Werner

No need, but I won’t stop you if you enjoy it. 😉 What I would probably do for a graph like this at work is to randomize the dot’s vertical position within a distinct band. So if we’re looking at 5% debuffs, within 2% of the actual value, plus or minus. You need to know to not take the value literally then, but instead take the whole band to represent the value in the middle. Give each dot a transparency as well if needed, depending on how many dots there are in the graph and how likely they are to overlap. I find that this often provides much more insight than trying to combine the discreet data points into some other sort of graph. Maybe you can’t put numbers to those insights looking at a mess of points, but it’s not about precision, it’s about understanding. 🙂 I think you’d get a similar result, without bands, by randomizing the debuff a little. Might be simpler. Edit: Though I suppose the reason I find the dots valuable is because the distributions I plot are often not smooth, but instead have interesting patterns unknown prior to seeing them, and it's those patterns that provide some insight... or at least questions to start asking. But I'm expecting this particular plot to smooth out quickly.

OMG, that’s priceless! I can’t stop laughing.

Guilty! It was an Invuln/SS build for a friend, and he almost flat out told me “do not plug the psi hole.” So I didn’t. At least it gives me reason to occasionally pretend I have to save him from the scary psychics. Though he doesn’t play it much these days. He complains that the rest of us don’t need a Tanker anyway. Except Pete. But we’re pretty sure Pete faceplants on purpose.

mmmmmmaybe... LOL

That was @Werner I ain't that good. LOL. I didn’t do it on a Scrapper, though. On a Katana/Dark Brute and a Dark/MA Tanker. Also with enemies buffed and no Lore. Ouchy! And it was over a four hour slog on the Tanker.

Let me first agree that Bopper's charts demonstrate that for his specific case of a lot of attackers with very small debuffs, 59% defense 0% DDR averages much better than 45% defense 50% DDR during the time frame of a fight. That out of the way, two points... 1) Do you want better average performance, or do you want to stay alive when the debuffs are big and fast and furious and the RNG hates you? On average, the 45% defense with 50% DDR doesn't drop below 30%. That's mathematically 3x more damage than being over 45%, sure, but it's still not very threatening. What's more threatening is when that defense goes negative. and we're taking over 10x as much damage. Now we're talking! So how often does that happen, and how fast? We're not really seeing a probability distribution, but from the limited information from the black "lines", it appears that not once in over 1000 simulations did the 45% defense 50% DDR go negative in the first 40 seconds or so. No problem. On the other hand, the 59% defense 0% DDR occasionally went negative in the first 10 seconds or so, and quite often went negative by 20 seconds, and sometimes even was down at -20% or even lower by then. On average, it was great, but I don't like being killed by the RNG. All other things being equal (they aren't of course), I would therefore personally pick 45% defense 50% DDR over 59% defense 0% DDR on a resistance build, but that choice is not objectively right or wrong. It's a personal choice based on how I want the character to play and what sort of enemies I want to throw myself against. 2) But that's not the actual choice! Why in the world, in a discussion of Radiation vs. Invulnerability, are we even discussing 59% defense with 0% DDR vs. 45% defense with 50% DDR? It's admittedly an interesting philosophical and mathematical discussion, but Invulnerability is the one with significantly higher defense, not Radiation. It seems to me we should be discussing 45% Defense with 0% DDR vs. 59% defense with 50% DDR, but that would be a very, very short discussion. Defense is no contest in favor of Invulnerability. But that's not where Radiation shines. Radiation shines elsewhere.

I'd take Leadership over Concealment for defense. The defense from Stealth partly suppresses when you attack, and Maneuvers helps the whole team.

The Bright Novas do the defense debuffs. They're part of my ITF targetting keybind. But of course that's not needed if you're killing the whole spawn quickly like you are. I'm slow. 🙂

Then you’re off by an order of magnitude. A 5% defense debuff hitting 50% DDR will result in a 2.5% defense debuff, not a 0.25% defense debuff. And it will take (59% - 45%) / 2.5% = 5.6 such debuffs before we drop to the regular soft cap, not 56. Your point might still stand, of course, if your point was that an Invuln with 59% defense and 50% DDR can handle a little defense debuffing in regular content just fine. It can indeed, particularly if the 59% is with one target in range. Radiation builds would have lower defense and no DDR if comparing apples to apples, but of course bring plenty of other goodies to the table. I don’t have any Radiation experience to compare the sets overall. Just commenting on the defense and DDR aspect.

Agreed, you'd be SLN resist capped with a full heal every 10-15 seconds and in no real danger, and could easily stack raw defense well over 59% if needed for some reason. I only have a Katana/Dark Brute, so he's in a bit of danger soloing the ITF at +4x8, but nothing unmanageable. I just need to pay attention. My Dark/MA Tanker with 55% melee is in some danger on a +4x8 enemies buffed ITF, but without enemies buffed and taking less than half the incoming damage, probably almost no danger.

In case there's confusion about how overcapped defense and no DDR works, here's my Dark/MA Tanker after being hit once by a +3 Cimeroran boss. He's normally at 44.44% ranged defense, 55.07% melee defense. He takes a single 13.30% defense debuff with no DDR. Now he's at 44.44% - 13.30% = 31.14% ranged and 55.07% - 13.30% = 41.77% melee defense. With no DDR, every defense debuff is a simple subtraction, but it's nicer being at 41.77% than at 31.14% after that first defense debuff, so overcapping can help. Against a crowd of Cimerorans, it might only buy you a couple extra seconds before your defense collapses completely, but against light debuffers, it can sometimes be enough to hold the line, with one debuff wearing off before the next hits.

Dark/Katana without Ageless Radial fighting Cimerorans, perhaps. But yes, 59% with no DDR probably won't be a common situation.

I assume you meant to say 95% DDR? And I assume that by “before your defense starts to drop” you mean drop to the point where garden-variety non-incarnate enemies have a higher chance of hitting you? As an aside, I think there may be a max raw defense debuff of 100%? I often see 100%, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen over. Too lazy to look it up right now. If so, a 59% def 95% DDR should only be debuffable to 54% ever. Anyway, even on SR I try to get a few points over the incarnate cap to cope with defense debuffs in incarnate content because every point is handling another 20% in debuffs, which feels very worthwhile. Seriously overcapping an Invuln with 50% DDR works pretty well most of the time I’m sure.

I use it to counter defense debuffs, or more rarely resistance debuffs. I also use it to plug the energy hole, but that's more relevant to my Brute than my Tanker, who doesn't notice the energy hole nearly so much.

Likewise. That's what I used on an SR/Staff on Beta on 801.1 +4x8 no temps no insps. I leaned on it heavily, and it worked quite well. I think it was the best choice, but I decided not to build that Tanker on live due to low damage output. Rebirth is also what I told a friend to take on his Invuln Tanker. Both builds were already basically immune to defense debuffs. I don't think Rebirth would be my choice on any toon where defense debuffs were going to be an issue.

I feel like Street Justice is a bit lacking as it seems to only bring damage to the table. I leveled a Street Justice Brute to 50, kitted her out with IOs and was working on incarnates, then abandoned her and stripped her for parts. I want more from a set than what Street Justice brings to the table, even if the fun factor was there. On my Super Reflexes Brute, that was Dark Melee for the heal. On my Dark Armor Tanker, that was Martial Arts for the +10% defense.

Me too. I'd love to do better, but this is where I'd gotten fiddling with Invuln/MA, which has a 10% head start on defense. This is 1 in range of Invincibility, so maybe we're looking at 10 in range? That would explain the defense. I've hit similar defense numbers without MA, but sacrificed more on the resistance front. I'm unclear where the resists are coming from, though they'll often be higher than Mids' shows in practice due to multiple stacks of the ATO and scaling resists from Reactive Defenses, so yeah, definitely not weak to other types when built for it endgame, just weaker than to smashing/lethal, though if you throw Barrier on top of it, the difference mostly evaporates even with the 6% tail end, but I went Rebirth. Not an actual character of mine, just fiddling in Mids' while thinking of making one. I ultimately went with Dark Armor/Martial Arts instead, but more because I love Dark Armor than thinking it was clearly superior. It definitely doesn't handle defense debuffs as well. I've not fiddled much with Radiation builds. Sure the resists are great, but no defense and no DDR makes me squirm a little. I already have enough trouble with Dark Armor, which has at least a little defense with no DDR. But I suppose in practice the defense would be virtually identical when it matters, which is when facing heavy defense debuffs, where I buy myself maybe an extra few seconds of ablative defense with Dark Armor, which is hardly a game changer. Maybe I need to take a more serious look at Radiation.

I think it's 3% to 13% at 0% health, 3% fixed, 10% scaling.

Purples mostly add recharge and fire/cold/toxic/psionic resistance. Recharge is nice, but Dark Armor doesn't live and die by it. Fire and cold are relatively rare in comparison to more "popular" types, so not as critical to cap. Psionic is easy to get in other ways. You're going to have a toxic hole regardless. So one could argue that the purples aren't doing much for you in practice. The numbers look good and help give you bragging rights, but as far as the practical effect, I'd say it's pretty situational. I have a purple and a half, not a build filled with them. I think you can make do without purples. And it's not like you get no bonuses when you give them up. You get other bonuses. Dark Armor does benefit significantly from investment though, yes. It doesn't suck without, but it really comes into its own with investment and incarnate powers.

Agreed, though the difference isn't as large once you factor in Arcanatime, which accounts for server ticks of 0.132 seconds, and that the next attack cannot activate until between 1 and <2 of these ticks have passed between attacks. Fortunately, Mids' will do the math for us. Pull up Mids'. Brute, Katana. Options -> Configuration -> Effects & Maths -> Use ArcanaTime for animation times. Then Window -> Power Graphs. Instead of Damage, select Damage/Anim. The bigger the blue bar, the better the attack in these terms. Golden Dragonfly and Soaring Dragon are the clear leaders, and while Sting of the Wasp and Gambler's Cut are close to each other, the edge still goes to Gambler's Cut, which is probably the primary reason people say that it's better. In practice, there are other things to consider when comparing attacks, like what sort of attack chains you can build with the attack, what the secondary effects are, what sort of procs you can slot and what their chances of firing are, that shorter-activating attacks are less likely to animation lock you when you really, really need to hit another power to stay alive, and so on.

None whatsoever. I think I used Conserve Power once and didn’t really need to even then. It’s just there for safety, and to get me into Physical Perfection. It’s strong, but I’m not sure I’d call it stronger than the weapon sets since it’s unenhanceable and doesn’t stack. Katana, say, could make you mostly immune to melee/lethal defense debuffs, which tend to be the most common. But I wanted to try something new. I’ll probably be fiddling with Katana builds, though. If I can significantly improve on my DPS, I might convince myself to switch. Plus the Gaussian proc, which fires off pretty reliably. Where I was happiest to have it was fighting against uber defense. With +84% to hit for five seconds you can pretty much hit anything a few times every cycle, so you aren’t merely twiddling your thumbs waiting for defensive powers to expire. Maybe not that helpful objectively, but it’s more fun than waiting, and fun matters too. It does. Very fun. He might be my new main. Time will tell, but right now I don’t want to play anything else. 🙂

Yeah, it’s worth commenting further on the defense - on Dark Armor, when the going gets tough, and particularly if solo, it’s more of an alpha buster and a head start than it is actual defense. It WILL be stripped away, but if you can buy yourself 15 seconds, say, that can still make a big difference. Then Barrier buys you another 10-30 seconds. By the time that’s not propping you up, even solo at Tanker damage output, the threat should be so dramatically reduced that resists and Dark Regeneration have you covered. And I’m talking about things like +4x8 Cimerorans and AE 801.2, not any average mobs. Team tanking +4x8, my hit points rarely move. Losing 1/3 my hit points is cause for mockery by my friends. “You took damage! Is something wrong? You feeling OK?” All that said, I’m a complete newb at tanking, and I only finished the build on Friday, so I perhaps shouldn’t be acting like I know what I’m talking about. I may not have the best understanding of what’s required and how it plays, and my reports of experiences team tanking on the finished build is from literally just a few hours this weekend. I have years of experience with Dark Armor, though, just not on a Tanker.

I suspect that when most people claim 90% resists on a Dark Armor, what may go unstated but assumed is "except for energy and toxic, of course". My own Dark Armor Tanker is Martial Arts, which helps with the defense sotcaps. Then 90% to all but energy and toxic, which are 71% and 65% until you stack the ATO or start taking damage or use Barrier. I consider endurance to be one of the benefits, not drawbacks of Dark Armor, at least in the endgame, due to the 86.5% resistance to debuffs. Knockback is easily handled, as you say. The primary weakness in my opinion is defense debuffs, which I plug as best I can with 55% melee defense and Barrier Core. Ageless Radial is an arguably better solution for defense debuffs, but it leaves you weaker to resistance debuffs, and doesn't let you plug the energy and toxic hole on demand. Anyway, here's my build. Not Kinetic Melee, but it might be useful. It's definitely a cost-no-object build, which isn't what you want, but I'm buying my way to those good numbers.

If I decide to tackle this more seriously, I'll want to learn all the mob abilities and create a priority targeting macro/keybind like I have for some groups, but I figured a quick and dirty substitute for that was to target the special-looking lieutenants, bosses, and elite bosses. And if I see any green radiation, those die first.

There certainly are those days, but it's much more noticeable on my Brute with 55% resistance than my Tanker at 78% after a couple stacks of the ATO plus higher defense and hit points. The energy hole is one reason I run Barrier Core rather than Ageless Radial on both, and handle debuffs in other ways.