Anyone concerned that the abundance of IO softcap defense builds will cause blowback?

So... my otherwise squishy widow who is soft-capped with only +5.5% global DEF bonus will be annihilated by any and all Praetorian DE who are hitting her every 5th swing. I was already hoping that later iterations of Incarnate would help me add things like RES or HP to her, because it's already to the point where every EB, AV, and level 54 critter from new TFs can trigger one-shot code on her by doing 1400+ damage in one hit. All she has going for her is the fact that she usually dodges. But if all the new enemies have +15% ToHit she's just going to die left and right. I'll have to take along another VEAT just to run regular missions.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

The concept of "native defenses" being introduced here is a concept here being applied as gospel. The biggest reason why leadership powers are low to begin with is because they affect more than one character.

PBAoE auras are notorious for being lower value, higher endurance drain than their single target buffing counterparts. It has less to do with the concept of being "native defense" or not.

A few simple examples that disprove the idea of "native defenses" are found in Steamy Mist and Shadow Fall. Even VEAT Maneuvers falls under "native defense", yet they all grant a measly +5% defense.

A high base value benefits more with slotting than a low base value. Has nothing to do with "native defense". This means that Steamy Mist benefits more from being "native" than Maneuvers, but both are very low defense buffs to begin with.

It's been what? 10 issues now and no new IO sets have been released? There are still powers that don't have IO sets at all and some that don't have purple sets. I would seriously not expect to see any new sets at all.

At the last meet and greet someone asked the devs when or if new invention sets would be released. Their response was pretty much that they were waiting until the incarnate system was complete or mostly complete so as to see where and what new sets were needed.

Well, those suggestions come up often enough.

I'd still like to see some - like the majority of the Snipe recipes - shuffled out of the pool and moved to a vendor somewhere. They can be available then, if you REALLY want calibrated accuracy or executioner's contract - and won't just be an insta-delete drop. (And I'm saying that as someone who *likes* snipes.)

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so where does your idea of -def leave builds that are totally reliant on defense for protection and don't have any real defense debuff resistance such as the VEATS?

The devs could probably cap how low a resistance debuff could take you to prevent excessive damage I'm guessing.

yeah, a weighting a bit more towards melee sets would be nice too as that seems to be the lion's share of the playerbase. I have yet to see a kinetic combat drop from all the characters i've played in the 30's

Well, the VEATs are interesting because of their flexibility. While you have the choice to build as a pure melee powerhouse, you don't have to. All of them have some form of mitigation that is not based on personal statistics (summoning pets, hard controls like holds and stuns etc).

My own fortunata has way better defenses than any of my Dominators for instance, and still packs the controls and blasts to put out damage. Stackign DDR on top of that seems unnecessary. Especially once teamed when I've reliably been sitting at over 150 defense to all positions thanks to stacked leadership and VEAT leadership buffs.

That said, I do think that some level of DDR would fit into the builds. Definitely not the 95% that SR can build for, but maybe 25% to 30%. My point of view is that not every build and every AT needs to be able to solo at +4/x8. DDR is mostly needed against very large groups solo. It is extremely helpful in other circumstances, but usually in an 8 man team, Aggro is spread out and/or you have buffs. 1 melee VEAT and 7 blasters is not something I've ever actually seen, and even then it's hard to believe cascade failure would kick in before everything was dead. So VEATs right now fit into the "if it ain't broke" category for me.

If some anti-def techniques start cropping in, I can definitely see the argument for giving them a DDR power, possibly added to one of the auto powers, possibly one of the others. Maybe 10 to 20% base DDR before enhancement.

In other words, what I said:

All you're saying is that power pool defenses tend to be numerically lower than primary and secondary power defenses, which means anything that affects them proportionately will show a larger numeric benefit on the stuff with the bigger numbers. But that's a highly non-standard way of designating bias. That would be like me saying that the Alpha slot is preferentially designed to benefit total focus more than power blast.

Moreover, this part of your statement was the part I have no idea what it means:

And I mean that literally: I have no idea what this statement is supposed to parse into, because it has no connection with the game mechanics I'm aware of.

The Alpha buffs function like enhancement buffs, which is to say that for the most part they are strength buffs. Strength buffs "directly buff base stats" if you want to put it that way. Nothing buffs "directly *instead of*" buffing "base-stats" because in that sense base stats (intrinsic power values) can't be altered by anything in the game. They can only be, well, buffed.


One more thing: simply looking at digits isn't always a fair way to judge "benefit." All three SR passives have a base 5.625% defense to one type. For scrappers, weave offers 3.75% defense to all types. Its arguable that Weave is stronger, and each slot put into Weave helps more than each slot put into the SR passives (excluding the effects of enhancing the defense debuff resistance in the passives).

So:
Actually, I see that weave increased by 0.6% whereas in your Kinetic Shield example it increased by 1.5% (Kinetic Shield is 12.75% defense, by the way, but that's not significant here). And Weave is defense to all types as I mentioned. Is 0.6% to all really miniscule compared to 1.5% to only smash/lethal? Or even the 1.8% defense to fire/cold/energy (and less to negative) of Power Shield? It actually seems in the general ball park.

This is not just hypothetical number crunching. There was a time, before defense debuff resistance and the scaling passive resistances, when it was a legitimate topic on the scrapper forums to ask whether Weave was a better choice than taking all three passive powers in SR, because while all three passives combined were stronger (and didn't burn endurance) you could get more than half their strength with just one power and two discretionary slots: the passives required three power choices and six discretionary slots. Triple the effort for double the gain.

In any case, implying that this was an actual deliberate decision on the part of the devs is false: its a consequence of the numbers that they really had no choice on. But since most of us would not say that a defense SO is specifically designed to benefit power pool powers less than primary and secondary powers, I think its misleading to say the same for the Alpha slot.

Oh, one more thing:

Unlikely. When I asked about that, the only thing I think that was deliberate was tier 1: Accuracy, Damage, Endurance, and Recharge. Those are the four most popular enhancements slotted. The second tier which is composed of the three primary mitigators and a filler (defense debuff) was assigned more or less randomly.

Moreover, that would not be an especially good way to do it anyway. You can already soft-cap with the invention system, just sometimes at the expense of underslotting other things. So someone wanting to soft cap doesn't have to take Nerve: they can just build with inventions to the soft cap and then if they are underslotted with damage due to slotting just take Musculature to compensate. The biggest benefit to a soft-capper - because its the biggest benefit to everyone - is to take the Alpha that buffs the aspects you most want that are the most underslotted in your build. So a soft-capper doesn't stack Alpha onto their defenses if that is inefficient: they build to the soft cap making sacrifices elsewhere and then lets Alpha fill those in.

Not everyone is thinking that way yet, but I'm sure its only a matter of time. Either way, Alpha's attribute combos aren't even a small speed bump to soft-capping. Heck my MA/SR soft-cap build is taking Spiritual because that's what's not maxed out in my build: recharge. And outside of my defenses, my strongest mitigation power is Aid self. What would I want to make Aid Self stronger... Recharge and Heal I guess.

Way to go on making Alpha less useful to soft-cappers. Are there many soft-cap melee builds out there that cannot make good use of Recharge/Heal? I guess perma-hasten Willpower melee will just have to take Musculatures.

Sorry, but that's a lousy cop-out.

We have about a zillion sets that provide recharge boosts (including specific SINGLE IO's that provide the boost). Yet we still got an alpha slot that enhances global recharge.

There's no reason you can't have parallel tracks to enhancement.

I'd like to see more PBAOE sets that focus on end consumption rather than just whacking max damage and recharge.

I'd also like to see more sets that provide boosts to resistance (in the same manner there are sets that provide defense boosts). Right now, if you want to bump defense, you have tons and tons of options. But if you want to boost resistance, you have almost nothing outside of the random "You six-slotted, congrats, TOXIC resist" type bonuses.

I'd like to see purple sets that can overcap Acc, End, Range, etc rather than just the Dam/Rech dynamic duo.

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I think what was meant that instead of being like a set bonus or inspiration I.E. luck giving a bonus directly to the defense types that it was done as what we got instead (a global enhancement).

Now now we DID get accurate healing, to hit buff and defense buffs sets..

i said as much myself earlier in the thread. i just want to know where i can find them. Regular DE are already very nasty to my def-based characters when they drop those quartzes, but add higher base tohit as well... *shudders*
Which for some perverse reason makes me want to fight them even more.

I believe they are referring to the DE in the new versions of Maria and Tina's arcs.

For a troller, recharge will probably give you better mitigation unless you are already near the def cap. Same thing for a resistance based melee character with decent knockdown. Or if a resist tank is near the cap but not at it for resist, but far away from the defense cap, then even a couple of points in resist will be much better mitigation.

For a lot of characters, hitting the defense cap isn't a "what will I pick up with this extra slot for a new set bonus", but instead something the entire character must be built around - including strange power choices that negatively affect the character in other ways.

Ah. i don't think i've fought them yet, but i do have an alt currently running one of the arcs, so i will keep an eye out for them. A character who coincidentally enough is a Night Widow that usually has around 60% positional def.

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