Andreah

This whole thing reminds me of CDF with the romans in the ITF. There you are, happy and snug in your 45% S/L defense, surrounded by hot men in leather outfits trying to put their swords in you. Wiff! Wiff! Wiff! They miss you over and over. Suddenly, one gets lucky and hits you. Bam! Your defense is debuffed and now they don't all have a 5-9% chance of hitting you, but much higher. Most keep missing, but another one hits! And BAM! Down goes your defense even further. They now have a 20% or more chance to hit you. And looking over the angry faces in that crowd, you know they've all been counting their many previous misses and get their very next hit on you for free -- curtesy of Streakbreaker, Inc. They all hit you with their next swings and down you go. This is why I like to be a little above the 45% marker :D

You're also more likely to be hit by things that are opposed by a different kind of defense than you have at the soft-cap. Some can get all three of their positionals soft-capped, and this handles almost everything; but often, people will only soft-cap a few types (such as S/L), and then when something shows up that isn't that type, they get hit.

Yup. I suspect it's because the vast majority of people don't run that content, and the ones that do are happy with their system to deal with the gimmics.

Also, if you are in the 9.75% chance to hit zone from an AV, if the AV is still alive long enough to have missed you 100 times, the chance a streak of misses that long even happens is less than 1 in 37,000.

The point is, it virtually never is 20% or more. If your defense is high enough, Streakbreaker lets them miss you 100 times before it forces a hit. Look, just use some high-school scientific method. Instead of obsessing over your parsing of the wording in the (old, out of date, I might add) wiki; put your interpretation to the test. Go in game, find a +4 AV to fight solo and examine your combat log. You don't need a five page thread full of caps locks to see it doesn't work the way you think it does.

Also, please, for gods' sake, turn off your caps lock.

No, that's not how the streakbreaker works. The allowed misses in a row depends on the final chance to hit, after your defense is applied, not before. If you have high defense, the final chance to hit you will be low, and streakbreaker will allow many misses, easily up to 100, before it forces a hit.

I like to hit the softcap, when I can, or go a little above it, since it's more a guideline than a rule. If the cost isn't too high in other ways, I'l significantly overachieve it, since enemies have tricks to play too, and you'll get hit a lot more often than you expect if you believe "The Legend". If possible, getting complementary resistances or ability to heal/regen can be more valuable that getting a few more defense points to match the technical softcap. I find in regular content that being reasonably solid protection-wise is a big help to feeling like a "Superhero" -- which is key part of what I like about the game. Sure, defeat's not really painful, but "Superheroes" should be hard to defeat! And good soft-cap-ish defenses are an achievable way to be tough like that for most builds.

Upper-Left, with character flaws and errors.

Mechanically, I likely would not. I don't find that particularly interesting. However, in Roleplay, I have thought out several serious weaknesses & deep flaws in my main characters. Basic mechanics can't represent these well, but they add storytelling potential that I would not pass up.

This is the main reason (apart from the character designs, which are a matter of taste) I don't like these stories. It's too much funneling.

Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away! Twinshot took the lead, With her guns held high, But she shot the ceiling down, And debris filled the sky. Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away! Proton’s clone-tech whirred, From dimensions afar, But he warped himself to France, Now he’s lost in a bar. Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away! Dillo’s hoorb rang out, In the snowy fray, Slipped on icy ground, And rolled into the bay. Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away! Flambeaux flipped her hair, Flames on grand display, But she torched her own costume, And ran screaming away. Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away! Grym sniffed out the foe, With his hound-like flair, But he chased a squirrel instead, Left the team in despair. Jingle bells, Shining Stars, Bumbling all the way. Oh, what fun it is to see The villain slip away!

Serious reply, I'm not a huge fan of the Shining Stars, but the stories are undeniably well written.

Shining stars? Yes, I remember them. ... they should all be destroyed, or at least shot into the Sun.

LGTF https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ4gRh5Z0vopoz9bzUVPhuA6E6lRezCsYqfy In my main thread with other CoH-related songs: