Please add Resistance to Defense Debuffs to Temperature Protection

Ok, this is a post I shouldn't write

First off, I don't think we need more resistance to resistance debuffs secondly, I'm about to contradict you, which historically isn't wise but...

No way?


come on, how about a power that procs a resist boost every time a debuff to resistance over a certain magnitude is applied to a character, that can stack up to... er, whatever, three times.

Surely creative solutions could exist...



it'll cut down

Except that is not a resistance to resistance debuffs, which I said was impossible without buffing resistance. You're asking for a resistance buff that would kick in when your resistance dropped, which is just a resistance buff, not a resistance to resistance debuffs.

There's also no current way for the game engine to know how much "debuffs" are applied to you. It only knows the overall total which is buffs plus debuffs. It may *seem* like the game engine knows because Real Numbers knows, but actually Real Numbers is only pretending to know: Real Numbers grabs its numbers from two different places. It yanks the details from essentially the same place buff icons come from. It then shows the total from the game engine itself. Interestingly, that's why they don't always add up. Resistances throw the numbers off. If you have 95% DDR, then your Real Numbers combat attribute display might show -20% and -30% defense in the detail, but then -2.5% total. The detail is showing raw numbers, while the total is showing what the game engine actually knows the total debuff to be, including all calculations. According to pohsyb, there was no obvious way to show the detail as "-1%" and "-1.5%" factoring in resistances, because there was no way to get per power details from the game engine that way.

There's probably also no obvious way to say something like "if debuffs > 15% then apply effect X." The system would know your resistance net was 60%, but not if it was 80%-20% or 70%-10%.

Curiously, this would be easier with Defense. Because defense debuffs are always base defense and defense buffs are always typed (with only a couple of corner cases) you can always separate buffs and debuffs. You could say "if base < -10% then" knowing that is a 10% defense debuff. You cannot say that for resistance, because resistance debuffs are not similarly "segregated."


There's four different kinds of "impossible."

1. Cannot be done under current conditions. I.e. "the game engine currently doesn't support that ability."

2. Cannot be done given current resources. I.e. "the amount of work required to add this to the game engine is more effort than the devs could possibly afford to spend.

3. Cannot be done mathematically. I.e. "there's no way to set combat jumping so that it offers the same proportional benefit to blasters with no defense and SR scrappers with 30% defense. No number meets both conditions.

4. Cannot be done because request is nonsensical. I.e. "I don't know what you mean by balancing combat jumping against combat auras, but whatever you mean there's unlikely to be a game balance processes that is actually applicable."

"Can you add resistance debuff resistance without buffing damage resistance" is type one impossible on the surface, and type four impossible if you know how resistance works in the game engine.

Crazy (or "creative") options always exist, but they tend to run afoul of being type two impossible. For example, if someone were to ask for a way to buff their defense against lethal, but only for Katanas and not Bullets, that's just impossible (type one). The game doesn't distinguish between blades and bullets: a lethal typed attack is a lethal typed attack. Technically speaking someone could find all the lethal katana attacks and all the lethal bullet attacks and give the latter a special debuff that just coincidentally reverses the special buff being added for katana attacks so it all automagically works out, but as a practical matter that is impossible (type two).

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

The choice they made, at the beginning of time, was to build in a Base defense type that would affect all attacks, but not a Base resistance type that would affect all damage. That difference makes it impossible to debuff base resistance - no base resistance.

Pretty much this. I was surprised by how fast my IO'ed up Fire tank got torn up in Tin Mage last night, but we had zip for buffs or even debuffs on the team (well, we had a VEAT, so improved Maneuvers, but that was it). That same Fire tank can absolutely breeze through most ITF, LG, hell even Apex runs w/minimal support, but for TM, he seems to need a bit more support. I know I can sleepwalk though every phase of TM w/my Stony (tho I usually pop Granite for the end fight).

Oh, and DDR wouldn't really have helped last night either.

I really wish you would stop linking to this. Many of the conclusions here are wrong and the build advice given is seriously off the mark in several respects with more than a few glaring omissions to anyone even casually familiar with slotting Dark Armor.

You are misinforming people. Please stop.

Why stop now.


/too easy.

I usually don't critique build guide or build advice too much, but I was actually shocked to see a set of Touch of the Nictus slotted into Dark Regen. I can think of few *worse* ways to slot Dark Regen, especially on a Tanker.

TotN minus the damage proc ends up slotting Dark Regen like this:

68.9% accuracy
42.4% end red
97.49% heal
47.7% recharge

I literally can think of few worse slottings than that. Maybe six heal IOs. This massively overslots for heal while underslots for end reduction and recharge. In fact, the six-slot SO slotting of one acc, two recharge, three endred would almost certainly be better. The above slotting reduces the end cost of the power from 33.8 to 23.7 per use. The SO slotting above reduces end cost per use to about 20.3. An even better way to slot Dark Regen is focusing recharge/end IOs and some accuracy.

But the best way to slot Dark Regen focuses on an IO in the set that was explicitly tossed aside in the guide: Theft of Essence. Theft of Essence actually has a +END proc: it has a chance to return endurance for every target the power hits. Its 20% chance for 10% endurance. Or, assuming you have no endurance boosting accolades or anything, you could say it returns on average 2 points of endurance per target you hit with Dark Regen. And tankers are likely to be hitting lots of targets with Dark Regen.

Unless you're optimizing for fighting archvillains solo, you should always assume as a tanker you're going to be hitting three to six targets with Dark Regen. So lets examine this slotting pattern:

Theft of Essence +End
Theft of Essence Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge
Doctored Wounds End/Recharge
Numina's Convalescence End/Recharge
Touch of the Nictus Accuracy/End/Recharge

Everything level 50 except the ToEs which top out at 30. That ends up generating:

38.6% accuracy
89.12% recharge
89.12% endred

It now cycles faster, and only costs 17.9 endurance per use *and* returns 2 end per target you hit on average. If you average hitting just four targets per use as a tanker the net cost of Dark Regen will be just under 10 endurance. Ten. That's less than half the cost of the TotN slotting. Even averaging hitting just *two* targets will reduce Dark Regen's average cost to only 13.9 end, and with no heal slotting will still be generating 60% heal per use. If it bothers you that the accuracy is a little lower and the heal is unslotted, add Touch of Nictus Accuracy/Heal. Now accuracy is 65.10% and heal is slotted 26.5%. That means about 38% heal per target, 76% heal from hitting two targets, and three saturates the heal. Its one of your best powers, I don't know why you'd short it a slot if you were concerned about its performance. That's like complaining about SR's defenses while two-slotting Focused Fighting.

Its also not an expensive slotting pattern. The proc is actually only about 20 million, and the Numina's is nothing: end/rech is a throwaway Numina. An expensive slotting option would be to toss in the Panacea proc. But the above option is within reach of practically anyone contemplating IOs at all.


Since slotting a set of ToN is *worse* than even slotting with SOs for things like endurance management (or even utility, really, except maybe soloing AVs - maybe) any analysis of dark armor that incorporates that slotting pattern is highly suspect. I would literally rather run with one acc, three end, two rech SOs than ToN. Slotted into Dark Regen, the set bonuses ain't worth it. Hilariously, one of the set bonuses is +Heal strength, which is almost wasted on a Dark Armor build that slots ToN. The max health and max endurance are useful, but the cost in suboptimal Dark Regen performance is far too high. And my hypothetical slotting above that 6-slots DR and uses two ToNs gets the max health bonus with just two of the set. I only lose the +MaxEnd, which is more than made up for by the fact I'm using far less end.