Understanding Incarnate Abilities for Defense Caps

[Black Orchestra]

Hi I recently downloaded Mids and have started to get to really fine tuning my Hero (BEAM/DEV) and I have question about Incarnate slotting. I'm trying to cap my defense at 45% for smashing, lethal and range. I picked Agility Core Paragon for my Alpha slot and Vorpal Radial Final Judgement for my Judgement slot. With Scorpion Shield, Tough, and Weave Mid's tells me that my Smashing and Lethal are already at 46.6%. All I have left to work on is getting my Range Defense beyond the current 34.2%. My question is am I reading this right? Or as a BEAM/DEV Blaster should I be focusing on something different? Also If I exemplar down to lower levels to help friends with missions do I lose those incarnate slots?

[Nemu]

Turn vorpal off. The defense bonus it gives last only 10 seconds so it's not dependable.

 

S/L is easier to softcap with scorpion shield especially if you use both defense uniques and are able to fit maneuvers and weave along with either hover or combat jumping into your build. Getting ranged defense up there while keeping the s/l softcap takes a lot more work. You will be investing in thunderstrike set IOs and the blaster ATOs heavily and most likely will dip into blessing of the zephr sets as well, and that will cut into how much recharge bonuses you can stack.

 

If you don't plan on being in melee range at all as /dev normally doesn't then the alternative is to go with a resist shield and focus purely on ranged defense. That's the way people that avoid melee typically go and it does offer better survival than just defense alone. The pool of choice for pure ranged play is fire because of  bonfire with the KB to KD proc.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Nemu

[Doc Ranger]

Paragon Wiki says defense caps for Blaster is +175% at 50. When did it change to 45%?

[Troo]

soft cap vs hard cap?

 

soft cap being the effective cap.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Troo

[Doc Ranger]

What is the difference between soft and hard caps?

I have a toon that I am planning to have Scorpion Shield on that gives 59% S/L Def. He also has 50% S/L Resist. Should I change Scorpion Shield to a Resist based shield? This would take my S/L Defense to 37% and put me over the S/L Resist cap to somewhere over 80%.

 

Which would be more beneficial?

Edited April 15, 2020 by Doc Ranger

[metacore]

Softcap is where you don't get any benefit by going over whereas hardcap you can't go over.

 

For non-incarnate foes 45% def softcap is the same as 85% or even 175% def. Foes always have a 5% chance to hit.

Note that foes with -def or that are a higher con to you (yellow, orange, etc) can hit you easier.

 

For incarnate the softcap is 59% I believe.

[Doomguide2005]

 

On Paragon Wiki search for an article called Attack Mechanics.  It will cover this topic quite thoroughly.

 

Basically an even level minion has a 50% base chance to hit you.  And no matter how badly debuffed it becomes it will always have at least a 5% final chance to hit you and no matter how badly you get debuffed or the critter gets buffed they will never have better than a 95% to hit you. --> 50 - 45 = 5.  

 

But after that the complications start in terms of figuring out exactly why that foe actually landed his attack.  After you take all the to hit and defense buffs and debuffs into account you get a value and that value will be either raised to at least 5 or lowered to no higher than 95.  That value now has accuracy mods applied.  

 

The foes relative level and rank also play a role in the final chance to hit usually an accuracy modifier but can involve to hit modifiers as level differences go above +5 or below 0.  These accuracy mods based on rank and level are why that red con Lt and +4 level AV hit more often than 5% even when you are at or beyond the defense soft cap.

 

Then there's both Beginner's Luck and the Streak Breaker as other complications on top of it all.