The meta game has changed

First off, re-read my post:

I never said "there's no such thing as 95% mitigation"

I suspected his point was similar to yours, but I wanted to make sure before explaining full mechanics.

Also, for all definitions of this game, 95% is simply wrong, though. Sure, you can claim that against a match that only contains minions and no enemies with to-hit or accuracy buffs. But you can’t ever say 95% is true against the average encounter in this game.

Note: Weakest average encounter in this game is:

A minion (50% chance) and a Lt (57.5% chance)
3 minions.

That’s what you will always face if you play solo, against standard enemies, with bosses turned off and +0x1.

That adds up to an average encounter ToHit of 51.87%.

This means, in average, with that approach at defining mitigation, softcapped defenses are giving you at best 94.81% "mitigation", and only at the lowest level of performance. (sorry but we cant round when talking this stuff)

It's extremely important to keep in mind in this game an "encounter" is not "an enemy" but a "spawn" that almost always contains multiple enemies with varying stats.

So NOW you can say I said there is no such a thing as 95% mitigation in this game.

Disclaimer: truth is in game you actually face an average of evens and +1 foes, meaning it's actually less than 94.81% while playing solo, but I made this post complicated enough. Bah since I edited, the actual average is 94.55%

It would had been false.

Not to argue with you cause I don't disagree but I wanted to point out that the resist change benefits my invuln/ss tanker quite a bit.... I can hit 90% s/l resist without running tough (i took it for a unique mule and of course I still run weave) but my exotic resist numbers all jumped by about 20%! so my invuln/ss tanker is 90% resistant to s/l without tough and 50-55% resistant to EVERYTHING ELSE (including toxic and psi) without stacking the tanker ATO proc which raises those exotic resists to 70-75% thats pretty damn impressive if you ask me.

So yes the sets without high base s/l resist benefit... but that doesn't mean sets with heavy s/l resist dont! If my invuln/ss tanker can do +4/x8 DA missions with only a +1 incarnate shift on test (which is exactly what I did once I had her build squared away) I can find no fault with how the system is benefiting her Especially when you consider how much exotic damage and debuffs are thrown around by the DA mobs.

Although its the standard definition, its also the intuitive definition of nearly everyone outside of the quantitative community. I think essentially everyone outside of that community would say that 90% resistance is 90% damage mitigation, basically all the time. And that perspective mandates the defensive mitigation definitions we use to be consistent with that expectation. There's an on-paper perspective that asserts 45% defense is 95% mitigation, sometimes, when no accuracy is involved, but there is no internally consistent perspective that states 45% defense is higher damage mitigation than 90% resistance, or that states 45% defensive mitigation (within the reasonable limit window) is variable but 90% resistance mitigation is constant.

The question is: are you (the general you) willing to state that 90% resistance is ambiguous and variable mitigation? If the answer is no, then 45% defense is 90% mitigation. From that the rest of the current mitigation methodology follows (and believe me, it was like pulling teeth to promote it back in the day; it seems self-evident to most quants today, but there's a reason that Scrapper Comparison Analysis linked below is as long as it is: at one time it wasn't self evident at all, and that is a product of six threads posted over five issues from I2 to I7).

Actually, for a while now I've been thinking about a damage mitigation comparison methodology that uses the concept of the statistical average spawn.

Its not an entirely new idea: its origin actually dates back to the Ice Tanker changes way back around I6ish. The devs and the players (Circeus among them) were batting a spreadsheet back and forth that analyzed Ice Tanker mitigation based on its mitigation verses a standard spawn size of bosses, Lts, and minions.

A much more advanced version of the same principle would be interesting to design a comparison around.

While I do always seem to enjoy your posts, the things you find to be an "interesting" use of your time make my brain want to crawl out of my head a directly into the nearest bottle of Rum.

Don't get me wrong. I am quite thankful there are people like you. The world would be a much different place without the math whizzes, but boy do these threads make my head hurt when I read them.

I have always prefered resistence sets so I will periodically check back in to see if a final determination has been reached on just how good or bad this will be for my favorite armors. Till then, I am off to check in with the Captain.

Oh lord I remember that... I was such a retarded idiot back then. I think I actually owe you an apology still...

PS: I miss Circeus.

I looked at all the changes and new options for my Tanker and nearly broke into tears.

Pride is definitely talking here, but on the live servers my build cannot be packed any tighter. With I24, to keep maximized performance current Sylph Knight will require something just short of an overhaul. I can barely begin to tweak my build with all the modified IO sets and bonuses, PPM changes, and power options now without a Mids update to help track of all the variables. For the moment, all I can do is test the new powers and start laying out the floor plans for an upgrade based solely on observation while attempting to purge as much Recharge Toxicity from my attack powers as possible to find more idealized configurations with my Procs.

For the most part, I'm elated. But with rumors flying around about Tanker changes following sometime in the near future, I'm about ready to have a heart attack. For good or ill, I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. On the positive end of things, I now have a reason to come back and play again. A God Am I certainly does qualify for the resulting potential of these collective possibilities.