Defense is usually 2x Resistance, right?

Focusing just on the -DEF, its not quite that simple. -DEF is only effective until the attacker saturates tohit, meaning reaches the 95% tohit ceiling. If you don't have +DEF, the best that a critter can do is debuff your defense to about -45% DEF, assuming the attacker has no accuracy and is even con to you. After that, -DEF becomes worthless. For an even con zero accuracy attacker facing a target with no defense, the best that unlimited -DEF can do is to increase net damage by about 90%, just short of doubling. On the other hand, -RES can stack in a similar situation to the resistance floor, increasing net damage by up to 300%, or quadrupling incoming damage.

The bottom line there is that a -40% stackable defense debuff is a higher threat to players with significant defense (and low or no defense debuff resistance) than a -80% resistance debuff is likely to be, but a -80% stackable resistance debuff is a higher threat to players without defense than a -40% defense debuff would be. We cannot just say one is equal to or comparable to the other. And the reason is that in this case, among other factors**, the -DEF debuff has a lower "cap" on its effect than the -RES debuff does in the zero defense case, but not in the high defense case.

Colloquially we tend to talk about defense and resistance as if they were essentially identical attributes except for the 2:1 ratio, but they are not. Its one of the reasons I have never liked the 2:1 rule in the first place. It implies a higher degree of similarity between defense and resistance than actually exists. For small numbers, moderate conditions, and absolute (not relative) calculations, the 2:1 rule usually works. But in situations like this, it can be misleading.


I'm not saying the -40% defense debuff is necessarily appropriate. But its not a good idea to use the 2:1 rule and attempt to use it to analogize to the resistance case, because that's not a good foundation to make a case upon. In general, the 2:1 rule tends to ultimately skewer balance arguments, not support them.


** Among those "other factors" is the amount of buff to neutralize the effects of the debuff. Its obvious that it takes +40% defense buff to neutralize a -40% defense debuff (assuming the target doesn't have defense debuff resistance). But it doesn't take +80% resistance to neutralize a -80% resistance debuff, it takes only +44%. Yet another area where the 2 to 1 rule falls apart.

Isn't that due entirely to the fact that resistance is its own resistance debuff? Whereas there are plenty of defense boosting powers, defense debuff resistance is almost entirely exclusive to defense powers within personal survival powersets.

Replying to both you and Umbral, this is a Yes and No situation.

Yes: Resistance is its own debuff resistance and that makes resistable -RES have a generally proportional effect on players. -DEF doesn't have that same resistance and thus its effects are not proportional.

However, its not that defense has no protection: it does. It avoids debuffs. The problem is *not* that resistance resists debuffs and defense doesn't. Rather, its that resistance always resists debuffs *at full strength* while defense avoids debuffs only *at current strength*. This is actually the issue with "cascade failure." Its not exactly that defense spirals downward that's the problem: that's just a symptom of the core problem, which is that protection against debuffs spirals downward and that's what causes damage protection to follow it down the spiral.

Put it another way: suppose we have one player with 50% resistance and one with 25% defense and 50% resistance to defense debuffs, and then we fire *autohitting* resistance and defense debuffs at them. The first player will still resist half the strength of the resistance debuffs, and the second player will resist half the strength of the defense debuffs. Their relative performance will be, more or less, equal on average. But notice that if we now require the debuffs to roll tohit rolls, the latter player will avoid more debuffs than the former. His strength will be higher because he will be both avoiding *and* resisting his incoming debuffs.

This is what makes it difficult to simply "hand out" defense debuff resistance to everyone, or alternatively to package all defense buffs with defense debuff resistance. There's no "correct" level of debuff resistance to package with defense that doesn't require picking an arbitrary level of incoming debuffs and then working out the numbers to happen to balance for that one particular situation. The "2 to 1" rule guestimate for defense debuff resistance would make +DEF always stronger against debuffs than +RES, sometimes by very wide margins. Defense and Resistance are just different, and can't be made congruent in this way any more than Resistance and Regeneration can be made congruent.

In my opinion, the best you can do is to make powersets fairly equitable across the game. Its never going to work to try to make the raw mechanics equal in nature, and I'm not sure I would want to even if it was possible (because what's the point in having two different game mechanics always work the same). That's in my opinion why defense debuff resistance is specifically targeted at powersets that rely on defense for the majority of their protection. For everyone else, the harsh nature of high order defense debuffs is intentional (the intent itself might not be properly balanced and need tweaking, but its deliberate). For those sets specifically, the ultrahigh debilitating nature of those debuffs was *not* intentional, and that's why they have defense debuff protection. Its not to make Defense work like Resistance.

Technically, you can debuff anything to -100% defense; the hit chance calculation just makes the minimum at 5% after factoring in base tohit and accuracy

Minimum movement speed is -90%. Rooted alone is already -90%. Glue Grenade is -90% speed, and -5.25 max speed. So, barring speed buffs, running Rooted and getting hit by an Equalizer's glue puts you at the same speed.

Neither Rooted nor Glue Grenade are unresistable, so a power granting speed resistance (Such as Speed Boost) would reduce their effectiveness (and in the case of SB, increase speed as well). However, because Glue Grenade has -maxspeed and Rooted does not, a Tanker with Rooted could potentially reach the normal run speed cap, while someone under the effect of a Glue grenade would never be able to.

Rooted (and Granite's) movement penalty (and the -recharge on Granite) is unresistable. There was a big stink about it awhile back because RedTomax had it (and still does) listed wrong (including the -recharge on Granite). All Speed Boost does is add the base +runspeed (or +recharge), the resist effects don't apply to the penalties (if they do, then the numbers tab is bugged but I'm pretty confident that I'm not getting +82.5% recharge from a single SB while in Granite).

Well, first of all its not just a question of whether all the protection comes from defense, but more a question of how critical to the overall functionality of the secondary is that defensive protection. That's why cloaking device doesn't have defense debuff resistance.

*Buffs* never grant defense debuff resistance, because its not considered a malfunction if player A buffs player B and then enemy C debuffs player B and counters those buffs. That's the purpose of debuffs in the first place: to counter buffs. So the +DEF that a Widow might grant as a team buff is unlikely to count as something that should have defense debuff resistance protection. Granted those buffs also affect the caster, but when it comes to team buffs its likely that such buffs are considered team buffs that happen to buff the caster, not buffs that primarily protect the caster and also protect the team besides.

Second, Widow protection is not exclusively +DEF. Widow secondaries also offer scaling resistances in two powers in Teamwork that are individually stronger than SR gets, and they also provide significant psionic resistance besides. And the secondary includes placate. On top of that they also get significant offensive capability. You could argue that the +DEF available to Widows in secondary sets is only a fraction of the total capability of those sets, a much lower fraction than say SR.

Third, I believe Widow secondaries do offer some level of defense debuff resistance, comparable to powersets with a similar nature of having significant but not critical majority of its functionality in delivering +DEF, like Ninjitsu.


In any case, this isn't an argument for *proving* what level of debuff protection Widows should have, its only a line of thinking that is consistent with the level of protection they actually got. You could probably make a legitimate case for why they might need more than what they have that isn't inconsistent with the apparent design intent of the archetype.

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, but I would like to point out that you don't need to fight them to get your contacts in Sharkhead. SWAT only show up in PPD at levels 21+, not 20+. What I do when entering Sharkhead (at level 20) is do one mission for Darrin Wade. He then introduces me to one contact. Then I do newspaper missions and two mayhems to unlock all the tier 1 contacts in that zone. I don't have to deal with any SWAT because they don't spawn at that level. Now that we can set our difficulty to -1 level, you could even avoid SWAT at level 21.

Nerva is another story, there's no way to avoid dealing with them there if you want to unlock contacts, but at least you're level 25 and hopefully a little better equipped to deal with them.

Interestingly, Grant Cover for Shield Defense is the only ally buff in the game that also grants defense debuff resistance. Whether a side effect or by design, this makes the skill deceptively potent on large teams and when stacked through multiple shield wielders.