Werner

I like my set bonuses too much to go full proc monster, but usually one or two procs in AoEs, yes.

All I play these days is my Dark Armor/Martial Arts. But I'm working on a build for a Shield Defense/Martial Arts, and testing on beta, and it's looking even better to me. Also fiddling with Invulnerability/Martial Arts, which looks even more survivable, but with less damage output. I... might have a thing for Martial Arts on Tankers.

I agree with your definition, but I suspect most people will add additional restrictions, such as not two-boxing. I usually place a number of restrictions on myself when soloing challenges, but if I choose to post about it, then I’ll state it as solo plus all those restrictions. Most of my list are just how I usually play, though. Heh. I remember one evening adding “no toggles” to my restrictions. Completely silly, and I wasn’t fighting +4x8 Arachnos or anything close, but it was still amusing.

Each additional proc in a toggle has half the chance to fire as the previous. The cause does appear to be a lock out, and that the ten-second tick of your toggles gets reset and resynchronized when you zone, making all toggles fire at the same time. The first one is great. A second isn’t bad. A third is meh. A fourth is getting silly.

Well, huh! I may have to reconsider my builds and my play. I just assumed the game counted them as temporary powers, so I treated them that way. But 8 hour refreshable availability is enough for me to personally consider them part of a build rather than temporary if the game thinks the same. I’ll spend hundreds of millions +5ing all my IOs for mostly minor boosts. Spending hundreds of millions over time on the P2W buffs doesn’t feel that much different to me. Hmmm.

I think it’s OK to include them as advice if your advice is something like “I recommend using the P2W survival buff with this build, as I tuned the build’s performance around it.” If that’s how you play, and how you recommend others play, that seems like reasonable advice. I think you’re more saying “when comparing builds, we should ignore that”, but I wouldn’t ignore it. I’d look at the build as it’s played, and just keep in mind that I might play differently. I think of it like the Pylon times - as long as we know what’s being used, it’s all fair game. When I heard 90% resists across the board on invuln, I wondered what I’d done wrong with my build, but it came down more to what was and wasn’t being included. I’m fine with that. I fear that if we try to go down the path of saying what other people should and shouldn’t count as part of their build, we’ll also end up hurting build innovation to the extent that anyone feels constrained by our standards. I’m not sure you get bragging rights if you say “my build is awesome, you just need to chug a small purple every minute”, but if you want to build around the availability of small purples, like stopping at 32.5% defense to focus on other priorities, that doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. Chances are that most of the time you won’t need them more often than they drop naturally. Sorry, I feel like I’m blabbering on without really even understanding what point I’m trying to make.

Yes

Yeah, I think that makes you basically immune to resistance debuffs the same way an overcapped SR is basically immune to defense debuffs.

Agreed in general, but I think we're well past any semblance of sanity in CoH, and some people still ask for buffs. Admittedly maybe some sets call for it. I don't know. I just shrug and play. I'd rather the devs take a hands off approach than attempt to bring sanity at this point because I don't trust that changes will be for the better, no matter how well-intentioned. But I don't think I'm in the majority on that, and that's fine. It's not my game, it's our game.

I’m only specifically remembering IDF seers, Anti-Matter, and AE 801.x, but I know there are others. Monitor resistance and you’ll see it now and then. Definitely not as widespread as defense debuffs, though.

Maybe for leveling, but I don’t remember it being bad. Plenty of ways to deal with it with incarnate powers and IOs. He has sustainable endurance in fights, 86.5% endurance drain and recovery debuff resistance, and Conserve Power in reserve for emergencies. I think I’ve used it two or three times total, and it probably didn’t count as an emergency, just being overcautious. I consider endurance to be a strength of Dark Armor in the end game, not a weakness. He’s also only died twice ever. Once on a +4x8 enemies buffed no inspirations solo MoITF attempt when I tried to charge through the cysts, once on a no-inspiration AE 801.2. It’s a pretty new character, level 90 something, and I’m sure he’ll die again, but it takes effort to get killed. Almost died charging through 801.1 no inspirations, but in a fortunate coincidence of timing was saved by a level up. It’s my only Tanker on live, so I don’t have much to compare him to other than by numbers and theorycraft. I think Invuln/MA would be tougher at the cost of some damage output, but haven’t tested. On beta I’ve been testing the Shield/MA I mentioned, and I’ve killed him twice already, but I’m still experimenting, so I’ve not concluded that he’s weaker. His hit points definitely move more slowly. My Dark has higher resists, but is subject to defense debuffs. When he’s suffering from 100% defense debuffs, his hit points sometimes move fast, and it’s a matter of hoping Dark Regeneration recharges in time. But I guess they’re moving fast on enemies buffed (+125% damage taken) and 801.x (evil) and level 54 Anti-Matter (targets my weaknesses). Most things I never touch Dark Regen, Barrier, Conserve Power, or inspirations. I really, really like playing him. I would prefer something “immune” to defense debuffs, which is why I’m fiddling with high-defense Invuln and Shield, but then I’m comparatively weak to endurance drains and recovery debuffs. One of the Shield’s testing deaths was draining out and detoggling while Conserve Power was running, though I was admittedly a little late hitting it. With more experience I’d have recognized the danger and hit it earlier, and probably killed them before they killed me. Or I could have run, or used inspirations, but I consider either of those almost as bad as dying. 😉

I assume "Empyrean Merits". They're one way to level up your incarnate powers. 600 is more than enough to fully level up all your incarnate powers to tier 4, at least once the slots are unlocked. Not that you would do it that way, but you could.

Do you know about and have you installed Mids? While it’s possible to decipher the gobbledygook, it’s much easier to understand the build by looking at it in Mids.

I have so far found myself in a similar boat on my Dark Armor, and on my Mids builds for Invuln and Shield. I want Musculture on Tankers. I’d love the extra damage. I always start the build with it in there. But by the time I’m done it’s always been sacrificed for a total package that I like even more.

I'm playing my Dark/MA almost exclusively these days. But I probably spend as much time in Mids trying to come up with an Invuln/MA or Shield/MA build to best it in terms of overall package and how I like to play. Built a Shield/MA on beta over the weekend, but have done very little testing of it yet. Anyway, very similar numbers to what you showed, other than having significantly higher defense from Storm Kick. 3115 hit points is nice too, but of course Invuln beats even that.

Wait, what? I must see this! Nooooooo, my Shield/Mace on beta doesn't have Taunt. 😢

Nice. Maybe swap the Tough and Obsidian Shield slotting? Capped smashing/lethal with no proc, more cushion for resistance debuffs, plus slightly lower endurance drain. ...I suppose I should first make sure I understand resistance debuffing. Let's say we have 95% resistance, capped at 90%, and get hit with a 30% resisance debuff. We only take a 3% net resistance debuff, down to 92%, still capped at 90%. Right? So as with a Super Reflexes with huge DDR, we can make ourselves mostly immune to resistance debuffs by overcapping maybe 5-10%? Where if we start at exactly 90%, we're theoretically subject to cascading resistance failure, at least if there were enough resistance debuffs in the game to do that. Not sure there are.

And now that I’m thinking more about it, maybe I’m wrong. Or only half right, and it’s the weak half. 90% resistance hit with a 100% debuff is 80% resistance taking twice as much damage. 0% resistance hit with a 100% debuff is -100% resistance taking twice as much damage. But if the 0% resistance is only getting hit 10% as often, the average would be a 10% debuff, but that’s averaging only 1.1x the damage rather than 2x the damage. So I think I was wrong to say that “average damage taken in subsequent hits will remain comparable.” Both average a 10% debuff, but that’s the net debuff, so it affects one much more than the other. I think I got confused by the idea that a 10% debuff does the same subsequent damage boost in % regardless of the initial damage resistance, but that’s true only if that’s the initial, unresisted buff. After resistance, if what gets through averages 10%, that has a very different effect.

Yes, but on the soft cap build, a resistance debuff is only going to land 10% as often. I realize you didn't claim otherwise, but I want to be clear about how that affects the outcome. Hit 10% as often with the debuff vs. taking 10% of the debuff averages the same, and the average damage taken in subsequent hits will thus remain comparable. (edit: I think I’m wrong, see below) It's just much more subject to the whims of the RNG with defense.

You may be thinking of the rule of thumb that every point of defense is worth two of resist. But we're comparing 45% defense to 90% resistance, so twice as many points of resistance. Soft cap defense and hard cap resistance will average the same against garden-variety enemies. Let's say we're standing there letting an even level boss pound on us. Let's say it does 1000 points of damage in a hit to keep things simple. The boss has 50% to hit and a 1.3x accuracy modifier for being a boss. The chance of hitting our soft capped, no resistance Tanker is 1.3 * (50% - 45%) = 6.5%. 1000 points of damage hitting 6.5% of the time averages 65 damage. No resistance, so that's our final average. The chance of hitting our resistance capped, no defense Tanker is 1.3 * (50% - 0%) = 65%. 1000 hit points of damage hitting 65% of the time averages 650 damage. However, we have 90% resistance, so we only take 10% of that damage, which is 65 damage. True, but I do my best to address debuffs in my actual builds. So for instance, my Dark Armor Tanker has 86.5% endurance, recovery, and to-hit debuff resistance, along with 80% recharge debuff resistance. The main remaining problem is then defense and resistance debuffs. Barrier Core is my answer to both of those. But what's allowed and not seems vague, so maybe I'm cheating by assuming I'll have the debuffs covered in one way or another since that's how I build. If we're allowed to have defense debuff resistance, but no other resistance, that clearly favors defense. Yes and no. There's no explicit thing called "resistance debuff resistance", but resistance itself resists resistance debuffs. Defense is still superior in this regard though because not only does it have defense debuff resistance, but you have to hit to apply the defense debuff in the first place, as you already mentioned. If we're including DDR, and I suppose we are, then if an enemy is spamming equal amounts of defense and resistance debuffs, the average performance of pure defense with DDR is better than the average performance of pure resistance. Resistance debuffs seem a lot more rare in game, but I'd still agree that the existence of explicit DDR does favor defense.

I've never taken it, but I'd think something like that, yeah. And I don't have data to back it up, but it feels like my Dark Armors' stealth delays the reactions of large groups, spreading out the alpha strike and making it less of a concern. And if Stealth stacks with the stealth IO to become full invisibility (I don't know if it does), that'd be nice on the occasions when you just want to head for the mission objectives and not bother with all the enemies in the way.

Resistance. A Super Reflexes Tank without any resists, including the scaling resists, will get killed by the RNG. A Radiation Tank without any defense should still be solid and predictable, if a bit vulnerable to status effects.

If I made the right assumptions and mathed right, 8.77% chance to proc every 10 seconds for each target in range, so a 60.1% chance to proc every 10 seconds with saturated Invincibility. Waiting for teacher to check my homework.

Now that's a sexy graph. 😉 It looks like the distribution is very smooth, so the percentiles aren't missing much, but I feel like the dots still tell a more complete story even if they seem a lot less precise. But having both together is best, I think. 👍 I'm tempted to build myself something like this. I probably won't, but I'm tempted. I already feel like I have a better understanding of what is likely to happen with defense and DDR against debuffs over time, even with only two examples and a very specific debuff scenario.

Endurance vulnerability and lack of extra damage are probably the main reasons I don’t have an Invuln. I’ve seen my friend’s Invuln get detoggled by Sappers. Not die, but get detoggled. It’s nice being able to literally ignore Sappers on my Dark. But the defense debuffs, oh Lordy the defense debuffs. I’m sure it’s pretty much the same for Rad. You pick your weaknesses, I guess. Edit: to be fair, my friend’s Invuln specifically doesn’t address Invuln’s natural weaknesses, and I’d try to if it were my own.