking:

"Having /SR like numbers along with Tri-Cord, good enough?" Or do I fail to see what would be common sense to others?

***Why do I feel like someone is going to tell me to hand in my account, gah...?***
Edited for spelling/grammar error, sorry, Mr. Craig (rolling over in his grave right now. Good man, though).

If you feel good about your current performance, then you don't need to improve it.

So what exactly are you asking? "/SR numbers" and "/SR like numbers" can mean a lot of different things. And by Tri-Cord, do you mean Aid Self (and if you did, why didn't you just say "Aid Self" like you did in the last line)?

i have to agree with Umbral on this and say ... What ?

Inspirations are your friend, don't be afraid to use them. Last night as I was soloing the Anti Matter arc with my MA/WP scrapper he softcaps Fire/Cold/Energy/N.Energy, 35% def S/L, I think positionals were in like the 30 range and like 53% S/L resists and High regen (can't think of the number off the top of my head) a lot of that sqwat when going up against him.

The First time I fought him I did not use any insp. and almost died and thankfully he left at like half health. The next time I faced him (last mission) I popped a medium purple and orange. Well I wasted the orange needless to say, I guess the purple was enough to counter the def debuff from his Rad Infection, because he did not lay a hit on me, I would have thought like within 10 hits he would get one but out of like 30 or more he didn't touch me. Also I think WP has some def debuff res.

But if you find yourself in trouble and don't want to hit the ground, taste the rainbow, pop a purple for more defense, pop a orange to take less damage, pop a green to get some hp back quick, and pop a red to kill quickly.

On a personal note, if it comes down to a choice between optimizing a Scrapper up to Tank survivability, or just rolling a Scrapper and a Tank, I just roll a Scrapper and a Tank - because I like rolling alts.

I'll have to go nuts on the new Louis, but the most I do on the rest of the alts are some of the uniques and procs.

I know my 50 sm/wp brute is done with basic IOs, and I'm pretty sure that my poor 50 WS is still packing SOs.

That's about the same amount I spent on my claws/sr. I think I spent more on my fire/shielder with only 10 pieces of purps. My kat/fire is about a billion, bs/inv around 300 mill, my claw/regen is about 200 mill, claws/inv about 200 mill, my kat/regen is just regular 50 IO's and all 3 of my tanks are just sitting on SO's.

but once I hit 50 on a character I usually put some decent IO's on them

I try to keep only one character that I "uberize", and that's basically my main, my MA/SR scrapper (the guy in my avatar and sig). I don't know how much I've spent on him, and still continue to do so (he still currently lacks one more purple IO set). I don't farm for influence, so keeping it to just one is good enough for me. And as long as the devs keep putting in more ways to improve a character in future Issues/Patches, he's probably the only character in my roster that will never be really complete, as he keeps improving along.

As for my alts, I just give them generic IO's, and every now and then, a unique or proc IO that helps their build. And they run well enough. The game, as I believe it, is still balanced around SO's, so my alts already do well with IO's that have better than SO numbers.

As for the OP's topic: I say you are already good to go with the way you described your scrapper. If you're happy with it, then there's no real need to "uberize".

Keep on scrapping!

Late to the game and agreeing with everyone, but what the heck...

A significant percentage of the build approaches that we debate are so far over the line of what you'll ever need in game as to be kind of ridiculous. We find ourselves spending billions to be in the position of being unable to challenge ourselves without finding the hardest targets in the game, or turning off all our powers and running invincible, or whatever other silliness we can come up with.

Yes, a straight up Super Reflexes with SOs, Elude and Aid Self will survive almost anything that the game will throw at you. You don't need the soft cap. You don't need to spend billions. You just need a decent understanding of how your powers work, and how to play the game. And that's what you're seeing in your own experience. Last man standing on a team of 8? A single death on the ITF? You're golden. There is seriously no need to build a stronger character. We do it because we enjoy it, not because it's even close to necessary to play the game.

Generally, I think of defense as starting to kick in in the teens, and really kicking in in the twenties. If you're in the thirties, you're getting a LOT of mileage out of your defense. Nothing even close to being at 45, but still, quite a lot.

To illiustrate where my mindset is, I don't think it's a stretch to say in a typical month, I probably spend more time "playing" in mid's hero builder and on my spreadsheets, then I do playing the game itself. I also very much enjoy playing those uber builds. I enjoy doing the work in-game to get those builds made (believe it or not, all my current 50s earned thier own money... only minimal sharing was done between them).

I also belive 100% that for people who enjoy doing what I do, CoH is absolutely, without a doubt, the best game on the market.

Just for the record: You mentioned that you're running a DM/SR I believe?

If that's the case you shouldn't need Aid Self for 99% of situations, Siphon Life should be enough to keep you on your feet.

Yes, the softcap is a good thing, but it isn't mandatory. I have a DM/SR brute that is just beastly already and he's only at 34% or so, the to-hit debuff from DM makes a lot of difference when you're fighting a small number of targets you can switch targets between. Against 3 targets I can consistently keep at least a 7.5% debuff on all of them at once.

A lot of times your primary will have quite a bit to do with how important hitting the softcap is for you. For example: Hitting softcap is more important for Dual Blades and Claws than it is for Dark Melee or Katana. That's because Dual Blades and Claws don't really have anything that adds to your survivability in their set other than a couple soft controls (knockback and down), Dark Melee debuffs enemy to-hit with every attack, and Katana has Divine Avalanche, which will easily get you softcapped to melee by itself.

Bill hit the nail on the head though, if it works for you, it's fine.


EDIT: Werner had a good point as well. If you were the last man standng on an ITF and only died once, there is nothing wrong with your build at all. Tweak it if you want to, but it isn't necessary.