Mids and build tactics

Well I am trying to make a decent build for a number of my characters. However I don't have a clue as to what to aim for and what to go with for anything.

I was wondering if there was any guides to understanding Mids.

Also, what is soft cap? There is a lot of terms being used I don't understand.

Thanks
MCM

Soft cap means 45% defense, usually to a specific kind of defense. Most players go for 45% position defense, which would be 45 range, 45 melee, and 45 area of effect. The next most common type of defense to shoot for is 45 to smashing and lethal defense, which will be used for those who start with no defense from their power sets on most occasions.

Now on some blasters and other ranged ATs, people will build for just ranged defense and stay at a distance from their enemies via hover. And if a character has only a small amount of positional defense, they might shoot for 32.5% defense, so a small purple inspiration will get them to the soft cap.

That being said, soft cap means the highest useful defense you can get. Because (99% of them) enemies have a base 50% cahnce to hit, and a minimum chance of 5%, any more than 45% defense is wasted, so even though it can still go higher, the higher amount makes no difference.


I'm sure I missed some stuff, but I'm sure some others will come by and fill in what I missed. But aside from soft capping defense, a lot of mids builds focus on other things as well. Some people focus on recharge bonuses for various reasons, such as getting a power permanent (like hasten), or just getting a long recharging power to recharge faster, or get their main attacks recharged faster for a better attack chain.

People will also try to get more max hp and endurance, with endurance usually including some recovery bonuses as well. This combined with a lot of recharge makes some builds able to attack endlessly without running out of endurance, and allows some people to solo arch villains and giant monsters.

Each character will need to focus on different things, but those are usually the main things people will build for on mids. Good luck finding what each of your characters needs.

Not to take anything away from Pyro, but Dechs has explained it better than I have ever read elsewhere.

Keep in min though that not every character needs to worry about soft capping defense. It can really vary based on the archetype and powersets.

For example:

An Illusion controller will probably place the highest priority on global recharge bonuses to perma Phantom Army before worrying about defense.

A forcefield defender can probably softcap all his positionals with relative ease and then try to build up +damage bonuses

A reflex scrapper needs little to no help softcapping his defense so he might focus on +regen bonuses

A invuln tank might want to plug his psi-hole using various set bonuses (i've seen an invuln tank with 30% or more defense to everything including psi as well as 30% or more damage resistance to everything including psi) making him extremely sturdy vs any type of foe.

Ideally you'll want to play off the archetype/powersets to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Cool, thanks for the info!

Other notes: (I play Scrappers, Tanks, Brutes: Other AT's I really have little idea about)

If your AT uses lots of Clicks (Regens, Illusion, Most Doms) +Rech will be very helpful. On a character that is easily soft capped (Energy Aura, SR, SD) +HP is very beneficial.
If you start out with powers in your armor set that does Positional Defense, focus on Positional Defense bonuses (SD)
If you have a toon with Typed Defense to start out with, go for Typed Defense Bonuses (Energy Aura, Invuln)

If you can get 45% S/L defense but low Energy/Negative (Energy is the third most prevalent damage in the game) OR 30ish% S/L and Energy/Negative. Go for the 30% one and pop a purple candy when you need it.

Mids itself can be a difficult tool to learn. (Having the totals tab clicked got me so confused when I started building, because I couldn't remove slots and choose levels for powers!). However, the new drag and drop feature has been a real blessing. Now you can just pick powers, regardless of the level the build is at, and then move it to a good level. So just start clicking powers! You can arrange them when your done.

See? Sometimes I'm a nub.

I don't have it open in front of me, but I know there is an option from the top menus in Mids to "search by set bonus" or something like that. It even has a way to select the various bonus levels, 2.5%, 3.25%, and so on. Very handy for someone new trying to focus on particular types of bonuses. For example, one of the best ranged defense bonuses comes in an Immobilize set, and folks who have done tons of builds will tend to remember that, but you wouldn't think to look there if you were just starting off. That kind of thing can even point you to taking or slotting particular powers mainly because of what you can slot into them. The finest example of whats known as a "set mule" I saw was 5-slotting Brawl with the purple Melee set for the recharge bonus, currently about 1.6B Inf or thereabouts. . .

As you do more builds, you sort of learn "OK, need +rch bonuses, have two AoEs, they get 5x Positrons Blast" and things like that to speed it up a lot.

Successful IO builds usually aim for recharge and/or defense, with accuracy/recovery/HP/regen as secondary build goals. In most cases you cannot stack enough resistance or damage buff to matter, and other bonuses are useless.

Typical build goals for a high-end IO build might include:

• have enough recharge to fire your best attack chain without gaps
• making some power (e.g. Hasten) permanent
• making some power stack a certain number of times (e.g. Rage)
• getting some amount of defense (45 is the softcap, but 32.5 to 35 is also common, so that you can eat a small purple insp and be softcapped immediately)
• being able to have 95% hitchance against +3 or +4 enemies
• have capped HP
• solve endurance problems