What of Resistance?
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2009-09-14 09:04 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Quote:
While I agree with this, it does hurt sets that rely on resistance as their primary form of mitigation, especially when compared to Defense-based sets, considering the ease of which each can get to their respective 90% mitigation marks.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
What a lot of this discussion comes down to is how likely are the devs to give us both access to high defense and access to good DR. I think that's not likely at all. As such, if getting good DR means losing access to high defense, I'll pass, because I like high defense much more. |
And it is unlikely to be changed, which is sad. This is not only due to the fact that people would complain that their characters were nerfed if the Defense values were changed on IO sets, but also to the ability of certain sets to get high Defense AND high Resistance from sets.
I think it would have been a lot better to have a better mix of Defense and Resistance in IO sets from the beginning. But the likelihood of it changing now is slim to none.
And, since the game is still balanced on SOs, you're not likely to see Resistance values bumped up on Resistance-based sets, since with SOs they still give comparible survivability.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
Quote:
Blasters and Controllers can already achieve 45% DEF, which is far more mitigation than 50% RES. My Blaster has almost 30% DEF without any rare or expensive sets, and that's more mitigation than 50% RES. Even if those squishies could CAP their resistance at 75%, that's less mitigation than 45% DEF offers.|
Originally Posted by Stormfront_NA
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 |
What's more, you can just add ranged defense and have mitigation against almost every attack in the game. Because no melee attacks can hit you if you stay at range, and AoE attacks are pretty rare by comparison. To get the same effect with RES, you'd have to add resistance to smash, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative, toxic, and psi. Granted, you could just do S/L and cover most of your bases.
And with a careful implementation of the set bonuses, you'd be able to prevent getting 45% DEF as well as 50% RES. Right now you can't get much more than about 5% RES to something if you try, and it takes some pretty strange set bonuses to get certain things like S/L.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
|
One reason why having more Resistance in IOs is more dangerous than Defense that I'm not sure people have brought up is one thing. Debuffs.
With defense, sure, you can avoid most of the defensive debuffs, but the threat of cascading defense failure is still very real.
Whereas Resistance resists debuffs on its own, meaning that having an AT that isn't designed for having high resists might have a more detrimental effect on balance than defense currently does.
I don't think it'd make it more overpowered than stacking defense IO bonuses but I still think it'd be a factor.
Mmm... While agree that Defense is awesome, after all you got to get hit to get hurt...
Currently my main Blaster has nearly 60% ranged defense, which allows me to take on EBs with a nice margin of safety; AVs varies from one AV to another, some are way over the top, and you never will have sufficient defense to prevent them from pounding you into nothing in 1.5 hits. Resistance on the other hand, is a constant, a very dependable protection not subject to luck. The point I was trying to make, can you imagine a Blaster with 60% defense and 50% resistance? Scary ah?
I am working on my Fire/Rad Controller and through MIDS I am quickly finding the near 60% ranged defense power and IO set mix, so far I am at 56% trying to squeese that last 4% more, giggles, but can you imagine all that defense on her and also 50% resistance to damage? At this time, in MIDS she is at 56% Ranged, 46% AOE, and about 25% Resistance to lethal and smash.
All I am saying is I wonder how higher resistances could mess with inter AT balance, especially in PvP. From a group perspective, the more powerful each component of the team is, the better the team will be, and I don't see any need for childish comparisons of what AT is better than another in a team.
As far as I concerned, since I want to see all ATs and their plausible builds be superb solo performers, having better Resistances and Status Effect resistances is a good thing, but only from a solo ability perspective, which often conflicsts PvP and Group dynamics.
Hugs
Stormy
Quote:
This is a false comparison. Most defense debuffs have to hit to take effect, and defense defends against that. Of course they take full effect when they hit, that's what defense is all about, avoiding getting hit and providing no mitigation of anything that makes it through and hits anyway. Resistance is about taking the hit and reducing its effects. The two are equivalent in this way.|
Originally Posted by BlackBellatrix
One reason why having more Resistance in IOs is more dangerous than Defense that I'm not sure people have brought up is one thing. Debuffs.
With defense, sure, you can avoid most of the defensive debuffs, but the threat of cascading defense failure is still very real. Whereas Resistance resists debuffs on its own, meaning that having an AT that isn't designed for having high resists might have a more detrimental effect on balance than defense currently does. I don't think it'd make it more overpowered than stacking defense IO bonuses but I still think it'd be a factor. |
Where defense gets boned is that defense debuffs are *EVERYWHERE*. You find them right from the beginning of the game and they never go away. Resistance debuffs are far less common. Also, autohit defense debuffs, while not ubiquitous, do exist in pve. I don't know of any unresistable resistance debuffs in pve, but if they exist, they are likewise less common than autohit defense debuffs, in my experience.
TEH WERDZ ON SKREEN HURTZ MI BRANE!
Quote:
Mmm?|
Originally Posted by Jabbrwock
This is a false comparison. Most defense debuffs have to hit to take effect, and defense defends against that. Of course they take full effect when they hit, that's what defense is all about, avoiding getting hit and providing no mitigation of anything that makes it through and hits anyway. Resistance is about taking the hit and reducing its effects. The two are equivalent in this way.
Where defense gets boned is that defense debuffs are *EVERYWHERE*. You find them right from the beginning of the game and they never go away. Resistance debuffs are far less common. Also, autohit defense debuffs, while not ubiquitous, do exist in pve. I don't know of any unresistable resistance debuffs in pve, but if they exist, they are likewise less common than autohit defense debuffs, in my experience. |
Your statements leads me to deduce that perhaps because of this, there actually may be AT preferential treatment.
Melee type ATs receive good Resistance and Defense abilities, while support classes tend to be limited to Defense as an effective means of protection.
As noted Defense has a high frequency of opportunities to be debuffed, while Resistance has fewer opportunities to be debuffed and the nature of resistance, inherently diminishes the effects of what that debuff would have been.
If the above is true, then I can see Melee ATs having a more reliable and durable set of "passive" protections, while the Support ATs have what it would appear as a possibly gymped protection system, were their only form of "passive" defense is easily degraded and nothing can be done about it. Kinda rough for an AT set that has inferior hit points to begin with.
I am not sure that there is AT preferential treatment, but if I interpret the information correctly from other posters, it appears to be the case.
Hugs
Stormy
Quote:
Considering that squishies can solo giant monsters where melee sets can't, you might want to check the tinfoil hat at the door.
|
I am not sure that there is AT preferential treatment, but if I interpret the information correctly from other posters, it appears to be the case. Hugs Stormy |
Be well, people of CoH.
There is definitely an AT preferential treatment when it comes to passive mitigation. Melee ATs have superior passive mitigation by design - because they have to be in melee range, and lack active mitigation. If they didn't have "preferential" passive mitigation, they'd be unplayable.
Edited to add: I'm a little surprised that this had to be pointed out.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
Quote:
I don't know how likely it is, but there is a possible solution: change the +DEF bonuses in the invention system to Elusivity.|
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
While I agree with this, it does hurt sets that rely on resistance as their primary form of mitigation, especially when compared to Defense-based sets, considering the ease of which each can get to their respective 90% mitigation marks.
And it is unlikely to be changed, which is sad. This is not only due to the fact that people would complain that their characters were nerfed if the Defense values were changed on IO sets, but also to the ability of certain sets to get high Defense AND high Resistance from sets. I think it would have been a lot better to have a better mix of Defense and Resistance in IO sets from the beginning. But the likelihood of it changing now is slim to none. And, since the game is still balanced on SOs, you're not likely to see Resistance values bumped up on Resistance-based sets, since with SOs they still give comparible survivability. |
Its been a while since I posted my two Elusivity threads, and I think people forget that Elusivity was *not* intended to be a PvP-focused mechanism. It was only tangentially intended to address PvP issues. It was actually directly intended to address stacking.
Since Elusivity doesn't stack linearly with Defense, it benefits +DEF, +RES, and Hybrid Def/Res sets equally. In fact it benefits things with zero mitigation proportionately the same also. This means you can have relatively high levels of Elusivity (to a point) in the Invention system without overstacking on existing defense sets.
Elusivity was actually specifically intended to address that specific issue (although the invention system didn't exist when it was first proposed: it was designed to address stacking issues in areas like power pool defenses and the stacking situation in the force fields set).
I will say, however, that if the devs were thinking of implemented Elusivity in the invention system, I'd want a hand in suggesting the correct values. It was done in a little too sledgehammer of a manner in PvP when it was first introduced, and Elusivity loses most of its benefits if it isn't finessed into the system with carefully crafted values. I would also consider limiting stacking opportunities with analogs of the five of a kind rule in most cases (only probably lower than five).
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
Quote:
I think this is a great solution. Perma soft capped ATs are beyond broken and I am shocked that all they've done recently is add even more access to defense. Allowing all defense bonuses to grant one position and two types was bad-- it's like saying that because SR can become broken, we might as well allow Invuln and EA to do the same. Blessing of the Zephyr bonuses at 3 slots were worse.
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Since Elusivity doesn't stack linearly with Defense, it benefits +DEF, +RES, and Hybrid Def/Res sets equally. In fact it benefits things with zero mitigation proportionately the same also. This means you can have relatively high levels of Elusivity (to a point) in the Invention system without overstacking on existing defense sets.
|
Mmm...
Perma soft cap ATs may not necesseraly be broken, I guess its all a matter of vantage point.
One of the original attractions of the game was the ability to feel "super", were we could go into a crowd of baddies and powerful creatures and dispense justice as we saw our favorite comic book heroes do. The fact that some ATs with very particular builds and IO sets allows you to feel "super" and not merely "common" allows the players who want that form of escape from the brutal treatment we receive from real life, all that much more appealing.
If we think of it, in the beginning, we were truly super; just about all ATs and builds were super, but then the game commenced to evolve and gradually the number of ATs that could make you feel truly "super" decreased and eventually there were none left. I will refer that time as the dark days (post ED, etc). I would be inclined to believe the devs realized what had occurred and the impact on the community as players left the game to try others and check from time to time on changes in the game. With the invention system, the developers provided us with a means to approximate the golden days when we were super, and I will admit a very fine job they did.
Now some may have an issue with players being able to actually have a truly super character, and I am sure they have valid reasons for hating it, but it all comes down to vantage points again. For me if I want to go into a battle field and feel like queen of the universe, I log on with my tankerette and open a can of whoop-***. If I want to be challenged and struggle and experience success despite the stacked handicaps, I log on my Defender and go to it. In fact the developers were wise enough to give us those choices, that is truly ubber AT or challenged AT, both being quite able to give us fun an enterteinment in our terms.
Of course, I am bringing a whole different perspective on these game postings, not one so mathematical as most other posters so cleverly analyse and describe, but one more from the game experience sense.
Hugs
Stormy
you know what they say about open mike night right? It's open to anyone.
Quote:
The devs don't consider being able to soft-cap with the invention system to be necessarily broken. There may be other reasons to believe that situation is not operating as fully intended, but the mere ability to soft-cap was explicitly stated to be not directly game-breaking when the invention system was first released, and a couple of times since.|
Originally Posted by Stormfront_NA
Perma soft cap ATs may not necesseraly be broken, I guess its all a matter of vantage point.
|
Its probably too easy to do so: there's not enough trade-off costs to attempting it. But that's not the same thing as saying soft-capping is broken (soft-capping is also possible without the invention system at all with SR, but the endurance and build costs are very high and probably enough cost to balance that advantage, at least to a significant extent).
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
I'm not sure how big a deal that is on its own. After all, today they can get to softcapped defense to at least one position, which has other benefits besides damage mitigation - it help make a lot of mezzes miss too.
What a lot of this discussion comes down to is how likely are the devs to give us both access to high defense and access to good DR. I think that's not likely at all. As such, if getting good DR means losing access to high defense, I'll pass, because I like high defense much more.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA