Uncle Shags

My favorite is when I drop a full aoe rotation including nuke on a big group of baddies and wonder wtf they're still standing. Then I realize I just blew my load on a pile of pets...

It could be worse. Word on the street is, when you go into negative for defense you're not only auto hit, you also hit yourself for extra damage.

God I'm bad with math... So my napkin tells me to add the 50% to the 158%. 100% more would be double, so 200% would be triple. So 100 dmg becomes 316 dmg? I think?

I think that would be if I had 0% damage resistance to start?

How much damage is that?! Long story short, I pulled two or three groups of Longbow and almost crapped myself when my health dropped unexpectedly. I looked at my stats and my smashing resistance was at -158%! So I looked it up and of course longbow has all sorts of -res attacks. Which is fine. The game should be challenging. I was being reckless - I don't have much resistance debuff resistance so I was asking for it. I just hadn't encountered that much -res before. I guess the question I have is: How much damage is that?! Let's say an attack does 100 damage to me with my normal 50% smashing resistance. How much would it do if I had -158% smashing resistance? One MILLION?!

The funny this is, despite multiple posts, lots of bullet points, and charts, in two threads, I'm still not sure what OPs point is.

It would cool if kb caused collision damage and kd with targets in the flight path.

Some people get mad at a derailment, but I am very much not! My silly little earthquake mystery was resolved (mission accomplished) and I got useful info to help deal with it (bonus!). But now I get to host all this extra good stuff, including the glorious addition of an s at the end of math (super bonus!)! It's like hosting a small dinner party for coworkers that suddenly turns into a raging kegger. But the party is at the local pavilion, not my house, so I I don't have to clean up the mess. Who's up for a keg stand?!

Hold on... This, and the"3rd Best" thing is a joke, right?

You might consider giving people some parameters. What are you trying to do? What are your build goals? Are you a soloer, teamer, both? What type of content do you plan on? What ratio of support to damage are you looking for? Are you twitchy or slow? Do you want to spam keys or take it easy? What's your budget? People are going to tell you to do this or do that based on their version of playing. But that might not be your version.

I've got the debuff part covered, but have been wondering about to hit buffs. Do you have recommendations for addressing this? For instance, is 50% high enough to deal with most of the to hit? I'm sure it depends on the particular power(s) involved, but I'm trying to min/max/better understand. Sometimes I look at the combat log and am suspicious that their chance to hit is higher than it should be.

Okay, I'm going to try again, nicely. Can you please explain what you mean and give an explanation of the spreadsheet you shared? It probably is crystal clear to you, but it is not for people who are seeing it for the first time. Thanks!

Come on man.... Can you put in a little effort to be accessible? Ever heard of an abstract?

Another option to consider, that might feel a little strange on a tanky melee toon, is to use movement. Kind of kiting-lite. If you stand there and let them surround you and beat on you the debuffs stack up. But if you hop and shimmy, change positions, and stay on the edges of their cluster it's more manageable. If they have to move they're not hitting you. The individual debuffs don't last long. Buying a little time to let them wear off can help. I think a lot of us think of melee as "plant your feet, take the hits, and swing until they're all dead." It doesn't always have to be that way?

It's funny how team composition can either make all of that glorious math lead to a complete wipe, or in the case of the team I was on earlier, completely trivialize it. After thinking about this thread I was a bit cautious at first because it was only a team of 5 vs 54x8 CoT. I started to get the flashback shakes. When the Ruin Mages showed up I clenched my cheeks and waited for the dooom...but it never came. Even pulling multiple groups, everything in sight, and dealing with two Ruins at once was easy-peazy. I stood in the Earthquake and made the Ruin punch himself. Of course, there were 2 or 3 support and a blaster that did most of the work. 5-man steamroll. Quite nice. The more I play this game, the more I notice and appreciate the complexity...

Ok, so I snuck away and I was able to hit it without distraction. Mystery solved! Earthquake is it! It seems to be autohit, ignores defense debuff resistance, and lowers defense by 15%ish rather than the 10% it's listed as in CoD. That 5% difference threw me off earlier when it was suggested as the culprit. I think another part of the challenge was they don't cast it very frequently. It might be something they use only on first contact. Standing around, waiting for them to cast again didn't seem to work. Aha! Case closed! Solution: Get the heck out of the Earthquake zone if your survival depends on defense! Booya. I feel like Columbo.

Agreed! I've been trying to get this point across, but it's not fully working. I just spent 45 min getting wailed on by hundreds of CoT and my defense drops by a couple points for normal attacks. It is NOT cascade failure. Cascade failure is a real thing, I've seen it on my other tanks, but for SR it's a non issue. But what DID happen is twice I dropped instantly to 35% from 50% defense. And both times it was only with one particular baddie present. Without their presence I stood and took a beating for long periods of time with no significant defense issues. There were other issues (I think mostly lots of +to hit because they were getting through more attacks than they should) but my defense wasn't budging. But this ONE enemy blasted me twice with -15 defense. It lasted for a few seconds, maybe 5-10, then was gone. Unfortunately it was very brief, my wife was talking to me, and I was trying to survive by flailing on my keyboard, so I couldn't see what it was exactly, damnit.... But I know it was a..... Ruin Mage! I spent another half hour trying to get a Ruin Mage to get me with it again, but it didn't work. It seemed like it was only on an initial alpha strike? For instance, if I hit the elevator and went back after they calmed down it wouldn't happen again. So obviously I need to get back in game, stop dicking around, and actually find the exact power. But it's Friday dinner time and I've got 3 kids. To be continued.... Thanks for all the help This is kind of fun! A reeeeeal...MYSTERY....

Just to be clear, this isn't a slow trickle of debuffs. You can see the trickle taking effect in very small percentages. It typically a couple percentages lowered max. I think this is kind of it. This is a one shot deal. BAM! -15 defense whammy. It seems like maybe not autohit, because it happens so infrequently, but I think if it lands the debuff is unresisted. In the big picture, I suppose this is fine. I guess it adds an element of increased risk and difficulty to the game. I was just hoping to figure out which power(s) are responsible so I can do something about it - aka target that dirty SOB first. I'm trying to find it in CoD, but no luck yet.

IDK... I'm sick of testing. I can't figure it out. I could only get it to happen twice in an hour. The closest I got was thinking it was a Succubus hitting me with Placate, Come Hither, and Blackclaw, but that doesn't really make sense, unless one of those or a combination of those powers causes an unresistable defense debuff. But I can't get hit with it often enough to see. I'm over my head and giving up.

I got it to happen again. Solo 54x8 CoT. Only once for a few seconds. Couldn't see what it was. Too fast and too panicky to stay alive. I'll see if I can tget it again and take a screen shot to look at all the debuffs. Whatever it is it's short duration and long cooldown. I'm glad no one bet me on my confuse theory.

95. Which is a LOT! I think that's too much res to allow what happened. That's my theory, anyway. Something else is going on. I tried the build out a LOT on test server before I actually built him for real. Against, Cimerora, Arachnos, Carnival, and CoT - multiple groups at once. Defense debuffing was never an issue. Defense dropped by a couple percent at most. This time it was only 1 group and it dropped double digits. I guess I'll go in and try to replicate it. Maybe there was one particular boss that I hadn't seen before, but I tested against over a dozen CoT groups total, I bet. Maybe it was multiple Quicksands. Do those pulse and stack the -def? But hey, you know what wasn't in my testing? Other players getting Succubus confused.... I think my teammates tried to kill me! A friggin' defender dropped some -def crap on me. I'll put money on it.

Super Reflexes has loads of defense debuff resistance. But a second ago in a 54x8 CoT radio mission my SR tank's health dropped really low, really fast, so after trying not to panic and gobbling greens I looked at my defense and it was 35%. That's a drop of 15% from just my stats, and the team of 8 at the time was adding more defense on top of that. I checked, all my toggles were active, and it quickly jumped back to normal levels. What happened? Are there CoT def debuffs that ignore resistance? The only other thing I can think was that there was confusion and one of my teammates had a power that landed on me. But shouldn't that have been resisted? Thanks

Looks good! Things you might consider: Force feedback +rech. You have an extra slot in Hand Clap that you could swap in FF and take out the purple. FF in aoe abilities goes off much more reliably than in single target attacks. Along the same lines, it might not be doing much slotted in Haymaker. Also, to me it looks like doubling up on knockdown in energy torrent with the ragnarok kd is going to make that power do knockBACK. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that io adds .67 kb to whats already in that power natively (.67 kb) which get it above 1, which makes it knockback. Which you might not want. You could put FF in there instead, keep it a knockdown, and have two aoe +recharge powers. You could do that in Foot Stomp too, but you might not want to lose that much tox/psi resist. Your E/N defense is a little low - it takes 7 enemies in melee to cap it. Which would probably be fine most of the time, but for the various enemies that throw around a lot of that damage type you'd have to be aware. Energy is fairly common. Or you could make a build adjustment to grab a little more energy defense. Eradication gives 3.13% for 3 slots, for instance. You haven't included incarnate choices in mids. Those make a huge difference in rounding a toon out.

I hear you. I sometimes regret choosing it on my invuln. I didn't manage it well, and when it synced with the hasten crash it got me killed too often...

Yes, no need for grumpiness. Apologies. If you look at the difference between hasten 2 (2x55) vs 3 slotted the difference is minimal, and not worth the extra slot. +5 refers to the ability to boost certain enhance. You can buy boosters in the merit vendor and add 5 levels to your level 50s. You can have that show up in mids by hovering over the enh and hitting the num pad + 5 times before clicking to slot it. Jeezus this game is complicated... Accuracy is important, but there are all sort of set bonuses that add up once you hit 50, and sometimes that isn't an issue anymore. Rage and FA add a ton of accuracy, also. At the top of the window in mids you can select "Enemy Relative level" and set it to +3, which represents you with incarnate compared to 54s. 95% is the best you can get. Leadership is great. But you could also argue that you provide a ton of team utility by being sturdy, setting the pace, grabbing aggro, cc for your teammates, and decent damage. If you can fit it in, that's great, but I don't think it's common or expected of tanks. It's a very silly game we play. And some of us make it sillier by trying to push the limits of build performance and obsessing over minute details. Sometimes I'm guilty of this. It's fun. Try the Arachnos radio challenge. IO medley! I like that. Warshade referred to it as proc bombing. It's a way to increase damage past the normal boundaries by adding IOs that proc extra dmg. Compare your build's dmg on those powers to the one on my damage build. Certain powerset combos can take advantage of "proccing" and SS is one of them. Rage and lots of inherent recharge lets you get crazy with the slotting. It's kind of complicated, but there's lots of info out there if you're interested. You basically trade set bonuses for extra damage. I think Fold Space is amazing, especially for tanks. Battlefield control. I try to fit it into all my builds if I can. Others like it less, and that's okay. Damn this game is crazy, eh?