Most important damage type?

[kcfalcon]

I really appreciate all the input and expertise here!  After digesting tons of info, one thing I thought it might help me to know as I finalize my choice of secondary (armor)...  What damage types are the most important to have resistance/defense for?  In other words, if I'm going to have a "hole" is it better to have it with some damage types instead of others?  Of course, I assume that smashing and lethal are obviously important, but what about after that?

[Lines]

Smashing, Lethal and Energy make up the vast majority of damage that will be thrown your way.

 

I think those three account for ~90% of all enemy attacks.

[Snarky]

energy is dominant in incarnate. (this is not scientific, but there is a lot)  psi is also used in late game.  psi is hard to cover.  i am running dark armor, a resist heavy set w/ a great heal.  my current build i have tons of resists, but my energy is only 50%.  i may tweak this but it prob will not go much higher. 

 

The thing with Dark is it has tons of mitigation as well as pure armor.  -tohit debuff, a aoe confuse, an aoe fear, oh, and it is pure stealth unless you are in PBAoE of it.  I pull what I want when I want.  Except Ritki drones.  grr.

 

I mention all of Dark's oddness to point out that every set is built to be balanced in different ways.  You need to learn the art of a set.  No one set is the set.  Although Invul comes close it has a Psi hole you can drive an imaginary tank through.

 

Pick a theme and love it.

[Hew]

13 minutes ago, Lines said:

Smashing, Lethal and Energy make up the vast majority of damage that will be thrown your way.

 

I think those three account for ~90% of all enemy attacks.

Fire is up there too, especially if you go anywhere near farms, or if you deal with high end clockwork which have these stupid built in flamethrowers, or CoT, which have the demons. But def SLE.

 

There are two ways to deal with it; defense, and resist. Defense can go ranged/aoe/melee that can be very effective on character build and complements to resist type, used either to fill holes or strengthen existing sets.

 

Sets like shield, bio, energy have a mixed bag of things in their arsenal, so slotting them up can be tricky. For sure, hybrid sets never come out looking the set, no matter who slots them.

 

In resist armors,  you have things that are insane like elec and rad which can be tricked out for max resists across a bunch of flavors of damage. Doing so leaves you with less defense, so what defense you DO pick up may need some thinking to resolve.

[kcfalcon]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I mention all of Dark's oddness to point out that every set is built to be balanced in different ways.  You need to learn the art of a set.  No one set is the set.  Although Invul comes close it has a Psi hole you can drive an imaginary tank through.

 

Pick a theme and love it.

Well said!   And thanks everyone for clarifying!

One follow-up question...which would be more common--psionic or toxic?  or would they be about the same?

[Gulbasaur]

15 minutes ago, kcfalcon said:

One follow-up question...which would be more common--psionic or toxic?  or would they be about the same?

It depends on what and where you play, really. Redside and goldside hit you hard and early with psi damage from widows and seers.

 

On my main, I've got psi resistance through the roof but almost no toxic damage resistance and I would say that toxic seems to come up a lot less often, but when it does come up it does so hard and fast.

[DSorrow]

Damage type distribution, courtesy of @Galaxy Brain:

 

On 11/22/2020 at 10:58 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

Speaking of personal experience, Smash, Lethal and Energy are used by most enemy groups. Fire and especially Negative and Psychic are more tied to specific enemy groups and usually you either face a lot of them at once or pitiful amounts as secondary effects. Toxic and Cold are also like this, but even less common to face in large amounts.

[kcfalcon]

5 minutes ago, DSorrow said:

Damage type distribution, courtesy of @Galaxy Brain:

 

Speaking of personal experience, Smash, Lethal and Energy are used by most enemy groups. Fire and especially Negative and Psychic are more tied to specific enemy groups and usually you either face a lot of them at once or pitiful amounts as secondary effects. Toxic and Cold are also like this, but even less common to face in large amounts.

Wow, that chart really makes me rethink some things.  Looks like Invul's Psionic hole (for example) maybe isn't so bad after all!

[Parabola]

That damage distribution doesn't tell the whole story though. The only damage that matters is the damage that actually has a chance of killing you. 1 million points of s/l delivered over 1 hour in tiny chunks isn't as dangerous as a thousand points of psy delivered in a single hit (to give a grossly exaggerated example). There is a huge amount of s/l damage in the game but I don't see it as being as dangerous as some of the more exotic types.

 

S/l is also easy to manage for the most part, extra protection is common in io's and powers and it doesn't come with much in the way of debuffs. The exotic damage types tend to be much harder to deal with without native protection. If I'm building tough I start with something like dark armour or particularly rad armour and layer on protection of various kinds. At the really sharp end, tanking 4/8 rularuu, carnies or arachnos etc, you have to also seriously worry about debuffs, they end up being probably more dangerous than the raw damage.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

Damage type distribution, courtesy of @Galaxy Brain:

 

Speaking of personal experience, Smash, Lethal and Energy are used by most enemy groups. Fire and especially Negative and Psychic are more tied to specific enemy groups and usually you either face a lot of them at once or pitiful amounts as secondary effects. Toxic and Cold are also like this, but even less common to face in large amounts.

Additionally keep in mind quite a few attacks have multiple types.  For example Fireball is both Fire and Smash.  Many of Energy Blasts attacks are both Energy and Smash.  And the game will use whichever defense is best i.e.  if a foe uses DM's Smite or Fireball you're already covered if your Smashing defense is capped.  Your Negative or Fire defenses won't matter (unless even higher and even then capped is well capped).

 

Know thy enemy and their powers especially if you fight them commonly.

Edited December 2, 2020 by Doomguide2005

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

Damage type distribution, courtesy of @Galaxy Brain:

 

Speaking of personal experience, Smash, Lethal and Energy are used by most enemy groups. Fire and especially Negative and Psychic are more tied to specific enemy groups and usually you either face a lot of them at once or pitiful amounts as secondary effects. Toxic and Cold are also like this, but even less common to face in large amounts.

That was done to simulate the distribution of damage, generally speaking. However, there are plenty of dual type attacks, so the numbers won't actually add up to 100%. @Galaxy Brain might have better numbers to share for this thread. 

[LiquidBandage]

6 hours ago, kcfalcon said:

In other words, if I'm going to have a "hole" is it better to have it with some damage types instead of others?

There is always going to be a hole. 

If this is for your Brute (the one without taunt), don't worry about it as someone else will be tanking. If this is for another character, there will always be a hole. It is exceedingly difficult to build a nigh invulnerable character. Instead, learn how to group with people that provide buffs. No tank stands alone (at least not for too long). Learn what damage types give you problems, pay attention to which mobs do that type of damage then prioritize CCing/killing those mobs first. Learn how to corner pull to group mobs up so they can die faster. Another part about being a good tank is learning how to play a support character that supports a tank (there is more than one way to do it). Then when you see someone doing that for your tank, let them know their efforts are appreciated. It is hard to see how buffs keep a tank from face planting when you aren't directly involved. 

[Riverdusk]

Energy in particular you can also plug with a nice temp power from P2W called "Kinetic Dampener"  It gives 20-30% energy resistance for up to an hour at a time as a toggle.    Since it is a toggle you can save it for particular situations and make it last quite a long time if you need.  It also happens to give 12-14% s/l defense.  Kind of the ideal temp for a dark armor.  Not super cheap at 1 million an hour, but cheaper than the amps which at level 50 cost 2.5 million an hour and aren't on/off controllable. ( although you can get that as well for another 7.5% res to all if you want).

Edited December 2, 2020 by Riverdusk

[Galaxy Brain]

The damage type distribution does end up being about what I posted in that chart.... but in reality when it comes to S/L attacks it's more like 80% SL damage and everything else is crammed in the last 20% due to multi-type attacks generally having a S or L component and SL resists and Defenses almost always being paired.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

Energy in particular you can also plug with a nice temp power from P2W called "Kinetic Dampener"  It gives 20-30% energy resistance for up to an hour at a time as a toggle.    Since it is a toggle you can save it for particular situations and make it last quite a long time if you need.  It also happens to give 12-14% s/l defense.  Kind of the ideal temp for a dark armor.  Not super cheap at 1 million an hour, but cheaper than the amps which at level 50 cost 2.5 million an hour and aren't on/off controllable. ( although you can get that as well for another 7.5% res to all if you want).

i had no idea, and since i just started maining a dark as a badger i am running to p2w right now lol

[Yomo Kimyata]

Keep in mind that building S/L defense/resist is probably easiest and cheapest in terms of builds.  Also, if you are planning to team at all, most support characters would be most likely to give you S/L help, so if you plan on being team oriented you can cheat a little and focus instead on other types.  IMO.