What For?

Ok, Im curious about how people use IOs, and suggjest how they use them to others on this forum.

I will point out, that this isnt a attempt to attack anyone on this forum, its just something im curious about, and dont understand.

Iv been watching people talk about adding Def% IOs to there builds, and have watched alot of others suggjest the same thing to another player using IOs.

"I have a Fire Armor Tank, and I was wanting to know what would be a good way to IO it?"

Common answer, "Put possitional Defense in it."

"Would Perma-Dom still be good on a Dominator since it doesnt boost damage anymore?"

Common Answer, "Put possitional Defense in it."

"Iv got a Earth/Empathy Controller, whats a good IO path?"

Common Answer, "Put possitional Defense in it."

"I have a Elec/Elec brute, should I give it Global Recharge to get faster Heals from Energize and Lightining Rods?"

Common Answer, "Put possitional Defense in it."

Ok, thats 4 Examples of something I dont understand, and belive me, theres alot more then just 4 I could toss out there.

These are acctual builds iv watched people ask a question about, and all get the same common answer.Im curious as to why this seems to be the only way to IO anything for so many people?

For that Fire Armor Tank, and the Electrical Brute, id have suggjested that the Fire Tank take up Global Recharge, Recovery, and Regen, and would have suggjested the very same to the Brute.I also would have suggjested KB IOs for the Tank, that would increase the survivability, and power of those melee character more then Def% being added to there builds.

I think Global Recharge would be all the IOs a Earth/EMP controller would need, and maybe a pet IO set that allows for a BU or something like that for the pet.Def % wouldnt be needed.

Then the most puzzling thing iv ever seen, is to suggjest to a Dominator to get def %, instead of Perma-Dom.If you have enough Global Recharge to have Perma-Domination, theres aboslutly no reason to have Def %s at all, the mob is under total control, and if its not, then somethings wrong with your attack run.

So my real question is, why does everyone suggjest Possional Defense for everything in the game, when the builds would benifit from another route way more?

The main reason is because, in general, defense bonuses have the highest combination of "effectiveness" and "amount available". A fire or elec tank having his heals up more often is a good general goal, but is not actually as much effective mitigation as the amount of defense available by sinking a large amount of inf into defense.

Personally, I feel it's a better plan for people at low budgets to try to dovetail with their sets' natural strengths. When you're talking about what can be done with a very high budget, however (which is what a lot of the people on these forums think of as "IO builds"), you can get more mileage in defense boosts than just about anything else.

Personally, I like to use IOs to overcome set 'weaknesses' or to stretch the definitions of that AT.

So for example, I am currently IOing out my Stone/SS Tanker and I'm loading him up with Run Speed, Recharge and Damage bonuses. Extra Defence is not something he really needs.

At the same time, I finished IOing out my D3 last week as well. As much as like playing him, the amount of damage I did was depressing (well, he is a Defender after all...) so his IO focus has been to get Damage and Recharge bonuses on him. Only after that did I start looking at Defences to stack with his -ToHit.

I find it better to play to a set's strengths as you're building on top of something that's already there such as pushing a Defence set like Shields up to the soft cap. The only toon I've attempted to add Defence to when there was none to begin with is my Sonic/En Blaster.

Positional Defence is a good bonus to have but I've seen some truly awful builds that sacrifice their core strengths just to squeeze in a few more % of Defence. Set IOs give us tremendous potential to push the limits of our characters in certain directions so when anyone asks for my advice on IOing their toon my first question is always "What do you want to achieve?" Only then will they know what kind of IO bonuses and enhancements they want to pursue.

I think there's a few things going on:

1) Most people who give advice about this tend to assume that when planning an IO build, you're looking for the absolute best money can buy. With plenty of Inf to burn, it's entirely possible to soft-cap at least one of the three positional defenses on even a Blaster. Less rich players, on the otherhand, will find it a bit harder to pick up enough +def to outweigh the potential benefits of frakenslotting and careful choice of set bonuses to match their build.

2) Topped out defenses is the single best generic defensive strategy in the game that all AT's have access to, due to the above. When you're getting hit by only 5% of incoming attacks, you tend to feel invincible. The other big advantage of +def over +regen or +resist, is that if you don't get hit, you not only avoid damage, you also avoid any and all debuffs, mezes, and other secondary effects of the attack.

3) Stacking defense bonuses is something any AT can do, so it's easy to give that advice to anyone without stopping to actually analyze what is going to be most effective in increasing that character's damage output, control, buffs, etc.

4) Stupidly high defenses combined with massive aoe damage is one of the ways to efficient farming.

I built my Dominator for Ranged/AoE defenses instead of permadom (could go for permadom on the current build, but I refuse to purchase those overpriced purple recipes for the remaining 7.5% rech needed) and even I admit that's pretty out of the box. But that's because I'm that crazy guy that is obsessed with soloing AVs on every AT

You have generalized the advice given out on every AT board here on the forums. Positional defense is not the default advice given out on any board except possibly the dom board, for a valid reason. I don't know where you get your observations, but it's not these boards.

To prove my point,

On the brute boards, defense is not the default advice. You'll see +HP/regen builds, recharge builds, and yes defense builds. But those defense builds are a healthy mix of typed defense and positional defense. If you don't believe me, what are the top 5 topics right now looking to build for? We have a person wanting to make a WP with lots of +HP. We have a mace/DA build looking for +HP. WE have a SS/Fire looking to build for recharge.

I don't think you looked very closely at the blaster boards either. I've only seen a handful of positional defense builds in the past six months.

You also missed the tanker boards, where +HP is a very viable way to build a tank. Not only that, but I see recovery being the biggest focus on this board. I'd argue that 75% of all tank builds posted on that forum have impervium armor slotted. You won't see many tanks with six-slotted titanium armor for melee def.

So why go defense? Perhaps it's because making your character tougher makes you feel stronger!

Perma-Dom isn't as good as it used to be, despite the intentions of castle to preserve those that had perma-doms. Your only real advantage is mez-protection, and an extra point of mez. However, perma-doms used to also get a damage buff, and so if you wanted to really cause havoc on them, you needed a perma dom. Now that this bonus is gone, survivability seems a little nicer than damage, so why not build your dom with good range defense, because you've got an AoE immob to keep them at range!

So I'd suggest you take another look at these boards. You'll see that positional defense is NOT the default answer.

Adding defense alone to any build is extremely beneficial. You really do not know what your talking about until you have taken a known squishy and turned it into a monster. I used to have my sonic/storm slotted up for maximum recharge, to get her fr, nado, and ls up as much as possible. I was able to have multiple of each out for full duration all the time. It was reaally cool, but as far as effectivness goes it was pretty pointless. I dropped all those rech sets, grabbed up softcapped range defense, and settled for a modest 44% global rech from bonus's. Now, I can have my fr, nado, and ls multiples out still, just not for the whole durations, but I kill twice as fast and dont die unless **** really hits the fan.

You say you would slot a fire armor brute with regen, why? Doubling his regen will not change his playstyle in the slightest. Unless a toon starts off with a hefty, HEFTY chunk of regen, adding regen wont improve their fighting as much as other options.

I just see a lot more out of my defense bonus's than any other bonus. I dont see much gain in 10% of recharge shaving off half a second from a power. I play too drunk for that half second to really matter.

When you make up one side of the argument and then argue against it, that's exactly what people SHOULD mean when they refer to a "straw man" argument. (This being the internet, "straw man" is usually used more like "Yer mother." Decline of the youth of today, etc.)

If you linked to a specific thread and said, "For example- here", we could judge your opinions about whether it really happens, whether it SHOULD happen, whether those players are on bad drugs, etc.

As it is, you're basically asking us to defend a position that you've invented for us.

It's very simple really.

Positional defense is the easiest way to add survivability to ANY character. No matter what AT, if you add defense, they will live longer.

All the regen in the world does you absolutely no good when you're being hit by everything and you drop to 0 HP in 15 seconds or less. Defense makes regen better, because it's less damage you need to regenerate.

All the recharge in the world is useless when you're dead. Defense will keep you alive longer, in order to use all those quick recharging attacks.

More HP just means you can take more hits before you drop. If you're not taking all those hits you will not drop.

That's why defense is a common IO path for any character. Because no matter what else you're doing with it, defense will make it better.

I think it's best to have a priority for a build - everything counts in large amounts - so most of my builds are focused on either getting global recharge as high as possible or soft-capping defence (usually positional, quite often just Ranged Def for squishies, but rarely I'll go typed S/L def and perhaps typed E/N def too, especially if the build already has some typed def from powers). Which I choose depends whether a build has survivability issues while levelling, but it's not always that clearcut - global rchg can add to survivability too if you're depending on a self-heal - and rchg is often more desirable as it affects almost every power you have and can increase your damage considerably over time.

A couple of my builds are a compromise of getting both +def and +rchg, notably my L50 blaster (my only purpled-up hero) - I just needed a little extra survivability on him (he has 25% ranged def, which was enough for what I use him for - TFs and also some soloing that's heavily dependant on Rain of Arrows), so the rest of his build was devoted to getting BU/Aim up faster. It just depends what I want from a character and whether they're mainly a solo or team build.

The only time I've deviated from either +def and/or +rchg is with builds that needed to fix really bad end issues (it was a joint aim for my WM/SR along with softcapping his def to all positions), though I could also see myself going for +HP bonuses if/when I build a teaming Tanker (currently I only have a low level Shield/SS built for tanking in a duo, but I plan to make a teaming Invul/Fire at some point, though softcapping S/L/E/N will probably be his main priority).

I buy (cheap) IOs to Frankenslot the best enhancement values I can in powers. I also tend to go for Recovery or Regen bonuses because they're generally 2 or 3 set bonuses and thus compatible with Frankenslotting.

I'll buy other IOs to fix specific issues : knockback protection, stealth, Chance for End PROCs for a fair few characters and the Forced Feedback PROC for a quick-recharging AOE if I have one. That's about it really.

Works out pretty cheap usually, can work equally well both sides and it's compatible with my love of making alts.