What of Resistance?

Yeah, Invince started (if I recall) at something like 10% per badguy. (I don't know hwo got that number or how.) Unslotted. For a Scrapper. Tanks would be higher.

... I remember Dr. Anvil saying "Yeah, I noticed that the damage I was taking went down from 200 guys to about 10 or so, then it would sometimes go back up a little."

And my point is that the way defense scales means that the amount of defense you start from has a much greater effect on the potence of the Invince bonus than the actual amount of the bonus. That's what makes Invincibility potentially "incredibly potent." The contrast here is not between Scrapper and Tanker Invuln as much as it is between Invince and RTTC. In the case of RTTC, if n identical enemies are killing you, n+1 will kill you faster - the additional regeneration from RTTC will not ever start to outstrip the additional DPS. In the case of Invince, once a certain defense value has been reached, it becomes safer to fight more enemies than fewer - at least up to 10, or the softcap, whichever comes first. That's what makes Invince enormously potent, and it's a quality that varies between Scrappers and Tankers only in the amount of non-variable defense needed.

That difference is approximately 10.3%.* I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out how difficult this is to achieve.

* Assuming Invince, Tough Hide, and Weave slotted for 1.55x def, and unslotted CJ.

Yes, on both Tanker and Scrapper. I'm giving the Tanker as much of a benefit from its superior mitigation modifier as I find reasonable; you could throw on Maneuvers and Hover if you want to find the absolute limit.

I think I'm not conveying my point successfully. Yes, it's possible to get an arbitrary fixed value of defense with or without Invincibility. What makes Invincibility uniquely potent, in my view, is that under certain circumstances its increasing mitigation outstrips the increasing threat from additional enemies. This is an extremely rare and valuable property for a power to have, and it's a property that both Tanker and Scrapper versions possess - while any fixed-value mitigation power, and even some scaling mitigation powers, do not. Hence the comparison to RTTC, which, although a scaling mitigation power, does not have this property - because existing regeneration does not increase the value of additional regeneration.

(Another power that does have this property: Eclipse - with the additional advantage that, as a click power, it does not thereafter diminish as the enemies that fueled it are defeated. This would make it quite thoroughly gamebreaking if it weren't for the fact that it supplies resistance rather than defense, and is attached to an AT with no mez resist in its most damaging modes and a resistance cap of 85%. Arguably, it still is, regardless.)

I understand the math. I just don't think it justifies the statement that "Invincibility is incredibly potent". Yes, it provides a scaling benefit. That benefit scales in pretty small absolute values, but we can make those small absolute changes very significant by providing a large enough base.

The problem I have is that this is not inherent in the behavior of Invincibility. Instead, it's inherent in the nature of defensive (and resistive) mitigations, and the fact that we can potentially get a large base value to add to Invincibility's scaling value.

To me this is a little like saying that a medium orange inspiration is "incredibly potent" with the condition that one already have 65% DR to add it on top of.

I agree with the above - of course, if the incremental bonus from RTTC is sufficient to beat the additional incoming damage, there is never a mitigation disincentive to throw another enemy on the pile. I still think that Invuln's property of offering, under certain circumstances, a mitigation incentive to take on additional enemies, does some weird things to risk evaluation.

On a not totally unrelated note, I'm working out the relationship between the amount of base resistance on a SR and the point where it starts being a survival strategy to hurt yourself...

A,

I'm not sure that you answered ST's inquiry, but hopefully ST will correct me if I'm wrong.

I get the impression that ST is wondering if allowing yourself to dip into low health can be used as a survival mechanism based on the PSDR by itself and not stacked on to 40% dam-res.

I'd be curious about your thoughts on that myself. Especially if we throw in the brute/scrapper comparison while throwing in the higher base HP and thus higher regen.

It took me about an hour of fiddling with spreadsheets and working out differentials to come to pretty much the same conclusion.

As to your first caveat, that resistance is hard to obtain, I can only point to the post title and add it to the list of interesting facts about defense and resistance. As to the second caveat... well, Brutes have a 90% resist cap, which changes the formula somewhat. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, honestly, but it's the only other place besides invuln where you get a survivability increase as the situation becomes more dire.

Thank you.

uhh.... my brain hurts...

Hi...

While i would love for more ways to effectively bring up resistances, the problem would be that "support" class ATs could benefit from those powers and thus become less dependent on the Melee in groups, and heavens forbid not need a melee at all. Just imagine the balance implications if a Blaster could achieve 50% resistance? or even more scary imagine a Controller with 50% resistance?

Hugs

Stormy