Brutes and Defense Secondaries

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

Is it because adding defence to a resist set gets no DDR and can be stripped quite easily but a defence set that gets extra resistance gets resistance debuff built in, plus the debuffs have got to hit in the first place to actually work?.

 

Yup.

 

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

Getting hit 5% of the time with some reductions to the damage when hit does seem better to me than say 90% resists. Plus defence sets avoid debuffs better. But i guess if there are no defence debuffs then a resist set will do really well.

 

But that 5% of the time is only true against even level minions. +4 bosses and AVs are going to be tagging you far more often. 90% resists is just 90% resists with 90% resistance debuff resistance. (Unless you're over the cap. RDR can go up to 100% where DDR is hard capped at 95%.)

[Gobbledigook]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Yup.

 

 

But that 5% of the time is only true against even level minions. +4 bosses and AVs are going to be tagging you far more often. 90% resists is just 90% resists with 90% resistance debuff resistance. (Unless you're over the cap. RDR can go up to 100% where DDR is hard capped at 95%.)

Even at 60% defence? Shield/SR with low health can go 90% with Brute/Tanker. Yes 75% resist cap is different but that is probably worse than capped defences most of the time. I would rather be barely hit at all with damage or debuffs than take 25% damage and all the debuffs. That is why i can go with less slow debuff resist on a defence set than i like to do on a resist set.

 

I do think defence sets have the advantage in this game. @Linea may have opinions for or against. Actually playing defence and resists sets has shown me this also.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Gobbledegook

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

I do think defence sets have the advantage in this game.

 

I think most of us are agreed on that. There are caveats and autohit powers and Rularuu Eyeballs, etc, but on the whole? Yea, Defense > Resist.

[arcane]

On 5/10/2022 at 7:36 PM, Krimson said:

Regarding 1, have you seen what Tankers can do lately?

Yeah, I now have a Fire/Rad Tanker to hang out with my 5 /Fire Brutes and I can't say *I* can tell a material difference in farmability. But the people with constantly running stopwatches might be able to, IDK. 

 

Honestly the main reason I still play my Spines/Fire the most is because it has the most vet levels and that e-peen measuring-contest mini-game is still mildly fun for me.

[arcane]

9 hours ago, Krimson said:

I have a Fire/Rad Tanker that uses Fold Space and it's glorious. I have no problems with bosses or EBs. That one does Fire, S/L, and pretty much everything else since I made it to be versatile. Before that I made a Dark/Spines Tanker, and it can chew through S/L pretty well. I could dual box them if I want to make INF with low effort. 

Yeah I pretty much afk farm on all my tankers for vet levels even if some can only put one measly PBAoE on auto and it’s slow.

 

Regardless, Fire tanks may be about as good as Fire brutes, but I still maintain that Fire farming brutes clearly have something other brutes don’t: not having to think about how much better mitigation their tanker counterparts have.

After you back out the Fiery Auras, I have 14 more tanks and 4 more brutes (the 2 without Regen / EA being on an extra dusty shelf). In every other case, you would need extra IO bonuses for a brute to match the tank’s mitigation, taking away from offensive/proc slotting opportunities. At least the fire farmer brute has the exact same fire resistance as the tank and only negligible differences in fire defense via pool power differences. Fire farmer brutes are already so invincible that I never take Healing Flames, so at least there’s that.

[Enots]

On 5/10/2022 at 8:47 AM, Uun said:

You need set bonuses to do it, but Elec can cap S/L/E and get 65+ to F/C/Psi.

Possible to cap all of those with set bonuses.

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 5/11/2022 at 6:16 PM, Gobbledegook said:

Even at 60% defence? Shield/SR with low health can go 90% with Brute/Tanker. Yes 75% resist cap is different but that is probably worse than capped defences most of the time. I would rather be barely hit at all with damage or debuffs than take 25% damage and all the debuffs. That is why i can go with less slow debuff resist on a defence set than i like to do on a resist set.

 

I do think defence sets have the advantage in this game. @Linea may have opinions for or against. Actually playing defence and resists sets has shown me this also.

 

60% defense means nothing. Could be 225%. At 45% defense, a +4 AV has the exact same chance to hit you as it will with you at 60% defense or at 225% defense.

 

The rest I completely agree with. Every time I've played a resist based character, I've lamented the horror of being hit with all those debuffs. This is precisely why so many people chase defense even when they don't have DDR to back it up. The longer you continue to NOT get hit at all means the longer you survive.

[Hjarki]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:46 PM, Gobbledegook said:

Does defence in general  fair better than resist based sets. Is it because adding defence to a resist set gets no DDR and can be stripped quite easily but a defence set that gets extra resistance gets resistance debuff built in, plus the debuffs have got to hit in the first place to actually work?.

DDR is less of an issue than many make it out to be. Cascading defense failures are a feature of large spawns rather than single tough opponents, so there are plenty of options for melee to deal with it in primary. Consider that Bio (a primarily defense-based set) has both low S/L (L is the primary delivery mechanism for most -def) and no DDR. But people are happy to play it.

 

Debuffs are also a concern. Being 90% immune to every type of damage is nice, but if you're getting hit 100% of the time with Negative damage you probably can't hit the broad side of a barn. Likewise, getting hit 100% of the time with Psi damage means you can't realistically use any of your abilities more than once. Blinds are bad and if even one Endurance Drain from the right kind of Sapper hits, you can get de-toggled (and dead). While resist-based sets are normally better with debuff resistance than Defense-based sets, they're not that much better.

 

The larger issue is that Defense powers are simply more useful to a build than Resist powers. With a single Resist power, you can slot every Resist set unique in the game while still improving the power itself to the ED cap. Resist sets give bonuses like F/C Defense, Melee Def and Psi Def which, while nice, generally aren't what you want.

 

On the other hand, you need five Defense powers to slot all your LotG +recharge. Having additional ones to mule the other Defense uniques can come in handy as well. You can two-slot most Defense powers just fine. Or, if you want to invest a bit, you can get a pretty hefty bonus to E/N Resist (which is lot harder for most builds to raise than S/L or F/C). Defense powers are incredibly efficient in terms of powers/slots compared to Resist powers due to the peculiarities of the various IO sets.

 

You also have to consider the value of over-cap Resist vs. over-cap Defense. If I just barely stagger to 90% resist, that's all I'll ever need. No matter how you ramp up the difficulty, go into Incarnate content, etc., 90% resist is the cap. Having over 90% resist is only valuable if you're facing significant amounts of -resist debuffing.

 

In contrast, hitting 45% Defense doesn't mean you're done. In incarnate content, the soft-cap rises to 59%. There are a variety of mechanics out there that give special +hit bonuses that require higher defense as well. A set like Stone or Super Reflexes that blows right past the soft-cap without even trying will be able to handle such issues a lot better than a build where you were barely able to hit soft-cap with some very clever slotting.

 

Lastly, there's a perceptual issue. When your Resist-based build goes down under a flurry of blows, it's fairly obvious that the build wasn't good enough for that content. Resist-based builds tend to die to large swarms of enemies that are not individually very dangerous. In contrast, when your Defense-based build goes down, it's because you were 'unlucky'. Defense-based builds tend to be nearly impervious to large swarms but can struggle against that AV because they just can't repel firepower of that magnitude if they do end up getting hit. Even then, most AV deal primarily S/L damage and Defense-based sets tend to build for S/L Resist cap even if they're vulnerable to everything else.

[Doomguide2005]

10 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

60% defense means nothing. Could be 225%. At 45% defense, a +4 AV has the exact same chance to hit you as it will with you at 60% defense or at 225% defense.

 

The rest I completely agree with. Every time I've played a resist based character, I've lamented the horror of being hit with all those debuffs. This is precisely why so many people chase defense even when they don't have DDR to back it up. The longer you continue to NOT get hit at all means the longer you survive.

This also points at the one very significant difference and weakness any defense has which Bill Z alluded to earlier when mentioning Eyeballs.  To Hit.  The game very largely doesn't exploit it.  It so unusual we gave it a new name when the Devs did use it.  We called it the Incarnate cap.  When they did it again it was in conjunction with a slew of opponent buffs as a new Notoriety setting, calling it Advanced Difficulty.  Those will destroy defenses/defense based characters unless they receive buffs (etc.) to counter them.  All it did to capped resistance based mitigation was make us more broadly aware of how RDR caps at 100% and resistance cascade failure isn't a thing.

[Gobbledigook]

10 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

60% defense means nothing. Could be 225%. At 45% defense, a +4 AV has the exact same chance to hit you as it will with you at 60% defense or at 225% defense.

 

The rest I completely agree with. Every time I've played a resist based character, I've lamented the horror of being hit with all those debuffs. This is precisely why so many people chase defense even when they don't have DDR to back it up. The longer you continue to NOT get hit at all means the longer you survive.

Yes,  incarnate at 59%. Not that it matters because you should really be teaming for that content and not punishing yourselves by soloing it lol.

[Doomguide2005]

7 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

Yes,  incarnate at 59%. Not that it matters because you should really be teaming for that content and not punishing yourselves by soloing it lol.

     Perhaps but the same sort of argument has been made about solo'ing +4/×8 mobs in general.  And it's really a side issue to what the difference between resistance and defense based mitigation involves and their respective strength and weaknesses.  You could solo Vanguard Sword and Eyeball laden missions long before Incarnate To Hit and Dark Astoria Incarnate missions became a thing.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Doomguide2005
Added to for clarity

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

Yes,  incarnate at 59%. Not that it matters because you should really be teaming for that content and not punishing yourselves by soloing it lol.

 

Generally speaking, I find dealing with other people far more a "punishment" than soloing incarnate content. Especially when I'm getting xp/inf for +4s and only fighting +1s.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     Perhaps but the same sort of argument has been made about solo'ing +4/×8 mobs in general.  And it's really a side issue to what the difference between resistance and defense based mitigation involves and their respective strength and weaknesses.  You could solo Vanguard Sword and Eyeball laden missions long before Incarnate To Hit and Dark Astoria Incarnate missions became a thing.

 

Just to add more clarity, the incarnate softcap comes specifically and only with incarnate enemies. It's a 13.something tohit buff for all incarnate enemies so the effective soft cap then becomes 58.something, round up to 59% but ONLY for incarnate enemies. So if you're generally running around with 59% defense to all types or positions, it's going to feel exactly like running at 45% defense against normal foes.

 

My scrapper and brute aren't there, they sit around 54% to m/r/a def but because of the level shifts, even being below the incarnate soft cap, and three of 'em, those +4s become +1s, and it seems I end up spending less effort for better rewards over time.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba