A Waste of Shards?

Odd, I certainly feel like I am getting hit less.

You know, I would think, if a DM/SD is finding they are often Defense debuffed on an ITF (it can happen to Shields and SRs), it MIGHT be worthwhile to slot the NERVE boost for a little added to defense will make a difference. I think it would depend on the build if the Spiritual is of more use.

I've skipped Cardiac on my DB/WP as I find it's just not useful, however, I've switched between Nerve and Spiritual.

Another thing to bear in mind about Nerve is that its defense enhancement aspect is going to be more useful to builds that get more of their +def from enhanceable powers. If you're something like Shields, Ninjitsu or especially SR, the vast majority of your +def is from slottable powers. That gives you a bigger lever for Nerve to pry on. Most of my characters are lucky if they can scrape up 10% defense from things that you can actually enhance. The rest comes from set bonuses. That means that Nerve is going to give me a couple of points of defense at the very most on characters who usually aren't that close to the softcap.

Now, I'm one of the first people to point out that a couple of percent +Defense in the 35%+ range can actually work out to a nice bit of added average mitigation. However, when these are characters who get things like big DPS boosts out of the +recharge of Spiritual, or suddenly can run attack chains forever without help, that's a big deal to me too.

I don't think anyone's saying Nerve is useless. It's useful on the right characters. I don't have anyone who's 50 and has high enough enhanceable defense for it to be right for me, and I sure as heck don't have anyone who is low on accuracy. So for me, my situational benefit leans away from Nerve. I think it does for a lot of builds. I wish its primary attribute was something besides accuracy, but that would throw the whole arrangement out of its current kilter, and I like the other three Alphas a lot.

Having only glanced past the thread, Nerve might help soft cap and provide help agianst defense debuffs.

My Shield Defense toon, however, is getting Cardiac Core beause A) She runs a lot of toggles and the extra end red is welcome and B) it gives a boost to resistance.

Remember, Deflection and True Grit together, unslotted, offer 15% resistance to everything not Psionic. Plus One With The Shield gives your Resistance another heavy boost.

And unlike Nerve, which in the end only 3/4 will ignore ED, Cardiac is libale to grant the full boost since your likely to have a defense set in Deflection, and if your like me, True Grit is slotted with Numia and Miricle Procs with the Heal + Steadfast +3% + Numia Heal/End for set bonus, and even if your not your liable to have it underslotted for Resistance. That's an extra boost to resistance which helps when you take the odd hit here and there.

Why would you slot True Grit like that? You'd be much better off slotting it for +heal and getting the +hit points from it.

Uberguy already said it, but to reinforce:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rodion This is a misapprehension of what the soft cap means. The soft cap is relative to level and rank: the 45% soft cap is relative to even-con minions. Higher conning enemies have an accuracy bonus (see the ParagonWiki article on attack mechanics), as do higher-ranking enemies like LTs and bosses. This means that if you're fighting level 54 bosses and AVs -- which you find in the Tin Mage and Apex TFs -- you want to exceed the even-con minion soft cap.

This is absolutely, specifically, and technically wrong, especially in the way you're using it. There is no benefit whatsoever to exceeding the soft cap...for any character...ever...except for a buffer against being debuffed. The soft cap is such a useful concept BECAUSE this is true. Furthermore, all early discussions of the concept, during which the term "soft cap" became popularized, explicitly established this.

Sorry to be so forceful, but I see this pop up from time to time and it's very likely to confuse people about an already-established and well-understood principle of game mechanics.

my only issue with the Alpha Slot is that the combination of boosts are just useless on some toons. I think a better attempt would have been to make them AT specific instead of broad and general boosts to everyone.

I made 1 of each common and I have the Acc/Hold one. I am working on Endo/Range and Dmg/Stun

Hm, if we're counting across all characters I have like... 350? That's six incarnated 50s, ranging from around 20-100 shards apiece, all with at least one uncommon crafted. Most of that is TFs, some of it is missions on high team size settings, and some of is Hami Raids. Hami Mitos also drop at a high rate; I probably trend towards four drops per raid, though I had an exceptionally nice one last week where I got eight. That's not including the four you can take as your reward, which I have not been doing.

I run a lot of TFs, so I almost never spend shards on common components. The only common component I craft outright is the one you get only from running the CoP.

Unfortunately I don't have easy access to my build right now, but I have the Nerve uncommon on my MA/SR.

He has all /SR toggles and passives slotted up to ED with defense, CJ also slotted for defense, and the Steadfast +Def in Tough. These, along with various set bonuses, gets him to slightly over 45% def in all three positions.

When I got and activated the Nerve uncommon, those numbers went up ~1.8%.

I don't think this would help much in the defense debuff department(I'm DDR capped anyway) and because I'm already softcapped, it's not helping me get hit much less, either. I'm sure using a Rare or Very Rare will bump that percentage up, since more of it ignores ED, but still...

Were I to make a new build and have it centered around using the Nerve uncommon exclusively, it could indeed be useful. But for a build that's already done and softcapped, I can't really see the big draw.

Does the Nerve path defense bonus also boost Defense Debuff Resistance?
Specific toons I am thinking of would be x/SR any and Stone Tanks.

Jak

Moreover, they are supposed to be specifically engineered to not buff things that current enhancers may buff by accident, such as how defense debuff enhancers will buff defense buffs. I'm not clear on the implications for powers that currently allow this, like SR's passives. As BA, said, even if it would work on SR's passives, it won't work on things that don't actually explicitly allow defense slotting.

I've gone with Cardiac with my Fire/Shield and crafted the two uncommons to get ready for the eventual i20. I don't play as much as I would like to, but I still do ok with shards. Nowhere near BA's numbers though.