No AT *needs* to build towards Defense to be effective, but most of what you're saying holds true. On any DM toon of mine I usually build more for recharge.
Yeah, with the mobs to-hit floored with Darkest Night, Fluffy, and Fearsome Stare, I see little need to build for defense.
You will want some. You do not really need to softcap, but you will definitely want some more defense. 20-25 + will be plenty. That stacked with the -tohit will keep your health bar green.
*EDIT* You do not need to "build" for it. But i would take mace for scorption shield at least. I did not build for it on my lvl 50 but now basically full IOed (dont have purples yet or all of my LotGs), it definitely made a big difference.
depends on who you ask.
For starters corruptors get absolutely no resistance to defense debuffs. That means that every single attack that lessens defense that lands will lower your defenses. This will send you into cascading defense failure very quickly.
Secondly, you don't actually get that much native defense. Shadow Fall is only going to give you around 5% defense even if you slam the buff into ED. Weave is only going to give you around 6% defense... again, capped into ED. Maneuvers isn't even going to touch 4% defense even if you went beyond ED limits. Combat jumping is also going to have trouble topping 3% defense at ED limits.
So, presuming you capped all of the native and pool power defensive powers, you'd have around 18% defense. You also would have to have used up, at minimum, 6 power choices. This means that in order to reach the soft-cap defense of 45%, you'll need at minimum 27% defense through just IO's alone.
Getting this defensive count, on the powers a fire / dark corruptor has available, you'll likely need to weaken yourself considerably. For example, very few of the ranged damage sets have defense buffs. The only one with a significant defense buff is Thunderstrike, and you'll need to be six slotting it to get enough defense to really matter. Of the targeted AOE ranged sets, only the PvP set offers any defense, and good luck affording that.
In the slow sets, say for tar-patch? Again, you'll need to 6 slot for any defense boost.
How about twilight grasp? 6 slots again for any meaningful defense.
If you packed in enough 6 slot sets to cover the 27% difference, you'll be having to take away from powers that might need those slots for basic things like endurance management.
So yes, you can chase after that soft-cap defense.
You just are going to have a really gimped build in all other aspects, and all it's going to take is one hit, and poof, you have no defense.
* * *
Now, in all fairness, as a /dark, if you are able to gain a significant amount of defense, the combination of strong to-hit debuffs will make it difficult for enemies to hit you.
Thing is, dark does a pretty good job of flooring enemies to-hit values to begin with. E.G. my own Robotics / Dark mastermind was capable of taking on con-red Elite bosses just on SO's alone. Between all of dark's debuffs, well, defense just isn't that valuable.
If it was my influence on the line, I'd be looking at builds that focused on Accuracy and Recharge. /Dark gets no defense debuff component, and your base heal depends on an accuracy check to heal. Do the math yourself.
Recharge can also help you sustain being nasty at higher levels with the Epic Power-Set proliferation, Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, and Soul Transfer are all corruptor powers. A Soul-Drained mob coupled with, a mob with lowered resistances through tar-patch, inferno, and a sky high recharge? Again, do the math yourself.
Now, in all fairness, as a /dark, if you are able to gain a significant amount of defense, the combination of strong to-hit debuffs will make it difficult for enemies to hit you.
Thing is, dark does a pretty good job of flooring enemies to-hit values to begin with. E.G. my own Robotics / Dark mastermind was capable of taking on con-red Elite bosses just on SO's alone. Between all of dark's debuffs, well, defense just isn't that valuable.
If it was my influence on the line, I'd be looking at builds that focused on Accuracy and Recharge. /Dark gets no defense debuff component, and your base heal depends on an accuracy check to heal. Do the math yourself.
Recharge can also help you sustain being nasty at higher levels with the Epic Power-Set proliferation, Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, and Soul Transfer are all corruptor powers. A Soul-Drained mob coupled with, a mob with lowered resistances through tar-patch, inferno, and a sky high recharge? Again, do the math yourself.
If you really wanted to, you could softcap S/L defense fairly easy and still get a good amount of global recharge. Most of my Corrs are built this way, although I'm not sure how Fire/Dark will be on your end bar. With that said, /dark is probably the secondary where defense is needed least because of all the debuffs, but it would certainly still be useful.
[U][URL="http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251594"][/URL][/U]
Yeah, as far as the patron/epic goes, I sort of go 50/50 between choosing the ones I just like and the ones that are most useful. I went for soul drain/power boost/soul storm. Love soul drain on my DM scrapper. Like having a kin, without all the ugliness of sharing XP. 
Soul Storm just looks awesome. I realize a fire/dark scrapper doesn't really need it, but it's nice to have a hold (a high-end one at that). It holds 5 purples and a hold proc really nice. And it just looks awesome. The coolest status effect power in the game in my opinion. Curl em into the fetal before you turn em into a corpse. D
ark servant I hear is good. Not sure if it's better than summon mistress (I'm guessing the fortunata is stronger, but long recharge. And servant just complements the rest of the build. Also, I took it at the end, and 2 slotted, so I figure the lack of recharge rules the fortunada out as a great pet.
I'm not going to post the build, but the basics of my stats look like this so far.
All dark powers except petrifying and black hole.
No defense to speak of. Counting on my dark set and the occasional purple.
Perma hasten. Puts me at 170% all day.
Procs: 3 slow procs, and a -recharge proc (not sure what the difference is). Knockdown in my AoE, Hold in my Soul Storm, and Buildup Proc in tactics.
If I soul drain a 7 mob, hit buildup, and my tactics proc hit, I have 87 acc/205%dam/170%to-hit. The recharge on both powers puts the downtime at about equal to duration. So half the time, those are the stats. When I'm just normal, I have 87 acc and 13% dam. Pretty good I think. And with a team to share aggro. Devastating.
Minimal end use.
I have a build planned that softcaps S/L and gets a decent amount to ranged, without gimping my powers to do it.
It also gets a decent amount of accuracy and recharge.
You don't HAVE to build for defense, but if you choose to it can be done without hurting other things in your build.
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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 don't plan on shooting for soft capped defense on my Fire/Dark. With all the -To-Hit I will just pop a luck or two to help that cause. I'd rather shoot for recharge and recovery on mine.
Don't I know you???
my fire/dark has 37.8% S/L defense and 157.5% global recharge (6 seconds off of perma hasten). I have no endurance problems at all unless I am really going full bore for a extended period of time, still nothing a single blue can not fix. I also have a 60% enhancment to accuracy. I do not feel I have sold myself short on any aspect and have still managed to get a good amount of defense.
forogot to mention, I did not take fighting or leadership to get the defense.
Hey Elimist...Can you post your build plz. Id like to see it
Fire/dark corruptor, does it really need defense. Debuffing damage, debuffing to-hit, aoe heal. Oh yeah, and slows. So much mitigation, do you need to slot for defense in your IO's, or take the defense pools for that matter? The way I figure it, if you're chasing defense, there's no point in a little if you don't have a lot. I can see taking defense pools for the luck procs, but other than that, is it necessary? Would you be better off slotting for purples and recharge procs, so that you can survive with your awesome mitigation and then kill them faster with your aoe's?