Without Tough an Invuln tanker reaches ~70% S/L resistance; with Tough he reaches the 90% S/L resistance cap. That means that you'll take three times the damage at 70% that you'd take at 90%... an attack that does 1000 points of damage would do 300 points to a tanker with 70% resistance but only 100 points to a tanker with 90% resistance.
Weave is needed for defense... the more defense you have the less you get hit. From your post you seem a bit fuzzy about the mechanics of defense and resistance. Let's break it down into the layers of protection.
Your first line of protection is your defense... an enemy attack must roll above your defense or the attack misses and does no damage at all. The higher your defense, up to the "soft cap" of 45%, the harder it is for an enemy to hit you. Due to the way defense and attack mechanics work if you have 45% defense you've reduced most enemies chance to hit you to the absolute minimum; most mobs would only have a 5% chance to hit you at all. LT and boss mobs will have a somewhat better chance but you're still reducing their chances to the minimum possible.
Your second line of protection is your resistance... any attack that makes it through your defense will have it's damage reduced by your resistance. As I mentioned above if you have 90% Smash/Lethal resistance then any attack dealing that kind of damage would only hit you for 10% of it's damage value.
Your third line of protection is your hit points, regeneration and ability to heal. Dull Pain is the mainstay of this allowing you to boost your hit points and heal massive damage when something truly nasty makes it through your defense and resistance.
What all this boils down to is that Tough makes a dramatic difference in your Smash/Lethal resistance (the most common damage types in the game) and Weave allows you to raise your defense closer to the soft cap. In both cases the more you have the more effective it is... the difference between 0% and 5% defense is nearly unnoticeable but the difference between 40% and 45% is immense. Each percentage point of defense is more important than the last up to the 45% soft cap.
So while Tough provides the same kind of resistance that Temp. Invulnerability does it stacks to provide still more resistance. While Weave provides defense like Invincibility and Tough Hide to it likewise stacks to provide still more defense. Until you reach the caps more resistance and defense is ALWAYS valuable, especially to a tanker.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Actually Awesome, I have been reading alot of your posts and build info. Nice job btw, and thank you for your input. In alot of the builds people are taking Combat Jump for extra defense along with boxing, tough, weave to work with the defense set, which I understand. So how do you slot those powers when the sets to maximize end reduction, recharge and so on, aren't even available. Everybody seems to have different opinions as to which set works the best. There are alot of builds that people agree on the same sets. Do I create my tank in hopes that the market will somehow make unavailable sets appear, or build it and plan on using Taining IO's.
Hello all, I am getting ready to build my first tank and I have been looking over alot of the great build advice from everyone.. Since I am new to tanking, here is a newbie question. Why does a SS/Inv tank still need Tough and Weave? Does the Inv powerset not offer what Tough and Weave offer? They seem to be just more toggles that eat up endurance. I understand that with good sets that shouldn't be an issue, but alot of the sets recommended are not available to buy pre-made or in recipe form.
Thanks for all the help, I am just trying to understand what everyone is talking about when talking about softcapping,etc. Ok, I am ready, let the newbie bashing begin, lol...