Bit of curiosity
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-11-02 01:49 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
1. Maybe a little, depends on AT though.
2. Well there is a hard limit for each AT, but it is far, far past the softcap and impossible to reach without external buffs/purples inps.
But to your implies question, yeah, it makes def more important for some ATs over others.
3. again, for some ATs/powersets, yeah. Although resistance does at least have the advantage of being it's own resistance to res debuffs.
4. Yes
5. Maybe. Depends on AT, powersets, and anything done with 1-3
6. Maybe, although diffrences are nice to have, so it'd depend greatly on what proposed changes are.
7. Depends, see 8. but nerfts I think would be bad.
8. Again depends on AT, powersets etc. On a tank, with 90% res, 0 def you get hit alot, but none of the blows do signifigant damage. With 45% def 0 res, only 1 in 20 blows hit you, but those that do hurt alot.
Also, def debuffs are far more common than res debuffs (and conversly, pool powers/buffs with def are more common than res), so for that reason I like to have resistance for characters I expect to be taking a beating.
Although if 4 were adressed, than def might be more enticing for my tanks/scrappers since I could just add in resistance to back up the defense, rather than working the other way around
9. Not really
10. /shrug
Sorry 8's so long
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it.
Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with. |
Resistance is very hard to circumvent once its in place.
Defence falls before defence debuffs quite dramatically unless you have Defence Debuff Resistance, and even that won't save you from To Hit bonuses.
A NPC group with To Hit bonuses or def debuffs that will deliver about twice as much damage to a normal character, but 20 times as much to a soft-capped character, so high defence can be targetted in this way.
Resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance, so there's no equivalent. If you design an NPC group to punch through resistance the only ways are unresistable Res debuffs (which Longbow used to have?) or just really high damage. But, really high damage will completely flatten any characters who dont have resistance.
So I'd say thats the side you left out. Resistance is much more reliable than defence.
The only thing that I think that Resistance lacks over Defense is that Defense will block all secondary effects of a power as well as the damage that would be inflicted. A resistance-based character with 90% Damage Resistance to S/L damage will take, over time, as much damage as the character with 45% S/L Defense. However, the Defense-based character will get hit with 90% less secondary effects than the Resistance-based character.
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The only thing that makes resistance better than defense is the fact that every AT has the same functional cap for defense (45%) whereas there are only 2 ATs (Tankers and Brutes) that can mimic that same level of survivability (90% damage mitigation) with only resistance. Defense is viewed as strongly simply because it is more common (almost exclusively due to its prevalence and preference in IO set bonuses) and because it allows any AT to achieve the same mitigation cap that is generally restricted to Tankers and Brutes.
From a mechanical standpoint, the two forms of mitigation are exceptionally well balanced: defense has the advantage of allowing you to avoid the secondary effects of powers but has to contend with the fact that it doesn't always work (i.e. a bad RNG string and you get hit 3 times in a row and dropped); resistance doesn't have the advantage or the disadvantage. For as long as I can remember, the developers have generally considered resistance to be substantially more "valuable" from a balance perspective than defense, mainly because, eventually, defense fails while resistance will never. I agree with that in principle, but I don't really agree with how the developers have translated the quantitative assessment into numbers, since it seems that resistance can be considered to be valued anywhere between 2:1 resistance:defense (most survivability toggles) to 1:8 resistance:defense (IO set bonuses).
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Quite true, the closest I can reach is 176-180% on my Night Widow with Elude, no Weave, and no PvP +3% defense. Perhaps stacking more defense IOs and the introduction of an alpha slot would increase it to near hard-cap limits (200%? or is it 210%?), but it's not obtainable without a direct focus on defense and a lack of recharge and damage.|
Originally Posted by Come Undone
2. Well there is a hard limit for each AT, but it is far, far past the softcap and impossible to reach without external buffs/purples inps.
But to your implies question, yeah, it makes def more important for some ATs over others |
Having all VEAT SF/TFs always made this fun, because you would be well over the hardcap with 220% or more at ALL times.
I'd have to agree that Resistance is much less effective than Defense from an RNG point of view even. When I would hard-cap S/L resitance and fight, say, Battle Maiden warriors, I would die much faster than my character with perma-60(ish)%defense. That is, when I fight the map completely solo on the same difficulty.
1. Depending on AT, I'd say yes. Lower HP characters benefit much more from Defense, because even with high Resistance a few hits are enough to take them down, so it's better not to be hit in the first place.
2. Nope, I think there is an issue with the hard limit of Resistance on most ATs. I understand the devs' desire to keep people from getting Tanker levels of Resistance, but how many sets can actually do that and how often? For instance, a Scrapper's Resistance hard cap is 75% while a Tanker's is 90%. At their respective caps the Scrapper will be taking 150% more damage than the tank. This is one of the reasons Resistance based godmodes (Unstoppable, Power Surge) aren't that good on Scrappers.
3. I'm not sure, really, because both Resistance and Defense have their advantages. While high Defense avoids secondary effects on top of damage, it is still susceptible to "unlucky streaks" which are something that never happen to high Resistance. With high Resistance you pretty much know if you can take on the spawn in front of you or not. With Defense it's a lottery where higher Defense results in higher chance to win, but it's still a lottery. Defense is also much easier to nullify than Resistance (+ToHit vs +Dmg). Then there's also the thing about Resistance being its own Resistance Debuff Resistance and Resistance Debuffs being rare... I guess they're quite evenly balanced, in the end.
4. In a way, yes, but I understand why the devs chose to make it possible to only stack one of them and I'm happy they did that. As to which of them is better to be stacked, I don't know from a dev viewpoint.
5. Yes. Much like it's currently useful to get Defense on Resistance based sets (Elec Armor, Fiery Armor, etc.), it'd be very useful to get Resistance on Defense based sets (SR, Ice Armor, etc.), and maybe a mix of both on mixed sets like Invuln and WP, depending on how much Resistance we could actually get.
6. Not really.
7. Nope, I like the differences between those two.
8. Nope, as I said, I think they're quite evenly balanced. It is a fact, though, that it is VERY much easier to get high Defense than it is to get high Resistance, which I think is the important thing to notice.
9. None whatsoever. I'm not even sure I'd like to try and wrap my head around all the possible powerset balance problems a change could create.
10. I'll edit this post if I can think of something you missed.
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This is pretty much my view point. I'll just add, that it's not just IO's that give easy defense to all players when compared to resitance. The power pools have lots of +defense powers, and only 1 +resistance power that's smash/lethal only. |
Originally Posted by Umbral
The only thing that makes resistance better than defense is the fact that every AT has the same functional cap for defense (45%) whereas there are only 2 ATs (Tankers and Brutes) that can mimic that same level of survivability (90% damage mitigation) with only resistance. Defense is viewed as strongly simply because it is more common (almost exclusively due to its prevalence and preference in IO set bonuses) and because it allows any AT to achieve the same mitigation cap that is generally restricted to Tankers and Brutes.
From a mechanical standpoint, the two forms of mitigation are exceptionally well balanced: defense has the advantage of allowing you to avoid the secondary effects of powers but has to contend with the fact that it doesn't always work (i.e. a bad RNG string and you get hit 3 times in a row and dropped); resistance doesn't have the advantage or the disadvantage. For as long as I can remember, the developers have generally considered resistance to be substantially more "valuable" from a balance perspective than defense, mainly because, eventually, defense fails while resistance will never. I agree with that in principle, but I don't really agree with how the developers have translated the quantitative assessment into numbers, since it seems that resistance can be considered to be valued anywhere between 2:1 resistance:defense (most survivability toggles) to 1:8 resistance:defense (IO set bonuses). |
My only counter argument to this whole discussion is this... Does it matter? I agree resistance is not as useful in the quantities provided to use as defense... but... well.. so? is it causing a game imbalance? If you gave Colossus some spidy sense, who is now harder to kill?... spiderman or colossus? Which group of Powersets is on the losing side of the imbalance here?
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1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness of resistance vs. that of defense?
No, but I do think there's a problem with their respective availabilities in Set Bonuses. Too much Defense; too little Resistance.
Per-percentage, Defense tends to yield better results, but all that means is that it needs to come in smaller doses. Saying "a cubic inch of lead" makes a better paperweight than "a cubic inch of cork" is a bad comparison: no way in heck am I gonna stop a wine bottle with lead.
2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT?
Not especially, since an enemy with a ToHit buff can render it very much less effective. Resistance always works, but Defense has some serious drawbacks.
3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic?
There are resistances to secondary effects too, such as -Recharge or Endurance Drain. These usually come in addition to Damage Resistance.
4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses?
Yes. See question 1.
5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable?
I would very much prefer Resistance, personally.
6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable?
Apples and oranges here; each has their strengths and weaknesses. I think their strengths should be focused on, but only sheer availability can keep them in the same performance bracket.
7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa?
I know it wouldn't make me any friends, but I strongly believe the amount of available Defense through Set Bonuses needs to be brought down by half or so. On top of that, Resistance Bonuses could see some buffs, so I guess I take a little from column A and a little from column B.
8. Am I completely nuts, and resistance is actually more effective than defense?
Depends on what you're doing, but if you've got a way to refill that green bar every now and again, Resistance is far more reliable and trustworthy than a mechanic that requires a random number to work.
You're still completely nuts, though, regardless.
9. Do you have any ideas regarding how changes could be made to close any gap that might exist in performance?
See question 7.
10. Did I miss anything that should be addressed relating to the topic?
If anything, I'd say you hit everything a couple times too many. (-:
1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness’ of resistance vs. that of defense?
--> No. Especially not at the level of SOs where the game is balanced.
2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT?
--> I think you are misusing the term, "hard limit". Please clarify this question. The soft limit is reducing enemy attack chance to 5%. The "hard limit" is irrelevant outside of external buffs. Hell, I'm not even sure what the hard limit is, I've been at over 140 to all positions thanks to buffs and it wasn't blue (indicating at the hard limit).
3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic?
--> No. Status effects are not damage they have their own mechanics. I do wish some versions were more common (such as the tohit/acc debuff protection in Focused Accuracy) but in no way shape or form do I feel they SHOULD be attached to damage resistance. COULD be? Possibly, but not likely, on a case-by-case basis. SHOULD be? No.
I understand this is brought up due to the way mez and status effects can be avoided when the attack misses. This seems like a non-issue to me. I have many resist-based characters and it's not an issue unless there is a deliberate hole in the set (knock vs fire).
4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses?
--> No. Having easy access to both is broken. Of the two I feel the developers chose the better to provide access to since defense is easier to debuff/overcome. Players do not need permanent god mode. Some builds are already too close to it. It would be nice if resistance bonuses were linked similar to defense bonuses, but that's not needed.
5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable?
--> Yes. This would be an incredibly bad thing for the game balance and would require a severe nerf, so I hope it never happens. Please note that some ATs have had this ability (to get high levels of both def and resistance) and have been nerffed for it. I believe Invulnerablility was one.
6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable?
--> No. Think what happens if they are? In order to overcome resistance the devs have to let enemies hit harder or start flagging damage as unresistable. That means if you don't have resistance, then you are screwed. On the other hand, the situation we have currently works just fine because defense can be debuffed, or tohit bonuses can be used to bypass it. Neither of which critically gimps a build that didn't have defense to begin with. What this question proposes would make resistance a requirement. That would be bad for game balance.
7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa?
--> No, no and a thousand times no. I believe that the Devs have made the right choice. Resistance resists debuffs. Defense does not. It is easier to take away defense, therefore they have provided easy access to the one that I prefer we have access to. Both is broken, if we can only have one, from a design standpoint I prefer we have access to defense.
8. Am I completely nuts, and resistance is actually more effective than defense?
--> No, it is and always will be less effective than defense under most circumstances until you can get it above the current hardcaps or if it is changed from % reduction to fixed point reduction. The latter would be a horrible idea.
However taking a resist-based character and layering on lots of defense is possible, and extremely effective. See Dechs Kaison in the Tanker forum for a discussion of what Dark Armor can do and how.
9. Do you have any ideas regarding how changes could be made to close any gap that might exist in performance?
--> No changes are needed. Play two characters with SOs only, then get back to us on the strengths and weaknesses of the two. As soon as you bring IOs into it you are outside the balance point. Now, the devs do care what IOs do and they do keep tabs on it. But the game is balanced around SOs. See Arcanaville's talksa bout why regen won't ever get resistance to -regen debuffs for a thorough discussion of this. The point is that at the level of SOs resistance based characters have comparable survival abilities to defense based ones with a few outliers. In those cases (super reflexes) the devs are more likely to nerf the superior set than buff the weaker, but they're not at all likely to do either.
10. Did I miss anything that should be addressed relating to the topic?
--> Yes. #1 You only limited discussion to the mechanics themselves, but all powersets come with non-def non-res powers as well and this is critcal to any discussion of the mechanics. Defense is based on the premise of preventing hits, resistance is based on the premise of getting hit for less damage. Think about snipe powers, or an assassin strike, or a summon, or a teleport, or an interruptable heal/rez. Defense sets rarely have self heals built in (ninjitsu is one that does). Fire is a mixed offense/defense set that trades survivability for damage. Just upping the resistance for everyone via higher set bonuses etc would throw all of these secondary powers out of balance.
#2 You didn't think about the side effects (raised by Umbral) of what happens when resistance is common. Damage goes up to compensate and anyone without resistance is gimped. This is bad. Very bad.
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Umbral pretty much covers my feelings on the matter, the only thing I'd comment on is this part:
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Regarding IO Set Bonuses the ratio is actually 1:2 Resistance|
Originally Posted by Umbral
I agree with that in principle, but I don't really agree with how the developers have translated the quantitative assessment into numbers, since it seems that resistance can be considered to be valued anywhere between 2:1 resistance:defense (most survivability toggles) to 1:8 resistance:defense (IO set bonuses).
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efense not 1:8 but I agree that that is out of line with toggle powers. However even if you changed the set bonuses to a 2:1 ratio (or even just 1:1) for most damage types there aren't enough resistance bonuses available to make building them up a practical option for anything other than Psionic and Toxic.If the devs decide they want to make IO Resistance set bonuses attractive compared to defense ones I would say they need to do the following:
1. Replace all single type bonuses with dual type
2. Increase the base modifier for dual type bonuses from 0.63% to 2.5% (or maybe a value in between, see below)
3. Add more sets (in particular damage, resistance and defense sets) that provide decent resistance bonuses for a wider variety of damage types (or possibly in some cases replace the less useful bonuses in existing sets).
4. (Optional) Reduce the level of the resistance bonuses in some existing sets (some sets have high level resistance bonuses as the 3rd slot bonus, if the scaling for resistance bonuses was increased these might need to be reduced to compensate)
Regarding the base modifier setting it to 2.5% would maintain the 2:1 ratio that toggle powers have. For example a Huge Smashing/Lethal/Melee Def Bonus provides 3.75% Smashing and Lethal Defense, with the proposed scaling a Huge Smashing/Lethal Resistance Bonus would provide 7.5% Resistance. I think this would be fine but I can see a valid argument for using a slightly lower scaling (such as 2%) if those values seem high.
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Yes. It is pretty much universally known that if you want to make a top tier character in durability you will need a defense build (granite excepted, but even that uses defense). Heck, even when people try to make resistance builds good, they do it by going for defense bonuses (softcapped fire tanks, etc). |
Originally Posted by William_Valence
1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness’ of resistance vs. that of defense?
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2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT? |
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| 3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic? |
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| 4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses? |
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| 5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable? |
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| 6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable? |
Right now it is extremely clear than there is a survivability gap between the defense sets and the resistance ones.
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| 7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa? |
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| 8. Am I completely nuts, and resistance is actually more effective than defense? |
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| 9. Do you have any ideas regarding how changes could be made to close any gap that might exist in performance? |
A) Buff the base resistance of the resistance sets. It doesn't have to be a huge amount, but it should be higher. For example, an electric armor brute should be closer to maybe 50%(maybe 55%) resistance (l/s/f/c) when slotted up. Right now it is only around 41%. The base resistance now is 26%, buffing this to 31%(for 50%) or 33% for 55% would not be unreasonable. Right now a SR brute with just SOs gets a defense of 30% for all positions and huge defense debuff resistance (95% I believe). For a direct comparison of defense to resistance you have to double the defense number. Thus SR out of the box, without pools or IOs is as good as if you could pull off 60% resistance to everything. That's as good as an electric armor tanker (with holes for negative energy and toxic on the tanker). Even better the SR brute can toss in weave and combat jumping for another 8% defense, which comes in at 76% resistance equivalent. If a brute adds in toughness right now you only get 58% resistance. Heck if you made my change the resistance brute would still be behind the curve at 50% mitigation from the set vs. 60% for the SR, but at least they would be in the game.
B) At least make resistance set bonuses as high as the defense ones, if not higher.
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| 10. Did I miss anything that should be addressed relating to the topic? |
Too many alts to list.
Really, it depends on what AT and power set you are using and what you are fighting. Generally the only characters who can get high resists are melee types with good mez protection, so the fact that they get hit by a lot more stuns and holds is largely moot. Most enemies simply cannot mez a Scrapper, Tanker, or Brute even in large groups... they just don't have enough mezzers in even an 8-man spawn to stack enough to overcome status protections. However, some few groups can do so, in which case defense is clearly better... but on the other hand, some groups have to-hit buffs so for them resistance is better. Neither case is common though.
The one change I'd make is giving resist-focused defense sets some slow resistance. Slows are annoying and common enough that characters that have low defense can end up with several stacked on them. Things like to-hit debuffs are a lot rarer so they aren't as big a deal.
Oh, and for Scrappers (and Stalkers) defense is far better for a simple reason: resists cap at 75% while defense can provide 90% mitigation. For Brutes it's less of a difference, and Tankers can get a full 90% from resists, though few sets actually give that much. Hmm... there's an idea: what if the devs added some decent resist bonus IOs, but only in Resist sets? That way resist-heavy sets could get more resists from IOs, but non-resist sets couldn't stack resists on top of softcapped defense.
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Actually, that's not true, even if I can only think of one example. It's very common for anyone who's not a Stone Armor character to pop oranges in order to survive Lord Recluse in the STF. You can pop enough purples to get above his toHit bonus from the Red (?) tower, but he still has a pretty meaningful hit chance even if floored. While damage buffed, he hits damn hard.|
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
Heck, even inspirations are biased against resistance. You missed that. Nobody every talks about popping a bunch of orange candy to take out an AV. It's always purples.
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It's also helpful to pop oranges for the Freedom Phalanx at the end of the RSF.
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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That sums up my thoughts as well.
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Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
The only thing that I think that Resistance lacks over Defense is that Defense will block all secondary effects of a power as well as the damage that would be inflicted. A resistance-based character with 90% Damage Resistance to S/L damage will take, over time, as much damage as the character with 45% S/L Defense. However, the Defense-based character will get hit with 90% less secondary effects than the Resistance-based character.
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1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness of resistance vs. that of defense?
Yes, primarily on characters lacking no innate mezz protection. By letting you dodge the mezzes, defense can function as both damage avoidance and ~95% mezz protection, which is huge for a squishy, especially solo.
On melee characters, the difference is far smaller. I don't fully agree with the argument that defense pays for its innate advantages by all the -def and +ToHit enemies get--Resistance-based sets get no defense debuff resistance, so they're still significantly impacted by it. My /Elec Brute had trouble with Longbow even before the -res grenades, thanks to being constantly at sub-zero defense.
2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT?
I do believe Resistance and Defense should be equal here--if it's fair for everybody to get 95% damage mitigation from defense, they should be able to do the same with resistance.
3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic?
Yes. See #1. A huge part of going for defense on my squishies is avoiding mezzes. If resistance IO bonuses were available in twice the amount as defense bonuses, I still wouldn't go for them on characters without mezz protection that I intended to solo a lot.
4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses?
Yes.
5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable?
On characters with some other form of mezz protection, yes. Otherwise, see my answer to #3.
6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable?
No. While they have some disparities, I think it's too late in the game to make major changes to either system.
7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa?
Resistance brought toward defense.
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This might be true if there were a resistance set which provided universal protection. Of course such a set doesn't actually exist. It would also require that the relative performances were comparable. |
Originally Posted by DrMike2000
So I'd say thats the side you left out. Resistance is much more reliable than defence. |
Let's look at the resistance sets:
The best of the bunch is Granite which carries plenty of penalties on its own, and still has the gaping psi damage hole (more common these days that in the days of yore). (granted calling on power of stone armor a resistance set is a bit odd, but it effectively is)
Electric is the next highest overall resistances, but it has a gaping hole to toxic damage (no protection at all), and the negative energy resistance lags the rest significantly outside of power surge. I find that my electric armor tanker just can't cut the mustard in an ITF for example tanking Rommy at the end.
Invulnerability stacks defense with resistance (then again so does granite), but against everything but lethal/smashing that resistance is fairly low. It has a glaring psi damage hole and toxic will make it weep.
Dark Armor has pretty much crappy resistance to everything but psionic and (sorta) negative energy. It makes up for it with mez effects and a heal, but for taking a pounding is pretty iffy. It survives on tricks, not durability.
Fiery Aura also has crappy resistance to everything but fire. no protection against psi, and little enough against toxic. It's a healing set to be honest and let's be blunt Rise of the Phoenix is not really an optional power.
Also, when someone talks about the mighty ability that is resistance debuff resistance, you have to remember that the degree of resistance is equal to the starting resistance. Thus for example, an electric armor brute is going to have 40% resistance debuff resistance. The SR brute next to him by comparison will have 95% defense debuff resistance.
Even more to the point when comparing defense debuffing and resistance debuffing is that defense debuffing has to hit you first. Resistance debuffing is going to go right on through against that resistance debuff resistance.
Now granted to hit buffs are another matter, but the numbers are generally fairly low, and not all that common (not like defense debuff).
Too many alts to list.
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That is true, but honestly it is a special case. I won't pull a percentage out of my posterior, but you know as well as I do that the vast majority of cases where someone had to beat an EB (or AV) they brought a tray full of purple candy.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Actually, that's not true, even if I can only think of one example. It's very common for anyone who's not a Stone Armor character to pop oranges in order to survive Lord Recluse in the STF. You can pop enough purples to get above his toHit bonus from the Red (?) tower, but he still has a pretty meaningful hit chance even if floored. While damage buffed, he hits damn hard.
It's also helpful to pop oranges for the Freedom Phalanx at the end of the RSF. |
Too many alts to list.
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This. Even if Resistance protects better (which it isn't IMO), Defense at least lets you avoid quite a few secondary effects. Due to this reason, Defense > Resistance by a pretty large margin IMO.|
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
The only thing that I think that Resistance lacks over Defense is that Defense will block all secondary effects of a power as well as the damage that would be inflicted. A resistance-based character with 90% Damage Resistance to S/L damage will take, over time, as much damage as the character with 45% S/L Defense. However, the Defense-based character will get hit with 90% less secondary effects than the Resistance-based character.
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However, in some extremely situations where if you get hit once, you die, resistance could be a bit better. You just need to eat some purples.
I think the problem with Resistance is that it only seems to work reasonably well in 3 ATs: Tankers, Brutes and maybe Scrapper.
I play Stalkers most of the time and Resistance is not very good. I get interrupted and I don't have the health to back up that Resistance.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Oh, this is sooooooooooooooooo true on my Peacebringer Human. I recently started PB Human and while she survives well (due to resistance shields and higher HP), I hate it when I get stunned by Void right before I kill him or get Bean Bagged by Longbows. It's like all my useful resistance is thrown down to the toilet for a while. Defense, at least can void some mez attacks.
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Originally Posted by Kelenar
1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness of resistance vs. that of defense?
Yes, primarily on characters lacking no innate mezz protection. By letting you dodge the mezzes, defense can function as both damage avoidance and ~95% mezz protection, which is huge for a squishy, especially solo. |
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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I've seen lots of Defense-built characters crumble to dust in the presence of ToHit buffs like Devouring Earth Quartzes or Elite Resistance. That's their weakness. Saying that they're universally protected by merit of positional Defense is just as incorrect as saying that a Resistance-based set fails due to one or two specific damage types.|
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
This might be true if there were a resistance set which provided universal protection. Of course such a set doesn't actually exist. It would also require that the relative performances were comparable.
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I also wouldn't refer to most defensive sets as "Resistance-based" just because they use Resistance instead of Defense. Like you mentioned, Dark Armor's hopped up on mez (especially with Tanker Ice Patch), Fiery Aura's geared towards actual outgoing damage (kill things before they kill you), Willpower's a grab bag of just about everything, and Invulnerability's got a good deal of both Resistance and Defense along with a pretty good heal.
Having said that, there are Defense-based sets. Super Reflexes and Energy Aura are pretty much exclusively Defense. I wouldn't put Ice Armor in this category, though, because it has things like Hoarfrost, Chilling Embrace and Hibernate that grant survivability in more places than just Defense.
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Originally Posted by docbuzzard
Now granted to hit buffs are another matter, but the numbers are generally fairly low, and not all that common (not like defense debuff).
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1. I think it depends on the AT. My melee characters would say no, but my squishies would say yes, because resistance will not prevent a Hold, Sleep, Stun etc...|
Originally Posted by William_Valence
1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness’ of resistance vs. that of defense?
2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT? 3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic? 4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses? 5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable? 6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable? 7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa? 8. Am I completely nuts, and resistance is actually more effective than defense? 9. Do you have any ideas regarding how changes could be made to close any gap that might exist in performance? 10. Did I miss anything that should be addressed relating to the topic? That’s about it; I look forward to hearing what people think. GL all and have fun |
2. Definitely not. In fact, the game already imposes limits (of sorts) by the fact that different ATs get different amounts of defense from pool powers. You may argue that these powers are only a fraction of the TOTAL defense that an IOed character can gain, but they are, in fact, the foundation that their defense is built upon, so it is very significant in the lower level game(pre-30s). And then there is the massive amount of "defense-debuffing" present in the game throughout all levels of play.
3. Not Really. I believe that the IO system should be expanded to allow for the ability to stack resistance AND status protection to more comparable levels. I have said before that if my Empath had the choice to pursue meaningful status protection with IO bonuses rather than defense, I would do so instantly.
4. Yes, I absolutely think that there is a huge disparity in how IO set bonuses are balanced. Defense is more effective (on a percent point basis) than either resistance or status resistance AND its easier to get meaningful amounts of.
5. Again, it would depend on your AT. My squishies would seriously have to consider pursuing status resistance, while my melee characters would have to look at this on a case-by-case basis. My instinct says that the resistance would still be less valuable than the defense for a melee based toon, UNLESS you were playing Shields or Super Reflexes.
6. Yes, absolutely. And while their at it, lets see a purple Healing Set too.
7. I think Defense is fine as is. With the heavy amount of defense de-buffing in the game, I would not want to see any reduction in available stacking defense UNLESS it came hand-in-hand with a reduction in the amount of defense debuffing being thrown around by critters. I would like to see the IO set numbers for resistance increased, OR made more available to stack. Same goes for Status resistance.
8. Resistance is more reliable. It is a steady amount of protection that is not easily "debuffed". But I certainly don't think it is overall "better" than defense, and that is based on playing many different toons for comparison (Shields, Willpower, Reflexes, Invuln).
9. Yes, as I alluded to in previous questions, it would be nice to see more IO set bonuses which grant resistance so that characters can actually "cap" resistance if they focus on it. Currently there are only a few powersets that can actually hit their caps, and only in particular damage types. And they were obviously designed to do so (S/L for Invuln, Fire for Fire, Cold for Ice, Energy for Electric). I would also like to see the way status resistance works to be similar to DDR with a cap at 95%, so that If I pursue 100% resistance to Hold (for example) a hold will last only 5% of its duration, which is practical immunity, for all intents and purposes.
10. Nothing that comes to mind. Good thread Idea by the way. Looking forward to seeing other responses
BIOSPARK :: DARKTHORN :: SKYGUARD :: WILDMAGE
HEATSINK :: FASTHAND :: POWERCELL :: RUNESTAFF
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I don't think the examples you brought up with the resist sets really helps the argument because, in the realm of defense sets, there are holes too. You can't hold up SR as 'defense sets' and forget Ice Armor and Energy Armor have no defense to toxic because such defense doesn't exist or how they lack psi defense and how Shield Defense is pretty much the defense equivalent of Fire Armor with lower defense numbers.|
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
This might be true if there were a resistance set which provided universal protection. Of course such a set doesn't actually exist. It would also require that the relative performances were comparable.
Let's look at the resistance sets: |
Back to topic, I would say there's a disparity if I were just looking at this from an Armor set PoV and adding up the values on paper...but that's not how the game plays.
While the resistance buffs and bonuses might look ineffective in that light, it tends to the actual balance it strikes. Defense is common therefore seems more effective and resistance is rare therefore not as effective...until resistance uses defense to leverage an overall better amount of mitigation.
On teams, the only place where extreme survivability really matters, defense buffs are extremely common but accumulated buffs only have an effect up to a point. So someone with lots of defense jumps on a team with Fortitude buffing Empaths, a FF user, 3 maneuvers and a Dark Miasma user? Compare that to resistance sets teaming together and using the same 3 maneuvers?
Same with set bonuses. If we could accomplish high amounts of resistance bonuses on defense type sets, and I'd side with you, OP, about the questions you ask. But neither defense or resistance should be examined only vs eachother when mixed mitigation is what actually wins.
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That's a whole 2 examples. I could name more examples of psi or toxic damage users easily. |
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
I've seen lots of Defense-built characters crumble to dust in the presence of ToHit buffs like Devouring Earth Quartzes or Elite Resistance. That's their weakness. Saying that they're universally protected by merit of positional Defense is just as incorrect as saying that a Resistance-based set fails due to one or two specific damage types.
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Just by group:
Arachnos
Carnival of Shadows
Rikti
Banished Pantheon
Devouring Earth
Snakes
Psionic Clockwork
Seers
Hydras
I've played a lot of electric armor set alts, and I know what makes them wilt. I've also played many of the options without psi resistance (as in most everything else but dark) and I know how much that hurts.
To contrast my SR brute and stalker are much more durable.
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| I also wouldn't refer to most defensive sets as "Resistance-based" just because they use Resistance instead of Defense. Like you mentioned, Dark Armor's hopped up on mez (especially with Tanker Ice Patch), Fiery Aura's geared towards actual outgoing damage (kill things before they kill you), Willpower's a grab bag of just about everything, and Invulnerability's got a good deal of both Resistance and Defense along with a pretty good heal. |
Dark armor is the oddest case, but if the mez isn't cutting it, you rely on weak resistance.
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| Having said that, there are Defense-based sets. Super Reflexes and Energy Aura are pretty much exclusively Defense. I wouldn't put Ice Armor in this category, though, because it has things like Hoarfrost, Chilling Embrace and Hibernate that grant survivability in more places than just Defense. |
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| Longbow's Sonic Grenades notwithstanding, there aren't too many significant sources of damage Resistance debuffs either. And at least the grenade sticks to a specific location when cast. |
Council (or 5th Column) sonic attacks
Crey Rad scientists
Longbow
I also believe tar patch can be tossed by carnies and CoT
I mean honestly, I find it really amazing that people here are trying to claim that resistance is even in the same ballpark as defense when the rubber meets the road. You simply can't build someone to clear x8 maps based on the resistance focused sets unless you target a very specific damage type (FA vs fire or Elec vs. energy). Almost any map can be cleared by SR or SD with some limited exceptions. Note the contrast, for the resistance builds the exceptions are where they are strong, while in the case of positional defense, the exceptions are where they are weak.
Too many alts to list.
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Granted I should have been specific to the positional defense sets as they are basically worlds better than the typed defense sets. (Having enough high enough level characters in all flavors to be familiar). |
Originally Posted by Leo_G
I don't think the examples you brought up with the resist sets really helps the argument because, in the realm of defense sets, there are holes too. You can't hold up SR as 'defense sets' and forget Ice Armor and Energy Armor have no defense to toxic because such defense doesn't exist or how they lack psi defense and how Shield Defense is pretty much the defense equivalent of Fire Armor with lower defense numbers.
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Describing Shield Defense as the same as Fire Armor is rubbish. Try looking up some numbers before making claims. SD gives 15% defense base to all positions. FA gives 22.5% base resistance to l/s/e/ne. Yes, it caps fire, but lags on cold, toxic and is useless against psi.
Given that defense is essentially double the number, SD comes out at 30% equivalent before enhancement.
22.5% vs. 30% is a pretty glaring difference. While FA gets a real good heal, SD gets a god mode power, and some health and resistance grab bag effects.
I have both a SD tanker and multiple FA tankers at 50 (who are retired because they are soft). Don't even try to claim the two sets are equivalent in survivability. That is completely false.
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| Back to topic, I would say there's a disparity if I were just looking at this from an Armor set PoV and adding up the values on paper...but that's not how the game plays. |
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| While the resistance buffs and bonuses might look ineffective in that light, it tends to the actual balance it strikes. Defense is common therefore seems more effective and resistance is rare therefore not as effective...until resistance uses defense to leverage an overall better amount of mitigation. |
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| On teams, the only place where extreme survivability really matters, defense buffs are extremely common but accumulated buffs only have an effect up to a point. So someone with lots of defense jumps on a team with Fortitude buffing Empaths, a FF user, 3 maneuvers and a Dark Miasma user? Compare that to resistance sets teaming together and using the same 3 maneuvers? |
Though hell, on your above team with a bubbler, an emp and a dark, a blaster could tank just fine. What a puerile example.
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Same with set bonuses. If we could accomplish high amounts of resistance bonuses on defense type sets, and I'd side with you, OP, about the questions you ask. But neither defense or resistance should be examined only vs eachother when mixed mitigation is what actually wins. |
It is better to have 45% defense than 25% defense and 50% resistance any day of the week. The former gives 90% mitigation while the latter gives only 75%.
Yes, if you have 50% resistance on top of capped defense of course that is better, but the pure resistance sets don't have that option on their own.
Too many alts to list.
Skip to bold if you dont care about background, otherwise.
I guess Im not sure why it bugs me so much, but I always tend to the belief that resistance is weaker than defense. Not just in scenarios where defense is used to rout intended AT survivability levels, but also when resistance is available in high enough amounts to supposedly match protection levels that defense can. So I started thinking about it, and came up with a few ideas that I thought would fix the problem that I had perceived.
All well and good, and I was ready to post those ideas when my attention drifted toward a few different threads where claims were being made with little support and even less interest in the topic. I found myself thinking, on a few occasions who cares?, and while I like to think I support my theories and ideas, despite their correctness, I couldnt help but wonder. With regard to defense vs. resistance, who cares?. So instead of posting ideas, I would like to start a discussion on that very topic.
TL;DR version? I dont want to be a thickheaded SOB who keeps posting the same crap no one cares about and solutions to problems that only exist in my head. So heres a bunch of questions on player perception of resist vs. defense to satisfy my curiosity. Please feel free to elaborate on these questions, come up with your own, or call me crazy and say everything is fine. Im mostly just interested in what peoples opinions are on the subject.
1. Do you believe there is an issue with the respective effectiveness of resistance vs. that of defense?
2. Do you believe there is an issue with the lack of effective hard limit on the amount of available defense for each AT?
3. Do you believe that there is an issue with the lack of inherent protection to secondary effects within the damage resistance mechanic?
4. Do you believe there is and issue with the amount of available resistance bonuses that can be stacked vs. the amount of available defense bonuses?
5. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to stack resistance bonuses instead of defense bonuses, if the amount of available bonuses were currently comparable?
6. Do you believe that a change should be made to make the efficiency of resistance and defense more comparable?
7. Do you believe that if a change were made, that defense should be brought more toward resistance or vice versa?
8. Am I completely nuts, and resistance is actually more effective than defense?
9. Do you have any ideas regarding how changes could be made to close any gap that might exist in performance?
10. Did I miss anything that should be addressed relating to the topic?
Thats about it; I look forward to hearing what people think.
GL all and have fun
Murphys Military Law
#23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
#46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
#54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.