Stretching For Soft Cap

I've never been one for Defense. This is probably due in large part by my first experience with a Defense set being Energy Aura, but most of it is the the 5% hit chance floor that comes out to a 1 in 20 chance of hitting for every enemy around you. Defense, to me, has always been something with a 5% failure rate, which combined with Defense sets' general lack of other forms of protection (especially Energy Aura) reeeally turned me off. Like, to the point that I spurned Defense and swore my allegiance to the 100% success rate of Resitstance. This was years ago.

I rolled up a new character recently and decided that it would be that one character I pushed for Defense, since Stalkers with Resistance merely die more slowly than Stalkers without it (I'm using humor here, so don't get upset). Now, I'm picky when it comes to class roles, and I'm very strongly of the opinion that general-purpose survivability sets like the other melee archetypes get are errors for Stalkers. The only two secondaries I consider "authentic Stalker" are the ones with control: Ninjitsu and Dark Armor. And since I already had a Dark Armor character, Ninjitsu it was.

Working on the principle of "soft cap or bust," I did something else equally uncharacteristic of me: drafted a build that specifically took advantages of invention set bonuses. I'm a hardcore frankenslotter at heart, and since I've never had to worry about Defense before, all my builds have just been flavor and I've enjoyed the freedom of slotting all my powers for performance without sacrificing for set mules or anything. I've had a lot of successes in this regard, but Ninjitu's base defense numbers are quite a bit lower than my goal, so I had to stick my neck out.

I ended up drafting a build that I think looks really good, since it only uses one mule power (one which was initially taken just to gain access to a different one) and the other set bonuses ended up frankenslotting the powers they were placed in... I was giddy. What I had at the end, though, was soft cap to all three positional Defense types using just my secondary powers and Weave. No Maneuvers, no Combat Jumping; just Weave.

Turns out my expectations were maladjusted when selecting sources of Defense from the power pools. But it got me thinking, is this normal? Did I just happen to luck out and find a build I liked without having to toggle up? So that brings me to this thread...

To what lengths does one generally have to go in order to achieve the Defense soft cap to <insert position(s) of your choice> in a build? How many spare powers do you end up taking, how many set mules do you employ, and how much performance on a per-power basis do you sacrifice in order to get the bonuses you need?

Well, to give you one example, I went for ranged defense on my Psi/Mental blaster and I took one set mule power that needed an additional two slots on top of its base slot for the full IO set. Also, I went with slotting a ranged damage IO set into my snipe instead of a snipe IO set. Other than that, capping the build was just a matter of looking at other powers in which to get the set bonuses... I run Stealth, Hover and Maneuvers for my defensive toggles, and World of Confusion as a damage mitigation aura only sometimes. With smart slotting, I was able to take every power I wanted and only one that I won't use.

To me it varies, I think much of what your asking also has to incorporate which Primary and Secondary your picking.

As an example Archery / Energy Manipulation leans very favorable toward getting range cap by slotting Thunder Strike and Mako Bite. You end up 6 slotting some good powers that are useful both range and if someone gets into melee range. On top your able to 6 slot health for some very nice regen and still able to pick up Aid other and Aid self on top of all of this.

But then I have a AR Device that I really wanted to obtain Range Defense cap with and I will be the first to admit without incarnate system for the endurance boost it would be totally impossible. With that build there were many sacrifices to do that. I will admit it might be one I might have to relook at and see what can be done maybe. Though the range cap is nice, because I am not 6 slotted in health as my Arch EM is I notice the damage I take much more or is slower to heal back during a fight.

Personally I come from the house of worship Defense is king. Maybe to the point of going door to door telling everyone about my savior a bit too much. To me I went from Frankenslotting to Defense cap and have never turned back. I would make just about any sacrifice for Defense cap as long as the AT is still effective.

To me I know I am doing something right when any of my numerous Traps toon ( the AT does not matter ) is out living the Tank / Brute / Scrapper. I find that there are players playing certain arch types that should be aware of defense cap and are not.

Another perfect example about capping without sacrifice is Traps. Any AT that has Traps can defense cap positional and still be very effective. So to me not going defense cap with Traps which really does not benefit from recharge ( know I will get beat up for that comment ) as other powers do. What I mean by that previous comment is that Traps has so many quick recharge powers already that cutting off a few seconds will not make a difference. Getting FFG in 5 seconds instead of 7 is not going to be game breaking. The only power I can see making a difference is Triage Beacon. But even with capping defense with Traps you still can obtain a decent amount of global recharge and still be very effective. Every Traps toon I have can solo 4/8 settings.

So I am a firm believer if you can obtain defense cap, especially positional defense cap it is worth forgoing a few DPS points. Just looking at certain purple IO sets you can see that the difference between damage and accuracy bonuses between a purple set and a lower level 50 set is about 2% difference in favor of the purple set. But your obtaining 2% to 4% increase in certain defenses with a lower IO set among some other bonuses as well. As a side note I wouldn't bother trying to obtain defenses in the mid 20s for the sake of trying to get some defense. In that instance I do believe you would be better off working for DPS or recharge. It is either all ( at least 1 key positional defense or smash and lethal ) or nothing.

Soft capping all positionals is amazing. Do it and you will reach a level of awesome you will have never imagined. You will be a nigh-unkillable god among men. The pinnicle of survivability in the CoX unverse. Unkillability incarnate. The...well you get the picture.


Even though you are a stalker.

I've gotten crazy enough to carry lucks around to soft cap

Well, the first two replies were on-target, at any rate. Maybe this thread has too much Defense. (-:

Do you have hide turned on in mids? It can add some deceptive numbers. It's not as easy as one might think to softcap all three with ninjitsu.

Soft-capping Willpower with Hide off can be troublesome, soft-capping Ninjitsu can be done with only Def/global recharge and Def/End in Weave.

Oh, I misread your earlier post. Thought you were saying that soft-capping with Ninjitsu could only be done with +Rech and Def/End. My bad. (-:


EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville "With only" not "only with."

Semantically equivalent. Depends on interpretation.

The issue was that I initially interpreted MajorDecoy as using "only" with "done" ("done [...] only") rather than "with" ("with [...] Def/global recharge and Def/End").

Buuuuuut... Yeah, the thread DOES have high Defense. It's about the necessary steps to achieve soft cap, not the interpretation of "only." (-:

Wow...really?

Your only DEF toggles are Ninja Reflexes, Danger Sense, Hide and Weave? No Stealth?

You might want to consider making room for Stealth in there somewhere. While Hide alone will make you completely invisible to any NPC that doesn't just totally ignore any amount of stealth, Hide + Stealth + a Stealth IO is the only way to cap your stealth against other players. Even my Stalker doesn't PvP much, but the PvP zone temp powers are amazing and I like badges. Having capped stealth (and perception) while I'm there gives me peace of mind.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Stealth_and_Perception

Would you mind elaborating as to specifically which sets you used to softcap your build?

I think soft capping toons because really popular went it was discovered you could make Invulnerability and Dark Armor toons immortal. Which in turn drove the prices of Kinetic Combat and Reactive Armor IO sets upward.