Doomguide2005

Well said and welcome home!

I'm still confused 😜

Agreed, but when it gets right down to it I think most of us also fit those last couple of lines in Werners post. Were also here to just play whatever without concern of min/max and have fun with friends, new and old.

See my post above. Soft cap defense even incarnate (i.e. 59%) is meaningless against many of the groups above with their To Hit buffs in the triple digits ... they'll blow through it like it's not there and that's before considering things like Aim, BU, procs like Gaussians, Power Boost, PBU, or similar buffs. So the question in general becomes what are those defense values after the team buffs are up? Could 'your' team hit 'AV you'? If the answer is yes then can 'you' handle the incoming damage via non-defense mitigation. In my case well I can manage about 120% defense in buffs 24-7 (the SR scrapper being notably higher sitting around 170%). I'm going to overwhelm myself as AVs as far as defense is concerned as my To Hit Buffs are pushing 220% for most of the team. Depends on how many Fortitude each Empath is buffing and how often I'm able to PB or PBU those Fortitude. 220% assumes 3 Fortitudes on a teammate but no boosting via PB, PBU or Soul Drain etc.. My edge is going to be the massive Regeneration the group and especially the Empaths will have. It's reached (and beyond) the hard caps for defenders on those Emps at over 2000% (2000% being the limit). And team wide you're dealing with Regen at and exceeding IH levels (+~1500% to ~2250%). If debuffs apply before you consider the limits you need to strip ~250% to upwards of 1000% when the 3rd Aura is in effect just to get an actual debuff on the Empaths. And none of the above takes into account Incarnate Abilities (or inspires etc.), or for that matter the Empaths actually using HA and HO. This is one case where buffs have a huge edge over debuffs especially if against, as mentioned by the OP, these are endgame AV versions of us (resistance against buffs n/a, resistance vs debuffs ~85% + purple patch effects +/- individual effect resistances). Those 8 Doms (@oedipus_tex) would worry me. A bunch of perma Doms stacking tons of holds will shut those Empaths down (even through PToD) or leave them spamming Clear Mind at the expense of using their other buffs which means something risks breaking elsewhere with a missed buff. Everyone else I'm thinking is trying to doing a massive damage spike vs an Empath in hopes of overwhelming that regen ... then again 'foes' don't benefit from the one shot rule but players also don't have 30,000 hp getting effected by IH levels of regeneration. I'm not sure which is worse.

Or put another way. I've literally, between HC and Live, created dozens of SR builds/characters none have had Elude in their primary build since maybe i13 if not earlier. While I have fewer /Regen characters none have ever skipped MoG (either the old version or the new).

Just skimmed through their wiki entry as a refresher. Just about everyone of them at that level has a ranged attack that carries a defdebuff. I'm guessing at least in part your 20% ranged defense was regularly going the way of the Dodo if you weren't using lucks+. Likely this exasperated getting hammered in melee by things like Bonecrusher attacks by other Longbow. You move into melee, ranged guys pepper you and not only does your ranged defense go south but so does your melee, aoe, etc.. and the generally harder hitting melee attacks start landing. Monitor your combat attributes and carry purple inspires.

And here I thought it was Milliseconds of Glory. But yeah good mule, doesn't need slots except to hold said mules and combined with things like Shadow Meld can help get out of a tight spot, buy a few 'moments' for IH, DP, or Recon to recharge etc.

Yes 😁 I think it was @Wernertalking about running solo, no inspirations, etc. against Cimerorans with his Kat/DA specifically mention how he'd be watching his defense and when their debuffs started landing he'd start mixing Divine Avalanche into his attack chain to try and keep from rapidly spiraling into cascade failure. And don't overlook the fact it takes defense enhancements like LotG inc rech speed. Conceivably your double stack could by itself come very close to 45% vs melee and lethal with the defense aspect enhanced.

Yep, it's an on tap ability to help counter defdebuffs on sets with little to no DDR. I use/used it like crazy on my BS/Regen when running at low levels.

I'd probably further break that into 'active' regen (i.e. click IH or Dull Pain - which is an active way of boosting both health and passive regen and then passive regen) at least when talking about Regeneration and other sets with lots of regen like Willpower.

Oh no doubt -> 0.30 vs 0.25 before enhancement but it was 0.30 vs 0.00 until they ... /NERF'd Regen by making everyone's life easier sooner than, pant, pant waiting to burn a power choice on Stamina at 20th.

Even at low levels they backhandedly /Nerf'd Regen. They made Fitness an inherent, then rubbed salt in the wound, making them all available at level 2 while Quick Recovery comes in at 4th.

Quite a few of these if run by an AI anywhere near player quality capability would be basically untouchable as end game AV groups. At best a stalemate might happen. To have a chance against some of these groups you'd have to separate and defeat individual targets or forget about winning. On the other hand I see a few groups where stacked Tactics/To Hit buffs are going to shred the other sides defenses. If your defenses aren't enough to make Rularuu Eyeballs miss like crazy you may as well not have defenses. Hope your resistance and regen can handle the incoming dps that can get generated by 8 players in today's endgame.

Well it was more or less back in the day when the biggest nerf happened. So unless your back in the day was entirely when IH was a toggle you should be good to go.

And with the right kinks it'll go around the screen too. 😜

I can understand that ... when the "thing" is new(ish). I recall earning the ability to create a new class of cleric in the RPGA. Only way you could get the ability was successfully completing a mission. I got to use the new character for maybe a half dozen adventures and then they opened it up to everyone. And I felt a bit cheated. But most of the changes talked about in the thread above have been around for many game issues, years of game time. They aren't remotely new changes. For an awful lot of people the current set up is the status quo.

While I realize it's not quite the same you could use the wiki's (both the older Paragon Wiki and the newer HCwiki) to learn how things were unlocked and then just not use them until you "unlocked" them. Check out the thread about "Classic Heroes" for some folks running their characters as close as they can to what it would be be like to level up as if it was issue 0 in 2004.

At +5 they'll hit slightly more often (accuracy goes from 1.4 to 1.5, no change to base to hit) and hit harder yes and those debuffs will be shorter. But ruinous to the safety margin I don't think so. Those health bars barely move against +4's (+4 AVs), I doubt the extra damage is going to be anything like ruinous. It'll probably hurt the teams kill speed the most, not survival.

Oooo, thanks must be an update that I was not familiar with.

Got very little to do with difficulty but a lot to do with the potency of buffs and debuffs in this game. Something like @HyperstrikeFRads or the PuG team in i9 I mentioned above move into whatever mob and the mob just starts dying while virtually nothing happens to the characters. +5 incarnate mobs (of your choice) would barely slow the i26 versions of those teams down. Heck they'd barely threaten the i9 versions because of the crazy values of their cumulative buffs and debuffs.

This It's not particularly hard with any power to get a desired aspect enhanced to ED caps with 3 set IOs. Doubly true if you start boosting to +5. In the case of Arctic Fog, Steamy Mist or Shadowfall that's defense and damage resists. Or with Short Circuit damage and endmod along with endred, recharge etc..

Yep part of why the set of alts I listed above would get tough --> high defense (70+) high resistances stacked on top of at or near hard capped amounts of regeneration (2000+%) across the entire team.

Ouch, ouch, ouch owieeeee!

And in addition to the advice above remember you've got a thousand slots (on just that server alone). Instead of deletion just set a character aside for a bit and create a second (third, fourth, etc.) character. You'll continue to learn and some of that knowledge will shed light on how to make the previous characters better for you and pick them up again when desired. Perhaps setting them aside until an opportunity to team comes along and in the meantime play another more solo capable AT while waiting for that teaming opportunity. PS @Greycat If I remember right you need a 1 or 2 there as in /selectbuild 1 or /selectbuild 2. And if I dont remember right we'll both learn something when someone else illuminates the mystery.

You can tell, in case you or another viewer isn't aware, by the green dot 'lit up' at the end of the power bar in Mids.