Enemy Weaknesses (and resistances)

[Sakura Tenshi]

So basically this thread is about damage resistances in PvE mobs or rather weaknesses. Lots of enemies are distant to something but only so many suffer from weaknesses, and I know reworking resistances and such is a daunting, long term project, I do want to just talk about things anyway and hear everyone else’s thoughts.

tl;dr: not a suggestion, but just a thread to ask what weaknesses folks think some enemies should have or weaknesses you find interesting in existing groups.

 

Part of this was brought in when I noticed how many enemies either have no resistance to Psionic damage, or a whole lot of resistance to it. Clockwork are the only ones actually weak against it, and I thought maybe Trolls and freak show would also have a psionic weakness, probably even a minus resistance to confusion. After all they embrace drugs that compromise their state of mind heavily and leave them blindly violent. (Though on the flip side some might argue they’d be too dumb to be bothered by mental assaults)

[ZorkNemesis]

For the sake of weakness, if a mob has resistance to everything, but still a zero to something else, that zero is still a weakness.  Despite not taking extra damage, most of Crey is considered weak to Psi damage because their armor does not protect against it while protecting against all other damages.  This also makes some sense plot-wise considering the amount of influence Countess Crey holds across the company.

 

In a similar vein, Malta is considered weak to Toxic as none of them have Toxic resistances (except maybe the Gun Drone pets).  Even Zeus Titans have no resistance to Toxic damage despite a 25% or more to all others.  Presumably Malta armor is not protected against acidic or corrosive attacks.

 

A few I do wonder about though...

• The new Longbow Menders and Arachnos BCUs don't have any innate damage resistances (though BCUs have a higher base defense).  No S/L protections for the robots?  Most Praetorian Clockwork are also like this with no innate resistances, including the Warworks (other than War Walkers).
• Freakshow are resistant to Cold damage.  I never understood that one.  Does Excelsior have something to do with that?
• Most human Council and 5th Column lack Lethal resistance.  Do they not have body armor built into their uniforms?  Even Malta grunts have S/L resists.

[Sakura Tenshi]

@ZorkNemesis
I think the reason why Praet Clockwork and their derivatives tend to lack resistances is because they're greatest asset is just being absurdly cheap but functional enough for their purpose. As warworks, they were just upscaled and given more powerful weapons and it was called a day because even if a piddly level 20 primal hero could smash a dozen of them, there's a hundred thousand more ready and waiting in the wings and more were made in the time it took to take down a dozen. Then again, we might also sometimes need to assume there's a level of resistance any foe has to make them a challenge at level with our characters. You can see fifth column and Council soldiers clearly wearing chestplates, and likewise Arachnos grunts have body armor but none of them have resistances (besides the Huntsman boss)

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, ZorkNemesis said:

For the sake of weakness, if a mob has resistance to everything, but still a zero to something else, that zero is still a weakness.  Despite not taking extra damage, most of Crey is considered weak to Psi damage because their armor does not protect against it while protecting against all other damages.  This also makes some sense plot-wise considering the amount of influence Countess Crey holds across the company.

 

In a similar vein, Malta is considered weak to Toxic as none of them have Toxic resistances (except maybe the Gun Drone pets).  Even Zeus Titans have no resistance to Toxic damage despite a 25% or more to all others.  Presumably Malta armor is not protected against acidic or corrosive attacks.

 

A few I do wonder about though...

• The new Longbow Menders and Arachnos BCUs don't have any innate damage resistances (though BCUs have a higher base defense).  No S/L protections for the robots?  Most Praetorian Clockwork are also like this with no innate resistances, including the Warworks (other than War Walkers).
• Freakshow are resistant to Cold damage.  I never understood that one.  Does Excelsior have something to do with that?
• Most human Council and 5th Column lack Lethal resistance.  Do they not have body armor built into their uniforms?  Even Malta grunts have S/L resists.

I would guess that Excelsior would give protection against cold in the same way it protects against pain.  Freakshow might be freezing but they do not seem to notice.  Complete guess.  Excelsior is a metaphysical compound and there may be something deeper at work

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, ZorkNemesis said:

For the sake of weakness, if a mob has resistance to everything, but still a zero to something else, that zero is still a weakness.  Despite not taking extra damage, most of Crey is considered weak to Psi damage because their armor does not protect against it while protecting against all other damages.  This also makes some sense plot-wise considering the amount of influence Countess Crey holds across the company.

 

In a similar vein, Malta is considered weak to Toxic as none of them have Toxic resistances (except maybe the Gun Drone pets).  Even Zeus Titans have no resistance to Toxic damage despite a 25% or more to all others.  Presumably Malta armor is not protected against acidic or corrosive attacks.

 

A few I do wonder about though...

• The new Longbow Menders and Arachnos BCUs don't have any innate damage resistances (though BCUs have a higher base defense).  No S/L protections for the robots?  Most Praetorian Clockwork are also like this with no innate resistances, including the Warworks (other than War Walkers).
• Freakshow are resistant to Cold damage.  I never understood that one.  Does Excelsior have something to do with that?
• Most human Council and 5th Column lack Lethal resistance.  Do they not have body armor built into their uniforms?  Even Malta grunts have S/L resists.

Council and 5th Column have an endless supply of recruits. Investments in body armor are a bad business practice.

[KaizenSoze]

15 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

In a similar vein, Malta is considered weak to Toxic as none of them have Toxic resistances (except maybe the Gun Drone pets).  Even Zeus Titans have no resistance to Toxic damage despite a 25% or more to all others.  Presumably Malta armor is not protected against acidic or corrosive attacks.

I play my Bane a lot, which can heavily debuff toxic resists. So, I am very  interested in mobs with weakness to toxic.

 

Zero resistance is nice, but there is one important group of mobs that are weak to toxic. Goldbrickers have -20% resistance to toxic.

 

Side note, another group with useful weakness that many people don't know about. Carnies are weak to lethal, -20% again. My Widows enjoy shredding them.

[Cutter]

10 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Side note, another group with useful weakness that many people don't know about. Carnies are weak to lethal, -20% again. My Widows enjoy shredding them.

Ah, Carnies. Back on live I used to seek them out on my Spines/Dark Scrapper main. Ate them for breakfast despite their end draining ways.

[SeraphimKensai]

@Galaxy Brainmade a post back in circa 2019 about npc resistances. I don't remember everything they wrote in it but I remember it confirming my long held understanding that:

 

Edit: here's the link :

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by SeraphimKensai

[Sovera]

I really dislike resistances. It should be nominal at best and roleplayish, not dumb numbers like 30% and above.

 

We return to the whole 'what does this add to the game?' and what it adds is more time whittling enemies down.

[PeregrineFalcon]

26 minutes ago, Sovera said:

We return to the whole 'what does this add to the game?' and what it adds is more time whittling enemies down.

I agree.

 

I've always thought that enemy factions should always have 1 or 2 things that they resist well and 1 thing that they don't resist at all. Exceptions being the one enemy in the faction (like a Tank Smasher or Crey Tank) that's supposed to be really tough.

 

Like Council should have good resistance to Lethal damage, robots should have ridiculously high resistance to Psi damage, etc.

 

Other than that, 0% damage resistance should be the norm. Otherwise, what's the point in even having certain power sets if everyone's going to resist the damage? What's the point in leveling up and doing more damage if the enemies' damage resistance is just going to go up?

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

I really dislike resistances. It should be nominal at best and roleplayish, not dumb numbers like 30% and above.

 

We return to the whole 'what does this add to the game?' and what it adds is more time whittling enemies down.

But that's all they are regardless of having or not having resistance. Requiring more time to defeat enemies is kind of the point unless you'd be fine with literal practice dummies for mobs (and for a lot of builds, that's all they are because they don't have much time to use their powers).

 

Anyways, someone mentioned the concept of enemies being weak to confuse. I think there might be enemies that have weakness to KB but not sure about other mez. Would be interesting to make a foe difficult to hold but easy to confuse or something like that.

 

Another prospect I pitched was giving mobs powers that either suppress while mezzed or maybe weakened afterwards... Like if you put a mob to sleep for 3 sec, they have a passive that stacks -res on themselves. The point would be to introduce alternative methods to engage enemies rather than the standard. You could just charge at such a foe but they might take a lot more punching to take down than if you put them to sleep and blew up the hard targets one by one after they were asleep for a few seconds.

 

And the above is mostly just briefly thought it hypothetical to demonstrate my point, not a direct suggestion.

[Sovera]

20 minutes ago, Naraka said:

But that's all they are regardless of having or not having resistance. Requiring more time to defeat enemies is kind of the point unless you'd be fine with literal practice dummies for mobs (and for a lot of builds, that's all they are because they don't have much time to use their powers).

 

Anyways, someone mentioned the concept of enemies being weak to confuse. I think there might be enemies that have weakness to KB but not sure about other mez. Would be interesting to make a foe difficult to hold but easy to confuse or something like that.

 

Another prospect I pitched was giving mobs powers that either suppress while mezzed or maybe weakened afterwards... Like if you put a mob to sleep for 3 sec, they have a passive that stacks -res on themselves. The point would be to introduce alternative methods to engage enemies rather than the standard. You could just charge at such a foe but they might take a lot more punching to take down than if you put them to sleep and blew up the hard targets one by one after they were asleep for a few seconds.

 

And the above is mostly just briefly thought it hypothetical to demonstrate my point, not a direct suggestion.

 

Listen, I get what you're saying, but either we do it or we don't do it, and if we do it we do it well. The concept that robots are immune to mental powers or fire elementals are immune to fire is nothing new to the genre. But just slapping a semi random % to mobs that isn't even consistent remains nothing more than an annoyance at best. And it STILL does not explain why robots get affected by mental powers or fire elementals get hurt by fire.

 

This is another artifact from D&D like the 5% chance to miss. Fortunately it is not a hill I would die on.

[Xenosone]

Thing that bothers me the most about sets is they always do smashing or lethal plus something else.

 

[biostem]

On 2/2/2022 at 8:38 PM, ZorkNemesis said:

Freakshow are resistant to Cold damage.  I never understood that one.

 

Maybe it's a weird play on how you're supposed to cool electronics, like their stuff benefits from it or something?

[kiramon]

4 hours ago, Xenosone said:

Thing that bothers me the most about sets is they always do smashing or lethal plus something else.

 

Right you can’t get away with it on a lot of power sets. 
 

it’s just annoying to hit some mobs for 500 and some mobs for 30 lol 😂