Personally I would always try and shoot for the soft cap, specially on an SS/WP brute, no matter how much +rech i have to give up.
This thing is, the more def you get the each point of def gets BETTER...by a lot. But with more and more +rech each point of +rech gets less and less useful.
But generally i want softcap and 50% or more +rech from set bonuses.
"I have ridden the mighty moon worm!"
-Al Gore
Fiery Aura is only good for farming, I'm cereal
@Caucasiafro
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Originally Posted by Socorro
Lately, I've decided to make the push to softcap my SS/WP Brute's S/L Defense as sort of a project since I had so much dough to blow haha... So, last week or so I've blown about 3.5 Billion on her buying that Gladiator Proc and other S/L Def boosting IOs. I'm sitting at about 39% def to S/L now and when I'm done it'll be about 44% (and with another -5% tohit debuffs from RttC I think I'll be pretty darn shifty
 However, I've had to make a few sacrifices here and there. Not major, I've kept my damage, regeneration, resistance, and recovery all at very good numbers, IMO, but my Recharge had dropped from around 85% to 62.5%. (and won't drop any further) All, that's fine. I'm keeping it as it, but it got me to wondering. For you min-maxers, Recharge and Defense is the two things most of you shoot for. What do you consider the threshold, the tipping point, whatever, where losing more in one is not worth gaining more in the other. Example: I doubt many of you would Softcap if it meant your recharge went from 75% to 40%, but maybe you would. So, out of curiosity, what balances do you try to get? |
Just make sure to put the force feedback proc in footstomp, I tend to get about at 20-30% increase in overall recharge when farming.
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Yeah, I have it... it certainly is noticeable. The Spiritual Recharge Alpha-Slot helps too. I have it and Nerve for Defense and swap between the two depending on how things are going. Nerve only give about 2% extra S/L def, but in the 40%+ range, that's actually alot.|
Originally Posted by Enots
Just make sure to put the force feedback proc in footstomp, I tend to get about at 20-30% increase in overall recharge when farming.
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So, softcapped S/L with 62% recharge is more than plenty good enough in you guys opinions then?
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This is my guideline too. I find 50ish percent to a sort of sweet spot where you get good recharge but more recharge gives smaller and smaller benefits.|
Originally Posted by ultrawatt
Personally I would always try and shoot for the soft cap, specially on an SS/WP brute, no matter how much +rech i have to give up.
This thing is, the more def you get the each point of def gets BETTER...by a lot. But with more and more +rech each point of +rech gets less and less useful. But generally i want softcap and 50% or more +rech from set bonuses. |
Let's take Foot Stomp, for example. With the 62% recharge Socorro has, assuming FS is slotted for 95% recharge in the power, that gets recharge down to 7.77 seconds (from base 20). Add an LOTG, to get to 70% (forgive rounding), and Footstomp shaves off a whole .2 seconds from recharge, down to 7.55 seconds. Let's add 2 purple sets to get another 20% recharge, now FS is down to 7.02 seconds. I'd call 62% "good enough".
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I'm just a casual number cruncher, so wasn't aware how significant the diminishing returns for recharge were beyond 50%. I feel immensely better about my 'measly' 62.5% recharge now |
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
This is my guideline too. I find 50ish percent to a sort of sweet spot where you get good recharge but more recharge gives smaller and smaller benefits.
Let's take Foot Stomp, for example. With the 62% recharge Socorro has, assuming FS is slotted for 95% recharge in the power, that gets recharge down to 7.77 seconds (from base 20). Add an LOTG, to get to 70% (forgive rounding), and Footstomp shaves off a whole .2 seconds from recharge, down to 7.55 seconds. Let's add 2 purple sets to get another 20% recharge, now FS is down to 7.02 seconds. I'd call 62% "good enough". |
Thanks
IMO Defense debuff resistance is a critical factor to consider in soft-capping, since a character without it will find that their investment is being eroded by debuffs with over 50% of enemy groups at level 50. If you're mostly planning to farm cherry-picked enemies, that's less of a factor - but then, if you're cherry picking your enemies you may want to just be fire armor or electric armor for the 90% resistance to the picked damage type
Further, newer content (or older, harder groups like Rularuu) tends to include more 'casual def-busting' (and arguably, WP-busting) enemies, with -def and -regen attacks or +tohit buffs. The short of it is that while softcapping is certainly nice most of the time, a softcapped WP, fire, elec, etc brute is still going to end up at negative defense on a regular basis in the ITF, against the PPD's kheldians, in the cathedral of pain, or vs praetorian clockwork.
On the other hand, alpha slots combined with the diminishing returns of stacking recharge, help make +defense more attractive for brutes. A very rare spiritual alpha will cover 30% worth of +rech bonus or more (dependent on power slotting), and of the 4 alphas, only spiritual and cardiac are of particular interest to most brutes - the low AT mod deprecates the value of the musculature tree, and everyone with sets will have enough accuracy to deprecate the nerve tree. This encourages you to have your cake and eat it too on the recharge/defense front.
Just don't be surprised if you end up still needing buffs and support, if you're not SR, shield, granite, or maybe invuln.
"Experience is the mother of good judgement. Bad judgement is the father of experience."
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Originally Posted by Flux_Vector
the low AT mod deprecates the value of the musculature tree, and everyone with sets will have enough accuracy to deprecate the nerve tree. This encourages you to have your cake and eat it too on the recharge/defense front.
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Could you elaborate on this? What do you mean by "low AT mod"? Thanks!
Having gotten quite a few brute to 45% I can say that once you hit the s/l soft cap def debuffs (from s/l at least) don’t actually have that big of an effect. That’s for 2 reasons i think:
1. Being soft capped means that you are actually less likely to get hit by def debuff. As the first attacks only has 1 in 20 chance to hit.
2. Dead things can’t debuff you, you’re a brute large mobs should last that long in the first place. But there are some enemies that don’t like to die, like AVs. But during that long AV fight most of the time the only thing that will be alive is that AV, which means it’s going to take quite a while for an s/l AV to stack any decent –def on.
Of course, posi and the like with eat you up and spit you out unless you have some backup, but when don’t you have help?
This is only true of */*/soul brutes, but both gloom and dark oblit will end up throwing -tohit at the enemy. That’s 4-8 pseudo def.
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brutes have a low dmg mod, ie base dmg. So the 33-6% +dmg you get from musculature is...not a lot.
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Originally Posted by TankShock
Could you elaborate on this? What do you mean by "low AT mod"? Thanks!
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"I have ridden the mighty moon worm!"
-Al Gore
Fiery Aura is only good for farming, I'm cereal
@Caucasiafro
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Basically, it means that the brute base attack damage is low compared to other melee guys like scrappers, stalkers, tanks, etc.
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Originally Posted by TankShock
Could you elaborate on this? What do you mean by "low AT mod"? Thanks!
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Gotcha. If End isn't a problem, I still think +33% can be the best bet for a Brute. Nerve is the red-headed stepchild, so that's out. Cardiac +Res will have a minimal effect on most Brutes (obvious exceptions). Spiritual is solid, my Spines/Regen scrapper loves it. But with the diminishing returns of recharge, if you don't have something to benefit from Regen or something to Perma, a permanent medium red is nothing to sniff at. My lvl49 SS/WP will probably go musculature. He's close to the HP cap, so +regen won't do much. And to be honest I don't want to be flatlining Rage anymore than it already does. 
I went ahead and got Nerve alpha slot for the Defense Bonus. It doesn't provide much, but it does get me to S/L Softcap on my SS/WP (I'm 43% without, a bit over 45% with Nerve slotted...and high 30's most other types).
Still, I went with Spiritual for my Tier 3 (and level boost). I figured the level shift, xtra recharge and Regen (from healing bonus) would make up the difference when soloing, and when teaming there's just about always someone buffing my defense so I'm over softcap anyway.
Lately, I've decided to make the push to softcap my SS/WP Brute's S/L Defense as sort of a project since I had so much dough to blow haha... So, last week or so I've blown about 3.5 Billion on her buying that Gladiator Proc and other S/L Def boosting IOs. I'm sitting at about 39% def to S/L now and when I'm done it'll be about 44% (and with another -5% tohit debuffs from RttC I think I'll be pretty darn shifty
However, I've had to make a few sacrifices here and there. Not major, I've kept my damage, regeneration, resistance, and recovery all at very good numbers, IMO, but my Recharge had dropped from around 85% to 62.5%. (and won't drop any further)
All, that's fine. I'm keeping it as it, but it got me to wondering. For you min-maxers, Recharge and Defense is the two things most of you shoot for. What do you consider the threshold, the tipping point, whatever, where losing more in one is not worth gaining more in the other. Example: I doubt many of you would Softcap if it meant your recharge went from 75% to 40%, but maybe you would.
So, out of curiosity, what balances do you try to get?