Looking for information on soft caps

[Rainhall]

How can I tell if I'm wasting my influence?  Will adding another set bonus for accuracy or recharge time help, or am I at the soft cap already?  Do set bonuses get diminished in the same way that 3rd and subsequent enhancements do?

 

If someone can point me to a good article or explain this, I'd be grateful.

[Pixie_Knight]

To my knowledge you can only have 5 copies of a set bonus. Note, that doesn't mean 5 instances of the same set. If five different sets all provide +3% ranged defense, you've hit the limit of how many +3% ranged defense set bonuses you can have.

 

As for the soft caps, you can view your current Defense and Resistance values in your Combat Attributes panel. The defense soft cap is 45% regardless of what class you're playing. This is because enemies have a 50% chance to hit you if you've got no defense, and they always have at least a 5% chance to hit you. Conversely if you are being majorly defense debuffed, there is always a 5% chance an attack will miss you too. This works both ways, you always have a 5% chance to miss regardless of how much to-hit and accuracy you have. The defense hard cap I think is somewhere around 200%, but you're unlikely to reach it usually.

 

By the same token, you'll find that any more then a total of -45% to-hit debuff is wasted most of the time for the same reason.

 

The resistance soft cap depends on your AT. Brutes and Tankers have a soft cap of 90%, meaning if they are at the soft cap and get hit by an attack that would normally do 100 damage, they only take 10 damage. Peacebringers and Warshades have a resistance soft cap of 85. Everyone else has a resistance softcap of 75.

 

For accuracy, keep in mind that to-hit is additive while accuracy is a multiplier. Most attacks as I recall have a base to-hit value of 75% and accuracy value of 1. What this means is that you'll hit the enemy 75% of the time, assuming they don't have any Defense or to-hit debuffs. A single at-level SO of accuracy makes the accuracy value of 1.33, or in other words your final chance to hit an even level minion is 75*1.33, or 99.75 which gets clamped to 95% chance to hit. To-hit buffs add to the base to-hit value, so a 75% base to-hit would be raised to 90% if you have a +15% to-hit buff.

 

This makes the formula if you have a +15% to-hit buff and an at-level SO worth of accuracy slotted (75+15)*1.33 with any result higher then 95% being clamped down to 95%. If you regularly face +2 and +3 enemies, you may want more accuracy slotting, but if you typically face even level or +1 enemies a single SO worth of accuracy slotting is more then enough most times.

 

Defense debuffs also reduce how much accuracy and to-hit you need to hit the 95% chance to hit limit.

 

Recharge Reduction is capped at 400%, but this includes the base recharge value. So realistically you can get an additional +300% recharge reduction.

[Rainhall]

What a great detailed answer, thank you.

 

If I improve the recharge of a 60-second power by 100%, that makes it 30 seconds, right?  Would 300% be 15 seconds?

 

It looks like maybe I've been using way too much accuracy, but I do like to fight +3 and above.  And I assume surplus accuracy can help counter to-hit debuffs?  Maybe I should concentrate less on IO set bonus accuracy, or only slot one ACC in each power instead of two if I do have a lot of set bonuses.

[jack_nomind]

If I improve the recharge of a 60-second power by 100%, that makes it 30 seconds, right?  Would 300% be 15 seconds?

 

Yes.

 

It looks like maybe I've been using way too much accuracy, but I do like to fight +3 and above.  And I assume surplus accuracy can help counter to-hit debuffs?

 

Sort of.  As Pixie Knight indicated, accuracy and tohit multiply each other.  If your tohit has been floored to 5%, +100% accuracy still only means a 10% final chance.

 

These pages will be of interest to you.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification

[Pixie_Knight]

It looks like maybe I've been using way too much accuracy, but I do like to fight +3 and above.  And I assume surplus accuracy can help counter to-hit debuffs?  Maybe I should concentrate less on IO set bonus accuracy, or only slot one ACC in each power instead of two if I do have a lot of set bonuses.

 

To-hit buff directly counters to-hit debuff. Let's take the exact same attack, it has a 75% base to-hit. It has a single SO worth of accuracy slotted. I'll show the formula and result for base chance to hit, with 15% to-hit debuff, with 15% to-hit buff, and with a combination of debuff and buff.

 

No buff or debuff: (75+0)x1.33=99.75 (clamped to 95%)

With debuff only: (75-15)x1.33=79.8

Both debuff & buff: (75+15-15)x1.33=99.75 (clamped to 95%)

 

If you slotted for +50% acc and got hit by a 15% to-hit debuff it would be:

(75-15)x1.5=90

 

As you can see, slotting more accuracy can counteract to-hit debuffs, but not as effectively as a to-hit buff. This is why Tactics or Targeting Drone can allow you to forego slotting accuracy.