Def Debuffs and Damage Types

So I have a horrible tendency to care in an OCD way about the vulnerability of being debuffed, Defense especially because it's so common in the game at this point.

If one is building for defense for damage type, isn't the best idea simply to over-cap for S/L def as much as possible in order to ensure the debuffs don't ever lead to excessive stacking? Aren't the majority of def debuffs applied from attacks with an S/L Component?

I don't have hard numbers of mob damage type when it comes to this, so I'm just curious if anyone has ever considered this or taken the time to really investigate it. If you had, say, 55% S/L Def, would that help a noticeable amount more than having 45% S/L Def when it comes to handling def debuffs, even at the expense of not soft capping for other damage types? (55% S/L Def with 35% all other positions better than 45% to all positions?)

I am talking about an environment where you've got the attention of more than one mob, for the record. and I'm considering it in relation to a SS/WP Brute, though I also considered it as more of a general thing.

Most defense debuffs from attacks are from blades (Lethal/Melee, usually), bullets (Lethal/Ranged or Lethal/AoE), and radiation (Energy/Ranged or Energy/AoE, usually). There are, of course, exceptions (Earth Control has -def attacks with Smashing/Ranged and Smashing/AoE; Acid Mortar from Traps has -def and it only uses AoE_Attack, no other vectors), and there are powers which debuff your defense without being a part of an attack (for example, autohit -def from Radiation Infection, Liquefy, Oil Slick Arrow, Earthquake, Quicksand).

As for how big of a buffer zone you need, it's hard to answer. I remember recently running my lv33 Ninjutsu Stalker into the alpha strike of a x8 Council spawn, and my defense ended up somewhere around -5% (yes, negative) by the time the fight was over. And Ninjutsu has Defense debuff resistance.

Sadly for your OCD soul, there is no hard and fast answer here. Since you're talking about a WP character, you have no defense debuff resistance, and so defense debuff that does hit you is going to take a good chunk out of your defense. Typcial debuffs from things like sword sets are on the order of -8% per hit from an even level minion, and more if they are higher level and/or higher rank. (Higher level and higher rank combine to even larger debuffs.)

That means that going from 45% defense to 55% defense is going to protect you from, at absolute most, one hit taking you below the softcap to L/S defense. The real question becomes, what alternative benfits (if any) are you giving up in your build to buy the extra 10% defense when it provides such relatively meager added protection?

WP does have minor DEF-debuff resistance, the last time I checked (~20% for Tankers, IIRC). That debuff resistance probably won't make a substantial difference in any situation where your DEF is the difference between life and death, but it is there.

For what it's worth, my personal feeling is that you should just carry a couple of purples and pop one if you think you're going to get heavily debuffed. That's my rule of thumb for most characters, but it seems especially appropriate when we're discussing a WP Brute, which isn't terribly easy (or cheap) to get up to 45% S/L DEF, much less 55% or 60%.

You're almost certainly better off using those extra resources to improve other types of DEF (Energy/Negative being the probable next-best options), or using those extra resources to improve your offense (global recharge) -- and/or increasing your max HP. You're not playing a Tanker, so presumably you're not going to find yourself forced to handle the aggro from large spawns of DEF-debuffers for long periods of time and without external buff support.

And even if you were playing a Tanker, you'd be better served to cover yourself against different attacks, because high-end content is pretty well varied. You'll never eliminate all of your weaknesses, but you can minimize most of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

You know, I wondered as I was typing that if WP did have any some debuff resistance given that the devs have been somewhat liberal with granting it to powersets that have some in-powerset defense. I did also figure that even if it did, it probably wasn't enough to significantly change the prognosis. So at least I got that part right.

Yeah, the little it does have isn't even enhanceable. You're probably right in that WP's case you'd end up sacrificing a lot to get the buffer zone above 45% that might actaully help, alas. Maybe in another case this theory might be more valid, at any rate.

I did play around with that a bit on Test at one point when I was looking into soft capping a fire tank (which REALLY makes you look at some hard tradeoffs). I fought some Romans on the wall, taking various size purples and monitoring my defense. I can say that 55% vs 45% does definitely help, as even after one lucky hit the next hit still has to be lucky to cause cascade defense failure, thanks to the low % each debuff is. Remember the baddies have a fairly short window to get that next lucky attack in before the first debuff wears off.

It will be much less help against the Praetorian robot radiation attacks in the classic Tina arc, for example, because their debuff is much larger. It will be much less help against quicksand patches, since they are autohit and have large debuffs. It will accomplish nothing against DE dropping quartzes, since they can hit through Elude with that.

So judge based on what you want to give up in return. I didn't end up quite even getting to 45% on my fire tank, because it would have meant whiffing on most of my attacks from slots I would have had to sacrifice. It might be worth trying a few purples to experiment, like I did, before you respec.

That's actually the kind of scenario I had in mind when considering it. Good to hear that it seems like it worked out decently well. While strong, the debuffs they give out didn't seem to last too too long, so having that extra bit seemed like it would help a lot to avoid stacking.

I decided on a MA/Shield Scrapper instead (seemed like an interesting concept I don't hear about anyone doing all that often), and while Shield has a lot more DDR than WP, I'll probably look into investing a few points over the 45% mark for safety, if it doesn't come at a huge price, like you mentioned. Thanks for the info!

Don't skimp on E/N defense. Energy attacks have a ton of -def as well and unlike S/L damage, Willpower has almost zero resistance to Energy attacks so you're going to feel every hit.