Resistance Is Futile!

Or at least slotting set bonuses for resistance instead of defense is. But in theory, it doesn’t have to be.

Throughout the early years of COH, resistance builds generally were regarded as more solid than defense builds, but accumulated changes have reversed that, at least in the high-performance end of the game.

My understanding of the situation is that Castle has implied that there are so many defense bonuses available that he thinks it’s a bit too easy to get significantly high defense on a character. I’m not saying, or asserting that Castle said, soft-capped defense is inappropriate for many characters…but it might be a little much seeing so many soft-capped builds that started out with no defense from powers at all. Furthermore, Castle didn’t say the Devs are considering changing the set bonuses to reduce the amount of defense available. Instead, if I understood him, he was implying that making an equivalent strength and variety of resistance bonuses available would be problematic because players could also stack in the already-existing defense bonuses and become even more mind-bogglingly strong.

I understand that, from a game-design point of view, it’s desirable not to have too huge a gap in performance. But I think it would be nice if resistance builds were possible, without being overpowered. Ideally, there should be (at least) three strategies for avoiding damage (I’ll omit discussions of healing/regenerating, which is valid, but does not bear on my suggestion): pure resistance, pure defense, and a mix of the two.

But how can we create a smorgasbord of resistance set bonuses that will allow resistance-based builds to accumulate enough to be roughly as well-protected as soft-capped defense-based characters can already be, without permitting stacked defense and resistance bonuses to grossly exceed the current paradigm?

I believe a mechanism already exists that could be adapted to achieve this.

This is difficult to explain, I hope I can make my idea understandable.

Certain IOs are flagged as “unique,” and each character can only slot one of that IO. If you try to slot another one, the game won’t let you; the slots are grayed out and it will not work. And all set bonuses obey the “rule of five” where the game checks for how many of a given set bonus you have slotted, and only allows 5 copies of that bonus to work.

Perhaps the defense set bonus IOs, AND the resistance set bonus IOs that already exist, AND the new resistance set bonus IOs that I am proposing be added, could all get some kind of similar flag on them that would recognize how many bonuses you already had slotted (like unique IOs do recognize themselves) and allow only a certain total value to be slotted (like the “rule of five” allows only a certain number of bonuses to be active).

Exactly how this would work is a question for the programmers, and exactly what proportions of defense and resistance limits would be “fair” is a question for the game designers. I won’t venture any guesses.

Would this be abusable? Yeah, probably someone will calculate some combination of defense and resistance through some oddball slotting that works really well. But people already do much the same thing with defense.

I am not proposing making defense weaker than it now is, nor making resistance stronger than defense now is. I am trying to propose a balance. I am trying to propose more interesting choices among top-end builds. Right now “slather on the defense, because you can’t get enough resistance to matter” seems to be the consensus, and it’s less interesting than if there were more (valid) choices (in how to do this specific thing, reduce incoming damage -- I am not trying to denigrate other choices such as regeneration or recharge bonuses).

I never understood the exact reasoning behind the drought of resistance bonuses in IOs. Given that 1% of defense is usually considered equal to 2% of resistance and that defense typed defense values are found in higher values (3.75% vs 2.5%), it doesn't make much sense. The only reason it remains this way is because 'the devs want it this way'. I don't like it, and I want balanced resistance sets so my resistance toons could add resistance rather than layer defense. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever see a time when typed resistances are properly paired and given reasonable values.

I guess the only reason defense values still exist is that defense debuffs can make quick work of defense, while resistance debuffs have to deal with resisistance.

The reason that we won't get any good Resistance set bonuses now is because of how well they'd stack with Defense set bonuses, which are out there in spades. And to fix that, they'd need to lower the Defense set bonuses, which they're very unlikely to do, because of how much influence and time people have put into getting the set bonuses as they are now.

Defense vs Resistance is easy to figure out. Against roughly even enemies, without any buffs on them, 1% Def = 2% Resistance.

However, Defense + Resistance is much greater than either one alone, and while it's not quite an exponential gain, adding slight amounts of resistance to a Defense soft-capped build can create some staggering amounts of survivability (this is one of the reasons that both Granite Armor and Invuln are great...they layer Resistance and Defense).


I think that if the Devs did it over again, they probably wouldn't have put so many Defense bonuses into the IO sets. But, because they have, we're unlikely to see a change in it.

As for the OPs idea: it's okay, but I don't see it likely that it will happen. THere are just too many complications in it, and it adds one more layer of balance that needs to be looked at when it comes to IOs.

its a nice idea, but there are a few sets that do have +resist bonuses (purple sets for example with 6 will net you 5% toxic resist)

i think there is also a knockback set with 2.5% smash resist

theres also a PVP IO which gives +3% all resists

i havent looked that in depth with all set bonuses to see if there are any others, but there are already a decent bit of sets out there with resist bonuses

Aett, I just don't buy the stacking def/res argument that one could stack appreciable numbers of both resistance AND defense using IO sets - especially if the resistance sets were either completely new, or they simply combined the typed defenses and buffed the resistance numbers on the sets we do have.

The sets we rely on defense have absolutely no resistance component to them - kinetic combat, reactive, BoTZ and so forth. Obviously we couldn't change these to include resistance values, so we would need completely new sets.

To stack appreciable numbers of defense, a build has to focus on stacking defense, and the majority of the powers will contain defensive bonus sets. I just don't see players having enough room to slot for both.

Ah, that makes sense then.

I was thinking from the viewpoint of a squishy trying to choose sets to increase survivability. Getting appreciable numbers on res/def on a blaster would be pretty tough, even with the APPs. I didn't even think about how easy it is to softcap a SR. Yeah, SR would eclipse granite then, if it doesn't already in some cases.

Well, that's a disappointment to my 3 /elec brutes. I wanted to be able to match powersurge using resistance sets.

Thanks for bringing that up both of you.

I think DDR is the key reason then. I can spend a fortune on IO's to get around 40% S/L defense on a resistance set and watch cascading defense failure turn a multi-billion inf build into a piece of trash.

Whereas if a SR brute could achieve around 40% S/L/E resistance, it would easily outperform any of my defensive build /elecs.

Resistance sets would still be a nice thing. Maybe with the impending harder content, resistance sets wouldn't completely unbalance end-game.

Hmmm..

Actually, if I could make my own proposal for how to fix the rifts between defense and resistance bonuses: What if we had a hard cap on how much defense and resistance you can get out of sets?

I'm not sure about the exact numbers but how about 18% for both?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Firery Aura Scrappers (and Tanks and Brutes I assume) can cap Fire resistance with just SOs, or maybe even DOs. Don't quote me on the latter though. If I remember correctly, Invulns with Tough can hit S/L cap. But, for all positions? Ignoring Tier 9s and the aforementioned Eclipse, the only thing I can think of are Khelds mixing shields with their inherent. But, depending on how you choose to define it, that may count as a teammate buff in an indirect sense.