Def vs Res

[Erratic1]

8 minutes ago, Werner said:

I'd argue that there is such a thing, even if I haven't heard it called that, or even the mechanics mentioned often, probably because resistance debuffs are so rare compared to defense debuffs.

 

Let's say you have 45% defense and no resistance and 20 even level minions beating on you with an attack that does 100 points of damage and a 5% defense debuff. In the first round, one minion hits for 100 points of damage and you're at 40% defense. In the second round, two hit for 200 points of damage and you're at 30% defense. In the third round, four hit for 400 points of damage and you're at 10% defense. With every round of attacks, you're taking twice as much damage due to cascading defense failure.

 

Now let's say you instead have 90% resistance and no defense and 10 enemies beating on you with an attack that does 100 points of damage and a 10% resistance debuff. Resistance resists resistible resistance debuffs, so in the first round, all 10 hit for a raw 1000 points of damage and 100% resistance debuff, but both are resisted 90%, so you actually take 100 points of damage and a 10% debuff, and now you're at 80% resistance. Next round they all hit again, but now you take 200 points of damage and a 20% debuff, and you end up at 60% resistance. Next round they all hit again, but now you take 400 points of damage and a 40% debuff, and you're at 20% resistance. With every round of attacks, you're taking twice as much damage due to cascading resistance failure.

 

A little oversimplified, but that's the idea.

 

 

In the first scenario you have five guys and in the second you have ten. Moreover in the second scenario, even without additional defenses, mobs have an inherent chance to miss so it is unlikely all 10 hit to begin with.

 

Doesn't seem apples to apples...more apples to squids.

[Werner]

On 10/26/2021 at 12:16 PM, Erratic1 said:

In the first scenario you have five guys and in the second you have ten. Moreover in the second scenario, even without additional defenses, mobs have an inherent chance to miss so it is unlikely all 10 hit to begin with.

 

Doesn't seem apples to apples...more apples to squids.

The point was that both defense and resistance suffer from cascading failure. It was not my intent to imply that the two situations were 100% equivalent or that defense and resistance are equivalent.

 

Edit: And it seems my point was wrong. Resistance debuffs are resisted at the original, undebuffed resistance, and thus there's really no such thing as cascading resistance failure. My apologies.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Werner

[Bill Z Bubba]

28 minutes ago, Werner said:

I have to wonder if I'd have more fun most of the time with Shield/Energy.

 

Solo it's awesome. On teams, there's sooooo much corpse blasting.

[Hyperstrike]

18 hours ago, ZemX said:

On my Rad tanker, I eventually gave up on bothering much with defense.  But Rad already layers absorb, healing, and resistance and that's good in all cases I've found except when I am surrounded by angry, buffed, Cimerorans with no access to Incarnates to keep defense up (level 44 challenge).  Aside from that, I haven't needed defense with this build.

 

I'm still trying to find a defense-based tanker I like enough to play to 50.  I generally think building resistance onto a defense set is better than building defense on a resistance set because of DDR.   Obviously if you can rely on Incarnate abilities for it, that's different, but I exemplar often enough I can't rely on it in general.

 

This.  In my early testing with Rad, I tried going the "build for Defense" route and it worked up until I started hitting things with significant -Def.
At that point, Arachnos and the like were just insta-devastating me.

"One hit, two hits, three hits, FLOOR!"

Basically what was happening is, because Rad is a Res-centric set, it has no native DDR.
So the debuffs would strip any Defense off, and because I was jury-rigging for Defense, I had inferior Resist numbers to back me up.
I refer to it as "eggshelling".  You look and feel hard up until someone cracks your shell.  Then you're just a gooey mess.

So I rebuilt for Resist.
I won't lie and say it solved ALL my problems.
But the Tank was a COMPLETELY different animal afterward.
It wasn't bulletproof, but damage became a nice, dependable decay, rather than "OW!  HE*DEAD*al...."

 

Basically, if you have a Resist-based set, it's not to say you SHOULDN'T build some Defense in there.
But treat it like Absorb.  It's essentially another "ablative" layer of damage mitigation that can (and frequently does) "go away" at a moment's notice.

 

[mcdoogss]

3 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Basically, if you have a Resist-based set, it's not to say you SHOULDN'T build some Defense in there.
But treat it like Absorb.  It's essentially another "ablative" layer of damage mitigation that can (and frequently does) "go away" at a moment's notice.

 

 

Agreed, Defense on a resist-based set is especially useful for blunting the alpha from large groups of mobs, probably more to limit debuff stacking than  damage spikes.

Edited October 27, 2021 by mcdoogss

[PLVRIZR]

3 hours ago, mcdoogss said:

 

Agreed, Defense on a resist-based set is especially useful for blunting the alpha from large groups of mobs, probably more to limit debuff stacking than  damage spikes.

/cough/ Invuln /cough/

[Carnifax]

2 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

/cough/ Invuln /cough/

Inv is cheating. Its much more of a Def friendly set than Bio, WP or the 'pure' resist sets thanks to the DDR. It's another good example of "a decent base set of defenses and resistances to IO on top of". 

 

I thought it was run of the mill until I made a Staff/Inv IO build in mids and looked at the numbers it had. 

[PLVRIZR]

1 hour ago, Carnifax said:

Inv is cheating. Its much more of a Def friendly set than Bio, WP or the 'pure' resist sets thanks to the DDR. It's another good example of "a decent base set of defenses and resistances to IO on top of". 

 

I thought it was run of the mill until I made a Staff/Inv IO build in mids and looked at the numbers it had. 

 

Fully kitted-out Inv/SS (this is NUTCRCKR's build), within a crowd (10 mobs for Invincibility) with Resilient and Melee Incarnates:

 

 

Just silly, but definitely not "cheating"...

 

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by PLVRIZR
reworded

[Carnifax]

1 minute ago, PLVRIZR said:

 

Fully kitted-out Inv/SS (this is the NUTCRCKR's build), within a crowd (10 mobs for Invincibility) with Resilient and Melee Incarnates:

 

 

Just silly, but definitely not "cheating"...

 

 

That's definitely cheating. Poor game. How's it supposed to compete?

[PLVRIZR]

2 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

That's definitely cheating. Poor game. How's it supposed to compete?

 

Why I humble myself in Linea's AE801-s and anxiously await the next update, with even higher difficulty settings.

 

Having said that, it's because I loved the game where teaming was king, because every AT was needed.  I'm an old school herding tank and, in not much other than a +4/8 ITF -  if then, Incarnate teams steamroll everything...without the need for herding.

[Werner]

1 hour ago, PLVRIZR said:

Just silly, but definitely not "cheating"...

You forgot to hit Dull Pain to cap your hit points at 3534. Are we cheating yet? 😉 Invuln is so good. 

[Hjarki]

In terms of Super Reflexes, it effectively bypasses most of the issues with Defense because you end up so far over soft-cap that, coupled with high -defense resistance, you'll still be capped against anything you'll conceivably face.

 

With that in mind, I see two key problems with Super Reflexes. The first is end drain. Sapper attacks tend to be 'one shot kills' if you don't have End Drain resistance since they de-toggle you. While an SR Tanker is unlikely to get hit, that 1-in-20 chance of instadeath still isn't very comforting.

 

The other issue is that when SR fails, it fails hard. It has no resist to either Toxic or Psi (coincidentally the two types of attacks most likely to bypass positional defenses). So you end up with a Tanker who is great against everything... except that one guy in the mission that you have no answers against.

 

From that standpoint, I tend to steer clear of Super Reflexes because if I'm not going to be the universal Tanker, I figure I might as well just play a dps-focused melee AT.

[Hedgefund]

The notion upthread of "no such thing as cascading resistance debuffs" raised an eyebrow as my recollection was different so I exed to 29 on an Elec tanker and went to St. Martial to gather up some Wailers who most definitely stack resistance debuffs, all around level 31-33.

 

I'm not going to do the line item accounting on this, but starting from 85% resists, almost 100% res debuffs resulted in an ending resists of 77.98%.  I've attached the screenshot of the combat attributes.

 

I also found this in the Wiki with this notable phrase: "there can be no cascading resistance failures"  Complete article here:  https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Resistance_(Mechanics)#Resistance_to_Resistance_Debuffs

 

 

 

[Xandyr]

On 10/26/2021 at 11:52 AM, ZemX said:

 

Yeah, I should have said my problem is really more about the secondary and not entirely about the performance.  I have at this point, in various stages of low to mid-levels: SD/Rad, SD/Dark, and SD/MA.  And I've taken an Ice/SD Stalker to 50, so I am pretty familiar with how Shield operates.

 

But... the Rad and Dark melee Shield tankers have been kind of a slog.  They are both just so uninspiring to play so far.  Slow.  Late-developing.  Lack-luster AoE on Dark.  My Rad/Staff just took off and needed no pushing from me to run all the way to 50 on pick-up teams.  Big, fast, early AoEs.  The Rad has just gotten Irradiated Ground which is both good (or will be once procced up) but also kind of boring.  You just stand there and it does damage.  Meh.

 

The MA is somewhat interesting and might be the one.  It may only have the one AoE but it's fast recharging, decent sized (though not quite as large as Staff's Eye of the Storm), and takes an FF:Rech proc.  It also has Storm Kick to provide an extra defense boost which, together with decent DDR, should make it hard to crack.

 

Outside of Shield, I have been considering (but haven't rolled up yet) an Invuln or SR tanker with either Staff or TW as the secondary.

 

ETA: Big reason I might consider SR/Staff, even though I've already got one Staff tanker is the +res on Staff's Form of Body + Sky Splitter.  With IOs, Sky Splitter's +res, Might of the Tanker's +res, maybe even that little bit of Absorb from Gauntleted Fist, AND scaling resistances?  Who needs a heal?  Okay... outside of auto-hit situations, this guy would be very hard to kill even at 40% health.

I'll say one thing....I have a Dark/MA tank, and with the tank ATO and storm kick, he has capped resists  AND defenses. 

[Werner]

3 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

I also found this in the Wiki with this notable phrase: "there can be no cascading resistance failures"  Complete article here:  https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Resistance_(Mechanics)#Resistance_to_Resistance_Debuffs

Well, huh! Thank you and my apologies! I really thought it was based on current resistance, but it seems I was wrong and it's based on the original, undebuffed resistance.  I'll correct my post.

[Carnifax]

 

8 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

The notion upthread of "no such thing as cascading resistance debuffs" raised an eyebrow as my recollection was different so I exed to 29 on an Elec tanker and went to St. Martial to gather up some Wailers who most definitely stack resistance debuffs, all around level 31-33.

It being the undebuffed resists was how I remembered it too, but I'd never tested it to verify. So thank you for this. 

[ZemX]

10 hours ago, Xandyr said:

I'll say one thing....I have a Dark/MA tank, and with the tank ATO and storm kick, he has capped resists  AND defenses. 

 

Sure, but only when you're not up against a crowd of defense debuffers is my point.  I found that happened often enough that the investment in defense bonuses just wasn't worth it.  By shifting that to recharge, regen, and debuff resist bonuses instead it made me better able to survive those fights against def debuffers and didn't affect at all my ability to survive anything else.  So win/win.

 

It's nice to have that base of defense on teams where you might catch enough defense buffs to put you safely over the soft-cap, but I usually prefer to be more self-sufficient on a tanker so I'm good in any situation.   As for MA, yeah Storm Kick is the shit.  But I'd rather stack that defense on a toon with DDR so I decided to try the @Werner-recommended SD/MA Tanker.  If I can stop creating alt-tanks, I might even get somewhere.

[Sovera]

Or you just pair Martial Arts with any resistance armor and you get 90% to most and 45% to melee/ranged/AoE

 

😛

 

It's not particularly hard and I've builds for Dark Armor, Fire Armor and Radiation Armor that achieve it. But it does not solve the DDR problem though like the mythical 'Ruularu crush SR' it's more a perceived flaw than a practical flaw. I'm still tanking the ITF which is the motherload of defense debuffs and I might have to kite to get a breather but I'm not dying.

 

Now -some- might take it as shameful about having to kite, but, it's a bad habit CoH instilled where we plant our feet and mostly ignore strategy.

 

And anyway, it's ridiculously easy to make any resistance based armor reach 90% thanks to the near 20% from the ATO so once that goal's achieve what is left but add more layers of defense? It's not like we can increase offense like we can defense other than a few damage procs and recharge.

[mcdoogss]

If we are talking layered defense sets, let's not leave out Granite.  Ok ok, it's crazy overkill sure, there is nothing in the game that requires this much survivability. But it' still fun to never be in danger.

 

I also think that relatively few people have built stone/ tankers recently and are biased against it because of the reputation of the drawbacks of Granite.  I'd urge you to pair it with an admittedly overtuned set like Energy Melee, and the revamped Teleportation pool. 

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by mcdoogss

[aethereal]

On 10/26/2021 at 3:24 AM, Maelwys said:

In a vacumn, +Def beats +Res.
That's because you cap at 90% Resistance (you take 10% damage) compared to Defence flooring your enemies hit rate at a 5% ToHit chance (you take 5% damage)

 

An even-conn minion has a 50% base chance to hit you.  So if you have 90% resistance (and no defense), you get hit 50% of the time for 10% damage, taking a total expected 5% of their base damage (or 10% of the damage they would do to you if you had no resistance or defense). 

 

If you have 45% defense (and no resistance), that same minion will hit you for 100% of their base damage 5% of the time, for a total expected 5% of their base damage (or 10% of the damage they would do to you if you had no resistance or defense). 

 

And it's generally true, not just for even-conn minions, that softcap defense mitigates 90% of damage, just like capped resistance.

[ZemX]

39 minutes ago, Sovera said:

But it does not solve the DDR problem though like the mythical 'Ruularu crush SR' it's more a perceived flaw than a practical flaw.

 

I dumped defense and got tougher on the ITF and weaker nowhere else.  If there's a perception problem anywhere it was that the defense was doing me any good in the first place.  It turns out the only place I needed it was the only place it abandoned me.  I'm more than tough enough to survive when enemies AREN'T hitting me 95% of the time, so what do I need defense for?  To avoid debuffs but only when one of them isn't defense debuff?

 

I'm gonna stick with Def w/DDR + res stacked on top is tougher than Res wo/DDR + Defense stacked on top, even if you can't reach res caps in the former case.  You don't need to.

 

Of course... tough enough is all you DO need in any case.  So one being tougher than the other isn't always (or even often) going to matter.  This discussion can only really be about surviving the game's hardest challenges.  Anything else?  Even a decently built Tanker is nigh-indestructible.  Any normal ITF ("normal" being run at 54 with a 50+1 Incarnate and a decent team) is a complete pushover these days.

[mcdoogss]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

 

I dumped defense and got tougher on the ITF and weaker nowhere else.  If there's a perception problem anywhere it was that the defense was doing me any good in the first place.  It turns out the only place I needed it was the only place it abandoned me.  I'm more than tough enough to survive when enemies AREN'T hitting me 95% of the time, so what do I need defense for?  To avoid debuffs but only when one of them isn't defense debuff?

 

I'm gonna stick with Def w/DDR + res stacked on top is tougher than Res wo/DDR + Defense stacked on top, even if you can't reach res caps in the former case.  You don't need to.

 

Of course... tough enough is all you DO need in any case.  So one being tougher than the other isn't always (or even often) going to matter.  This discussion can only really be about surviving the game's hardest challenges.  Anything else?  Even a decently built Tanker is nigh-indestructible.  Any normal ITF ("normal" being run at 54 with a 50+1 Incarnate and a decent team) is a complete pushover these days.

 

The danger of debuffs does change depending on the armor set.  Dark/ for example suffers under heavy -tohit and -recharge debuffs as it has no native resistance to either (as both make dark regen less effective).  

 

But I agree, almost every tanker armor set has potential to make the tanker unkillable in all non-AE situations at the 'endgame' when fully IO'd.  Mainly I feel like the discussion/contention between armor sets revolves around 'holes' or vulnerabilities that only effectively exist whilst leveling.

Edited October 28, 2021 by mcdoogss

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

 

I dumped defense and got tougher on the ITF and weaker nowhere else.  If there's a perception problem anywhere it was that the defense was doing me any good in the first place.  It turns out the only place I needed it was the only place it abandoned me.  I'm more than tough enough to survive when enemies AREN'T hitting me 95% of the time, so what do I need defense for?  To avoid debuffs but only when one of them isn't defense debuff?

 

I'm gonna stick with Def w/DDR + res stacked on top is tougher than Res wo/DDR + Defense stacked on top, even if you can't reach res caps in the former case.  You don't need to.

 

Of course... tough enough is all you DO need in any case.  So one being tougher than the other isn't always (or even often) going to matter.  This discussion can only really be about surviving the game's hardest challenges.  Anything else?  Even a decently built Tanker is nigh-indestructible.  Any normal ITF ("normal" being run at 54 with a 50+1 Incarnate and a decent team) is a complete pushover these days.

 

You don't dump defense and become stronger. This implies you weren't running with 90% resistances to begin with.

 

I've had this talk in the past. The IO system is not terribly flexible. We can increase defense, but resistances are much harder to push up (I can work around 30%-ish resistances (out of 90%) but I can push defenses to 40% (out of 45%), we can not significantly push up damage (at best about 20-30% really pushing it). Neither can we push up regen to more than statistically significant numbers (100%-150%-ish percent? Something like 10-15 HPs? Melee Radial Hybrid testing giving me 700% regen was still unable to prevent deaths).

 

So what do I do with my slots? Aim for even more recharge? I'd rather have some debuff protection and 40% defenses adding to Barrier when I have to click on it. Personal tastes and opinion here.

 

But yeah, I agree putting defense up is not terribly important in the sense that 90% is already a very tough wall to overcome.

[Werner]

8 minutes ago, mcdoogss said:

The danger of debuffs does change depending on the armor set.  Dark/ for example suffers under heavy -tohit and -recharge debuffs as it has no native resistance to either.  

For a Dark Armor endgame build at least, Focused Accuracy is 86.5% tohit debuff resistance, and breaking up cold sets like Superior Blistering Cold can give you very high recharge debuff resistance. I have 80% on my Dark/MA. It's -defense that chews me up. Well... makes me need to hit Barrier and on rare occasions run.

[mcdoogss]

6 minutes ago, Werner said:

For a Dark Armor endgame build at least, Focused Accuracy is 86.5% tohit debuff resistance, and breaking up cold sets like Superior Blistering Cold can give you very high recharge debuff resistance. I have 80% on my Dark/MA. It's -defense that chews me up. Well... makes me need to hit Barrier and on rare occasions run.

 

Yep I agree, like I said most of the vulnerabilities we talk about for the top tanker sets (so like invul, shield, dark, rad, etc) are only real issues while leveling/exempting or underbuilt

Edited October 28, 2021 by mcdoogss