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I use them on all my resistance based toons to help me reach the S/L softcap. I was slotting Aegis, but made this switch when I decided to soft cap my WP tank, and the difference in survivability has been amazing. Good IO set if softcapping S/L is your goal.
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Originally Posted by shaggy5
I was taking a close look at the bonuses you get with Reactive Armor--can someone tell me how feasible it is to use it for lvl 50s? Do people use this for the bonuses at those high levels?
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Do you know, how much resistance do you lose by not being able to have lvl 50 enhancements?
Global Name: Denver Nugget
Playing since i3 on 8 servers
Very, very little. The difference between level 40 and level 50 IOs is small in the first place, and level 40 Reactive Armors can get you to the ED cap for res already.
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About 1%. Even level 40 stuff 4-slotted takes you over ED cap.|
Originally Posted by shaggy5
Do you know, how much resistance do you lose by not being able to have lvl 50 enhancements?
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Mids gives the following values:
Reactive Armor (40)
Resist, Resist/End, Resist/Rech, Resist/End/Rech
- EndRed/Recharge: 43.43% enhancement
- Resistance: 56.57% enhancement (63.80% before ED)
Resist, Resist/End, Resist/Rech, Resist/End/Rech
- EndRed/Rech: 45.80% enhancement
- Resistance: 57.35% enhancement (68.98% before ED)
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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IMO, your mail goal should be to reach ED cut-off of 56% enhancement; the value of enhancing beyond that is severely reduced by ED.|
Originally Posted by shaggy5
Do you know, how much resistance do you lose by not being able to have lvl 50 enhancements?
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You can reach 56% enhancement with four RA IOs as low as level 35, and the benefit of having 1.25% more defense to S/L/E/NE in most cases is much greater than that of a tiny amount of additional resistance you'd get from higher level IOs.
And keep in mind that slotting level 35s has the added benefit that you'll keep the defense bonuses when exemped down as low as level 32.
EDIT: Do people use them? Heck yes. Check any resistance-based melee build posted on the forums and you're very likely to see several RA sets if the player is building for defense.
My Characters
Knight Court--A CoH Story Complete 2/3/2012
Whenever you are looking at this you need to ensure you look at the difference in real values and not the percentage difference. In most cases the real difference between using level 25-35 and level 50 enhancements is fairly small.
For example
Scrapper - Head Splitter with 6 Multi-Strike (no other globals affecting it)
Level 50's
End Cost - 7.05
Recharge - 9.48
Damage - 370.9
Level 35's
End Cost - 7.46
Recharge - 9.91
Damage - 366.3
Level 25's
End Cost - 7.87
Recharge - 10.29
Damage - 354.3
Scrapper - Temp Invulnerability with 6 Titanium Coating (no other globals affecting it)
Level 50's
End Cost - .13
Resistance - 35.44
Level 35's
End Cost - .13
Resistance - 35.12
Level 25's
End Cost - .14
Resistance - 33.97
This is due to the effects of ED wasting most of the level 50 enhancement values and also the fact that the underlying value is small therefore even fairly large changes to percentage don't make a big impact on the real numbers.
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I use sub-50 IOs for most of my characters on most of my powers, including Reactive Armor, and don't have any issues.|
Originally Posted by shaggy5
I was taking a close look at the bonuses you get with Reactive Armor--can someone tell me how feasible it is to use it for lvl 50s? Do people use this for the bonuses at those high levels?
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Because of ED, the difference in primary bonus (usually damage resistance and defense for amors or damage for attacks) between a set of level 35 and 50 IOs is about half a percent for four-slotted damage resistance and defense sets like Titanium Coating, and 2.5% for five-slotted damage sets like Crushing Impact. Using lower level IOs is useful if you exemp a lot, or prefer to outfit your characters as you level up instead of trying to buy 70 IOs all at once when you hit 50. Because IO sets make character play snappier, I prefer to go through the process just once, slotting IOs that I keep forever starting at about level 27. It's much cheaper in the long run because you don't waste inf every 5 levels on SOs that you just throw away.
There is a price to pay for this, however. The difference in the secondary bonuses (endurance, accuracy, recharge) is much higher because those bonuses aren't affected by ED. Which means characters using level 35 IOs for attacks will have 6-10% lower bonuses for accuracy, endurance reduction and recharge. Since accuracy set bonuses are so common, the acc is usually augmented so much that the difference there is usually not noticeable.
I'm not a good builder. I am currently getting a ton of help from very good posters in the Brutes forums on how to make an uber build for tons of cash to be my main for the next year. Reactive Armor shows up on all the top contenders, sometimes on 4 powers!
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That helps, thanks!
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Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
I'm not a good builder. I am currently getting a ton of help from very good posters in the Brutes forums on how to make an uber build for tons of cash to be my main for the next year. Reactive Armor shows up on all the top contenders, sometimes on 4 powers!
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Global Name: Denver Nugget
Playing since i3 on 8 servers
I use reactive armor on almost all my builds, and often use several sets. Shield, SR, and Energy Aura being the biggest exceptions, but sometimes even then.
PS: And the value lost, as others have said, between 40 and 50 is negligible. It's so small that I often slot the lvl 30-33 level range on this set just to allow for exempting down to lvl 30.
PPS: I know lvl 33 is all I need to go down to for exempting to level 30, but I make a ton of builds, and often not worried enough to wait for a lvl 33 if a lvl 32-30 is sitting available for sale.
I was taking a close look at the bonuses you get with Reactive Armor--can someone tell me how feasible it is to use it for lvl 50s? Do people use this for the bonuses at those high levels?
Global Name: Denver Nugget
Playing since i3 on 8 servers