Does -1 offer a disproportionate advantage to defence sets?

Or is that just my imagination? Here's the setup that led me to ask this:

I played with a friend of mine the other day, so I upped the difficulty from my usual +0x2 to my "duo" difficulty of +0x3, but when my friend left, I forgot to lower it. Moreover, I outlevelled one mission before I even started it, which put my DB/SR Stalker in a mission that was effectively -1x3 to her... And she cleaned house in a way I don't think I could ever have managed at +0x2, not to mention earning what felt like considerably more experience. For the first time in a very long while, my Stalker actually felt more like a tank, taking on (accidentally... sort of) two, three and at one point four x3 spawns of level 38 Circle of Thorns and walking away smiling without too much problem.

What I infer made the biggest difference is that enemies lower level than me have lower base to-hit against me. Considering this is a Stalker using only Common Inventions and thus with defence buffs hovering around 30%, this did feel like it made a considerable difference, far more so than, say, for my Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster back in the day. For her it seemed like the increased enemy numbers far outweighed any benefit gained by having them be one level lower.

The key question here, though, is: Is this just my imagination, or is there any actual backing to this? Does it really make sense for SR characters looking for an easier ride to drop enemy levels more so than drop enemy numbers? And, most importantly, does that even work in Dark Astoria, which is where the only real problems occur? Mind you, I'm not just asking about Stalkers. I have SR Brutes, I have SR Scrappers and I have a heavily defence-reliant Bots/FF Mastermind, just to name a few. My question is about defence in general.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Whether the tohit advantage by level favors defense sets or not is moot given how hard it would be to discern that among the myriad other effects that a level gap has. In addition to the 10% enemy tohit penalty, you gain a 5% tohit advantage. You also gain 11% damage while they lose 10%. In addition to that their hit points will be reduced compared to what an NPC of your own level possesses. Now, look at all those numbers and say "I'm confident that one of them specifically is a more important factor for some sets than others." Could it be more important? I suppose it could, but the overall effect of the level gap is that anyone using any set will see huge gains.

The moral of the story here is that level shifts are amazing. Defense sets love 'em, as does everything else.

Fighting -1s is indeed much easier, for a number of reasons, among them that it effectively lets you softcap with less defense (Paragonwiki's page on Attack Mechanics says -1 enemies get a -10% to hit modifier). However, -1s also give significantly less XP/inf than even-con targets.

I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

-ToHit and Defense stack together to drive things down to that 5% chance to hit. And until you hit the 5% each point is more and more important. For (an extreme) example if you were at 40% against 0s and then went to -1s you'll go from being hit 10% of the time to 5% of the time. Things will miss you twice as often.

However -Damage and +Resistance don't stack together in the same way so a Resistance set is unlikely to see the same dramatic increase in survivability.

So the answer is most likely yes on a semi-high defense build as the -ToHit is really valuable to you.

The reason I'm asking is I'm trying to set up a difficult curve for myself, which would progress in such a way as to make me feel like my character is growing stronger and can take on more visually-impressive challenges. Increasing the number of enemies I fight is a very direct way of doing this, but, as pointed out, it has problems. Experience gain isn't one of them - more enemies means more experience, and between the 20 XP Boosters I get for free on every character, Patrol Experience and so forth, that's a small price to pay. What IS a problem is that "-1" enemies don't always exist. Malta, for instance, don't spawn below level 40, so running Malta missions AT level 40 means they'll always show up as even con. I assume the same is true in Dark Astoria, where enemies will never spawn below level 50, but I have not actually tried lowering my difficulty there.

Interestingly, multiple people have suggested that if I have problems in the new Dark Astoria, such as with enemies inherently higher base to-hit, I should just drop my difficulty down to -1x1, but does that even make a difference? I mean, the number of enemies obviously does, but are there -1 Dark Astoria enemies to a brand new level 50 just fresh out of Ramiel's arc?

I ask specifically about defence, because I feel defence sets suffer the hardest in Dark Astoria, especially if they're not soft-capped like the game seems to expect. If going -1 comes down to about the same level of mitigation as non-DA content, then this might be the perfect solution. Granted, I don't suppose it'll be possible without at least one level shift, but at least that's still an option, and it gives me an idea of what I want to do if ever I gain one of those.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Enemies in Dark Astoria cannot spawn below level 50, even missions.

...

Well, that's not entirely true. I just did a mission where there was a level 49 Void Stalker, but everything else was 50.

If you'd like a more tangible answer...

You said your SR scrapper is hovering around 30% defense. So the base "to hit" of standard mobs is 20% for you. That implies, long term, you're "blocking" about 60% of the incoming damage (that would have otherwise hit you). So you're "taking" about 40% of the damage you'd take without defenses.

The base "to hit" for something one level lower (versus your 30% defense) is 10%, and they've got what amounts to an 11% damage debuff (really just a bit more). So that -1 is allowing you to "block" about 83% of the incoming damage (that would have otherwise hit you). So now you're only taking 17% of the damage you'd take without defenses.

In other words, "long run" the rate at which you are taking damage drops to less than half what it was before.

Roughly speaking, you have to just a bit more then double the number of foes you are facing at a given time to "feel" like you were getting hurt as fast as +0.

Dark Astoria gets tricky. In effect, setting it to -1:

Keeps 51's from appearing, but won't make any "incarnate-level" mobs 49, since 50 is their minimum level.

*Will* make any mission-specific allies level 49 (which, depending on the circumstances, can actually make the mission *harder* than if you let 51s spawn in).

Since the DA incarnate mobs all have base To Hit of 64%, your 30% defense is blocking (again, long term) only about 47% of the incoming damage for +0 mobs. So you're taking about 53% of the damage you would if you had no defense.

At -1 (which you'll only see after you get that first level shift), their base To Hit is 54%, so your 30% defense (and the 11% damage "debuff") means you'll be "blocking" about 60% of the incoming damage. So now you're taking 40% of the damage you would be if you had no defense.

So instead of taking less than half the damage you used to, you'll only be taking 75% of the damage you used to ... a much smaller relative benefit.

EDIT: One bit of advice ... if you can survive at +1 difficulty *and* you need incarnate iXP, it's worth it. Level 51 foes give *twice* as much iXP as level 50. Obviously if the added difficulty is making it take more than twice as long to kill things, skip it.

I always assumed the point of gaining level shifts was so we could up the difficulty and still fight even cons, but with a higher reward progression to make up for the larger reward requirements for later Incarnate status in a reflection of a more traditional levelling structure, but I've been wrong before. You're right at the difference between con levels is considerable, and I've been sensing this myself on occasion, which is what prompted me to make this thread. I'm just not sure how reasonable it is to fight through these things until my first level shift, though I assuem T3 Alpha might not be that bad. I've yet to see, however. Dark Astoria came out about two weeks after I'd gotten fiendishly bored with playing Crash and making no progress. Maybe I'll go back to Xanta who sits at 46, who knows?

You are correct, however - I would not raise my difficulty with a single level shift. I light fighting -1 enemies, but more of them. Here's an actual question for you, though: Would you suggest raising enemy levels at two level shifts and above? The reason I ask is -2 and below enemies start turning my knockdown into knockback, and that's really grating. Furthermore, even with enhanced to-hit, won't ostensibly green enemies be a little TOO easy to beat? I've never been one to look for a challenge, but I still like to think there was a point to taking and slotting more than, like, five powers out of 24.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, I can tell you that even my extremely solo-capable scrapper can get his head handed to him on a platter fighting some of the DA groups at +2/x8 (he's 50+3, so that's -1 to him). Fortunately, the recent Resurgence buff means I get right back up and finish them (15 seconds of invulnerability goes a long way; if I only turn on the most important toggles and spend the rest of it attacking, I can get the spawn to a much more manageable size before it wears off). I seem to recall that you like to play at lower difficulties than that, so it should be easier, but my point is that even at -1 they aren't pushovers.

Understood. I recall the new DA enemies pressing my SS/Inv Brute very hard when I tried that content, but I suspect a large part of why that was was I kept getting huge +1 spawns of one or two bosses, multiple lieutenants and over a dozen minions, again and again. Against the Knives of Vengeance showing up in non-ridiculous spawns and against the Tsoo in about +0x2 spawns, it wasn't that bad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My only full run through of DA so far was on +3x5 on a 52 character but most of the groups didn't seem that bad to me. I can see how on x8 the Talons would be quite a lot scarier if you kept getting multiple Oracles per spawn. Ancients and Ravagers, though, eh? Not really that frightening. I kind of feel like it's Praetoria all over again: on the beta forum everyone was talking up how fiendish they were but now that they're loose it seems slightly exaggerated.

I always carry two sets of Awaken+Break Free, so that's two break-frees right there. The idea behind these is so I could get back up after a defeat, but considering that half my characters are bugged and can't use inspirations during the "get up" animation and that Return To battle generally recharges faster than I repeat deaths, I can't recall the last time I've actually used them for this. So, there are your break-frees

As for the rest, I guess we'll see. Playing at -2 to Dark Astoria seems like an ambitious desire, all told. Still, if I can pry myself away from Word for an hour or two and actually make some bloody progress on Kim instead of spending entire days writing this story about her (seriously, today I clocked myself going from 3 PM, it's 11 PM now and I'm not done yet...), I might actually be able to put this knowledge into practice.

Thank you for your advice. That's very useful to know. I'll plan my difficulty settings accordingly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.