Acrobatics offers mag 2 hold protection. How useful is that?

[EnjoyTheJourney]

It seems that sometimes players choose acrobatics at least in part for its ability to mitigate holds. But, it's not clear what the value of mag 2 hold protection would be, in most cases, given that most holds have a mag of 3. 

 

Am I missing something about how acrobatics protects players against holds? 

[TheZag]

Acrobatics by itself wouldnt be very useful if only mag 3 holds are coming at you.  There are attacks with lower mag hold associated with them and im not sure if mob versions have different magnitude then player versions of the powers.  

 

Acrobatics along with another hold protection power would mean more holds need to be stacked on your character before its held.  But even with all that said,  i have never taken acrobatics on any character.

[roleki]

I can't usually fit Acrobatics into a build, but when I have, it's been for the KB protection moreso than the Hold protection.  That said, Acrobatics and a P2W buff would make you fairly impervious to street-level Holds, which I suppose is desirable, but there's still like 60 other things that could put you on your ass that aren't covered by Hold protection.

[Uun]

In addition to the mag 2 hold protection, Acrobatics also has 48% resistance to holds. So any holds that get through (which is most of them), will last half as long. That said, Acrobatics isn't worth taking for the hold protection. 

 

Back in the days before KB protection IOs, Acrobatics was a must take for anyone playing Fire or Dark armor (which have no KB protection), and was often taken by non-armor ATs.

[Black Zot]

Mag 2 anything is basically padding to make a power look better without actually giving it a useful effect.  By itself, it does jack.

[Snarky]

It is great for anything that hits you Mag 2 or less!

[Terad]

I have it on my fire aura tank and it's not super effective against Elite Bosses or especially AVs. 

Alternatively you could try putting Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection IO in your travel slot, it's got mag 4 KB protect which should be sufficient against most knockbacks. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Terad

[Mezmera]

I agree with most here saying it is an okay power in conjunction with other mez protection taken more for the knockback protection.  Achieving defense caps is far more beneficial against mez than most any shield offered to squishies beyond Rune of Protection.  I'd rather not waste a power pick on this and go for a defense power.  

 

In pvp it's an entirely different matter, squishies almost always take acrobatics.  It gives you a starter pack of 10pts kb protection and cuts the mez time of any holds that hit you in half.

 

Combat Jump is a nice little power pick though from Leaping.  It either comes down to CJ with one power to spare or Leadership if I have a few powers to choose.  

Edited November 1, 2021 by Mezmera

[biostem]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought players had an inherent mag 1 protection, so the 2 from acrobatics would mean that an enemy would need to land 2 standard holds in order for them to affect you, (working on my understanding that the mag of a mez effect must exceed the mag of any protection that you have, in order for it to take effect)...

[roleki]

9 hours ago, biostem said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought players had an inherent mag 1 protection, so the 2 from acrobatics would mean that an enemy would need to land 2 standard holds in order for them to affect you, (working on my understanding that the mag of a mez effect must exceed the mag of any protection that you have, in order for it to take effect)...

 

You may be right, but that's not how I remember it.  Also, if you look in Combat Attributes, you'll have base 0.0 Hold Protection, and subtracting whatever Hold protection you DO have will leave you at 0.0, not 1.0.  You can also watch your Hold Protection get dinged by jerks in PvE, so like, if you had 2 Hold Protection and get hit by a Mag 3 hold, you drop to -1.0 (Held) and not 0.0.

 

ETA: I monitor Hold Protection on all my characters because I used to do a lot of MSR and in my experience, Hold Protection was a better indicator of your health than HP or whatever.

Edited November 2, 2021 by roleki

[Metatheory]

I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is (PC has +1.0 mez protect naturally or whatever) but it is subjectively useful against holds.

 

One time I was duoing controllers vs Carnies. I kept getting held and the other player didn't. Noticing they had acrobatics and following a conversation with them I respecced into it. Since when, I only get held if I mess up my initial mez roll out on them (i.e. they have time to stack blind on me).

 

It is a good option for squishies IMO, even if it can be hard to squeeze in sometimes.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Metatheory

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Metatheory said:

I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is (PC has +1.0 mez protect naturally or whatever) but it is subjectively useful against holds.

 

One time I was duoing controllers vs Carnies. I kept getting held and the other player didn't. Noticing they had acrobatics and following a conversation with them I respecced into it. Since when, I only get held if I mess up my initial mez roll out on them (i.e. they have time to stack blind on me).

 

It is a good option for squishies IMO, even if it can be hard to squeeze in sometimes.

^This

I have had the same experience.  It's worth noting both occurred in the pre-IO and pre-real numbers/combat attributes era so no numbers known at the time, just the experience.  My Fire/Nrg and an SG mate, also Fire/Nrg.  Purely anecdotally we were running on an 8 man team against Carnies.  I noticed he spent a lot less time held.  He had Acrobatics, I did not.  Being on a large team I didn't die, neither did he but I did spend more time held than he did.  Interestingly it was also Carnies.  Coincidence or a commonly used Power by them I have no idea.  And how much of that was the mez resistance vs mag protection in Acrobatics or both I'm also unsure.  Tried searching the HCwiki for powers that use Hold but the article is incomplete.  Following links to external articles led to the old forums and a post where someone had links of a compilation of all critters mez powers documented but given my phone only computing and internet connection capability that was as far as I got last night.

 

Edit:  I'm wanting to look around a lot more because old memories (those oh so reliable 9+yr old things floating in my brain) tell me things are a bit more complicated than the wiki seems to indicate currently.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Doomguide2005

[roleki]

9 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

^This

I have had the same experience.  It's worth noting both occurred in the pre-IO and pre-real numbers/combat attributes era so no numbers known at the time, just the experience.  My Fire/Nrg and an SG mate, also Fire/Nrg.  Purely anecdotally we were running on an 8 man team against Carnies.  I noticed he spent a lot less time held.  He had Acrobatics, I did not.  Being on a large team I didn't die, neither did he but I did spend more time held than he did.  Interestingly it was also Carnies.  Coincidence or a commonly used Power by them I have no idea.  And how much of that was the mez resistance vs mag protection in Acrobatics or both I'm also unsure.  Tried searching the HCwiki for powers that use Hold but the article is incomplete.  Following links to external articles led to the old forums and a post where someone had links of a compilation of all critters mez powers documented but given my phone only computing and internet connection capability that was as far as I got last night.

 

Edit:  I'm wanting to look around a lot more because old memories (those oh so reliable 9+yr old things floating in my brain) tell me things are a bit more complicated than the wiki seems to indicate currently.

 

Say you run into a Dark Ring Mistress and she hits you with Petrify, a 10s Mag 3 hold on a 16s recharge.  Without Acrobatics (and absent any other Hold Resistance) you're down for the full 10s of being Held, come out of it for 6s, then get hit again. 

 

If you had Acrobatics with its 48% Hold Resistance, you'd get Held for 5.2s, come out of it for almost 11s, then get hit again.  

 

Two players side-by-side equipped as above may feel like the other spends a LOT/NO time held.

[Doomguide2005]

14 minutes ago, roleki said:

 

Say you run into a Dark Ring Mistress and she hits you with Petrify, a 10s Mag 3 hold on a 16s recharge.  Without Acrobatics (and absent any other Hold Resistance) you're down for the full 10s of being Held, come out of it for 6s, then get hit again. 

 

If you had Acrobatics with its 48% Hold Resistance, you'd get Held for 5.2s, come out of it for almost 11s, then get hit again.  

 

Two players side-by-side equipped as above may feel like the other spends a LOT/NO time held.

     Oh no doubt there's a lot of subjective feel there combined with an utter lack at the time about the actual numbers ... yeah it very much could be completely in my head.  And watching him Fire off any number of Fire Blasts quick animations to further feel the difference while held. 

     He's also shaking off a 0.48 mez resisted effectively mag 1 hold vs my non-resisted mag 3 hold and that's the part where my memories are old and foggy, like there's some detail missing.  Or my brain is making stuff up.  Not sure which.

 

Edit:  of course one detail not mentioned is the Purple Patch which further messes with the durations at minimum.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Doomguide2005

[MrSnottyPants]

I have it on a Blaster to prop up Defiant Barrage.

[Riverdusk]

On 11/1/2021 at 8:22 PM, biostem said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought players had an inherent mag 1 protection, so the 2 from acrobatics would mean that an enemy would need to land 2 standard holds in order for them to affect you, (working on my understanding that the mag of a mez effect must exceed the mag of any protection that you have, in order for it to take effect)...

 

That was my anecdotal experience the time I took it long long ago back on live once.  Basically it'd make you immune against most single applications of holds.  You wouldn't get held unless you got hit by a second one fairly quickly.  Always thought it'd be worth picking up for a blaster running energy manipulation secondary as energize has stun protection that looks easy to perma.  Would give you some pretty decent mez protection as a blaster between the two.  Just haven't gotten around to trying it.

 

Edit: Looks like temporal manipulation has some stun protection too with Time Lord.  Knew I was forgetting one.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Riverdusk

[Industrious1]

People used to (and still do, I'd imagine) use it for the kb protection on a squishy.  

 

Think some people just fill the gaps with IO's now though.