How effective is it to softcap S/L?

[Sovera]

I'm toying with two builds. One has (easily) softcapped S/L defenses and more freedom of powers and slots. The has melee, ranged and AoE at 32.5% so it can all be softcapped with a small purple, but it's a verrrrry tight build in terms of slotting.

 

For those who work out with builds with only softcapped S/L how do you find it in terms of defense and faceplanting?

[subbacultchas]

It's fantastic... if you run a lot of s/l AE farms. Otherwise it is decent, as a lot of typed attacks have a s/l component and you use higher of your defenses. But there's going to be a lot of times where it's useless too. Positional defenses are better to cap IMO, or get your other typed defenses also in the 30-40 range. But I don't think s/l capping on its own is often the boon people think it is, considering the steps you sometimes have to take to get there.

[Sovera]

It feels situational which was why I was asking. Building for 33% to all is harder but works for everything. But how situational? I left back in I14 so I don't know or even remember how common pure damage attacks are in the game. It's not so good to be tanking aimed at all content and suddenly faceplanting out of the blue.

[subbacultchas]

It feels situational which was why I was asking. Building for 33% to all is harder but works for everything. But how situational? I left back in I14 so I don't know or even remember how common pure damage attacks are in the game. It's not so good to be tanking aimed at all content and suddenly faceplanting out of the blue.

That's exactly my thrust too. I have a Dom that's softcapped to S/L, and has the other damage types in the 30-40 range. And it works, that negates a good portion of the damage you'd usually take, coupled with your controls. I would not softcap S/L and ignore the others though, just my two cents. You're going to get some massive spikes that do you in.

[Machariel]

My guideline for my own builds is to shoot for 32.5% ranged defense because...

a) you have access to a super strong AoE immobilize, so it's easy to stay out of melee, and I guess there are very few attacks tagged purely as AoE, so it's easy to force most incoming attacks to be ranged - whereas if you build for S/L def and you happen to find an enemy with attacks that don't have a smashing or lethal component (not super uncommon) you're SOL

b) you're one purple away from the softcap (and will reach it quite readily in a large number of teams)

c) Dominators only need enough defense & resistance to cover for gaps in their control powers

d) 32.5% ranged is quite an easy target as many strong and desirable IO sets also happen to give large ranged defense bonuses, and I am lazy  ;D

[Tankshock]

Capped S/L will get you through the vast majority of opponents, it's surprising how many attacks have an s/l component.  I'd rather cap that or ranged than have 32.5 in all positional.  Melee Dam and AoE are not nearly as important to a Dom.

[Sovera]

I went to Justin to test, and woosh, even at 45% S/L I went down in seconds in a 0/8 S/L farm. As if I was naked. Those five percent chance hitting seems to add up pretty fast and I had no heals other than insps. I guess it's back to /Psi, though at the rate I went down I'm not sure the regen would have helped. I'll make a new test character tomorrow.

[subbacultchas]

I went to Justin to test, and woosh, even at 45% S/L I went down in seconds in a 0/8 S/L farm. As if I was naked. Those five percent chance hitting seems to add up pretty fast and I had no heals other than insps. I guess it's back to /Psi, though at the rate I went down I'm not sure the regen would have helped. I'll make a new test character tomorrow.

Absolutely. It's only good with good controls, to help mitigate but not a total mitigation by itself.  This with a purple every now and again, and a good aoe control set and you can do 3-4/8 pretty easily.

 

What build did  you use out of curiosity?

[subbacultchas]

Also bosses or no bosses is a tipping point for me.

[Sovera]

I was testing a concept that did not pan out very well. Thank god for Justin so I did not finish leveling and slotting it in the live servers just to be disappointed. It was a plant/MA based on the idea of using Envenom Blades to add a lot of extra ticks of damage, then pick Roots, Creepers, Caltrops, Sleet and Ice Storm under the idea that each tick of damage (76 ticks in both Sleet and Ice Storm) would have a tick of damage added.

 

But no. Roots only gets the toxic damage on application, Caltrops works fine, Creepers only on application, and Sleet and Ice Storm only tick once a second for a triffle. Envenom blades does a % of the attack's damage, so my snipe was hitting for 250 damage and the toxic tick was 40 damage. On Sleet and Glacial Storm it was something like 0.22 toxic once a second, and all the other ticks during that second ignored.

 

I picked a random map that had patroling packs which was my undoing too. I would seed a pack, then start dropping all those AoEs, then a second pack would come before Seeds was up again and the rush of damage would kill me quickly even at 45% S/L.

[predador]

Only having defense alone is a matter of luck, if you can not play in a controlled environment where you can easily keep the mobs held / stunned / whatever, you'll likely die(No, you will die). One way to mitigate this could be to increase your resistances against smash / lethal, but even so, in the end I think it would not make that much difference in general, you would last a few more hits though.

 

Personally I'd rather focus on ranged defense, although you still depend on lot on your luck, it's better in the fact that you have a chance to dodge ranged damage of all kinds. As for melee / AoE, I prefer to keep the mobs under control, it works perfectly, except for EBs / AVs, it is not easy to get a good amount of defenses in those 3 without much investment or sacrificing other things.

[marex]

I went to Justin to test, and woosh, even at 45% S/L I went down in seconds in a 0/8 S/L farm. As if I was naked. Those five percent chance hitting seems to add up pretty fast and I had no heals other than insps. I guess it's back to /Psi, though at the rate I went down I'm not sure the regen would have helped. I'll make a new test character tomorrow.

 

Well if you chose a farming S/L map like the comic con one, the are build for Brutes that sits on the 90% resist cap, because

even one savage leap will do >500dmg with 30%resist and we don't have much hp either.

As an example if you have >45% try the Council farm from Unai Kemen, even after 3min the could not kill me at +4x8

 

To bring this into perspective: I run a farming Brute with 90% fire resist through a pure fire dmg map on +4/x8 (boss on) and my results are for one run are:

 

dies in ~10sec with 0 def

dies in ~12sec with 12.5% def

dies in ~25sec with 25.0% def

dies in ~32sec with 37.5% def

dies after 2min 45sec with >45% (without healing flames on auto)

 

 

From playing a fire/dark at +4/x8 on every mission you first priority should be perma domination, nothing does more for you then to have it perma after that in case you have a epic def shield you can cap >45% def with it easily. Just remember that dosen't help in the same way for incarnate stuff because the have a +tohit bonus. However a high s/l def with quite a bit resist to back it up helps at that difficulty setting.

It's nice to have, but you don't need it in every case.....

 

Stats for me without the extra toxic resist from hoarfrost are (with the outside def buff 2.81% from Tielekku and the scaling resist buff from Reactive Defenses starts at +3% and goes then up to +13% at very low hp):

 

 

 

 

[KelvinKole]

Defense is just not a good attribute if farming is your goal. At the aggro cap, statistics are against you and when attacks land they land with full force. I tried for quite a while to make a shield brute work on live, but fire armor was always better.

 

A Doms best tactic for farming is going to be total lockdown. That's why fire/psi and plant/psi, back in the day, worked well. Fire and plant offer a lot of hard control, and psi kept people moving with great AoE damage.

[Sovera]

After playing around with a sentinel I was testing I came to see that healing is a must. The downfall of the Plant/MA was having nothing to counter the hits that did come through. I'll try it with /psi since Drain Psyche ought to (easily) counter what damage goes through the defenses.

[DirtyMick]

After playing around with a sentinel I was testing I came to see that healing is a must. The downfall of the Plant/MA was having nothing to counter the hits that did come through. I'll try it with /psi since Drain Psyche ought to (easily) counter what damage goes through the defenses.

 

It does a good job with the Regen.  The thing is I remember farming very well with Fire/Psi way back when the ideal map was the TV farm, and half the enemies there were Nemesis which are far from ideal PS fodder. The only times I can recall dying is when I had a network flap, or screwed up somehow.  This is prior to incarnates, APP proliferation, the KB to KD IO for bonfire, and granted the PS nerf. 

 

All that said I think it’s important to focus on a farm where the max group size doesn’t exceed 16, so that means no roamers.  I’m thinking of shooting for the council empire mission as my farm.  As said already, control is our defense and that’s what we should build around.