How important is a extra 3.2% Defence for a Scrapper?

[Logansan]

Back on live my Katana/Regen Scrapper build was considered to be a reasonably fair build, and when I recreated the character on Torch I didn't change much at all. Now that same build is considered not very good as all (due to not having soft capped Defence and Resistance).

 

So I decided to redo the build using all the well know tricks that people are aware of these days. Below are the results of three builds:

 

1) My original build from live with all but Calling the Wolf in Katana, all powers from Regeneration, Fly, Invisibility and Recall Friend.

2) New build with all but Calling the Wolf and Gambler's Cut in Katana, all powers from Regeneration, Super Jump & Combat Jumping, Maneuvers and Invisibility.

3) New build, same as above but switch out Maneuvers for Recall Friend.

 

Some notes:

Why do I take Invisibility on a Scrapper? - I intend to complete as many Flashback missions as I can and with a lot of them the ability to be invisible makes a huge difference.

Why take Recall Friend? - I sometimes duel-box with a second account and sometimes it best to leave the second character at the start of a mission until they are needed. It is also very useful on many Task-forces, especially when combined with Invisibility.

The first build didn't include of any the unique plus defence and resistance percentage IOs. Doing so adds a further 5.6% defence and 4.4% resistance across the board.

None of the builds include Hasten, as I never been a fan of it.

I would had preferred to keep Fly but I couldn't find a way to do so due to the maximum number of allowed Power Pools.

 

So if I drop Maneuvers I lose 3.2% across all defence but regain a power that I sometimes use. Will this make any noticeable difference to my survival at the top end at all?

 

 

[Erratic1]

Depends on how much  Defense you already have.

 

Even level mobs have a 50% chance to hit you. Going from 0% Defense to 3% defense reduces the damage you take over time by 6%. By contrast, if you were at 40% Defense then going to 43% means you're taking 70% of the damage over time you otherwise would have taken. In short, the closer you get to the soft cap of 45% the better off your life will be. Still, most people shoot to get to Defense cap by using IOs rather than taking every single Defense granting power--enhancement slots are plentiful, power slots in somewhat shorter supply. Even if your armor set is not defensive, you can get a long way by accumulating IO set bonuses.

 

That all said, the indicated endurance usage does not look particularly high. If going with Invisibility, Combat Jumping, Maneuvers etc. fits a theme for you, go for it. 

[Murcielago]

The difference between 49% and 52% defense is negligible outside of incarnate and enemy groups with high to-hit e.g. elite resistance. Once you are past 45% anything over that amount will net you exponentially diminishing returns.

[Call Me Awesome]

1 hour ago, Murcielago said:

The difference between 49% and 52% defense is negligible outside of incarnate and enemy groups with high to-hit e.g. elite resistance. Once you are past 45% anything over that amount will net you exponentially diminishing returns.

Actually once you hit 45% defense more is for all intents and purposes pointless except against Incarnate foes.  Theoretically it provides a buffer against defense debuffs, practically however if you get hit by a debuff it will strip enough defense that 3% won't matter.  This is the curse of sets without debuff resistance; once they start hitting they tend to keep hitting and strip your defense.

 

Of the builds above #3 is your best choice defensively.  I tend to slot Kinetic Combat sets into single target attacks for the S/L defense and that chance for knockdown hits fairly reliably to put a mob on it's butt for a few seconds.

[Logansan]

Thanks for the advice all, at this stage I'm going to respec into build #3 above and see how it goes.

[Sailboat]

Pedantic nitpick:  you can't softcap Resistance.  Resistance has a hard cap.  Defense does too, actually, but it's so high it literally doesn't affect combat and it would be prohibitively difficult to approach it (with, of course, no corresponding advantage to doing so).  So people use the term "soft cap" for Defense, but it's not really applicable to discussions of other types of defensive powers.

[Call Me Awesome]

8 hours ago, Sailboat said:

Pedantic nitpick:  you can't softcap Resistance.  Resistance has a hard cap.  Defense does too, actually, but it's so high it literally doesn't affect combat and it would be prohibitively difficult to approach it (with, of course, no corresponding advantage to doing so).  So people use the term "soft cap" for Defense, but it's not really applicable to discussions of other types of defensive powers.

True, outside of someone hitting the Barrier Destiny Incarnate power you'll never see the defense hard cap.  The RESISTANCE hard cap is 90% for Tankers & Brutes, 85% for Keldians and 75% for everyone else as I recall.

[Seigmoraig]

3.2% might sound small on paper, but in reality since the Defence softcap is 45%, 3.2% is actually 7.1% of the total amound of +def you need to attain the cap so it's a bit bigger than it might seem. Maneuvers is also a place where you can put Defence IO sets which you are really lacking in Regen, Luck of the Gambler, Reactive Defence and Shield Wall all have some fantastic frankenslots you can drop into Maneuvers.
Personally, I would drop Revive instead of Maneuvers to pick up Recall Friend. You can get a Revive power from the Pay2Win vendor for 1mill that is only slightly worse than the one from Regen: no 15 sec invul but you can "strategically die" so that you won't need that invul anyways if you don't rez in the middle of a spawn.

[Shred Monkey]

If you use stealth instead of invisibility and add a +stealth IO to sprint, that gives you full invis when both are toggled on.  Perhaps that gives you the extra power slot you're looking for.

[Roderick]

On 10/28/2019 at 6:22 AM, Shred Monkey said:

If you use stealth instead of invisibility and add a +stealth IO to sprint, that gives you full invis when both are toggled on.  Perhaps that gives you the extra power slot you're looking for.

Or you can drop both Stealth and Invisibility from the build and add Super Speed (if you don't already have it), freeing up 1-2 power picks. Then either put Celerity: Stealth in Sprint so that you have full invisibility when both are on, or just put the Stealth IO into Super Speed so that you've got a single Invisibility power.