Super Reflex Numbers

Checking the patch notes indicates that it's supposed to only grant positional defense. It's probably working as intended, though I think the intentions are... insufficient.

That's one way to put it.

I know there's a precedent for this since Parry gives just Melee positional defense. But I think this is different for a couple of reasons.

First, although I haven't use the sword sets to any great degree, IIRC, the melee defense is Parry does stack with repeat applications, so it's a least conceivable that a typed defense character could get a fair amount of melee defense under some circumstances. The defense buff from Storm Kick does NOT stack on itself, so the only buff you're going to get is the 10%.

Second, the Parry buff is for one position and the Storm Kick buff is for all positions. That combined with the fact that it's non-stacking makes it hugely more advantageous for sets with positional def compared to those with typed defense since positional defense builds will have access to a constant 10% defense buff that stacks with their other defense powers. Having an additional 10% positional melee defense that does not stack with your typed defense is a lot less useful.

That seems very inequitable to me, and it's made even more so by the fact that if you're getting a fair proportion of your defense from sets you'll be better off than if you have a set like Ice, since you won't have as many 1/2 scale positional defense boosts that you get from set bonuses.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice buff even for typed defense, but IMO it needs to be rethought to address the inequities in benefit between positional and melee defense sets.

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

With the exception of WP, the typed defense powersets all have a weakness to psi which the positional defense helps cover, and they(Inv,Stone,Ice) also have very few problems in reaching the S/L/N/E/F/C softcap with IO's. As for the resistance based powersets, they build for typed defenses simply because it is easier(in terms of slots), and this MA change gives a very nice option to build for positional defenses, evening the playing field.

I can already imagine DA/MA builds softcapped to all positions.

Ah, well, so there's not so much of a precendent then.

Though undoubtedly true, I don't see how it's relevant. Positional defense based tanker primaries have just as few, if not fewer issues reaching the soft-cap for all positions.

Hmm, I was under the impression that the easier-to-slot aspect of typed defense was a trade-off for a) the inherent weakness to Toxic, and b) the fact that you have to slot for four separate defense categories--S/L, E/NE, F/C and Psi--to approach the coverage of positional defense. To give MA players such a huge incentive to slot for positional defense seems like a lot more than evening the playing field.

But I have a hard time believing that the the intended goal of this change was to encourage players with resistance based sets to slot for positional defense for two reasons: For one, why would the devs care whether players slot for positional or typed defense? It's not like it's somehow game-breaking for players to prefer typed defense.

Secondly, if that's the reason behind it, there's a significant UNintended consequence; it benefits positional defense sets much much more than typed defense sets.

For example, I have a Shield character that's sitting at around 47% defense to all positions. At 57% defense, this change will put her near the incarnate soft-cap pretty much constantly for all positions. It would be trivially easy for a SR/MA tanker to reach 60% defense to all positions.

On my Ice tank, the MA defense buff would yield no benefit whatsoever for S/L/E/NE defense--the types that comprise about 75% of the game's content--because adding the 10% is less than the typed defense she has already for those types. The way she's currently slotted, the 10% positional buff will increase her protection from F/C/Psi and Toxic to around 30%; nice, but not even *close* to the benefit my Shield tank gets from this change.

Instead of 10% positional defense, I'd like to see it give a smaller amount of defense--5% for instance--to S/L/E/NE/F/C as well as all positions. It would be a helpful buff, but not game changing, and positional defense would maintain its advantage as the defense category that covers Psi and Toxic when typed defense typically does not.

Both Typed and Positional defense based tankers can reach the softcap without sacrificing too much, and they both need to do so without the assistance of MA. If you jump into a spawn and your SK misses, what do you fall back on? building for defense will still be needed for defense based sets either way, so my point is that whether it caters to typed or positional primaries more isn't really relevant at the IO level.


If you want to cover for the most common damage types, S/L, you just have to slot for S/L defense. If you want to cover for the next most common damage types, you have to slot for E/N defense. That's 2 instead of 3 to gain complete coverage for the most common damage types, or 1 instead of 3(which is the most popular). Note that while there are builds which softcap themselves to 4 damage types(and the rest gets covered by resists), there are none which even come close to softcapping themselves to all 3 positions.

I'm not pretending to understand the devs way of thinking, I'm just making sense of their decisions in what way I can.

Your Ice tank can incarnate softcap with saturated Energy Absorption, and so can your Inv tank with saturated Invincibility. Does your SD have an equivalent tool in its disposal?

The additional advantage for positional defense sets is even more stark at the pre-IO level; my SR/MA can have 28% defense at level 3, my Ice tank will have around 18% S/L defense and 10% positional defense. That's a huge difference in survivability.

Yes, and the tradeoff for covering the most common types at a lower cost in slots and enhancements is significant holes in coverage. Seems fair to me.


How does first statement gibe with the second one? Aren't you assuming that the devs are factoring in satured Invinc and EA and therefore perceiving positional def to be at a significant disadvantage? If not, why bother mentioning it?

Bottom line, I haven't seen any evidence that suggests that the devs consider positional defense to be lacking compared to typed defense, and without that, the argument that the MA change is designed to address it is unconvincing.

It's certainly not the common perception among players from what I've seen. IME, Positional defense is typically seen as better because it offers more complete coverage, an advantage at least somewhat offset by the lower cost of soft-capping the most common types.

Even if you're right and the Storm Kick defense buff is somehow designed to give positional def a needed boost, it strikes me as a remarkably ineffective one, since it will only be of assistance to players of one secondary of one AT.

Your Ice tank will have Hoarfrost, Chilling Embrace, and a damage aura at the low levels to make up for that. And then at level 26 you get Energy Absorption to close the gap. It's not that big of a difference. Besides, some sets have better synergy with others, so while you can get close to the softcap earlier the Ice tanker can pick KM to stack -damage.

I'd be a hypocrite to argue otherwise as my main tank(elec) sits at 32.5% positionals, but I'll just say that S/L is stupidly common IME and the holes aren't as significant.



I'm not assuming anything about what the devs think, I'm simply stating what's logical to me about their decision. Instead of focusing on what the devs may or may not think, what do YOU think? Is it ok for Inv and Ice tankers to have incarnate softcapping tools, while SD does not have that option?


Strange, my experience is quite the opposite. People prefer to softcap themselves to S/L/E/N instead of going for 32.5% positionals.

If like you say there's no problem, then there's no need for a big AT-wide fix. This MA change gives a nice synergy option, but it doesn't tip the scales either way as MA is quite weak without it.

Yes, and at lower levels Hoarfrost is a modest heal on a very long recharge; Chilling Embrace can easily draw more aggro than a low level tanker can handle. We could argue the minutiae of which tanker primary is better and under what circumstances endlessly--it's certainly happened on this forum often enough--but that still provides no evidence that the devs are using this change to address a systemic weakness in positional defense.

Purely anecdotally, I've played almost all the tanker primaries at low levels, and none of them has had as easy a time as the SR/MA tank sitting in Beta. Having 28% melee and ranged defense before level 10 makes much, much more difference than Hoarfrost or any of the other things you mentioned. Have *you* tried it?

Heck, I think players with positional defense characters other than MA should be ticked off that one secondary gets this huge boost and they don't.

Considering that it's situational and that presumably the other defense sets have strengths to compensate--not necessarily the same kind of strength, mind you--I have no problem with it.

The problem with going down that road is then you have to start asking why resistance set Y doesn't have a tool defense set Z has. If there is indeed a systemic problem with positional defense sets that needs to be addressed, it should be addressed systemically, not by giving what I consider to be an unbalancing boost to one secondary.

I said that *soft-capping* positional defense is thought to be more effective than soft-capping S/L/E/NE/F/C. (And it clearly is, given that it covers all but a very small percentage of attacks.) Whether it's more effective to soft-cap S/L rather than go for a lesser amount of positional defense is not as clear. But given no defense to start with and a limited number of slots to use to get it, if a player is going to pick one defense category to go for, S/L is in most cases the best choice for melee characters.

But that's design choice that players make based on defense effectiveness in that particular situation, and does not in any way prove that positional defense is somehow inferior to typed defense.

Now *that* is a completely different argument, but if that's the tack you want to take, fine. If it's MA that needs a boost, not positional defense sets, then it really makes no sense to have it affect just positional defense.

And it's too large, I think it gives way too much of a advantage to a certain sub-group of players. As I suggested earlier in the thread, halve it to 5% and make it apply to S/L/E/NE/F/C as well as M/R/A. That way, playing MA has unique advantage that adds a nice bit of extra survivability to most tank primaries.

I wanted to come in and say this is a FANTASTIC idea and thanks for it! I've got a SLEN capped DA/WM right now I'm IOing, but maybe I'll try DA/MA and positional cap it as an alternative in the future. Hell, even right now she'd be over cap on M/R with MA, and about 7% under on AOE. Which is easily fixed, and it might be cheaper than what I'm doing now.

Oh, if only I could see the new sets in Mids now.

I don't remember what all I took or how I slotted my SR/DM on beta, but seem to remember sitting around 40-42% positionally with just DOs. And the heal in the attack chain smoothed the hits that did get through nicely.

Yes I have with SD, it's great at the lower levels. I've also taken an Ice tanker to 50, and Energy Absorption is stupidly powerful once you get it. Mind you AAO also gives crazy amounts of aggro, but it doesn't come close to giving the mitigation of Chilling Embrace.

If they've taken it to 50 and invested in IO's, then the buff from it isn't very meaningful. For example, would you rather have an incarnate softcap option(which purple insps can cover), or a power like Lightning Rod? The answer isn't clear cut, whereas before there was absolutely no reason to take MA apart from concept.



It depends on how major the problem is. In this case, small issues like incarnate softcapping and low level balance don't warrant a powerset revamp. And that's why giving a synergy option is appropriate.



The particular situation happens to be the most important endgame content. S/L/E/N is very dominant in endgame TF's and trials, but maybe the next trials will change that(haven't tried underground yet).



Lowering it to 5 makes it far less viable as an incarnate softcap choice, so I would say no. Remember that it still provides survivability to everyone, it's just that some powersets get more synergy. For example, the Ice tanker gets more protection from Toxic/Psi, while the Shield tanker gets early game strength and an incarnate softcap. How about if Focus Chi added Psionic Defense? That would help make it more viable to typed defense sets.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

So, I guess the devs decided that positional def isn't underperforming compared to typed def after all.

I still think it's too big, but I'll stop looking the gift horse in the mouth.

Technically MA didn't get buffed: the changes only affect Tankers, who didn't have MA in the first place.

Also worth noting: MA did not have any damage removed from it, because the effects that were removed (in SK and EC) were critical chance-related, which Tankers were never going to get regardless. They removed features that Tankers would not benefit from, and added new ones Tankers would benefit from, as part of proliferating MA to Tankers.

As to SR, except for the mez protection gap in PB SR tankers are going to be pretty good in the lower levels. My concern is mainly in the upper levels where burst damage could be problematic given SR has no +health, no heal, no resistances (except the scaling ones), and no -DMG. It will thus experience the highest damage spikes of any tanker.

Another potential problem will be getting past soft-cap. Tanker SR is going to be trivially easy to soft cap, so it will get to that level of performance early and easily. But to take the next step beyond gets harder; Aid Self is a logical addition to SR but tankers might have a harder time getting Aid Self off without interruption even with interrupt slotting: they are going to be getting hit potentially more often even with soft-capped defenses.

And then there are the places where SR just plain falls down. I don't know how SR tankers will fare tanking for teams in Nemesis missions where a lot of vengeance goes off. My SR scrapper just plain bails out if the vengeance buffs get too high: that option isn't really a legitimate one for a tanker. And the first time an SR tanker tries to tank a really crowded DE mission and an LT drops a quartz in a difficult to see spot the SR tanker will suddenly become basically a blaster with some extra health, because even soft-capped defenses mean nothing when the critters are being buffed to +100% or even +200% tohit.

Outside of the weak spots, SR will probably be very strong. But the weak spots are very weak and that concerns me some.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Pretty well. Defenses were solid, and SJ hit like a truck. Nil AoE capabilities at the levels I played it to (around 24-ish.) It is rough going until you hit 20, though - all you had was two combo-builder attacks and one finisher, plus Taunt and Build-up. That third attack really helps.