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1) I have a spines/elec with 40% S/L defense and almost-perma-Energize. It's very survivable at +3x8 against Carnies, Rikti, Malta, Council, most Praetorians, and Freakshow. CoT and Nemesis are tougher. Cimerorans are MUCH tougher. Arachnos and Rogue Vanguard kill me so bad it almost deletes the toon and cancels my sub.|
Originally Posted by Chromium_Man
The Premise: I'm obsessed with Elec Powers in all of their forms. I have an Elec/Elec Blaster, Tank, Brute, and Stalker all at the cap with a Scrapper currently at 47. With IOs I've got Perma-Hasten for my Blaster and ridiculous amounts of Regen/Recovery with my Tank and I want to go a different way with my Scrapper. I think I've made up my mind that I want to go for Soft-Capped Defense of some variety to compliment the decently high Resistances and good Regen provided by Energize. I already know of the pitfalls of building for Defense with no -Def Resistance, but I have a lot of resources and I think I want to do it despite the drawbacks.
The questions: 1) Has anyone built a different Resist-based toon for Defense? How did it work out? 2) What would be better to build for: Smashing/Lethal or Melee Positional? I'm leaning towards Melee, but there's another Elec/Elec on my server that's soft-capped for S/L and says he likes it. Assume that influence is no issue. Thanks in advance for any help or insight that you can give me. |
2) Depends on your primary. If the primary is Broadsword or Katana, definitely think about softcapped Melee Defense using Parry/DA and then whatever other positional defenses you can get from IO sets. With other primaries your best bet is probably to go for S/L defense and enough recharge for perma- or near-perma-Energize.
My Brute and my Tanker are both Electric Armor, both have around 30% defenses to all positions, both are indeed very survivable. They have no problem against Arachnos, Malta, CoT or Council, but Carnies and Longbow can be very tricky and usually require silly strategies such as running around a corner and away from location debuffs (namely Sonic Grenade).
Both are also capable of tanking RSF/STF without requiring anything more than small inspirations and moderate support
Defense debuffs will really ruin your day though, really.
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One thing I hate about defense debuffs is that unduly punish non-defense builds. Defense offers protection against them since you still have to be hit. Where as a high defense characters can have a defense cascade failure, resist characters with low defense immediately double incoming damage. I'd like to see defense debuffs limited so they wouldn't reduce you beneath base defense. This would still take away all the mitigation of primarily defense based characters, but Resist characters would weather those enemies better.
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Originally Posted by Silverado
Defense debuffs will really ruin your day though, really.
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Moonlighter
50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD
First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563
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This really isn't true. What represents double (average) damage (per second) against a non-defense-based character would represent 3-5x as much average damage per second against a defense character, depending on how you define "doing the same thing" to them. Looked at another way, it takes way less -Def to start doing double damage against a defense user.|
Originally Posted by Moonlighter
One thing I hate about defense debuffs is that unduly punish non-defense builds. Defense offers protection against them since you still have to be hit. Where as a high defense characters can have a defense cascade failure, resist characters with low defense immediately double incoming damage. I'd like to see defense debuffs limited so they wouldn't reduce you beneath base defense. This would still take away all the mitigation of primarily defense based characters, but Resist characters would weather those enemies better.
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Even when you're softcapped, stuff with pervasive debuffs will hit you eventually. When it does, unless have a boatload of DDR (which only SR and Hami-O'd Shield can have) getting your defense debuffed usually represents a serious problem for the defense user, because that defense is usually their primary means of mitigation. Slapping 30% defense on a DR or Regen set still leaves them with those tools underneath. They're going to take the extra damage more gracefully than the Defense set will handle suddenly taking 3 or more times as much damage (even if none of them can actually survive it).
Remember, the game isn't balanced around the kind of stuff we do so often in this forum. If it was, it's quite likely we simply couldn't do them.
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
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
This really isn't true. What represents double (average) damage (per second) against a non-defense-based character would represent 3-5x as much average damage per second against a defense character, depending on how you define "doing the same thing" to them. Looked at another way, it takes way less -Def to start doing double damage against a defense user.
Even when you're softcapped, stuff with pervasive debuffs will hit you eventually. When it does, unless have a boatload of DDR (which only SR and Hami-O'd Shield can have) getting your defense debuffed usually represents a serious problem for the defense user, because that defense is usually their primary means of mitigation. Slapping 30% defense on a DR or Regen set still leaves them with those tools underneath. They're going to take the extra damage more gracefully than the Defense set will handle suddenly taking 3 or more times as much damage (even if none of them can actually survive it). Remember, the game isn't balanced around the kind of stuff we do so often in this forum. If it was, it's quite likely we simply couldn't do them. |
Hrrrm.
As I recall, Invuln with all passives has 50 percent debuff resistance vs defence debuffs. On my tank I try to 'sweeten' that by running Invincibility saturated as much as possible, getting me to 60-odd percent on the ticks when I manage it. (The old-fashioned 'minion shield' is alive and well.)
Scrappers? Not so much.
Is there any way for other sets to get this goodness? How exactly do the Membranes work their goodness? Could you slot them in Tough Hide, for example? Or scatter them across a fiery aura and gain benefits?
If not, it seems SD may be a little too good to be true....
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Slotting defense enhancements in powers that grant defense-debuff-resistance, usually boosts that debuff-resistance. In the case of Shield Defense, you can slot Battle Agility and Grant Cover for defense, and the defense-debuff-resistance value they provide will also be boosted. There is another power, however, that grants defense-debuff-resistance but can't be slotted for defense: Active Defense. Slotting Membranes into this power will boost that defense-debuff-resistance value, just the same as if the game allowed us to simply slot it with regular defense enhancements
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Originally Posted by mauk2
How exactly do the Membranes work their goodness? Could you slot them in Tough Hide, for example? Or scatter them across a fiery aura and gain benefits?
If not, it seems SD may be a little too good to be true.... |
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Well, what really make Active Defense a money power is not that you can enhance its DDR: it's actually that you can enhance both its recharge and DDR. Being able to enhance the recharge (and thusly get it to double stack) and DDR (which allows you to increase the DDR by ~60%) allows you to get the power to be roughly 3.2 times stronger than it was originally intended, which allows you to close the gap to 95% DDR. Rather than having the original, intended ~56% DDR, you're getting an additional 24.2% DDR that I doubt was ever intended.
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Originally Posted by Silverado
Slotting defense enhancements in powers that grant defense-debuff-resistance, usually boosts that debuff-resistance. In the case of shield, you can slot Battle Agility and Grant Cover for defense, and the defense-debuff-resistance value will also be boosted. There is another power, however, that grants defense-debuff-resistance but can't be slotted for defense: Active Defense. Slotting Membranes into this power will boost that defense-debuff-resistance value, just the same as if the game allowed us to simply slot it with regular defense enhancements
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Answers:
1) I have a softcapped Broadsword/Dark Armor. It worked out pretty well, he does the RWZ Challenge with little or no danger to himself. But as noted by other posters, defense debuffs are a nighmare for him
2) It really depens on your primary. Katana or Broadsword would be better off focusing on ranged and AoE defense to supplement the melee defense from Parry/DA. Just about any other primary wouldbe better off with typed defense, as there is no real way for them to get significant defense to all 3 positions (1 or 2 is pretty easy, all 3 is decidedly less easy). As far as typed defense goes, focus on Smash/Lethal and Fire/Cold. As an Electric Armor you should have capped energy resistance by accident just in the course of building it, so defense to that type is less important.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I'm going to pretty much echo ClawsandEffect and others.
1) Softcapped Katana/Dark Armor. Works great against most things. Dies fast against crowds of uplevel defense debuffers. Still, I verified that +4x8 Arachnos and even Cimerorans are technically possible, just FRICKIN' HARD, and will involve multiple trips to the hospital. +4x8 Vanguard erase me. There's no way.
2) I'd probably go smashing/lethal. A lot of FCEN attacks, as I understand it, have a smashing/lethal component, allowing that defense to still work. But if it were me, I'd do a comparison of both approaches with completed builds, not just guess that one was better than the other. With Katana or Broad Sword, go with positional defense. Hit the melee soft cap, then work on ranged and AoE.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
I think our responses to the OP skipped a step here. The first answer should be "YES, Soft capped defenses on a resistance based toon are AWSOME."
Then we can start talking about disclaimers of rare and unusual situations where you might still be able to die.
Keep in mind, defense debuffs are frustrating because they turn you into a normal resistance based toon. You're not extra weak to defense debuffs... you're extra strong to everything else. Soft-capping a resistance toon *IS* how you try to stand toe to toe with +4x8 arachnos. Nothing else would have a prayer.
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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I don't know if it possible on a scrapper, but using the epic defense powers on my blaster I was able to soft-cap smash-lethal and ranged. Ranged is easy to pick up with few slots using Zephyr sets. As you said, many FCEN have lethal components. And the ones that do not are mostly ranged attacks... Also most psi attacks are ranged as well. Again, this may not be possible on a resistance scrapper. /Dark or /invul might be able to pull it off. You might have to take hover and combat jumping both. Personally, I hate hovering with a scrapper.
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Originally Posted by Werner
I'm going to pretty much echo ClawsandEffect and others.
2) I'd probably go smashing/lethal. A lot of FCEN attacks, as I understand it, have a smashing/lethal component, allowing that defense to still work. But if it were me, I'd do a comparison of both approaches with completed builds, not just guess that one was better than the other. With Katana or Broad Sword, go with positional defense. Hit the melee soft cap, then work on ranged and AoE. |
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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One weakness of this approach I came up with considering this it for my own characters is Dark Melee, which is relatively common among NPCs. Both Siphon Life and Midnight Grasp are Melee/Negative, meaning they slip past the defenses of a build with L/S+R. That's still probably acceptable to something like Dark Armor, which has Negative resists out the wazoo, though it depends on what you're fighting. Soloing Requiem or Nosferatu would probably make it pretty uncool.
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Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
I don't know if it possible on a scrapper, but using the epic defense powers on my blaster I was able to soft-cap smash-lethal and ranged. Ranged is easy to pick up with few slots using Zephyr sets. As you said, many FCEN have lethal components. And the ones that do not are mostly ranged attacks... Also most psi attacks are ranged as well. Again, this may not be possible on a resistance scrapper. /Dark or /invul might be able to pull it off. You might have to take hover and combat jumping both. Personally, I hate hovering with a scrapper.
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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
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All very true. This is one of the secret strengths of BS/Kat: The Defense is against Melee and lethal (assuming I'm reading it right.)|
Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
As you said, many FCEN have lethal components. And the ones that do not are mostly ranged attacks... Also most psi attacks are ranged as well.
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That's a common positional and a common typed, and a LOT of ranged/AOE attacks have lethal components. If you make the attack miss, the whole attack misses.
(Another secret strength of BS is the fact that it's a potent debuffer. Who needs rads?)
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| Again, this may not be possible on a resistance scrapper. /Dark or /invul might be able to pull it off. |
You can, but the builds look a little...odd. Not bad. Just odd.
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| You might have to take hover and combat jumping both. Personally, I hate hovering with a scrapper. |
I personally LOVE my hoverscrap. It completely changes the playstyle of the game to run a hovering meleer, and you get all sorts of cool animations, not to mention that people stare in amazement. I just wish it wasn't an SR, I find even softcapped super reflexes to be way too delicate for me.
But the manueverability of a fast hoverscrap has to be seen to be believed. It is astonishing how much easier many maps are that way.
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I just can't get used to it. But then I probably don't play my scrappers the way most people play. I generally kill my current target before the previous one hits the ground (use the tab key young padawan. Use the tab key).
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Originally Posted by mauk2
But the manueverability of a fast hoverscrap has to be seen to be believed. It is astonishing how much easier many maps are that way.
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I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
I had a Hovering Stalker, mostly because I wanted Air Superiority to help Placate/AS in better safety. (It works great.) Anyway, I eventually respeced out of it once I used IOs to get defense to help with the AS interruptions. I generally find ground or leaping mobility much faster. The one exception I know of is when you're stuck in caltrops, mostly only an issue when fighting Knives of Artemis and, to a lesser degree, Tsoo.
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
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Or just double-tap your attack. Actually, for a while maybe a couple years ago, it seemed like there was some bug that made attacks not always register. I got in the habit then of multiply-tapping my attacks, and kind of never unlearned it.|
Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
I just can't get used to it. But then I probably don't play my scrappers the way most people play. I generally kill my current target before the previous one hits the ground (use the tab key young padawan. Use the tab key).
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I've personally found Combat Jumping + Hurdle to be more maneuverable than Hover + swift, but maybe I need more experience. Mind you, my first 50 was a hoverblaster, and I have over 1500 hours on him. I suppose that's enough hovering to say that I prefer Combat Jumping.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
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You probably shouldn't. That bug still exists, in spades. It's just not that the attacks don't register, but rather that they can very distinctly unregister. This is wild guesswork on my part, but because this effect seems significantly exaggerated under conditions of bad network lag, I have a suspicion that this is related to packets arriving out of order. Previous packets arrive at either the client or server that tell one of them something else is going on from some previous state, and it ends up unqueuing your next attack.|
Originally Posted by Werner
Or just double-tap your attack. Actually, for a while maybe a couple years ago, it seemed like there was some bug that made attacks not always register. I got in the habit then of multiply-tapping my attacks, and kind of never unlearned it.
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I have a tendency to continuously tap my next attack until it actually begin to animate it. The only real downside (other that wear-and-tear on me!) is that I sometimes autotarget to some unintended foe if my current target dies unexpectedly.
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
[QUOTE=Werner;2603559]Or just double-tap your attack.
QUOTE]
If you double tap, you have server delays between targets. You send an attack that doesn't go until it's queued, then it has to learn that it didn't fire because it's target is dead, and it aquires the nearest target. Tap again and that sends the next attack. That method results 2x delay between server and your machine between targets (send a single, get one back). However If you tab after fireing an attack, you'll aquire the new target during the animation of your your attack, and you can send the next attack at the new target immediately, with no delay at all in your attack chain. That delay can easily be .5-1.0 seconds (which, by the way, is why you should be queing your attacks as early as possible to begin with).
It may not sound like a big deal, but think of it as gaining 1 second per kill.. .and then add up how many kills you have per spawn... or over the course of mission...
I generally do as UberGuy said.. i continiously tap attacks... switching from one attack to the next when an attack animation starts... but i'm watching the hp meter of my target, when I can see the next attack will kill him, I tab (actually i use a numpad key that selects the next target). Then my next attack automatically goes to the next guy without delay. Sometimes I'm wrong and the previous target has a sliver of health left... but that's not a big deal... the point is I'm always hitting something.
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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Awwwww, man. Hmmmm. Occasionally let targets live a few more seconds, or stick with my current approach...
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Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
If you double tap, you have server delays between targets. You send an attack that doesn't go until it's queued, then it has to learn that it didn't fire because it's target is dead, and it aquires the nearest target. Tap again and that sends the next attack. That method results 2x delay between server and your machine between targets (send a single, get one back). However If you tab after fireing an attack, you'll aquire the new target during the animation of your your attack, and you can send the next attack at the new target immediately, with no delay at all in your attack chain.
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"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
Huh. I never actually realized I already do what Shred is saying until he mentioned it. I've been doing it unconsciously. I don't think I'd have realized it at all except I realized as I read his description that I suffer from the condition where sometimes the original target doesn't die.
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
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I have the same problem with doors. I cant double click tho, i have to click until the door opens and my character runs through.
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Originally Posted by Werner
Or just double-tap your attack. Actually, for a while maybe a couple years ago, it seemed like there was some bug that made attacks not always register. I got in the habit then of multiply-tapping my attacks, and kind of never unlearned it.
I've personally found Combat Jumping + Hurdle to be more maneuverable than Hover + swift, but maybe I need more experience. Mind you, my first 50 was a hoverblaster, and I have over 1500 hours on him. I suppose that's enough hovering to say that I prefer Combat Jumping. |
OP:
Most [acc checking] Defense debuffs come in the form of lethal damage via bullets and blades, so Katana/BS is ideal. try to get lethal up near the cap so that a DA or parry will put you a bit over, that's going to be your best attempt at DDR.
Your best res set to pair would be either invul (more of a def set really, as more mitigation comes from that than 75% res to a few types.) or elec (most of your -res is coming from sonic, which is energy, there is no RDR, you need to resist the damage type the debuff is coming from.) your only form of toxic res (another -res type) is the nuke tho, so be careful about when to use it.
I prefer elec, its got a better heal, max HP set bonuses dont work too well on invul, regen is still fine on elec, energize wont bring you an inch from cap, and regen dosent work based on %ages like some nay sayers would have you believe.
so yeah, get smashing up as much as possible, which will unavoidably bring up lethal, capped en resist is inclusive in elec. being over cap on lethal will help delay CDFs. besides unnuked toxic (nothing) and neg (40ish) you've got about 50% res all
The Premise: I'm obsessed with Elec Powers in all of their forms. I have an Elec/Elec Blaster, Tank, Brute, and Stalker all at the cap with a Scrapper currently at 47. With IOs I've got Perma-Hasten for my Blaster and ridiculous amounts of Regen/Recovery with my Tank and I want to go a different way with my Scrapper. I think I've made up my mind that I want to go for Soft-Capped Defense of some variety to compliment the decently high Resistances and good Regen provided by Energize. I already know of the pitfalls of building for Defense with no -Def Resistance, but I have a lot of resources and I think I want to do it despite the drawbacks.
The questions:
1) Has anyone built a different Resist-based toon for Defense? How did it work out?
2) What would be better to build for: Smashing/Lethal or Melee Positional? I'm leaning towards Melee, but there's another Elec/Elec on my server that's soft-capped for S/L and says he likes it. Assume that influence is no issue.
Thanks in advance for any help or insight that you can give me.
Chromium Man Model Designations
I - Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, II - Fire/Energy/Fire Tank, III - Elec/Elec/Elec Blaster,
IV - Elec/Elec/Mu Brute, V - Elec/Elec/Mu Stalker, VI -Elec/Elec/Energy Tank, VII - Elec/Elec/Body Scrapper, VIII - Elec/Elec/Mu Dominator
Co-founder of Riders of Apocalypse - Triumph Server