How to combat cascading defense failure?

[selfunconsciousness]

Hi! 
 

I’m curious if there’s a way to combat CDF in a high defense build with no defense debuff resistance baked into the secondary. Do you just pile more defense on top of the soft cap or is there a way to achieve higher resistance to this problem through IO sets?

 

Thank you for your help. 

[Ironscarlet]

I  do not know of any sets but what you can do is over do def to 60% ish or build around using ageless radical destiny incarnate and get 45%ish debuff resistance to all including def  or a combo of both. Another option is to make friends with a shield user with Grant Cover. Its just hard to tell what you can do with out knowing your combo or build. For example you could also pick up shadow meld to help.

 

What I am curious anyone know of a way to display def in combat with out looking at attribute screen?

Edited March 23, 2020 by Ironscarlet

[Riverdusk]

1 hour ago, Ironscarlet said:

I  do not know of any sets but what you can do is over do def to 60% ish or build around using ageless radical destiny incarnate and get 45%ish debuff resistance to all including def  or a combo of both. Another option is to make friends with a shield user with Grant Cover. Its just hard to tell what you can do with out knowing your combo or build. For example you could also pick up shadow meld to help.

 

What I am curious anyone know of a way to display def in combat with out looking at attribute screen?

You can right click on anything in the combat attributes window and select "monitor".  It will then keep it on your screen to view.  You can monitor up to 10 attributes.

[Ironscarlet]

2 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

You can right click on anything in the combat attributes window and select "monitor".  It will then keep it on your screen to view.  You can monitor up to 10 attributes.

awesome thx

[Hopeling]

In short, no, there's no good way to never get cascaded. You just have to deal with it.

 

If you don't have DDR, then you're playing something other than /SR, so you have tools in your secondary besides defense, and you combat it with those. You can also use purple inspirations as ablative armor against debuffs, and if things get out of hand, moving out of range for a few seconds until debuffs fall off isn't a terrible idea.

 

If it's only certain enemies that debuff you (like the Banished Pantheon guys with radiation powers), you disable and kill them first.

[Sovera]

The only thing you can do is go over the softcap by a good chunk and then kill fast. The soft remains 45%, but if the first hit takes a 7% off then you're going to be hit more and lose more and more defense.

 

But if you are at 45% and eat an insp and shoot to 57%, and then get hit and lose 7% then you are still at 50% and still softcapped.

 

This is how I combat it. A defense buffer and then kill fast. Again, if every hit takes a chunk of 7%, then quickly killing all minions and lieutenants ensures less 7% strikes landing.

 

As Hopeling mentioned moving out of range is a definite strategy. Once we lost enough defense to be down to the middle 20s there is no point in staying there since we'll be insta gibbed by a spawn still large enough (the 60% S/L resists, she does notheeng!). Hovering out of range is a DPS loss (lookit us talking like WoW raiders!) but staying in melee and be killed serves zero purpose. If I am in a team I just zoom out and then zoom back in right away to test if the mobs got distracted and started hitting someone else.

[SeraphimKensai]

Jousting. You jump in to attack, and then immediately jump out. This way you're able to do damage, but you mitigate most of the enemies melee attacks. 

 

As others have said building above defense softcap for your chosen content regular (45%) or incarnate (58.5%) allows you to absorb some hits. You can also pop purple Skittles or buy P2W defense buffs and base buffs to boost that defense.

 

If you're being debuffed that obviously drops and some debuffs have a range requirement to the caster such as radiation infection, so if you jump out of range it drops off and your teammates will thank you.

[selfunconsciousness]

This info is super helpful. Thank you. For context, I’m playing an Arachnos widow with def over softcap and running into this issue occasionally. I’m also building a staff/ninjitsu scrapper that will run into the same problem.  I didn’t know if adding more defense over softcap would be the best way to combat this in stats, and this has been helpful. Thank you. 

[Shred Monkey]

I monitor a few of my defense values and pop purples as soon as I see them defenses drop to get back up to 45+.   If i'm fighting something I know has a lot of -def, I might pop a purple as a preemptive measure before the fight.

 

Ageless Radial Epiphany in Destiny has a DDR as an option also.

 

Probably most effective, though is knowing your enemy and holding/stunning/destroying the debuffers ASAP helps.  For example with Banished Pantheon in DA, kill the "sorrow" enemies first and everything else becomes easy.

 

 

 

[Werner]

I'm mostly agreeing with others. Ageless offers DDR and may be the best choice in many cases. Also worth considering is Barrier, which offers a very big initial defense and resistance buff. Either fades with time, so kill your enemies quickly while prioritizing the debuffers. On my Katana/Dark Brute, I use Barrier then Dark Regeneration as my primary defense against severe defense debuffs, with Melee Core as my backup, leaning into the Brute's higher 90% resistance cap to try to survive without defense. Unless they're lethal or melee, in which case my primary defense is stacking Divine Avalanche. But it's slotted for defense over damage and stacks fast to well over 100% defense if needed. Being a smaller amount over the softcap may work OK for minor debuffing, but it'll only buy you a little bit of time against major debuffing. But a little bit of time may be all you need as long as you prioritize killing the debuffers. I haven't set it up on my current heroes, but in the old game I had target priority macros for my tab key based on which enemies needed to die first to keep me alive. In the absence of that, I try to sort it out quickly during the fight. (Edit: and on my Katana/Dark I monitor melee and energy defense, and pay close attention to them when fighting debuffers. An option would be to monitor base defense, as it'll turn red on the first debuff, hopefully catching your attention, particularly if you increase the font size.)

Edited March 23, 2020 by Werner

[Redlynne]

If you don't have debuff resistance ... you need to OVERCAP ... because you need MARGIN for when those debuffs leak through your defenses.  That way it takes longer for the onset of cascade failure.

[Frosticus]

it's all been mentioned - overcap, ageless/barrier, identifying key enemies, and def insp.

 

what will add is that +2  and higher tend to debuff quite a bit due to the purple patch. They can chew through any one of those measures pretty quickly. But if you layer in a couple of those techniques and also move around actively, you're generally fine. 

 

If you can no insp/temp/lore silver mantis then that is when I feel pretty good about my defense carrying over well to most situations. If you need to down purples against her, you likely will in many debuff scenarios.

[Ironscarlet]

1 hour ago, Frosticus said:

 

 

what will add is that +2  and higher tend to debuff quite a bit due to the purple patch. 

Just curious what is the purple patch?

[Frosticus]

1 hour ago, Ironscarlet said:

Just curious what is the purple patch?

it governs the interaction between level differences between you and your foes. 

 

 

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

[Call Me Awesome]

Remember there's some defense debuffs that are autohit, things like Earthquake and the Rad debuffs that those Crey minions use that can do a number on your defense no matter how high it is.

 

Cascading debuffs is just a fact of life, I've seen Cimeroans nuke my Invuln's defenses from 45% down to -30% and that's WITH 50% DDR.  Defense isn't a magical god mode, be aware of that and be ready to react to them by either kiting or popping inspirations.  Or, in the case of an Invuln vs Cimeroans just ignore it and punch them in the face; all those debuffing attacks are Lethal after all and you're hard capped resistance to it.

[Werner]

19 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Cascading debuffs is just a fact of life, I've seen Cimeroans nuke my Invuln's defenses from 45% down to -30% and that's WITH 50% DDR.  Defense isn't a magical god mode, be aware of that and be ready to react to them by either kiting or popping inspirations. 

Super Reflexes defense is close to a magical god mode defense in these terms. My build will have 94% DDR once complete. A 150% defense debuff like you mentioned is then just 9%,. That'll crack open my defenses and sting a bit, but only in incarnate content as I'll have 61% melee and 59% ranged/AoE defense. We'll see how it goes in practice, though, once the build is done. And of course Super Reflexes is somewhat lacking in resists and healing. Being a one-trick pony is a bad plan, even if that one trick is a really good trick. I buffed my resists to the extent I felt I could, and added Rebirth, but I still suspect my Katana/Dark Brute with no DDR at all will handle tough content better.

 

Granted we were talking about sets without DDR or with limited DDR, for whom cascading defense debuffs are indeed a fact of life, and there's no magical god mode defense.

19 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Or, in the case of an Invuln vs Cimeroans just ignore it and punch them in the face; all those debuffing attacks are Lethal after all and you're hard capped resistance to it.

Laughing at defense debuffs because you have 90% resistance is such a pleasure, and a good solution to the problem if you can pull it off. 🙂

Edited March 23, 2020 by Werner

[Doomguide2005]

Curious as to how much regen per second would you need to match your Dark Regeneration?

[Sarrate]

19 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Curious as to how much regen per second would you need to match your Dark Regeneration?

240 / (DarkRegenRecharge + DarkRegenActivation) = Regen (where 1.0 = 100%)

 

So if Dark Regen had a 10 sec recharge:

240 / (10 + 1.17) = 21.48 = 2,148% regen

 

Explanation:

It takes 240 seconds to go from 1 hp to full. So dividing that by the duration you want to heal to full in will give you the required regen amount. Practically, Dark Regen won't heal quite that much (you have to fire it early to account for reaction times, activation time, etc so it'll overheal). Theoretically, however, it takes an absurd amount of regen to match.

[Hyperstrike]

On 3/23/2020 at 12:00 AM, selfunconsciousness said:

Hi! 
 

I’m curious if there’s a way to combat CDF in a high defense build with no defense debuff resistance baked into the secondary. Do you just pile more defense on top of the soft cap or is there a way to achieve higher resistance to this problem through IO sets?

 

Thank you for your help. 

Someone else said it here.
There's no way to completely avoid CDF'ing now and then.
There's three ways to remove the fangs.

1: Ridiculously high defense (Over Incarnate Soft Cap.  Plus some.  The closer you get to Triple Digits, the better.)
2: Work on bumping your Resists and Heal/Regen.
3: Have access to something that can readily

 

strip out debuffs cast on you.

 

10 hours ago, Werner said:

Laughing at defense debuffs because you have 90% resistance is such a pleasure, and a good solution to the problem if you can pull it off. 🙂

Quote my Fire/Electric Tanks/Brutes and Kheldian. 

"Oh no!  My Defenses have been kicked down to negative three digits!  Whatever shall I do!  MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

[Murcielago]

Run, pop a purple, pop your T9 armor if you have it, add shadow meld to your build, kiss your butt goodbye.

[Zeraphia]

Or... better yet, my suggestion is to plan on dying. Take RotP + that random self rez, it's what my blasters do and everyone makes fun of me but I have a strategy planned solely around "suicide bombing"...

 

Well there goes any chance of someone from this forum inviting me to their Mo* tf runs.

[nihilii]

48 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Or... better yet, my suggestion is to plan on dying. Take RotP + that random self rez, it's what my blasters do and everyone makes fun of me but I have a strategy planned solely around "suicide bombing"...

 

Well there goes any chance of someone from this forum inviting me to their Mo* tf runs.

Return to Battle is probably my favorite CoH power, just for the universal use of it on all of my characters. Not only I don't fear death, I'm sometimes actively *looking forward* to it for that nice buffer of T3 insps.

[Werner]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Not only I don't fear death, I'm sometimes actively *looking forward* to it for that nice buffer of T3 insps.

I have been known to have been disappointed at having survived on my /Fire Armor. RotP is so pretty! And strong! <ducks>

[Nemu]

On 3/23/2020 at 9:24 AM, SeraphimKensai said:

Jousting. You jump in to attack, and then immediately jump out. This way you're able to do damage, but you mitigate most of the enemies melee attacks.

This.

 

Very few people practice the art of moving in this game. I see most people play city of statues and play with the same amount of intelligence that mob AI has. They stand still and either defeat the mob or get defeated.

 

Monitor your defenses, hop out of combat when you take a hit, duck behind a corner, kite, while you are doing all that you buy yourself time to using inspirations/godmode, wait for soft controls to recharge, or simply retreat. You stay still you are just going to get debuffed quicker and die quicker.

 

Worried about long animation times rooting you? Joust.

 

Getting debuffed? Move.

[Werner]

9 hours ago, Sarrate said:

10 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Curious as to how much regen per second would you need to match your Dark Regeneration?

<maths>...Practically, Dark Regen won't heal quite that much (you have to fire it early to account for reaction times, activation time, etc so it'll overheal). Theoretically, however, it takes an absurd amount of regen to match.

It's... uh-mazing! Yeah, it has its limitations. It's active. I'm typically firing it off at maybe around 1/2 to 1/3 of my hit points. If you're soloing a single hard target, you're not going to get a full heal, and occasionally you'll get no heal. (Dark Regen minion fodder is an option if you're willing to turn off your damage aura.) It requires that you hit your target. If you're to-hit debuffed you might miss every target even in a big crowd, something that happened to me once. But it's still such a nice heal, even with its limitations.

 

My normal approach to a large crowd of +4x8 debuffers - target a debuffer, jump in, Divine Avalanche, Gambler's Cut, Divine Avalanche, watch my defense like a hawk as I use my defensive chain, when the debuffs start to land, hit Barrier immediately, typically maybe five to fifteen seconds after jumping in. By the time it's up, I'll probably be in the red on defense and down to about 1/3 hit points. Hit Dark Regeneration. Now I'm back at full health with decent defense and 90% resistance, better off than when I started the fight. Ignore my defense going red again and just go to town with my offensive chain to kill debuffers until I start taking damage again, switch to defensive chain, be ready to hit Dark Regeneration again, might need to, might not, clean up the group. In a worst case scenario like being to-hit debuffed or slowed and unable to take down the debuffers, hit Melee Core when my resistance drops under 90%.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Werner