Brutal Justice

This is exactly what will prevent Homecoming from lasting as long as the original. Just stopping in to to see if we have changed the 45% softcap into a 40% hard cap yet?

Thank you for your time and consideration. I will admit the incarnate numbers do look pretty bad for a 40% hard cap. Let's be fair though, I did say a couple things about that which would more or less take care of it. Maybe I did sort of think that through a little bit. Now that the incarnate issue is settled we'll move on to some normal content. Your numbers look pretty good but I do feel you left out some fairly important ones. I'll list a whole bunch so it doesn't seem like I'm cherry picking numbers just to support my case. First some formulas I used. +4 level mods = Accuracy 1.4, Damage 1.44, Debuff 1.44 Chance to hit = Base Accuracy * Rank Mod * Level Mod * (Base ToHit - Defense%) 45% defense 1*1*1(.5-.45)= .05 chance to hit 40% defense 1*1*1(.5-40)= .1 chance to hit 0% defense 1*1*1(.5-0)= .5 chance to hit 45% defense at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-.45)= .07 chance to hit 40% defense at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-.4)= .14 chance to hit 0% defense at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-0)= .7 chance to hit The formula I used for DPS 10 hits for 100 damage = 1000dps 10 * chance to hit * (100 * level mod) = dps Ok, let's get started and see where we go. Tank at 45% defense 10*.05*100 50 damage Tank at 90% resistance 10*.5*10 50 damage Tank at 45% defense at +4 10*.07*144 101 damage Tank at 90% resistance at +4 10*.7*14.4 101 damage Now that is a thing of beauty. They are both equally durable but that defense tank is dodging all the slows and -tohit so they are much quicker. Scrapper at 45% defense 10*.05*100 50 damage Scrapper at 45% defense at +4 10*.07*144 101 damage Scrapper at 40% defense 10*.1*100 100 damage Scrapper at 40% defense at +4 10*.14*144 202 damage Those numbers probably look familiar. Let's see what it looks like for those resistance scrappers. Scrapper at 75% resistance 10*.5*25 125 damage Scrapper at 75% resistance at +4 10*.7*36 252 damage Ouch, that's quite a bit different than those defense scrappers! Well, at least the ones at 45% defense. It's not nearly as offensive when compared to the scrappers at only 40% defense. Maybe 40% is a bit more balanced. Still worse... but not as bad. It's also interesting how that 45% defense really doesn't care if you'r a tank or a scrapper. Well it doesn't really care what you are to be frank. It's a good thing tanks have some other increased numbers to help or they'd pretty much just be fat scrappers. Too bad for those resistance guys though. It's like they placed different hard caps on them for some balance purpose. Lame! Let's try some more, this time with some Defense Debuff thrown in. 45% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR 1*1*1(.5-(.45-.15)) = .2 chance to hit 40% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR 1*1*1(.5-(.4-.15)) = .25 chance to hit 0% def, 30% -def, 0 DDR 1*1*1(.5-(0-.3)) = .8 chance to hit 45% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-(.45-.22)) = .38 chance to hit 40% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-(.4-.22)) = .45 chance to hit 0% def, 30% -def, 0 DDR at +4 1*1*1.4(.5-(0-.43)) = 1.3 capped at .95 chance to hit Tank at 45% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR 10*.2*100 200 damage Tank at 90% res, 30% -def, 0 DDR 10*.8*10 80 damage Tank at 45% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR at +4 10*.38*144 547 damage Tank at 90% res, 30% -def, 0 DDR at + 4 10*.95*14.4 136 damage Dang, that's rough on those defense tanks! That's currently what happens to them in game? I can't wait to see what happens to a scrapper! We already covered that 45% soft cap and how it doesn't care who you are though so, spoiler alert! They have the same numbers as the tanks. 200 damage at +0. 547 damage at +4. Scrapper at 40% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR 10*.25*100 250 damage Scrapper at 40% def, 30% -def, 50% DDR at +4 10*.45*144 648 damage That purple patch hits hard combined with some debuffs! Scrapper at 75% res, 30% -def, 0% DDR 10*.8*25 200 damage Scrapper at 75% res, 30% -def, 0% DDR at +4 10*.95*36 342 damage We're pulling ahead now baby! That ToHit cap really saves your bacon. Caps are good? One thing to notice with these numbers is that 200 damage. It's the same as a soft capped scrapper! It only took -30% def debuff, with 50% DDR to be applied to a current soft cap scrapper for the resistance scrapper to pull even. There is your cascade tipping point at +0. That's looking pretty rough for our old friend the 40% cap. They really took a digger once they hit +4. Let's be fair to the poor fella, let's call him Bob, he wasn't doing that great even at 45% defense. Poor Bob. Now let's say we know another guy. We'll call this guy Bill. He has 95% DDR. Should we see how valuable that is? We might have to carry a few more decimal points... Scrapper at 45% def, 30% -def, 95% DDR 10*.065*100 65 damage Scrapper at 45% def, 30% -def, 95% DDR at +4 10*.104*144 150 damage Bill is crushing it! Just when that resistance scrapper was feeling good about himself, he gets the rug pulled right out from under him! Even at +0 that resistance scrapper takes more damage than Bill at +4. Bob needs to get some DDR, and quick. Maybe a Hard cap Bill will give them both a chance. Scrapper at 40% def, 30% -def, 95% DDR 10*.115*100 115 damage Scrapper at 40% def, 30% -def, 95% DDR at +4 10*.17*144 244.8 I guess not. A scrapper at 40% def hard cap, 95% DDR, and running at +4 is still better than a scrapper at 75% res hard cap at +0. I mean not only is he taking less damage, he's getting hit with other debuffs/mezzes significantly less. Making his life just better all around. It also takes 1 large -def debuff to drop these soft capped scrappers to this point. When you're only getting hit 5%-7% of the time at +0 to +4 those chances are extremely low. For two -15% def debuffs to land are even more extremely low. 10 hit chances is also the alpha strike. We ARE actively playing our toons so the chances go way way way down if they don't land those hits with the alpha. You're also dodging slows and mezzes and -tohits. But but but, going from 5% at soft cap to 10% at Hard cap is 100% more! What's 5% of 16 hits? ( aggro cap) .8 hits. what's 10% of 16 hits? 1.6 hits. The resistance scrapper gets hit 50%-70%, that's 8-11.2 hits out of 16. He's taking significantly more damage and getting neutered by debuffs at the same time. You call that balanced? A 40% hard cap would cause you to take twice as much damage but you'd still be better than the poor resistance scrappers. If you have 95% DDR you're still really solid and it's no contest. I showed +4 numbers to show the worst case also. If people are running at max diff they are probably 50+1 so it's really only +3. You might only be at +1 if you're in DA. Outside of Incarnate content, which I did address, (+tohit is killer on defense) that 40% cap would just slow you down. Possibly cause different power selections, costing DPS and over all kill speed to achieve previous levels of survival. You have a higher chance of cascade with little DDR because you are getting hit slightly more. This gives +def powers more value. They may not make you demigods like you were, but since you're taking more -def, you will need them more to stay at the cap. They do this now but you getting hit less means they do it less. Countering those -def debuffs becomes much more important, which is exactly what those bubbles would do. -ToHit would become more valuable since it could "get you" to the soft cap. Active mitigation would become more valuable to either stop the alpha or recover after it. If .8 hits didn't kill you I highly doubt 1.6 will. Percentages look scary, actually hits, not so much. Some of the numbers with a 40% cap were significant. Mostly after taking some solid debuff, showing that cascade effect and the value of that DDR. But when you look at them next to the resistance numbers you should be able to see they are not out of line. Right now a capped resistance scrapper can't even hold a candle to a soft capped defense scrapper. Who are we kidding? A hybrid scrapper! I didn't even factor in the in-house resistance those hybrids have! AHHH! Just take 10% off of all those damage numbers for the Defense toons to be safe. This nerf would have zero effect on people not currently running at soft cap, and very little on people not running at max difficulty. It slows down the top tier and leaves the lower tiers untouched. Are we here for balance or are we here to defend our brokenness?

Destroying the community is an over exaggeration shown to be false by several people other than myself stating it would be a minor nerf and listing ways around it.

Ok really you’re just making up you own definition of a hybrid and applying it to whatever it is you define as one. A hybrid is really just a mix two or more things.

Agreed. I think I said multiple times that defense and sr are not just defense sets. Calling these not hybrids is a bit of the same statement in layman’s terms. They are indeed hybrids just not specifically def/res hybrids. Can we just agree to move on from such detailed descriptions of every set mentioned for the sake of sanity? This is more or less the argument with bubbles. It IS super helpful right up until everybody soft caps themselves. Then it’s moot. This is the current state of the game and wouldn’t change much with a defensive hardcap. I’ll test it later to confirm if nobody beats me to it. But if a purple will compensate for a -def debuff then it’s possible things like bubbles and grant cover would still be effective and actually more valuable as power picks because people are getting hit with more debuffs do to lower defense. Currently a soft capped toon doesnt get hit with that many def debuffs in comparison to a toon at 40 defense. And since your +def doesn’t add effectual mitigation for them, they only get the benefit 5% of the time when that one hit is a def debuff. if they are getting hit 10% of the time by that debuff because they have lower defense, then they are getting double the amount of support they were getting from your grant cover. Making grant cover a more valuable pick. A defensive hard cap may prevent grant cover from soft capping a teammate, but in the current meta it’s already not doing that because they got there themselves. I suppose I really need to test some -res and popping an orange to see how an actual hard cap would react as opposed to a soft cap. How about neither of us assume we are the majority. Instead possibly the most vocal of our respective camps? The true majority is probably silent.

They could all technically be called hybrids. Just in layman’s terms shield is defense, electric is resists etc.

I understand your point but you’re also not just standing there afk either. Let’s just assume it’s not a vacuum and we are actively playing our toons. Can’t balance around skill level, just throwing that out there before somebody quips in about that. You didn’t say it but somebody would. Incarnate content should be more difficult than normal content but that’s really a separate area of balance from normal content. If defense was hard capped you could drop the ToHit that they posses as a start with probably comparatively small dev resources. But incarnate content balance is really a separate issue from the 1-50 content. So I guess my reply to this would be that I don’t want to see normal content affected by incarnate content anymore than it already is. I agree. That blaster at softcap is part of what I’m trying to address with a 40 hard cap. Dps reduces the need for mitigation and mitigation reduces the need for dps. Reduced mitigation reduces dps and reduced dps increases the need for mitigation. I choose to directly reduce their mitigation and as a by product reduce their dps. Rather than directly reducing their dps. I feel this is in line with the idea of the archetype. I agree. I stated defense was king earlier because the topic was specifically about defense. I apologize. Layers are king. I was trying to show the value of the layers that exist in the most defensive armor set.

I really do understand the value of DDR. I have an ice tank, shield tank, sr tank. All varying levels of DDR. I agree but blasters don’t have much issue with it since they can wipe out the spawn quickly enough. Slow them down by removing some of that safety and now they will have issues with it. Dps reduces the need for mitigation. Reduced mitigation reduces dps. I did not claim it was at max difficulty. I said standing on the wall. It was to point out the value of the layers of mitigation available to even super reflexes. Not to point out his immortality. I don’t even need to test it at max diff to know the end result.

I haven’t tested so don’t quote me, but if you take some def debuff and pop a purple, does the purple not counteract some of that debuff by simply adding to your debuffed amount? You are correct that multilayer protection is the actual king. But it is the defensive sets that achieve this. Shield is a defensive set, Invuln can be argued either way. I mentioned earlier that there is no purely defensive set anymore they all have layers of other mitigation. I even specifically mentioned shield as a reason it wouldn’t be crippling for defensive powersets. Really I agree with most of your points. Dps does reduce the need for mitigation. The need for mitigation does reduce dps though. I don’t think you would die, but you would slow down a little if hit by more debuffs. I also agree about bubblers. They have it rough and this wouldn’t help them. That would require a whole separate thread though. Buffing a bubbler will not affect balance, in any significant way. Same as buffing energy melee didn’t. Does it do something to balance? Sure. Does it upset the game? No. It’s one powerset with several different combinations. The soft cap is the opposite. It’s available to all fairly easily. Being hypothetical, if you join a team the odds of one of them having energy melee is X because a claws/sr can’t take energy melee. The chance for that claws/sr to be on the team is also X the value of X stays constant. The odds one of those players is at the soft cap is Y because any 7 of them could choose to softcap. Player choices change the value assigned to Y. I’m not stating that all players softcap. I’m simply saying, when all can do something, that something, has a huge effect on balance. If that something is overly powerful you have higher levels of power creep. Buffing a single set like bubbles is technically power creep, but it would not equate the resistance to power creep that a defense hard cap would provide.

I understand the mechanics are different. The point wasn’t the mechanics, it was that defense is superior to resists. Resistance may resist resistance debuffs but defense has the ability to completely avoid -def. 0 is greater than 1 in this case. This applies to all debuffs not just -def. Defense avoids them all, resistance face tanks them all. Also, since it is a soft cap and not a hard cap. People build in extra defense to counteract and negate the -def that does manage to get through. So you are correct that there is no IO for DDR, but it’s not even needed since 45 is a soft cap not a hard cap. If I have zero DDR and 55 defense I can take -10 defense and not even notice. More often than not the mob that delivered the debuff is either dead before he can land another one or the initial debuff has worn off before another lands. 300% does sound like a lot but when you’re talking about 1 hit vs 3 hits it’s really not. You will probably survive, just maybe not afk like you would have with 1. The tank can can stand there not because of DDR. With just the passives and their level of DDR the romans strip that level of defense rather quickly. It’s the 99% that keeps a sr from cascading. You don’t get that from the passives. He stands there because of the scaling +res and regen. He looks like he’s going to die, but he’s not.

I agree. I was just pointing out that the woes of a bubbler exist today and would not be a sudden result of a defense hardcap.

@Neiska honestly I mostly scanned your last response. It WAS very long in my defense 😋. Mostly it was about me or a generic player and what they can and should do in regards to teaming situations. Also a breakdown of archetypes roles and experiences. I am not new to the game. This is not about me. I don’t want it to be about me. I simply gave some personal information to set the stage for my proposal. A proposal to achieve balance. Not a proposal to instruct people on how to play the way I like. I don’t think you’re trying to be rude and I’m not offended. I am also not trying to be rude and hope you are not offended.

I don’t know how to enter more than one quote at a time with my phone so bear?bare? (you get it) with me. I am proposing a hard cap. Not an adjustment to the soft cap. A disproportionate nerf to defense is a nerf to the king. Resists don’t perform at the same level and healing is laughable in comparison. I know that you are partial to defense but I think you can acknowledge that defensive sets could lose some power without becoming overly gimped. I concede your point about soloists but the spirit of the statement had to do largely in a team setting. Example. A masterminds teaming experience is greatly affected by a murderous sr/claws tank laying waste to everything, while solo, the mastermind is unconcerned with that murderous madman. Speed is overly determined by dps but only when safety isn’t a concern. If safety becomes a concern, then dps isn’t the only determining factor. @Galaxy Brain has shown this with many of his tests and even accounts for safety in his final determination of his power rankings. Advocating for mobs damage mitigation makes it more of a slog than challenge. If they can’t defeat you it’s not a challenge. It’s a slog of dps. In my eyes that slows it down in a negative way. Not in a risk vs reward way. More a reward vs slower reward. Also, let’s be fair. Forcefielders are a godsend at low levels but once you hit 45% defense they are already pointless. This has been a cry of bubblers for quite some time. Their powers are great and they are powerful, and then they are not. People hit 45 now. They would still hit 40 if it was the cap. Really No change for those poor bubblers. Raising the ToHit would adversely affect those who do not hit the soft cap now, making the game more difficult for the most vulnerable players. Resists and defense “always” function but they do not function at the same level as defense. Regen could use a nerf though! In the same way you could pop a respite earlier, you could pop a purple to combat -def. Also there is no purely defensive based set left. My reflexes tank can stand afk on the Roman wall with his toggles off and not die. Defensive sets have room in their power level to lose a little. It would not turning the king into the pauper.

In response to your first paragraph. The only way I could present a nerf in a manner that shows a net positive, would be to first convince you that there exists a problem. As the many rebalancing threads have proven, there tends to be two camps, one that sees a problem and one that doesn’t. It’s also shown to be neigh impossible to convince one of the other. Point 1. I never said it’s the cause of LESS teaming. People who like teaming do. People who don’t, don’t. I’ve also never advocated for “forcing” one to do the other. The ability of every person to achieve soft cap levels of defense is the result cause of the current power levels. Some evidence. How did they make the incarnate content harder? Overall they raised the effectual soft cap, which would indicate they saw an issue with the accessibility of such soft cap. They did other things but this example is a global example thus more substantiated. Most balance attempts of mobs has largely been to address defense, post softcap knowledge and accessibility. Auto hit powers, large -def debuffs for example. Again this points to an underlying understanding of the devs, that defense is a bit of an issue. point 2. Altering the hard cap wouldn’t diminish the value of IOs. It wouldn’t lower their numbers. It wouldn’t adversely affect those who do not achieve the current soft cap for whatever their reasons might be. It wouldn’t reduce your power in an overly drastic way. It would open more build variability all the way from pool power selections to incarnates. Which would result in a minor amount of less power. Minor is good. Balance is very nuanced. Adjustments to achieve such nuance should be of the same type. Point 3. The consideration is shown in the minor ness of it. I haven't avoided criticism. I have dismissed dismissive people. I have spent much of my personal time trying to reply to all that have brought up criticism. Avoiding would be ignoring. Minor is not pointless minor is good. How can it be minor if it’s hugely controversial? How can it be hugely controversial if it’s minor? I am in the camp of its minor. Others are in the camp of hugely. If it was hugely and hugely then that would be an issue. If it was minor and minor then it would be a waste of time. Since it’s both hugely and minor then it leads me to believe it’s in the right direction.

I respect this. I do know the difference between a hard cap and soft cap. Right now the hard cap is meaningless in terms of mitigation and therefore we refer to the soft cap in relation to defense as opposed to the hard cap of resistance. The purpose of the nerf would be to combat power creep. I related this nerf to my enjoyment of teaming for one reason. Power creep of a soloist doesn’t really affect other people’s play experience. Other than farming providing more resources for the economy, which I view as a positive effect of solo power creep. As it has been mentioned by others, when one of these players capable of +4x8 solo joins a team, it now affects up to 7 other people. It’s not actually the soloists ability to do this that is the most detrimental. It’s the speed at which they can do it. @Luminara could solo GMs in 2005. I would wager they couldn’t do it anywhere close to as fast as a team could. The issue isn’t really the ability, the issue is the speed. You’re a buzzsaw, a flurry of claws and brimstone and I image curse words. You’re capable of clearing missions just as quick, if not quicker, than an average team. Possibly even at a higher difficulty than that average team is capable of. You probably don’t join average teams very often, but if you did, you would leave nothing for that poor average controller or mastermind to do. It’s simply to slow you down Bill. There have been many avenues of power creep through the years. Inherent stamina, no prerequisite for travel powers are examples. Removing inherent stamina wouldn’t overly nerf you, it would cause sacrifices in power selections which would slow you down a bit. If you’re capped at 40 or 45% defense, maybe you will take darkest night for some -ToHit to “reach” your previous levels. It’s a power choice that costs you a different choice. It just slows you down. It slows you down for the sake of balance. It also has zero to little effect on people not at your level of play. Your level is the exception, not the norm.

I have never tried to force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do ie team. Chances are if your friends are struggling to solo because of their build, and not for outside of game reasons, then they are not at the soft cap and wouldn’t be affected at all by placing a hard cap. These are actually the people I’m trying to protect with a defense hard cap. Raising the difficulty of mobs, to meet us more advanced players desire for challenge, adversely affects these exact players. Lowering the ceiling only affects those who can reach it. Raising the floor affects all. 40% defense hard cap doesn’t affect the base game. It affects the top tier. It also doesn’t make teaming mandatory.

Did I though? I notice you didn’t quote anything to support this accusation. You yourself “check and mated” my supposed attempt to force people to team with several examples of how you wouldn’t be forced to team. You have provided me factual defense of such non factual accusations. Try providing a fact that would actually support your accusations of “forced teaming”. We can start fresh. How would a 40% hard cap on defense result in forced teaming? Lay out your facts in support of YOUR opinion that this would be a result and I’ll lay out MY facts in defense of this not being a result.

Your mm is an excellent example of balance. It can do things just not over do things. Most of your fears and concerns have not been advocated for. It’s just been people putting words into other people’s mouths. Any “adjustment” to the game will affect solo players as well. We are all playing the same game with the same rules.

I do realize it would affect defensive powersets more heavily than resistant. Possibly resistant power sets would over take the top spot for durability. Somebody will always be at the top, it’s simply a matter of by how much. I don’t think a defense tank would become worse than a resist scrapper. A tanker at 90% resistance still eats debuffs and mezes. Certain mobs will still mez you even if your at 90% resistance. You may resist the -resist debuffs but you still take them and they will get through eventually. A blaster at 45% defense has a 5% chance of getting hit by a debuff or mez. 5% is an extremely small chance when the blaster can defeat all the mobs in 10s or less. Council can put out a decent amount of -def, but if they can’t apply that debuff, then they become the bug on a windshield they currently are. You can over slot def to negate any -def debuff that does manage to land. Resistance resists -resistance but you can’t overslot resistance to completely avoid the debuff. Defense is already disproportionately stronger. To try to compensate for this they have been giving mobs auto hit powers. These already play unfairly with defense. The resist toon was already going to be hit by it. I don’t think there is an enemy faction without some form of debuff. These mobs would become more difficult if they could just land some of them. They wouldn’t require a ton of volunteer dev resources to rebalance them. Upon further thought. I am fairly certain if you’re at 90% res and take some -res debuff, you could pop unstoppable or some similar “overcapping” power and push back up to 90. Don’t quote me on that. I believe the same could be done with a defense toon if they had a hard cap. The hard cap keeps you from exceeding that level of performance but it doesn’t actually keep you from “artificially” acquiring more. So in theory an ice scrapper with a hard cap of 40% def could take a -def debuff and pop energy absorption and get back up to 40% even with the debuff. I have no idea if this is how it works it’s purely hypothetical. I just have a foggy recollection of somebody explaining how having “more than” the hard cap of resistance actually comes into play once you’ve been hit with a debuff.

You got me. No where in there did I mention homogenization. I also didn’t say anything about forcing people to team. Thank you for quoting me so I didn’t have to go back and see if I miss spoke. Thanks again for reminding us all how you could solo GMs in 2005 without IOs. It boggles my mind how you provide examples of work arounds and toon strength without IOs, and in the next breath, accuse me of trying to force people into something “for my personal enjoyment”. Maybe I provide some personal info to lead into the idea, but from all of your examples how is it not clear that that is not my goal? You yourself have demonstrated no less than three times how that would not be the end result. And yet you still react as though it were.

I simply meant it’s not a game that is primarily designed as a solo game. I agree that being able to solo is a great feature of the game. I have had three kids since the snap, greatly altering my in game presence so I greatly appreciate the soloability.

I find your position comical considering you build tanks for “max survival”. A max survival tank with paltry offense is about as useful as a full support empath with only their tier 1 attack in today’s current game. People do tend to overreact any time a nerf is mentioned.

As @Luminara has pointed out with several work arounds for the defense hard cap, your solo performance wouldn’t take nearly as much of a hit as your portray

Again your disagreement is support for exactly the goal. The goal isn’t to neuter people. Everytime you list a method of getting around the defense hard cap you’re giving examples of how minor of a nerf it would actually be. That is the goal. Minor nerf. You take diamagnetic to artificially achieve soft cap, you don’t get reactive or degenerative. Minor drop in performance. At the same time it limits your godliness once exemplared below level 45 unless you have a non incarnate form of -ToHit. Which there are plenty. I agree that buffing ToHit would disproportionately punish defensive sets. Nerfing the defense hard cap just so happens to be the most abused form of damage mitigation. Also, as you have pointed out multiple times, it’s a nerf that can be worked around resulting in really only a minor nerf. I appreciate that regardless of your intent. It’s evidence from the other side of the fence that people’s over exaggerations of the proposal are just that, over exaggerations.

My point and goals exactly. Characters are homogenized already. I know you’re trying to disagree with my proposal but your words are actually supporting of the purpose of the defense hard cap. To promote different levels of power and less homogenization.