soft cap obsession

why is everyone so obsessed with getting to the soft cap for their defense?

Because a character at 45% defense is literally twice as hard to kill as one at 40%, and ten times harder to kill than one with 0% defense? Defense has accelerating returns - each point of defense gives you a larger boost to your survivability than the one before. Hitting that magic 45% is the key to surviving some of the most ridiculous challenges this game can offer.

The "soft cap" is 45% defense to any position or attack time.

Since standard enemies only have a 50% chance to hit you to begin with, 50% - 45% for your defense gives them only a 5% chance to hit with any attack you're strong against.

Since the game won't let anyone, player or NPC, have less than a 5% chance to hit with any given attack, a 45% defense is the sweet spot for all standard enemies up to +4 over your level.

The "obsession" is basically trying to make a character that's nearly invincible and can wade into a messy situation to kick butt and take names.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Because taking 1/10th of the normal amount of damage when you jump into a pack of bad guys is an exhilirating empowering experience? Defence gets more effective the more you have, so that last 5% or so can make a very noticeable difference.

It's also just right on the difficulty scale - you have to plan your build and shop ahead and so on, but it doesn't take purples or PvP IOs or anythiong beyond the means of a casual player to do so, just a bit of patience.

Because debt makes them cry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

Also, because of the way defense bonuses from IO sets work, almost any toon should be able to get to the soft cap versus at least one positional type (ranged, melee, AoE) or one damage type (smash/lethal, energy/negative, etc.).

High defenses also keep mezzes and debuffs off you, at least until that first defense debuff hits. So softcapping lets you build that elusive tank/mage character, as long as your luck holds

I think IO bonuses should suppress when you are mezzed. And probably also for some period of time after you die.

This is a super Hero game as far as I'm concerned we can do things real super heros do like clobber minion after minion by the hordes and solo the hardest bosses. If I couldn't do some of the things I can because of set bonuses I would be one of the ones gnashing teeth

45% defense is like 90% resistance, but more exciting.

I try to get there for brutes and tanks.. anything else I really dont care at all.

There's plenty of stuff in this game that absolutely wrecks defense, even soft capped. Other forms of survivability, such as resist and heal based (or mixed) can be just as survivable, especially if you just ignore the enemies these forms are weak against.

Then there's the leveling situation. As good as defense is at high numbers, it's equally pathetic/useless at low numbers. It's a fair trade-off imo, you pay for weaker leveling survivability for superior survivability at the end.

And finally, soft capped defense is an end-game thing that requires extensive IO use in most cases. There's nothing wrong with having very powerful end-game heroes/villains that do impressive things. I believe the devs even acknowledged this is their belief as well at one point. Or should we start crying 'overpowered' about recharge rates and stacking debuffs too while we're at it, so we're at least consistent?

So I would argue there's absolutely no need for a nerf. If it's too easy for you to play a def based toon, then don't play one. Or if you really need to play one and you still feel it's overpowered, don't dodge the enemies that laugh at defense and/or use the new shiny difficulty settings. Or take one into pvp, lol. And while some may truly feel def is too powerful, I think many of the complaints are based on ignorance and the big green monster, and I aint' talking about the hulk.

what do you intend to do about the poor SR brutes ? make them totaly useless. they have no resit untill they are half dead ! without the softcap a SR brute is like a 6th toe

Well the general solution is more defense debuffs. A SR Brute has DDR, a hoverblaster does not.

People are obsessed with it because it's extremely potent and quite easy to achieve; I have builds that went from 0% Smashing/Lethal defense to 45% while using just CJ and Weave from pool powers. If a hovering Blaster can achieve 45% ranged defense, which is the easiest vector to soft-cap, why wouldn't the player base eventually become obsessed with it?

In retrospect, IO defense bonuses probably should have been half of what they currently are when the system was designed. Take for instance Kinetic Combat, which grants 3.75% Smashing/Lethal defense from just 4 parts, and compare that to the skill Tough. Just two of these bonuses will nearly equal the mitigation value of a fully socketed Tough for many ATs, and three will often exceed its total protection. (Do note that KC used to just grant 3.75% Smashing defense.)

There has been a steady trend to increase the effectiveness of defense sets, and the pendulum has just swung a bit too far in the buff direction. Linking and pairing Typed/Positional defense across the board in the IO system might have been the proverbial straw, as it was the most recent buff to defense mechanics and coincided with an explosion of interest in soft-capping toons. You simply don't have to make extreme build sacrifices anymore to achieve the cap as it more than doubled the amount of available bonuses in the IO system.

Just read the guide in my sig.

The other thing about set bonuses is that they don't scale by AT. A set that grants 3.75% ranged defense gives the same bonus to masterminds as it does to defenders. I'm not saying the bonuses should scale by AT, and it would likely be a coding nightmare, but it might be interesting if a set that granted a damage bonus gave a 6% increase for scrappers or stalkers but only a 2.5% increase for controllers.

Also, the PvP IOs have dual effects, based on the character's presence in a PvP environment, so maybe there could be future IO sets that granted bonuses based on AT, or maybe even origin. Hey, it could make character origin mean something again

As a minmaxer, I'm not obsessed with softcapped defense. I don't like builds that cripple their power choice and enhancement percentages just to get the magic 45%; it stinks of blindly chasing set bonuses to me. On characters that have no native defense and no defense debuff resistance, I prefer to build for no or moderate amounts (20% - 32.5%) of defense while focusing on other build goals that benefit the character more.

Since I actually fight enemies other than CoT Behemoths, I know all too well that softcapped defense is a lot less invulnerable than it looks on paper. There is a reason that defense is the only mitigation you can stack such huge amounts of, not just as far as IOs are concerned, but also in the realm of pool powers/ally/team buffs: it is bypassed more easily than any other mitigation out there.