How much should damage type factor into your decision regarding power choices?

[VashNKnives]

The implications of damage typing is one reason I have enjoyed this game for so long. The strategic considerations this creates do provide positive feedback to those who are in the know as a small reward for digging a bit deeper in to the game mechanics. That said, if you find that you primarily like certain task forces and enemy groups, then I would consider damage resistances, defenses, and special powers of those groups.

 

I play mostly for concept but have abandoned characters that felt too grindy or poor at what they are designed to do. And sometimes the game changes and you just have to keep in mind that it is an MMO with some very gracious and thoughtful developers. The shock and horror I felt testing my almost 50 invulnerability/street justice/dark tank as a fully I/O'd and incarnated juggernaut against the new harder mode of the Imperious Task Force on the test server... I paused that project for now. 

[Luminara]

26 minutes ago, hexadecimalwtf said:

Question though. If a power has mixed damage types, say Lethal/Toxic, is the toxic portion resisted by the toxic resist stat or does it all count as lethal?

 

Resistances are discrete.  Lethal Resistance only resists Lethal damage, Toxic Resistance only resists Toxic damage.

[tidge]

I try to avoid having a character that only does exclusively (or almost exclusively) one type of damage; to my thinking this is the best reason to try to have some %damage powers on certain high DPS AT characters.

 

There are a handful of Giant Monsters that give my GM-hunters slightly more trouble because of their resistances (above and beyond their MaxHP); I usually try to have a Lore slotted that can help against these (beyond debuffs and extra DPS).

 

Flipping this around: Generally I prefer to try to shoot for positional defenses, and as for specific damage type resistances... it is more-or-less catch-as-catch-can... especially with the more-recent changes to damage typing.  I don't specifically build characters to 'farm' but I can understand easy-to-get resistance builds for S/L or F/C.

 

 

[carroto]

I do consider damage type and resistances when thinking of rolling up a new character but it's more of a subtle factor.  It might nudge me in a certain direction if I'm not sure which character to roll up next, but I don't know if it's ever caused me to avoid a power set altogether.  Then again I have very few characters with lethal-only power sets, so maybe it influences me more than I realize.

 

As some others have said if some of my powers have a commonly or heavily resisted damage type I'll usually try to include some attacks with another damage type.  Psi is heavily resisted but I can't think of a single psi power set that doesn't have some attacks that also do other damage types.  I guess Psychic Blast only has TK Blast, but that smashing component will be very welcome against robots.

[Scarlet Shocker]

I never think of damage type or enemy resistances.

 

I am quite happy to encounter Council however