Purples =/= Defense?

I've got a serious question that just popped into my head:

Why in discussions of Defense and Survivability do people mention purples?

I constantly see people talking about survivability and there characters lack there of, but then saying they can't afford expensive IOs or Purples. Now I know that to get good defense you need to spend some change, but you can easily defense cap a toon for what a set of purple's would cost.

So I'm just wondering where the fallacy comes from that purples help you survive?

My only theory so far is that it is because Purples are deemed SO great and amazing that they solve all of a characters issues. *shrug*.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Purples are what make my Warshade survive...

But really, I see where you're going with this. Purple sets don't amount to any survivability (most of them, anyway). There are some nice +HP and regen bonuses in a few, but very little in the way of defense.

I think it stems from a misconception about purple sets. Some people just think that purples are far and away better than anything else for every aspect of a character, but don't really know anything about them because they "can't farm for/afford/be bothered with" them.

It depends if people are refering to Purple sets or Purple inspirations. The two tend to share the same shorthand.

/pays 0.02 inf

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I guess there's also the feeling that if you have maxxed out on purples that you will have so much +recovery, +accuracy, and whatnot that some powers or slots may become superfluous and can be replaced by others that may actually help you survive. I would love to have enough slots to be able to 6-slot health with three uniques (Miracle, Numina, Panacea) and three standard green IOs. That would help me survive, but I can rarely justify the use of that many slots in Health. Perhaps with the right purples, you wouldn't need to slot the Kismet unique, or get Focused Accuracy.

Just a thought.

I guess it all depends on what aspect of the toon will make it more survivable.

For example a toon that uses defence as its main form of mitigation would gain more from slotting IO sets that enhance that (e.g. Shield toons or Ice tanks) rather than using Purple IOs. The same could be said for other toons that have no defence and do not require lots of recharge, e.g. a hover blaster with a good attack chain soft capping ranged defence.

On the other hand some toons are more survivable if a certain power is more readily available so the huge recharge bonuses from Puples sets is more useful. The main examples I can think of would be an Illusion controller having Phantom Army out or a Fire Aura toon having Healing Flames ready or a Warshade having Eclipse available.

And not all Purple sets are that expensive. For example the Confuse and Sleep sets are cheaper than the others IIRC.

So I guess my 0.02inf is it all depends on the toon, the build and how they are played.

Edit - damn my slow fingers!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

I have probably been guilty of using the mis-nomer of "purpled-out" builds as a reference to the amount of influence invested in the build, not necessarily that every possible "purple" set was being added to it. My apologies.

Henceforth, I will call these "Mega-Influence Builds", so as not to add to the mis-conception


It wasnt ME !

FYI: The purple confuse set has the highest ranged defense bonus available at 5%.

It is also worth pointing out that after you have softcapped defense, there are only a few ways to increase survivability using IOs:
1. Resistance
2. HP/Regen
3. Proc-based controls
4. Kill the other guy faster

1. is pretty much not an option unless it comes from your AT powers or Tough.

2. Does come with many purple sets in large volume. Along with the afore mentioned recharge that is key for quite a few builds both offensively and defensively.

3. The purple sets have extremely powerful procs (chance to hold added to your aoe immobilize along with gobs of recharge so it is up every 10 seconds? MMMMMMAAAYYYYBE that will help your survivability?). Chance to knockdown added to a Targetted AoE, again just might be relevant when talking survival. Contagius Confusion? Chance to Placate? Just might be helpful when talking survival.

4. Since the best defense is a good offense you might benefit from the higher % enhancement in your attacks that purples provide, they also kick in the higher recharge allowing your chains to be smoother and higher DPS. Combined with attacks like Parry or siphon life, they do double duty as offense and defense. Again, the procs come into play with a 33% chance to trigger and dealing 50% more damage than a normal proc.


Summary:
There are many ways that the purples will help your survivability. It's not all about S/L softcapping.

Purple sets may or may not increase the character's survivability at 50. However, they do nothing for the greater majority of the character's career (aka, the first 49 levels). If you feel your character has low survivability from 1 through 49 due to not being able to slot purple sets, then perhaps the character needs rerolled.

I too have felt that people refer to purpled out toons when they should just say IOd out or money pit toons. On a few toons that need significant amounts of recharge or +dmg, it can help. But you are correct, I can't think of any purple IO sets that increase defense directly. As someone else pointed out earlier, a /FA would be happy with increased recharge for healing flames, but I find it smarter to build for defense *and* recharge.

Aside from a few sets, most purple IOs generally add massive recharge, accuracy, Fire/Cold resistance, and recovery.

Recharge benefits a lot of ATs far more than defense. Dominators can achieve Perma Domination; their control clicks are their defense and domination grants full mez protection, and both are recharge dependent. Many controller builds rely on recharge as well to up their survivability. An Illusion controller running perma-Phantom Army and cycling controls/buffs faster has much better protection than they would being soft capped to one or two vectors. A Stone Melee player cycling Fault every 6 seconds has overblown protection levels.

There are lots of click skills that can provide protection, and lots of builds that are better suited for recharge over soft capping. On top of that. a dead foe is 100% damage mitigation. Purples increase increase accuracy, letting you hit more often. Their recovery lets you run more toggles and convert endurance to damage at a faster rate, while global recharge benefits both offense and defense in almost every build. Unless you can softcap a full suite of vectors, many builds would be better suited with recharge to provide increased protection and offense.

Purples do three main things:

1) They give a lot of recharge, which lets people get enough recharge for their attack chain from fewer sets, leaving room for more defense sets. And of course if you depend on click powers like Integration or Healing flames higher recharge is higher survivability.

2) They give full bonuses when exemped, making characters much stronger on lower level TFs. Having high enhancement values and great set bonuses at level 20 or 25 makes a huge difference.

3) They tend to have other useful bonuses that either boost survivability (+HP) or potentially free up more slots (+accuracy), plus extremely high enhancement values. That lets people free up more slots in attacks and shift them to defensive powers or set mules. It also allows slotting more procs and boosts total damage, which is nice for Blasters and others whose main survivability tool is killing all the bad guys (or good guys) really fast.

That said, high survivability builds generally don't use as many purples as max-recharge builds. You mainly see tons of purples in archtypes that need fewer set bonuses to survive (Scrappers, Brutes, etc...) or rely heavily on boosting the recharge of AoE control powers (Controllers, Dominators).

The best thing about Coercive Persuasion is that they are pretty damn cheap. Can get them for a 1-2 million each if your patient or 3-5 if not.

The salvage is most costly then the actual recipe.

I didn't think this would get as much discussion as it did.

In my haste posting this thread before work, I should have elaborated on my own knowledge (recharge helping certain click powers, heals, mind link, oh *snap* powers and what not).

I should have also stated that the only purple set that has a meaningful +defense bonus was Coersive Persuasion, however most characters don't have access to a confuse power to ustilize the set.

I did not however think of the purple sets saving slots elsewhere to add slots for adding defense, that does make sense.

I was mostly thinking very one dimensionally about people thinking that purples would give their character direct mitigation (maxing res. or soft-capping defense).

Dechs pretty much understood what I was asking head on, and his answer was basically what I had already thought, but everyone's answers have been enlightning, accept of course the purple insp. answers

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

QR, DR;

It's because the people who are making those kind of complaints don't know how to become tougher, don't know what actually makes them tougher, don't even care to know. So they assume that it's a simple equation with money in one end, survivability out the other end, so they can be bitter about it. If someone talks about purple IOs in the context of survivability, they are almost certainly just highlighting their ignorance.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect