Brutal Justice

I simply provided numbers generated by a tool developed by one of our most respected community members. I would double check his math... if I had the capacity to do so. If you have the capacity, then please do. I am not here to spread misinformation. I would love to be corrected with actual information if that were indeed the case. I did not calculate probability in my original numbers and had that probability information changed the info I was putting out I would gladly and respectfully have accepted it. I used the survivability tool in a bit of a rush but I do believe I saw a probability factor listed. I don’t know if I had to fill it out or if was auto generated by the man behind the curtain.

I think your first point is valid but I disagree with your second. Multiple sources tends to favor defense over resists. If you’re a positional defense set you only have three things to worry about. I also don’t recall any of those positional sets having a hole to one position over another. Veats have higher ranged I suppose. if you’re a typed defense set you might have some holes, but the way defense is checked makes those holes smaller than they usually appear. This is because most attacks have some portion of their damage as s/l. Resistance on the the other hand often has several holes they need to cover and are probably unable to do so. They don’t mitigate the mixed damage types nearly as effectively as the defense sets. It it is common knowledge, and often given as advice, that if you can’t hard cap all of your resists you focus on s/l because it’s the most common. Energy comes in a close second at end game. Similar with blasters, if you can’t softcap ranged then focus on soft capped s/l because most attacks have some portion of their damage as s/l. The mixed damage sources only favor the defense which makes those numbers even more out of balance.

Thank you for this. I ran some simple numbers through this tool because it's all I have time for at the moment. All using 1000dps. A scrapper with 45% defense, 0% res will last 30s at even level. 14s at +4 A scrapper with 0% defense, 75% res will last 11.2s at even level. 5.43s at +4 A tanker at 45% defense, 0% res will last 44.42s at even level. 20.15s at +4 A tanker at 0% defense, 90% res will last 44.42s at even level. 20.15s at +4 A blaster with 45% defense, 0% res will last 26.79s at even level. 12.58 at +4 A scrapper at 40% defense, 0% res will last 14.18s at even level. 6.83s at +4 These are the numbers I got putting in 45% defense to melee and 75-90% res to smashing. The soft capped scrapper lasts almost 3 times longer than the hard capped resistance scrapper. The 40% defense scrapper lasted 1.4 seconds longer than the 75% resistance scrapper. The blaster lasted 15s longer than the scrapper. This also matches my in-game experiences. It appears to me that the 40% hard cap would actually bring some balance.

I would love to see this answer as well edit. With my average it showed them taking exactly the same dps. 50 dps at even level. 101 dps at +4

So with Boppers probability numbers you have a 7.55% chance of taking 150dps with 45% defense? Does the 75% resist scrapper have a 50% chance of taking 125 dps? is that right @Bopper? I’ve been waiting for one of our math gurus to jump in. Using the math, how long on average does the 45% defense toon with 1500 hp last and how long does the 75% resist toon last?

Rather comical. I posted the exact same numbers right here. And then some. You got two likes. I got crickets. We posted the same numbers and yet somehow you think your numbers are showing balance and mine are not? i showed the average. You show the spike. You get a like. They are the same numbers. For every 5 spikes of damage you take 95 zeroes. Zero damage, zero debuffs. a spike is more damage. True On average you take much less damage. Also true. A resist scrapper is consistent in its death. A defense scrapper is more random in its death. Both true. Go stand afk in a mob with 45% defense and see how long you last. You’ll have to take an average of your times because some will be super short and others super long. Go stand in a mob with 75% resistance and see how long you last. You will still take the average time again but this time they will be closer. Any testing is done with multiple batches. Whether it’s testing in a game or in real life. It’s the average that matters, not the spike.

Its not unrelated. I have given the numbers in support of my proposition. All I have received in return is “no”. You want me to give up on it? Then show me where my math was wrong. Show me how any toon with 45% defense takes only 101 damage at +4, while a scrapper at 75% resistance takes 252 damage under the same circumstances. How a 40% defense hard cap increases that 101 to 202, which is still lower than 75% resistance. Show me the math that balances 101 to equal 252.

Uh... I was responding to you talking about blasters and sentinels. My initial post was about scrappers and their tankiness squeezing brutes out of their roll. I see that as more of an issue than buffing brutes or nerfing tanks. Even before the tank buffs, once you reached that tipping point of durability on a scrapper, you generally had to jump to a tank to complete the next level. Unless teamed of course because brutes can be buffed close to a tank. The tank buffs put more of a squeeze on from the top that wasn’t there before, but scrappers have always squeezed more from the bottom. If a tank used to occupy the top 10% and after the buffs now occupies the top 20%, and a scrapper occupies the bottom 75%, leaving the brute with a mere 5%, then the scrapper is too high. The tank buffs encroached on the brutes leaving them little space, but it’s the scrappers who encroach the most. At least with super reflexes. I believe the numbers to be much more balanced in a resistance setting. Which is why I advocate for a defense cap to balance across archetypes and within scrapper/stalker secondaries. Its just convenient that blasters and sentinels are having the same issues and can be addressed with the same response.

I play red and blue. I think less people are redside more for reasons not related to enemy factions, but that is a different conversation all together. The IOd new player will perform better. It might be close if a vet had a none softcapped, fully IOd build and the new player had a softcapped IO build. This is easily seen by the power spike a blaster gets once soft capped. I play generic IOs to lvl 47 with a few global IOs mixed in. Once that IO build comes online it’s a completely different animal and a lot of useful powers I used while leveling become extremely situational almost to the point of useless. Ice patch for example. I think its healthy for the game to soften up the raw afk mitigation available and open the door for more active and unique forms.

Its not balanced when the squishy has enough firepower to ignore the need for DDR. Ranged attacks generally deal much less damage than melee attacks as well. Council actually have a pretty decent amount of -def and yet blasters plow right through them. Arachnos and longbow are fairly rare on blue side. You don’t even have to actively avoid them. They are both actually pretty well balanced as well, having methods of dealing with pretty much any armor type. Rularuu as well are only in one area. Blasters are setting the speed records against arachnos in the trapdoor mission. You don’t see electric armor scrappers posting times, for reasons.

I agree with all of this. It is much more complex than just vacuum numbers. It is possible to gain additional mitigation from actively playing your toons. These Forms of additional mitigation are generally available to all and generally hinge much more on player skill than the raw numbers you can achieve, which makes things infinitely more difficult to account for.

Some notions are actually based around numbers.

Add a defense hard cap to prevent the blaster from getting there.

I only ran and posted simple numbers comparing purely defense and resistance. I did not account for the additional forms of mitigation available to those defense sets. I also used, I think, the lowest DDR available to those defense sets. Ice armor? Ice armor also has -rech, +hp, -dam, icy bastion/hibernate to account for the low DDR. The -30% def also exists in a vacuum that insta and perma applies the debuff. In actuality defense is only truly balanced around DDR when below the soft cap. At the soft cap you have a 5% chance of being hit. That means that with a 16 aggro cap, you get hit .8 times. That .8 has to apply the -def necessary to start the cascade and last long enough for another one to be applied to really get it rolling. At 40% you get hit 1.6 out of 16 which is still a pretty small chance of one or more -def debuffs landing. With zero defense you you get hit 8 times out of 16. Those eight more than likely carry multiple forms of debuffs. It is possible to jump into a spawn of carnies or Malta on a resist tank and get held through your mez protection simply because so much is hitting you. A blaster at 45% def and zero DDR is more durable than an electric armor scrapper at 75% resistance. In the trapdoor mission they just target the one mob that has a chance of landing a -def debuff. Once that mob is handled they cake walk the rest. Even in the ITF, the romans don’t apply -def with their ranged attacks, allowing the blaster to dance around while the electric scrapper gets plastered. A 45% soft cap available to all is unbalanced.

Part of the issue is you’re playing a defense set that shares the same “cap” across all three archetypes. If all three of these toons where electric armor I am sure you would find more of a reason for the brute. A 40% defense hard cap for non tank archetypes, ie brutes and tanks, 43% for EATS, would help differentiate the three. The scrapper would truly be highest damage medium survivability, brute high/high, tank medium/ highest. Currently sharing the same “cap” scrappers durability and damage push right to the point of needing the extra mitigation of the tank, squeezing out the brutes. Which you demonstrated with your +4 clear all’s and then jumping to the tank for the Werner rules. Resistance sets are more balanced archetype to archetype, due to the hard caps. Defense sets outside of tanks and brutes are not balanced even within the same archetype. I believe resist based brutes still have a place, due to the different caps from scrappers and still higher damage than tanks. Defense brutes have almost no place due to having the same “cap” as scrappers with only marginal more hp and less damage.

I provided the numbers myself back on page 16 of this same thread. I clearly showed how out of line 45% defense was when compared to 75% resistance. 40% defense at +4 still outperformed the 75% resist cap at +4. How about instead of saying it overly punishes defense sets compared to resistance sets, we say it balances defense compared to resistance?

They did this with the +ToHit incarnate mobs. The problem isn’t so much adding challenge. There are already systems in place to add challenge. However, They should add rewards for the added challenge, which they don’t. The problem is is when these builds built to handle those challenges enter normal play and trivialize it and any teammates they may end up with. It is healthy now but it’s fading and the more people feel superfluous the quicker they leave.

I feel like setting the defense hard cap at 40% would make the existing content and difficulty levels fair/challenging to capped and not atrocious to not capped toons. It would also not force anybody to one side or the other. This is my goal for promoting a 40% defense hard cap. It would slow down the stompage, giving some value to highly affected sets/AT’s, while also not stopping it. Couldn’t agree more! Why not bring down the far surpassers? Clearly you recognize the issue with the availability of the soft cap to all archetypes. I’ve given the numbers for a 40% hard cap. Why would you be against it? 100% agree. Lowering the defenses would allow more odds and ends to shine rather than just “soft cap and stomp”. My my goal is always to promote a healthy and balanced game in order to achieve longevity. I want to play CoH for a long time with a healthy community.

Can we hold the sledgehammer skin for war mace a little farther down the handle similar to the bat? I figure they probably designed it that way because of the perceived weight of the hammer, but I’m a super hero and that generally comes with some magnitude of greater than normal strength. I have several costumes that would love to use the sledge but every time I equip it and watch the animations I think, “there is no way you don’t hit yourself with the handle hanging so far below your grip.” You carry a sledge from closer to the head because of the weight, but you swing it from the bottom for both leverage/velocity and clearance.

Players will keep on keeping on but that doesn’t mean it didn’t achieve its goal. Hypothetical numbers. At 45% soft cap fire blasters blow the doors off speed run/ timed tests. Say 3m45 seconds clear time. A dark blast blaster might achieve 5m clear. At 40% hard cap defense the fire blaster might take 4m30 seconds because he had to dip into other areas to achieve his lost durability. The dark blast blaster still has a 5m clear even though he didn’t have to change up his build. The dark blast wasn’t suddenly able to blow the doors off. It stayed the same. You also achieved a much better balance between the two. If you deal more damage you SHOULD have less mitigation. If you have more mitigation you SHOULD have less damage. Which is exactly what blasters and sentinels are doing. Trading one for the other. The problem arises when one of them is able to achieve, or very nearly as to not matter anymore, the values of the other and not vice versa. Players keep on keeping on but balance is maintained. Isn’t that really the goal?

I feel tanks were overbuffed as well. Even still, it’s not like they are already posting the best times for things like pylons and trapdoor runs. I’ve been away from the game for a while but I am pretty sure I recall some blasters completing the max diff ITF before I left. I would say that test is primarily a test of durability with dps as a secondary. If that is indeed the case, then shouldn’t tanks be the ones completing that the most? (I know dps is very important in the test but I regard survival as more important and the harder nut to crack, especially since it’s a no death run)

You’re not bursting my bubble. This is exactly what I was describing would happen. The defense over 40% would be used to absorb -def debuffs. The bubbles would provide that. You would need more than you currently need to maintain the 45% though because you’re getting hit twice as much at 40%. Therefore, since you need twice as much overage with your new 40% cap to maintain your cap status, the bubbles have twice as much value as before. As for edit 1. The last time I brought this up I provided adequate numbers to show just how far ahead of their resist based brothers those defense sets are. 40% brought them right in line with their resist based counter parts, at least in terms of damage received. They still take significantly less status effects and debuffs from the enemy as the resist sets so they would still be ahead by a fair margin. Regarding edit 2. The +ToHit given to incarnate content to specifically counter the 45% soft cap would need to be removed. Other than that, higher difficulty should be higher difficulty. Isn’t that also what people are always asking for? You wouldn’t have to create a whole new system, or faction, or part of the game to achieve it. The 40% hard cap would provide it. Without making toons unplayable.

I sure do. We went over this once already and I showed the extreme discrepancy between an electric armor scrapper and a super reflexes scrapper. The 40% brought them right in line with those resist based scrappers.

I think it would actually give value to buffers and debuffers. Currently any archetype can reach the soft cap giving -ToHit debuffers and +def buffers very little value. If all non tank archetypes had a hard cap of 40% those bubbles would become much more important. The question then becomes, how being able to give less defense actually adds value. Less = less right? In this case I believe less = more for those buffers and debuffers. It all follows along the same idea of building for slightly more than the 45% softcap. The overage gives you a cushion against -def. Slowing and possibly preventing the cascading failure we all know can happen. When you’re pumping out the damage blasters are, often times a slowing of that effect is all you need. At 40% cascade becomes a real threat. We all know this. Any -ToHit can put you back to those soft cap values, giving debuffs significantly more value than they currently have. The bubbler may not get you to the current levels but you will need him more than ever to maintain your current 40% hardcap defense. Since the overage would absorb the now twice as many -def debuffs you’re getting hit with. Giving the bubbler roughly twice as much value as they currently have.

Drop the 45% soft cap on defense to a 40% hard cap and the “perceived” problem goes away. Then the blaster can’t “match” the durability of the sentinel. The sentinel can’t “match” the blaster for damage, the blaster can’t “match” the sentinel for durability. Balanced by counter weaknesses.