Maelwys

Yes. Works better for henchmen with more ranged attacks though, obviously. You can also still use Defensive Goto to keep them in BG mode, although it's trickier to select a point in midair that isn't maximum distance away.

I think this is going to matter. Neither this sheet nor the "consecutive losing streak calculator" you posted in the other thread have their values properly bounded (they're not expecting any "clamping" to be occurring to their values!) and seem to have been originally intended for other (financial?) purposes. However the binomial distribution function used here is vastly more appropriate than the natural logarithmic function used in that other sheet (attack misses don't compound the same way financial interest does!) and the points where the streakbreaker is kicking in to force a hit in this one look right, so it's definitely showing something... just not the effect of a character having +45% Defense (unless the enemy attacking them has precisely zero positive AccMod bonuses - e.g. that 5% minimum is almost never reached unless you're fighting an even level or lower minion!) It might also be worth noting that the current title of the chart doesn't appear to actually describe what the data is showing. From what I can see the chart is not showing the chance for X consecutive misses over a set of 10 attacks; but rather the chance for X misses to occur over a set of 10 attacks regardless of whether or not those misses are consecutive (so 0X0X0X0X0X is being treated the same as XXXXX00000). This distinction will make at least some real-world difference in CoH, because your character getting hit with multiple attacks in a short space of time - "Spike Damage" - is harder to counter via Health Regeneration and Clickyheals etc. That's why Arcanaville in their old defensive powerset comparisons always used to mention things like Maximum HP and the "Immortality Line" rather than purely focusing on Defense in isolation.

Although this one might be a stretch, as if you're prepared to put up with using a Blast set (rather than a Wallop one) then the Sentinel implementation of /Regen will likely win out... 😜

I think one of them is still in rehab.

Hi! I'm Troy Mc @Maelwys. You may not remember me as the creator of the first truly-self-sustaining Spines/DA Scrapper; as a member of the first successful Master of Statesman's Taskforce run on a UK Server (shout out to NineClaws!); or as the winner of Worst CoH Santa Costume 2006. Happier now? My builds are posted all over the place. Pick any subforum + chances are that I've posted a build somewhere in the first page of threads. (Especially the farming threads recently for some reason. Srsly if I have to explain the difference between an "Active" farming build and an "AFK" farming in single syllable words one more time... rassin' frassin'...) You want one of my Softcapped Defense builds? Sure. here: Blaster - Archery - Tactical Arrow.mbd Want another? here: Arachnos Bane Spider.mbd Want more? Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd Controller - Illusion - Time (PwrBoost).mbd Scrapper - Kat_Regen IOed.mbd Sentinel - Beam Rifle - Ninjitsu (Weave).mbd Tanker (Bio Armor - Staff) (CT + Taunt + SS).mbd Just say "when". Have a few "softcapped pet" ones too whilst you're at it: Arachnos Crab Spider (Soul).mbd Mastermind - Robotics - Kinetics (Bonfire).mbd I got hundreds of these things. I've highlighted the relevant bit. Again you're claiming that you can build for Defense without sacrifice. None of us have seen any evidence of this; and our personal experience is to the contrary. The burden of proof to show otherwise and back up your outlandish claims lies on you.

This is exactly the sort of post that makes complete sense to me - someone has made a conscious decision to prioritize Defense in their build over maximum Damage. Whilst the Blaster in question probably still has a decent amount of damage; they won't be cranking it up to 11.. Because everything has a trade-off. A different take on it would be my Fire Blaster; who completely ignores both defense and debt and very much enjoys using Inferno on one mob and Rise of the Phoenix on the next one. AoE damage prioritised; mitigation (other than the sustain from their Secondary and the occasional usage of Clarion Destiny) pretty much ignored. My Archery/TA Blaster also has softcapped Ranged Defense + their Damage output is very good; just not as high as it would have been if I'd completely focused on it.

Sure. And whilst it's decent at the job it's intended for; after viewing the actual build we can confirm its current raw stats and uncover some minor room for improvement. Less boasting, more build file sharing. Please. Note that sharing a toon's build is not the same as watching you race it through a mission. The latter might demonstrate how a toon potentially performs in practice; but it doesn't reveal what raw stats and slotting it has or show whether there is no longer any additional room for improvement via enhancement tweaks (things like player skill, map memorization and specific enemy matchups are variables which differ from person to person and encounter to encounter. Not so with build stats. A lot of us actually enjoy creating/improving/endlessly poking at builds more than we enjoy actually playing the game!)

OK... I finally got the Build Chunk in the Sheet to import and after plugging in your stated Incarnate picks I get this: Mezmera - Dominator (Illusion Control - Energy Assault).mbd That's a fair Pylon basher, although even a quick glance over it shows that many of the powers are overslotted for accuracy aspect (none of them need two Acc/Dam HOs to cap your Hit chance vs +3 mobs; let alone vs an even-level Pylon!) and so a good few of the IOs (and even an entire slot in Bonesmasher!) could be shuffled around to pull a few more percentage points of Damage. The Snipe and the Tarantula pet and Spectral Terror are also missing some Damage Proc opportunities. Also; no Fiery Orb!! (yes it's crap for most gameplay; but the DoT ticks sometimes help a smidge on a Pylon run if you can fit it into an attack you're using anyway...) Anyways; I didn't intend to segue into a critique of what indeed looks like a perfectly acceptable Pylon whomping build. My issue is not with your Pylon hunting build; but with these comments: Because they are implying that you have a permadom that has maximum damage output and maximum control AND softcapped (or at least close to it) defenses. And I don't believe it's possible to hit all those bullseyes simultaneously. Efficiently balancing a Dom is a tricky endeavor. Getting "good enough" in all categories? Sure. Getting "rather impressive" in all categories; sure; I'll buy that too - your Pylon build shows you understand how to push at least one aspect towards maximum. But having ALL THE CAKE? Not needing to make any performance compromises at all? Nah. So I suspect that best case you'll be giving up a good bit of potential damage output. This isn't an attempt to berate you; so apologies if I'm coming across that way. I'm honestly just interested in build theory + finding out how far you've managed to push the toon in question's defence + how much you've managed to minimize the negative tradeoffs given what you're claiming here.

Your build isn't listed in that topic either, unfortunately. Only your Pylon times. And whilst 42s is certainly a reasonable Pylon time... the sheet says there are 7 other Illusion Dominator builds ahead of you within the same Division. You can appreciate that anyone claiming that their undocumented build is fully optimised could be met with a certain amount of scepticism; especially if there is evidence that other people with the same AT and similar (although admittedly not completely identical) powerset combinations appear to be completing the same task more efficiently. I realise not everyone runs with Mids (although that is often an indicator of a rather unoptimised build!) however it's not difficult to type "/build_save_file C:\Temp\ThisIsMyBuild.txt" into the CoX chat window; and failing that there's always opening up the enhancement screen and hitting the Printscreen button on your keyboard a few times.

My most active MM is definitely my Bots/Kin/Flame. Kinetics is active by default; doubly so if you're trying to use it to keep 6 metal maniacs fully buffed with SB+ID+Fulcrum+Siphons and prevent them from dying. Then there's the personal attacks to inflict -Regen, the Bonfire patches and Fireball; and trying to juggle the Protector Bot's Bubble recasts with Radial Clarion every few minutes. And yes, constant henchmen repositioning too; even if I'm using Group Fly. Hellava fun when it all comes together though. /Marine is fairly active and definitely the top-performing set these days; but almost any MM secondary (other than possibly /FF and /Sonic) is probably quite "active" if you're using all of its tools. I know I play my /Dark and /Traps and /Time etc. etc. etc. MMs that way...

These are the kind of concessions we're talking about. You're using extra enhancements slots in order to gain defense. You're using extra power selections to gain defense. It's very likely that those same power selections and enhancements slots could have been used elsewhere in your build to increase other stats/things like Global Accuracy, Damage, Health, etc. or repurposed to free up slots in your attacks for damage procs. The "cost" to you might be very minor, and it might not even matter on whatever content you prefer doing; but it's still a tradeoff that you've decided to make. The much beleaguered point here is that the best anyone can aim for when making a character in CoH is to be as efficient as possible with their build's tradeoffs - so giving up minor concessions for major gains is where good buildcrafting comes in. Whilst a mediocrely-built toon might be hitting 6/10 in a few aspects; an extremely well built toon could be hitting 9/10 in multiple aspects. However no toon will be hitting 10/10 in everything across the board all the time; the game simply doesn't allow for that - you simply don't get enough power selections or enhancement slots to pick up everything you could possibly ever want. Dominators are also rather notoriously tight when it comes to ticking multiple other boxes with their builds... because they always (unless you're intentionally bucking the trend!) need to push hard for Global Recharge and Damage and Control Duration; which leaves far less wiggle room than usual whenever it comes to things like Recovery; Healing Procs and Passive/Active Mitigation. And it's not just down to a lack of enhancement slots - merely opting for five LoTG mule pool powers means you'll likely not go deep enough for useful stuff like Burnout or Fold Space or Rune of Protection. Defense also comes in multiple flavours; so if a Dom is wading into melee range with Melee/PBAoE Assault Powers rather than hanging back using Procbombed Ranged Control powers then them leaning into Ranged Defense is going to be less useful. And running costly +Def toggles like Maneuvers and Weave whilst you're wailing on things with Procbombed (e.g. not EndRed slotted) attacks will cause Endurance issues unless you're constantly leaning into Ageless, even with Domination regularly topping you up. All that said - I doubt that watching you actually play a mission will be beneficial to anyone. But posting a Mids file or an in-game Screenshot or /build_save of your Dominator might help your case here; as it'll allow us to actually be able to see what your current stats and slotting are. And it might even help your Dom out too - because even if a build is "perfectly slotted" (which is extremely unlikely; as anyone who has ever delved deeply into PPM mechanics let alone mapped out enemy stats to determine exactly how much additional damage enhancement it takes to KO a level 54 minion without overkill knows only too well) there are often minor things like Enhancement level or Boost strength changes that can maximise Damage Proc rates; trading out particular damage proc flavours based on enemy resistance; etc. etc. let alone Lore Pet Selection - if I had a penny for everyone who just took Banished Pantheon and Degenerative...

'til 'er daddy takes the keyboard away? 🏖️ 👦 👦 Or just; y'know, start using the brackets in the correct place and work from there. It's HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ) Not HitChance = Clamp( AccMods ) × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) so this bit: Is throwing you off in every calculation you've made so far; including the derivative work in the spreadsheet. Use an unclamped AccMod; multiply it by (enemy BaseHitChance - player's defense%) and THEN clamp the result. And after that recheck your "45%" and "50%" defense figures again and by all means plug the correct figures into the spreadsheet. But at the moment it's got a bad case of GIGO.

No worries. I think we're on the same page regarding the Streakbreaker's irrelevancy anyway. Whenever I said it was more a point of clarification that this: shouldn't have mattered; because the aforementioned two examples were only looking at 7-8 attacks in a row. And then we started talking about attack sample sizes in the millions. Because of course that was where this conversation needed to go next. (and I'm still uncertain if it happened in reaction to the Streakbreaker comments or if it was just a continuation of one of the earlier tangents. This is why we can't have nice things.)

Marine is tight, certainly. You can drop either Shoal Rush (if you've other places for an Achilles Heel) or Soothing Wave; but that's about it. Water Blast though? Whirlpool is your AoE Scourgemonster; and you'll likely want Geyser and Tidal Forces for obvious reasons... but the ST attacks have wiggle room. The Instantaneous Water Jet lost its lockout timer a few pages ago (i27pg6?) so I think these days all you really "need" is Water Jet, Hydro Blast and Dehydrate plus a few filler attacks (like procbombed Shoal Rush or an Epic Blast) e.g. Water Jet [Regular] > Filler > Dehydrate >Hydro Blast > Water Jet [Instant] Depending on your filler blast timings + global recharge you could use Stream Spray in place of Dehydrate or stick another Hydro Blast in front of the Filler attack.

Guessing "a character that has all their enhancement slots filled with Attuned Set IO Enhancements" Many players exemplar down to play lower-level content again after they reach level 50. "Attuned" IO Enhancements keep their set bonuses whenever your level drops lower than -3 to the level of each enhancement... so if your build relies more on Set Bonuses than it does on raw % enhancement aspect and you like running low-level Taskforces or Story Arcs; then it can sometimes make more sense to fill your build up with Attuned IOs rather than Boosted IOs. For other people (like myself) merely attuning the important Global IOs is enough by itself, and the rest get Boosted. (Note that Procs and Purples and PVP IOs gain no benefit from attunement - so they can always be safely left as-is or boosted instead!)

Nah, not really. I just needed a brief mental degauss after poking at functions in Excel for the last 30mins 🤮 (why you still have to jerry rig functions like Median() just to perform a simple Clamp() operation is beyond me...)

@shortguy on indom - Hopefully after you correct the error in your AccMods clamping methodology (as mentioned in the other thread; AccMods only gets clamped *AFTER* you multiply it by the clamped product of that bracketed "BaseHitChance+ToHitMods-DefMods" bit on the right; not before!) then you should see that these lines: are a big glaring issue as they're indicative of a fundamental error in the current formula you're using; which in turn is impacting the logic within the spreadsheet you uploaded. The values for 45% Defense and 50% Defense should be identical here; providing that no other enemy ToHit buffs or player Defense debuffs are in play. HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ) CLAMP() imposes a minimum boundary of 0.05 and a maximum boundary of 0.95 on anything within its brackets. So whenever the right hand side of the formula effectively reduces to CLAMP(0.5 - YourDefenceBuff) going beyond 0.45 (45%) defense will have zero effect. If it was me, I'd probably use the "Possible Losing Streak" column to give an idea of how many total attacks on average within a given sample size are likely to miss... so for example cell C7 might be something like ROUNDUP(MEDIAN(0.05,(MEDIAN(0.05,(0.5-B6),0.95)*ACCMODS),0.95)*C$3,0) instead of ROUND(LN(C$3)/LN(1-B7)*-1,0) CoX Forumites often (rightfully) argue about whether chasing 45% defense is worth it (because most PVE content doesn't require much mitigation in the first place and "killing stuff faster" is more fun; because hitting 45%+ defense solo on most toons inevitably requires some form of build compromise; and because without large swathes of Defense Debuff Resistance any defense you have can quickly be stripped off you just by a few unlucky hits from even-level mooks armed with swords or rifles, let alone an autohit Earthquake patch; etc. etc.) however if you can attain and keep 45% defense between yourself and the enemy after Defense Debuffs and ToHit Buffs have been factored in then you'll get the maximum level of mitigation from it and adding more defense on top simply won't matter.

Here; I even found the relevant bit in the code for you so that you don't think I'm merely taking a Developer's word and the HC Wiki's word for it: See that fAccuracyfactor compiled on the second line? That's your AccMods (both the power's and the attacking critter's) On the very next line it gets multiplied by fToHit (so that the fToHit variable now contains the attack's raw ToHit value after AccMods; just like in the formula) The clamping operations to impose minimum/maximum boundaries of 0.05/0.95 on that raw ToHit value take place afterwards.

The formula to calculate the binomial distribution of a specific event is: where n is the number of trials, p is the probability of success on a single trial, and X is the number of successes. Substituting in the stated values for this test case [ n=100, p=0.05, and X=0 ] and we get: which reduces to: P(0)=0.005920529220334 = 0.592063% (a tiny smidge more than 0.56%; but close enough for government work) However the problem is that the Streakbreaker doesn't care that all 100 misses in a row were at that floored 5% hit chance. It cares that AT LEAST ONE of those attacks was at that floored 5% hit chance. Read Weirdbeard's entire statement; noting the last paragraph: "Because we do the lookup based on your worst to-hit in the series, the streak breaker is a bit less aggressive about breaking streaks than it might initially appear from the table. If you miss an ill-advised attack with a final to-hit of 0.15, you would in fact be allowed to continue the miss series for another 99 attacks, even if all the followup attacks are of capped to-hit, should you be unlucky enough." But I certainly wholeheartedly agree with the implication that the Streakbreaker hardly ever matters for enemy attacks against you if you have a high enough defense buff. ... All that said... I do however find it a bit dubious that in both this thread and the "new thread" @Shortguy is apparently repeatedly assuming that Enemy Hit Chance against you is always going to be reduced to 5%; because it's not. If whatever attacking you is of a rank higher than minion, a level higher than +0 or is using an attack that possesses an inherent accuracy higher than 1.0 then their AccMods rises above 1.0... which will cause that 5% Hit Chance figure to become substantially higher. Realistically if the HitChance of an attack before applying Accmods was 5% then after applying Accmods it'll still not get above about ~10%; but those few percentage points still matter quite a lot whenever you're modelling a row of 100 such attacks; let alone 2,000,000.

Exactly. The reason for this is that everything in computer code gets represented by Binary digits; and the most common allocation of storage for low numbers is 8 such digits... which means that (as long as that number is never going to be negative!) its upper limit is 255. It's a little more intuitive whenever you're dealing with Hex codes because they always use two Hexadecimal digits to represent those eight Binary digits... and FF in Hex is equal to 255 in base 10. Anyways, hopefully the new Hex code will work for you! 👍

Why are you clamping the AccMods before they get multiplied by the result of the ToHit-DefMods? You should be clamping (BaseHitChance +ToHitMods - DefMods) to get the first initial unadjusted HitChance; then multiplying that by AccMods before finally clamping the result again. AccMods doesn't get clamped at all before that final step. HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ) The purpose of the two Clamping steps in the formula is to prevent the HitChances from going below 0.5% or above 0.95%. It's never to apply an arbitrary limit to whatever Accuracy Modifiers are currently affecting an Attack... because doing so would defeat the whole purpose of a creature being able to stack accuracy bonuses (it'd also become utterly pointless to have any attacks with an inherent accuracy above 1.0, because you'd just be clamping that accuracy at 0.95 all the time!!)

Sure! They match the curtains.