Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR) question

[SuperPlyx]

Having a discussion with someone and the question was whether or not DDR could be added or it has to be build into the powerset.

I thought it had to be built in ala Energy Aura. But maybe I am missing something. 

 

I tried some searches on the Wiki but could not find a decent article discussing it.

 

[Dark Dove]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but you can get some DDR through the Ageless Radial path of incarnate powers.

[Caulderone]

Did you mean could the Devs add it?  Or, did you mean, is there any way for a player to add it?

 

The 1st.  If they decided to, I'm sure it is technically possible.

 

If the 2nd, then no.  Your powerset either has it or doesn't, there are no IOs or pools or anything that adds it.

 

edit:  As noted above, Ageless Radial does add some for anyone who takes it (level 45+ only).

Edited August 4, 2021 by Caulderone

[SuperPlyx]

Yes, the question was could a player add it. And thanks for the answers!

 

[Doomguide2005]

51 minutes ago, SuperPlyx said:

Yes, the question was could a player add it. And thanks for the answers!

 

I'd just be wary of precisely what was meant by "added".  As noted above outside of Ageless Radial no you can't add it to a set that has none to start with.  Even with sets that do contain powers that provide DDR you would still need to 'add' those power(s) to your build and furthermore with something like SR you can 'add' to the base amount by using defense enhancements to those power(s) to increase the amount of DDR the character has.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Doomguide2005
Because I can never seem to type something right the first time

[Riverdusk]

There is also one buff power (outside incarnate) that can add DDR to the whole team and that is controller's dark affinity Fade power.  Not sure there are any others.

 

Edited out other part as just noticed Doomguide covered that.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Riverdusk

[Psyonico]

Shield Defense's Grant Cover also provides team DDR.

[Doomguide2005]

     And wow.

     Probably knew about Grant Cover at one point but the smallish radius and smaller (unenhanceable) buff make it harder to stack up to crazy values --> SR amounts would take 7 scrappers and scrappers aren't exactly the poster children of force multiplication.

     

     Fade though has the potential to get seriously leveraged to cap DDR teamwide.  Just need to keep, ideally, 3 Fade continuously active on the team while maintaining the soft or Incarnate cap and away you go.

     Anyone done 8 × Fire/Dark controllers yet?

 

[ZorkNemesis]

6 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Shield Defense's Grant Cover also provides team DDR.

 

Does that provide DDR to everyone affected or just the user?  I know it's worth having for the user alone.

[Psyonico]

11 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

 

Does that provide DDR to everyone affected or just the user?  I know it's worth having for the user alone.

It affects the team

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_defense.shield_defense.grant_cover&at=tanker

 

 

[arcane]

This makes me think: Force Field buffs should get DDR. A rare and in demand buff for a set that needs help standing out.

[Pzn]

15 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Probably knew about Grant Cover at one point but the smallish radius and smaller (unenhanceable) buff make it harder to stack up to crazy values

Not sure if you were aware but tanker's 50% AoE bonus applies to grant cover.  At 22.5 feet it's a little easier to cover your team.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Pzn

[roleki]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

This makes me think: Force Field buffs should get DDR. A rare and in demand buff for a set that needs help standing out.

 

Considering +Def is pretty much all FF does, it's kind of ridiculous that it DOESN'T do DDR, but something something cottages.  

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Pzn said:

Not sure if you were aware but tanker's 50% AoE bonus applies to grant cover.  At 22.5 feet it's a little easier to cover your team.

    Wasn't specifically aware but it makes sense.  Plus the Tanker would not only be a larger AoE but the DDR buff is itself also larger.  And every bit helps certainly but it's still *cough* just a melee set and like scrappers you'd need a bunch of Tankers hanging tight to really leverage it well, they aren't really force multipliers the way a team of Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers etc. are either which is where my "RO" brain was headed.  But yeah given Shield already has one of the stronger base amounts a pack of Shield (Tankers, Brutes and Scrappers) should certainly cap their collective DDRs rather readily.   Probably something my fellow RO players have done with Shield already.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

 

Considering +Def is pretty much all FF does, it's kind of ridiculous that it DOESN'T do DDR, but something something cottages.  

Someone needs to let the cottage dwellers know that indoor plumbing is a good thing 😉

[Sailboat]

Good thing you can't add DDR to every character.  The defense-based powersets need something to cling to, poor things.

[Doomguide2005]

13 minutes ago, Sailboat said:

Good thing you can't add DDR to every character.  The defense-based powersets need something to cling to, poor things.

🙂 I'm good and willing to share!  Ya still got to get there first 😜

 

So sayeth GRETA-001 domesticated scrapper (Claws/SR)

[Doomguide2005]

On 8/6/2021 at 3:54 PM, Doomguide2005 said:

Someone needs to let the cottage dwellers know that indoor plumbing is a good thing 😉

     Just read the "cottage rule" entry in the HCwiki to jog the ole brain cells a bit and like many 'rules" it has a hefty bit of room for interpretation.  In this case you would need to convince a design team that you're not altering the core functionality of the power, i.e. providing +defense but adding a secondary effect to the power, i.e. debuff resistance

 

     I do think they would need to be extremely careful adding DDR buff powers into the game.

[TheZag]

You also need to convince the current team that the rule, made by a team from a canceled game with no connection to the new team, is a rule that should be followed when the old team said they would break the rule if needed.

 

There was a fairly lengthy discussion about it.  I prefer to think of it as the cottage advice instead of the cottage rule.

 

And that idea about force field having some DDR sounds like something that could give the set a nice facelift.

[Gigajoule]

I also think FF getting some +DDR would be good. I do think they need something.

 

And I don't think anyone is being serious in bringing up the cottage rule, but, just in case, it would not violate the cottage rule to add +DDR as a secondary effect on Force Field powers. The cottage rule explicitly allows for changes to a power's secondary effects so long as the primary effect is still more or less the same, and FF buffs would still primarily be Defense buffs, just with a little DDR to sweeten the pot.

[Sovera]

Defense debuffs sucks the joy out of playing. When a mob is chain firing attacks that take defense down until the negatives it is a death sentence. And it's also counter-intuitive that *defense* debuffing hardly bothers *defense* armors, while *defense* debuffing will positively murder *resistance* armors. Somehow you'd think that defense armors would be fearful of their defense being stripped, but it's resistance armors sitting at 90% who are straight up murdered.

 

At the very least it ought to stop at 0% and not go into the negatives.

[Vengeful Arrow]

4 minutes ago, Sovera said:

At the very least it ought to stop at 0% and not go into the negatives.

I think this is the key.  I don't really care about the debuffing, but leave at 0. I worked hard to barely get my corruptor to 45%. At least leave me back where I started...not -30%. Same with resistance debuffs. You get to the cap on MAYBE 2 types and then you end up getting to -20. Don't make debuffs trivial, but also don't debuff deep into negatives from a high starting point. 

[Shred Monkey]

There is, however a way to protect from cascading DDR.  And this is to over-enhance defenses.  If you have 60% defense, that is a full 15% above softcap.  This means you can get hit by a -15% defense debuff and still be at the softcap.  Since to get debuffed, you have to get hit, this is usually enough to keep your non-DDR toons from going into a full defense cascade against most enemies.  It's pretty impractical to build for 60% solo defense except on the sets that actually already have some DDR, but on teams, it's pretty normal to see 60+ defense numbers full time.

 

21 minutes ago, Sovera said:

At the very least it ought to stop at 0% and not go into the negatives.

 

I'd just go as far as to say defense debuffs just shouldn't stack.  This would be a good balance performance adjustment for defense vs resistance sets.  

[Caulderone]

Mask of Vitation from Carney Ring Mistresses is -50% Base Defense.

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=carnival.carnival_ring_mistress_inherent.mask_of_vitiation&at=boss_grunt

 

And, it is very common to see two of the Mistresses in a large spawn.  If the first one hits you, the second on is going to, too.  Welcome to -100% Base Defense.

 

I've always found that to be utterly, ludicrously ridiculousness.

 

Any tweaks and improvements to the -Def system would be welcome, for sure.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Caulderone

[Doomguide2005]

     Few thoughts keeping in mind I don't necessarily outright disagree with some of the last few posts but:

• Getting a defense set to high or capped resistance without external help is a whole lot harder than getting a resist set to the defense caps (at least to a position and/or couple types, nevermind more positions or types).  
• Stopping at zero really buggers a whole lot of meaningful defdebuffs when you're looking at non-set builds, thinking primarily of SO builds.  The game like it or not was designed (balanced?) with this debuffing well below zero as a potential outcome vs SOs ... changing something along these lines is a very messy change to overall balance.
• Things like the Mask of Vitiation are the outliers.  I wouldn't be in hurry to change defdebuffing in general but looking at the Mask for potential tweaking.