Re-evaluating the Importance of Defense/Resistance Minimums for Grouping vs. Ability Usage in Task Forces

[codyecho]

Hello fellow heroes and villains,

I've been thinking a lot about the balance between maintaining defense/resistance minimums and the number of abilities we can effectively use while participating in Task Forces (TFs), especially when it comes to clearing trash mobs. I'd love to get your insights and spark a discussion on this topic.

Key Points for Discussion:

1. Defense/Resistance Minimums:

   • Many players prioritize hitting specific defense or resistance benchmarks to ensure survivability during challenging content.

   • These minimums can be crucial for surviving against tough enemies and bosses, but how do they impact our ability to efficiently clear trash mobs?

2. Ability Usage:

   • In TFs, the speed and efficiency of clearing trash mobs can significantly impact the overall completion time.

   • Balancing the need for survivability with the desire to maximize our damage-dealing abilities can be tricky.

3. Trade-Offs:

   • Is it worth sacrificing some defense/resistance to gain more offensive power and faster clears?

   • How do different builds and archetypes manage this balance?

4. Group Dynamics:

   • How does the composition of a team affect the need for individual defense/resistance minimums?

   • Are there situations where having higher damage output trumps the need for defensive stats?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this matter. How do you strike the right balance between defense/resistance and offensive abilities in your builds? Have you noticed any significant differences in TF performance based on your approach?

Looking forward to your insights and a lively discussion!

 

Quill Windwalker

[arcane]

None of my 50 active characters have any defense or resistance beyond what they get from their primary, their secondary, combat jumping, and maneuvers or stealth. In the case of my tanks, I got the procs too. I don’t get the fighting pool anymore on anything, and I don’t waste slots on defense or resistance bonuses that can be better spent on damage/procs, recharge, or mobility.

Edited Sunday at 05:58 AM by arcane

[MoonSheep]

this is something that bugs me a lot as it often doesn’t make much sense to build for defense. this’ll probably turn into an arguement, but here’s my observations which are purely team focused as i don’t solo:

 

- building for defense reduces the overall potential of a lot of alts

- you can often do more with your squishie if you don’t build for defense

- the game has minimal penalties for dying, building for defense often tries to solve a problem that doesn’t exist

- i often feel people who prioritise building every alt for maximum defense and resistance without thinking if it’s actually needed tend to be less experienced players, positioning and mob strategy is just as effective

- a lot of people simply ask for a S/L cap build on the forums to copy and paste onto their squishie, then run off and play it as a scrapper like the rest of their alts. i often notice buffs received in this game are woefully underslotted, many people would be better suited playing sentinels rather than defenders and corrupters

- an entire build specialised for softcap defense can be replicated by typing /ah before the mish and buying medium purple insps, therefore it’s an inefficient and poor strategy for most builds

- people over estimate how much combat they’ll see whilst hiding at the back of the team during missions

- overall the majority of people don’t need to build for defense 

Edited Sunday at 08:08 AM by MoonSheep

[macskull]

Some players build for survivability because they don't want to have to think about inspiration management (or they think inspirations and temp powers are cheating, or they think procs are cheating, or whatever else). It's not as potent as it used to be with the typed defense changes, and to be entirely honest it doesn't really matter in almost any case in this game whether you lose some DPS to get that survivability.

[Uun]

Other than defense-based armor sets (SR, Shield, EA, Nin, Ice, Stone), I typically don't bother to soft cap defenses. The only time I shoot for resist caps is tanks/brutes playing resist-based armors (Dark, Elec, Fire, Rad). The majority of my non-armor builds generally have around 25-30% defense and 40-60% resists, with the emphasis dependent on whether I select a resist or defense armor with the epic. I've got Nature defenders and controllers that run around 15% defense and are still very sturdy. If I'm playing sets with significant tohit debuffs (Dark Miasma, Trick Arrow, Poison), I use the debuffs to bridge the gap. The exceptions are characters with Time Manipulation or Darkness Affinity, since defense can be soft capped without dipping into pool powers. The flip side to this is that I want to maximize the characters offensive/support/control abilities. I don't want to skip useful powers from my primary or secondary just to take defensive pool powers.  

 

 

[tidge]

@MoonSheep pretty much hit all the points I would make, so I'll just re-state this one: IMO a LOT of the builds I see have (by my judgment) seriously over-estimated the importance of things like "Defense Softcaps" and "Resistance Caps" (especially Smashing/Lethal). There *are* narrow content windows where these things can make a difference (even if a player has well-built and well-played teammates) but for most content it barely matters. I often feel that most characters would just be better with a self-rez power!

 

Long-time players will remember classic arguments like "going from 85% resistance to 90% cuts your damage taken by one-third!" while simultaneous ignoring how much health-per-tick will come back from a Tanker/Brute, and the effects of things like Scaling Damage Resistance, etc. The HC change to damage-typing also had a subtle impact to simply trying for overkill on S/L. The "S/L is the most common damage type in the game!" argument doesn't sway me; IMO how a character deals with S/L should help establish a baseline of performance and not  some special niche that can be filled by any rando character.

 

Full disclosure: I do sometimes still go the route of the Fighting pool for some characters in order to ---/Tough/Weave but in practice I almost never toggle on either Tough or Weave.

 

8 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 i often notice buffs received in this game are woefully underslotted, many people would be better suited playing sentinels rather than defenders and corrupters

 

Sometimes I am guilty of this (because selfishness)... but usually it manifests as picking a potentially early ally buff as a later power pick and not a flat-out non-slotting of powers I've actually taken. If I have a choice, it will be a S/L resist buff that I delay, see my comments above.

[lemming]

I tend to over build for end reduction than anything else.  Most of my melee chars tend to be more defensive, etc... to a point.  Unless I'm purposelessly building a char to solo +4/x8 content, I'm not too worried.

[Stormwalker]

Fair warning:  Massive wall of text incoming.  Read at your own risk!

 

I solo 90% of the time.  Maybe more than 90%.  I pretty much only group when I want to run a TF.  As such, my builds are constructed mostly for solo survivability.  That said, all of my builds have functional attack chains and are quite capable of dishing out their share of damage.  They are generally not built for exemplar play, however, so no promises about a functional attack chain at level 15 (though I have soloed Task Force Commander on almost all of these (all except the blaster, who has only soloed two of the TF's so far), meaning they are perfectly capable of soloing AV's when exemplaring as long as I remember to pack Envenomed Daggers - and the Energy/Energy Scrapper and the Claws/SR scrapper didn't even have those).

 

It should also be noted that I build my characters to specific concepts, and I restrict their power selection by those concepts.  Very few of my Scrappers take ranged attacks from their Epic pools, because very few of my Scrappers can justify those attacks within their concepts.  Of course, some of them have ranged attacks within their primaries, which helps a lot since those attacks have better unity with their primary concept.  But, for example, you will rarely see me taking a Snipe from an Epic pool on one of my Scrappers (I think my Dark/Dark/Dark scrapper has a ranged attack in his build plan, because it's not hard to work that in to his concept at all.  My DB/Energy scrapper currently has Laser Beam Eyes in her build plan, and I have been arguing with myself over that one for a couple of weeks now - not whether I can justify it (she's Tech origin, so it's definitely possible), it's just a question of how)..

 

1). In some builds, it's very easy to have both.

 

One of my three mains is Kitten America, a Claws/SR/Energy scrapper.  This is one of the easiest "have your cake and eat it too" builds there is, because if you have sufficient recharge (and Super Reflexes helps with this), you can have very strong single-target (Follow-Up -> Focus -> Slash) and AoE (Follow-Up -> Spin -> Shockwave) attack chains with only five attacks slotted (you have to take either Strike or Swipe, which I use as a mule for two-piece Blistering Cold for the extra slow resistance).   This leaves plenty of room for my travel powers (SJ and Infiltration), Combat Jumping, Boxing (another mule for Blistering Cold), Tough, and Weave.  I even found room for Conserve Power and Focused Accuracy, both of which are of highly situational benefit but are really nice to have in those moments when you need them.

 

Similarly, my second main, the Energy/Energy/Energy scrapper Stardriver did not give me much trouble fitting in everything I wanted.  Her attack chain is Energy Transfer -> Total Focus -> Energy Transfer -> Bonesmasher -> Energy Punch in single target situations, with Whirling Hands regularly subbing in for BS + EP in AoE situations.  It's not the best AoE output, but that's Energy Melee for you, and when you are one-shotting minions left and right you don't miss the AoE so much.  Energy Aura gives you just about everything you could want in survivability.  Fairly easily soft-cappable defenses (though Negative Energy is only 44.9% in my build, and it took some work to get it that high), a heal with endurance discount, an end steal that adds extra defense (which helps patch that minor deficiency in negative energy) and reasonably good resists.  Plenty of room after taking my five attacks to fit in Hover, Fly, Evasive Maneuvers, Boxing (again used as a mule here - slow resist is important!), Tough, Weave, Conserve Power (not that I really need it unless I am getting end drained a whole lot), Physical Perfection (more regen never hurts when 2/5 of your attack chain is self-damaging) and Focused Accuracy.

 

2). Some builds are a little tricker, but you find ways to strike a balance.

 

My third main is Skylancer, my Energy/Energy/Force blaster.  She is built for soft-capped ranged defense, reasonable Smash/Lethal resist (Tough + Temp Invulnerability, with Force of Nature available if I need it - though I very rarely do) and Personal Force Field is available for absolute emergencies (I think I've used it once).  Even though she's a concept character first and foremost, she doesn't skimp on offense.  I don't waste slots on KB -> KD (except in Nova, for convenience), because I have Hover and blasting things straight into the ground so they bounce is more effective KD than KD.  Also, it means I still have access to my KB in situations where it can be useful (as well as for self-defense.  I did mention that I solo a lot, right?).  Even though she's a hoverblaster, she does have Combat Jumping for Immobilize Protection and she slots two KB prot IO's.  If something DOES get into melee with her, it's going to eat a Total Focus for hefty damage, followed by a Power Thrust to get it out of her face. 

 

I'll also note here that Skylancer has soloed the Posi 2 and Synapse TF's when exemplared down (with only Envenomed Daggers outside her normal powers), and has duoed Citadel with a Katana/Dark Armor scrapper friend of mine (whcih was a cakewalk, as it happened; if I'd realized it was going to be that easy, I'd have tried to solo that one, too).  Energy is not exactly the strongest of Blaster primaries, but it's pretty good for single-target damage and Skylancer can dish it out just fine.  Furthermore, she brings Maneuvers AND Tactics to the table in terms of team utility.  I don't feel like soft-capping her ranged defense or investing in some damage resistance has blunted her offense at all.  If anything holds her back in the offensive regard, it's that her concept demands that she be a flying/hovering blaster and not a grounded blapper, which limits the mileage she can get out of her secondary.  She seems to be able to hold her own just fine in teams, though, so I'm not too worried about it.  Now, I'll be first to admit, I had a lot of help coming up with Skylancer's build from folks who know way more about blasters than me.  But I still think it makes a good example of how you can achieve reasonable defensive goals while keeping a strong offense.

 

3). Some builds, you spend a lot of time tinkering with until you finally make it work.

 

Now, where the builds start to get tricker in terms of meeting my survivability requirements and still getting the offense I want is with my Willpower builds.  I have two level 50 Willpower scrappers.  One of them, Stormy Walker (Staff/WP) is built for soft-capped Melee, Lethal, Energy/Negative, and Fire/Coild defense.  She's not soft-capped to Smash, and she doesn't really need to be because she's hard-capped to S/L resistance.  The only reason she's soft-capped to Melee/Lethal is Guarded Spin.

 

Similarly, Dancing Edge, my redside DB/WP street samurai scrapper, is soft-capped to E/N and almost to F/C, but not to S/L.  She has resists to handle the S/L.   And my several other not-yet-50 WP scrappers (like Impulse Drive, who is level 45 and is KM/WP) and brutes are similar.

 

Now, you might be asking, why did I bother soft-capping E/N on a set that is largely not a defense set?  Well, I can answer that in two words:  ENDURANCE DRAIN.  One thing I discovered very early on with Dancing Edge was that she had major problems with Malta, and significant issues with any enemies that had electrical attacks (Arachnos, Praetorian Clockwork, etc.), due to the endurance drain eating her alive.  The solution to this was to soft-cap Energy defense - if the Sapper/Mu/etc. doesn't hit you, it can't drain your endurance, and only being hit 5% of the time kept the end drain to manageable levels.  Ever since I soft-capped their E/N defense, neither of my WP scrappers has issues with those enemies anymore.  

 

(As for why I soft-capped or near-soft-capped F/C, honestly that was mostly a side-effect of slotting winter sets for slow resistance).

 

So, what did I give up to achieve that soft-capped E/N defense?  Mostly, what I gave up was recharge.  Fortunately, Willpower doesn't really NEED recharge.  Offensively, it does make some difference, but it's not as bad as you might expect. 

 

For example:

• Dancing Edge uses BF -> Attack Vitals as her attack chain.  This is not the optimal DB attack chain, obviously, but since the combo system was changed so that missing an attack doesn't drop the combo, it's not as far behind as it once was... and the optimal DB attack chain requires enormous amounts of recharge.  She also has Typhoon's Edge to give her some extra AoE punch as well as to provide a place to slot some more slow resistance, and similarly she uses Power Slice (since either Power Slice or Nimble Slash is required) as a mule for a bit of E/N resistance (2-pc. Touch of Death, IIRC).

 

And then there's my Inv/SS tanker, Sylvie Stardrive.  She's only level 37 (as of tonight), but I copied her to Brainstorm and tested out her level 50 build - which is based on one of Infinitum's but with a few changes for personal taste - and, yeah, even though it's a more defensive build than offensive, I could have sworn I was playing a Scrapper.  Except for, you know, the fact that my health meter wasn't moving.  She's a monster.  I'm not worried about her damage output at all - she does just fine, and she's nearly indestructible to boot.

 

So, all of that to say this... unless you are going to absurd lengths for defense, in most cases I think you can meet reasonable defensive requirements - enough to solo on fairly high difficulty settings - while still retaining plenty enough damage output to be a solid contributor on a team.

Edited Monday at 09:13 AM by Stormwalker

[Andreah]

My experience isn't like some of the feedback here at all. Usually, I see people who didn't build for some degree of sturdiness being defeated and needing to respawn or waiting for someone to rez them, all the while the now short team slows has to slow down. Sometimes over and over to the point I wonder how it could be fun. I'm also not speaking about lowbie toons, for whom it's understandable.

 

I see it as my first responsibility to be sturdy enough to not do that to my team for whatever mechanical role I play.

 

Even so, the game isn't hard and I'm more interested in having fun than rewards/hour. If they're okay with working their debt badges and still having fun, press on!

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, Andreah said:

My experience isn't like some of the feedback here at all. Usually, I see people who didn't build for some degree of sturdiness being defeated and needing to respawn or waiting for someone to rez them, all the while the now short team slows has to slow down. Sometimes over and over to the point I wonder how it could be fun. I'm also not speaking about lowbie toons, for whom it's understandable.

 

I see it as my first responsibility to be sturdy enough to not do that to my team for whatever mechanical role I play.

 

Even so, the game isn't hard and I'm more interested in having fun than rewards/hour. If they're okay with working their debt badges and still having fun, press on!

People who skip tough/weave, def/res bonuses, etc aren’t necessarily lacking in sturdiness unless they’re just bad players. I think everyone here claiming that they build for superior offense knows how to juggle Incarnates, inspirations, and tactics such that there is nothing slowing them down.

 

On the other side of the coin, those that built for sturdiness can only do so much to catch up with the offensive capabilities of the aforementioned players. Even if you compensated with a full tray of reds you’d run up against damage caps that proc builds are bypassing.

Edited Monday at 04:32 PM by arcane

[Troo]

On 2/15/2025 at 11:57 PM, MoonSheep said:

- you can often do more with your squishie if you don’t build for defense

 

I wish we saw more creative builds that showed the value.

 

Slows combined with -ToHit are very very effective together. Toss in a disorient and it feels like a cat playing with mice.

[Crysis]

I always build anything I keep on the T4 Incarnate path to a) some level of softcapped +DEF…this can be positional (usually ranged) or S/L and often several and b) enough damage to reliably solo +4/x8 non-Incarnate mobs.  

 

If I can solo it on max difficulty, there’s really no reason for me to worry about doing anything other than the above.  This isn’t a game about max defense/resistance.  It’s a game of -enough- defense/resistance and -enough- DPS to take out the enemy before they take out you.  

 

Every once in awhile I find a toon that is highly proccable.  I have a Marine/DP Defender like that.  She doesn’t have max Defense natively as I’ve procc’d out all her attacks and sacrificed all IO bonuses for +DEF as a result.  But even in such an edge case, I still end up T4’ing out Hybrid>Melee and Destiny>Barrier so I still end up with softcapped +DEF and +RES pretty much all the time.

 

Worked well for me across dunno….60-80 level 50’s across all classes.  I see no reason to change it now.

[BlackSpectre]

Team play vs solo play matters. Solo, high defense and resistances are important. Team play, it’s not as important because in most cases the rest of the team’s buffs, debuffs, heals, and damage strengthen all the individuals on a team. 
 

I do a mix of solo and team based play, so my toons are generally built to be useful in both arenas.. versatile. That said, I have not found that balancing offense was more difficult when attempting to balance defense except for a few archetypes/power sets. My dark/dark defender, for example, has always been a difficult balance to make. However, I have managed to build him so that he can solo most of the content in the game. His Achilles heal is lack of damage… and that’s not really a balancing thing as much as it is an AT/power set thing. 
 

So I guess my overall answer is “It depends”. LOL 

[Stormwalker]

2 hours ago, Crysis said:

I always build anything I keep on the T4 Incarnate path to a) some level of softcapped +DEF…this can be positional (usually ranged) or S/L and often several and b) enough damage to reliably solo +4/x8 non-Incarnate mobs.  

 

If I can solo it on max difficulty, there’s really no reason for me to worry about doing anything other than the above.  This isn’t a game about max defense/resistance.  It’s a game of -enough- defense/resistance and -enough- DPS to take out the enemy before they take out you.  

 

Every once in awhile I find a toon that is highly proccable.  I have a Marine/DP Defender like that.  She doesn’t have max Defense natively as I’ve procc’d out all her attacks and sacrificed all IO bonuses for +DEF as a result.  But even in such an edge case, I still end up T4’ing out Hybrid>Melee and Destiny>Barrier so I still end up with softcapped +DEF and +RES pretty much all the time.

 

Worked well for me across dunno….60-80 level 50’s across all classes.  I see no reason to change it now.

 

Yeah, this comes back to another point about defenses.

 

You don't need to have strong defenses against everything if you're not a melee.  You just have to defend against what you expect to be targeted by.

 

In a team, a blaster/defender/controller who expects to operate mostly from range (even if you are delivering some melee attacks via jousting) doesn't need strong melee defense.  They're not going to be close enough to the enemy for melee attacks to target them most of the time.  And they don't need a ton of AoE defense, either, though it's nice to have some.  The vast majority of attacks targeting these characters are going to be single-target ranged attacks, so what they mostly need is Ranged defense.   Some middling resists are nice as well to protect against being one-shotted if you somehow get unwanted attention from the AV.  Plus, if your teammates bring resist buffs, suddenly your middling resists become strong resists.

 

Someone will certainly think, "What about defense debuffs?  They won't have any resistance to those!"   That is true, but these characters should not have mass aggro so long as:

1.  They don't do something stupid, and
2.  The Tanker is doing his or her job.

Given that, mostly they're only going to have to deal with stray fire from a couple of enemies, which isn't going to be sufficient to provoke Defense Cascade Failure.  Especially when the enemy will have a hard time landing that first hit to begin with because of high defense.

 

Note that I said "high defense" and not "soft-capped defense".  If you don't ever solo, you probably don't need soft-capped defense on a ranged-primary character; you just shouldn't be taking that much fire to begin with.   Even 25% defense cuts down your incoming damage by more than half against enemies who don't have accuracy buffs.

 

I personally find that soft-capped ranged defense is not that hard to get on a Blaster - you can only use so many attacks in a practical chain, so you don't need to take all of them, so you have plenty of room for some defense powers. 

 

Defenders, though, are going to need to take most if not all of their primary to deliver the most benefit to a team - their role is more complex than damage and can't just be broken down to having enough powers to complete an effective attack chain.  As such, a defender may not be practically able to soft-cap ranged defense - and depending on what kind of Defender they are, they may have other tools that are more effective for their survival anyway.  I know that on my Rad/Rad defender I don't worry all that much about defense (it's nice to have *some*, but I'm not going out of my way for it)  because her massive To Hit and Damage debuffs plus Choking Cloud are plenty to keep her alive in most cases.

 

Controllers, I can't speak to in any detail.  I've never played one.  But I imagine that if I was playing a Controller, I would be counting more on my control to keep me alive rather than passive defenses.  Any defense I had would be there just to protect me from anything that leaked through.

 

Now, if you ARE a melee, you're going to face a lot of incoming fire.  Even if you don't have aggro (and you probably have some, at least on your primary target), you're going to get rolled against by every single AoE that gets chucked at the tank, because you're right there in the middle of things.   As such, I consider a strong defensive package a requirement for any melee AT.  Exactly what that "strong defensive package" consists of will vary from powerset to powerset.  /SR, /Energy Aura, /Shield all depend on soft-capped defenses.  WP is a mix of defense, resistances, regen, and max HP.  Invuln is resistances and defense, plus enough recharge to keep Dull Pain available at all times. 

 

Of course, exactly HOW strong each layer of your defense needs to be depends somewhat on your team.  If you know you're teaming with someone who provides defense buffs on a regular basis, you don't need to soft-cap, you just need to get close enough for the buffs to push you over the top.  If you know you're teaming with someone who provides resist buffs, the same goes for hard-capping resists.  If, like my Dark/Dark/Dark scrapper (who always duos with a friend's Kin/Psi defender), you know that you're going to have constant Recovery buffs, you can run with a build that is fairly end-negative and still be fine.

 

On the other hand, if you're teaming with randoms, you don't know what you're getting and it's best to be as self-sufficient as possible.  Remember: a dead scrapper does 0 DPS.

 

EDIT:  This reminds me of one other thing.  Willpower is not my favorite armor set for solo, but it's GREAT in teams.  Why?  Because whatever kind of buffs the team brings, Willpower can use it!

• Defense buffs?  Great, my "decent" S/L defense just got soft-capped and now I'm a monster with soft-capped S/L defense AND hard-capped S/L resist!
• Resist buffs?  Also great, because my fair-to-middling E/N/F/C resists are now quite formidable
• Recharge buffs?  Well, it doesn't help my defense any, but I can trim the fat from my attack chain and do better DPS.  Since it's hard to build Willpower for recharge without sacrificing too much durability, this is very helpful.
• Healing/regen buffs?  Sure!  WP is a "mitigate part of the damage and heal the rest" set, so more healing never hurts.
• Recovery buffs?  Ok, WP has a hard time making use of this one.  It's got lots of recovery.  Though it'd still be helpful to mitigate any incoming end drains or recovery debuffs.

Edited Monday at 09:04 PM by Stormwalker

[aethereal]

Lots of people who reply are saying:
 

• Oh, I don't build for [softcapped] defense [and I instead eat purple insps constantly to actually have softcapped defense]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [because I'm doing 4* Hard Mode content and my team will give me 100+ defense with rolling barriers and other team buffs]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [on my perma-dom dominators who lock down the entire spawn]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [on my character who only does large-team faceroll content]
• etc

But if you don't fill in the stuff in []'s, you are not getting a clear view on what's happening.

[tidge]

[because falling in combat isn't the end of the world]

[aethereal]

3 minutes ago, tidge said:

[because falling in combat isn't the end of the world]

 

It's certainly not!  But also, like, nobody at all is suggesting it is?

 

It is certainly possible to overemphasize durability.  I played an excruciating mission duo with someone who built a tank into like god I don't know the mid 20's with only their T1 and T2 attacks (and I was vastly underleveled and still doing all the damage).  And one also understands that the regulars on the forum have now built 500+ characters and are desperately starved for novelty.

 

Just, like, adding the note that the reason the whole meta of building defense or resistance came up in the first place is it is a generally strong tactic.

[arcane]

26 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Lots of people who reply are saying:
 

• Oh, I don't build for [softcapped] defense [and I instead eat purple insps constantly to actually have softcapped defense]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [because I'm doing 4* Hard Mode content and my team will give me 100+ defense with rolling barriers and other team buffs]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [on my perma-dom dominators who lock down the entire spawn]
• Oh, I don't build for defense [on my character who only does large-team faceroll content]
• etc

But if you don't fill in the stuff in []'s, you are not getting a clear view on what's happening.

I will admit that I likely can’t solo steamroll +4x8 Carnies on most of my characters, but I think your exaggerations aren’t helpful.
 

I can play on a +4x8 pug team with minimal support and be fine with just one Barrier and just small inspirations earned from average kills, nothing from vendors or the market. You make it sound like we have to go out of our way to cover our asses, and that’s simply not true. 
 

Oh and yes, you can do most things either way. But take 8 soft-cap meta toons loaded with Thunderstrikes and Artilleries instead of damage procs and -resistance procs, drop them in an Omega K’ong fight, and they will quite simply fail.

Edited Monday at 10:37 PM by arcane

[TheMoneyMaker]

On 2/15/2025 at 7:53 PM, codyecho said:

Key Points for Discussion:

1.  

2.  

3. Trade-Offs:

   • Is it worth sacrificing some defense/resistance to gain more offensive power and faster clears?

   • How do different builds and archetypes manage this balance?

Damage is king. For blasters, controllers, corruptors, defenders, and dominators, I will ignore defense and resistance to increase my damage; any defense or resistance that I pick up in set bonuses or a side effect of power usage is incidental. For sentinels, stalkers, and scrappers, I put varying degrees of effort into defense/resist, but again damage is priority. Brutes and tankers should be able to weather the brunt of a mob attacking, and so I will try to find the balance of damage and defense/resist with more focus on mitigating the incoming attacks and then leftover efforts to the damage. Brutes come with a nice damage bonus because of fury, and tanks can bring the pain but aren't really intended to be the damage dealer, so I'm happy when I can keep some damage in my tanker builds.

 

Masterminds? I don't play masterminds.

Edited Monday at 10:32 PM by TheMoneyMaker

[Stormwalker]

48 minutes ago, arcane said:

I will admit that I likely can’t solo steamroll +4x8 Carnies on most of my characters, but I think your exaggerations aren’t helpful.
 

I can play on a +4x8 pug team with minimal support and be fine with just one Barrier and just small inspirations earned from average kills, nothing from vendors or the market. You make it sound like we have to go out of our way to cover our asses, and that’s simply not true. 
 

Oh and yes, you can do most things either way. But take 8 soft-cap meta toons loaded with Thunderstrikes and Artilleries instead of damage procs and -resistance procs, drop them in an Omega K’ong fight, and they will quite simply fail.

 

I mean, most of the things people have said in this thread can be summed up in the statement "Build for the content you play."

 

But I'm going to point out that the OP said "Task Forces".  They didn't say "four-star hard mode Task Forces".

 

If I ever decide I want to actually run those four-star hard mode TF's?  I'll put together a dedicated build for that.  We can, after all, have more than one build. 

 

But for anything short of that, the builds I use for soloing will work just fine  And anyone who thinks otherwise is free to not team with me.  We'll probably both have more fun that way.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

I will admit that I likely can’t solo steamroll +4x8 Carnies on most of my characters, but I think your exaggerations aren’t helpful.
 

I can play on a +4x8 pug team with minimal support and be fine with just one Barrier and just small inspirations earned from average kills, nothing from vendors or the market. You make it sound like we have to go out of our way to cover our asses, and that’s simply not true. 

 

I'm sure that you thought that your caveats about teaming vs soloing and doing it at level 50 with Barrier support and so forth were apparent in your first post, but in fact, they weren't, nor was it particularly the case that your advice was targeted towards people who might care about hard-mode LGTF.  I think it's probably the case that more people want to solo Carnies than want to do hard-mode LGTF.

 

But, to be absolutely clear, there's nothing wrong with advice that's targeted towards people who want to group Hard Mode content, nor am I arguing against your advice for people who have similar characters goals to you.

 

But it is just endemic throughout these fora that people shear all context away from their advice.  Half of the content on these fora is person A saying "Build X is way better" and person B saying "You're insane, build Y is miles better," with person A not saying, "I care about the leveling experience on SOs," and person B not saying, "I care about the level 50 experience with billion-inf builds."  The advent of first incarnate trials and then hard mode has created yet more pretty highly divergent environments for builds to target, and for people to fail to specify.

[tidge]

100x this:

 

14 hours ago, aethereal said:

But it is just endemic throughout these fora that people shear all context away from their advice.  Half of the content on these fora is person A saying "Build X is way better" and person B saying "You're insane, build Y is miles better," with person A not saying, "I care about the leveling experience on SOs," and person B not saying, "I care about the level 50 experience with billion-inf builds."  The advent of first incarnate trials and then hard mode has created yet more pretty highly divergent environments for builds to target, and for people to fail to specify.

 

I kinda wish more folks would think about (and if necessary, be more explicit) divergent styles of play/content whenever an argument about X being "moar betta" than Y.

 

I've seen enough in-game variety to know that no build "solves" 100% of the game. Anyone who thinks so is probably only 100% playing of what they have "solved"... there will always be corners of game content where a different build would handle those corners better. Many folks who may have reached excellence at 99% of the game will have a second, slightly different, build for some content.

[arcane]

16 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

I'm sure that you thought that your caveats about teaming vs soloing and doing it at level 50 with Barrier support and so forth were apparent in your first post, but in fact, they weren't, nor was it particularly the case that your advice was targeted towards people who might care about hard-mode LGTF.  I think it's probably the case that more people want to solo Carnies than want to do hard-mode LGTF.

 

But, to be absolutely clear, there's nothing wrong with advice that's targeted towards people who want to group Hard Mode content, nor am I arguing against your advice for people who have similar characters goals to you.

 

But it is just endemic throughout these fora that people shear all context away from their advice.  Half of the content on these fora is person A saying "Build X is way better" and person B saying "You're insane, build Y is miles better," with person A not saying, "I care about the leveling experience on SOs," and person B not saying, "I care about the level 50 experience with billion-inf builds."  The advent of first incarnate trials and then hard mode has created yet more pretty highly divergent environments for builds to target, and for people to fail to specify.

I guess I’m not sure why you’re singling out posts from one side and continuing to imply that I’m only running 4 stars and that I’m only functional with a team full of Barriers. As I just said, I survive just fine in pug teams doing non-4 star content with the help of my own Incarnate picks and average inspiration usage, and I’m often the one running ahead and soloing. Is it not normal to assume someone is leveraging their own Incarnate slots and inspirations from kills?
 

Why not mention, for instance, that a lot of soft-cap builds are completely reliant on Cardiac or Ageless to function with 10+ toggles? Why not mention that soft-cap builds are contributing the bare minimum amount of DPS their powersets are capable of? Why not mention that soft-cap players are often not learning how to employ any tactics beyond playing like a Scrapper? Where is all this context you’re asking for?

[Stormwalker]

24 minutes ago, arcane said:

I guess I’m not sure why you’re singling out posts from one side and continuing to imply that I’m only running 4 stars and that I’m only functional with a team full of Barriers. As I just said, I survive just fine in pug teams doing non-4 star content with the help of my own Incarnate picks and average inspiration usage, and I’m often the one running ahead and soloing. Is it not normal to assume someone is leveraging their own Incarnate slots and inspirations from kills?
 

Why not mention, for instance, that a lot of soft-cap builds are completely reliant on Cardiac or Ageless to function with 10+ toggles? Why not mention that soft-cap builds are contributing the bare minimum amount of DPS their powersets are capable of? Why not mention that soft-cap players are often not learning how to employ any tactics beyond playing like a Scrapper? Where is all this context you’re asking for?

 

I don't know what soft-cap builds you're looking at that rely on Cardiac or Ageless.

 

Only ONE of my character builds uses Ageless, and it's not for endurance, it's for recharge (because she is an experimental build to find out if running Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike as an attack chain is practical, and that requires insane amounts of global recharge).  My blaster is crafting both Clarion and Barrier and using one or the other depending on the content she's running.  All my others use Barrier (because you need it to get to the higher Incarnate soft-cap, and also because frankly Barrier is overpowered).  The only one that MIGHT consider Cardiac is my DM/DA, because Dark Armor is pretty brutal on endurance, but I'm pretty sure he's going to go Barrier, too.  Oh, and he's not a soft-cap defense build, because DA isn't a defense set.

 

I for one prefer not to rely on Incarnate powers in non-Incarnate content, since they tend to trivialize it.  Which is another reason I build for soft-cap on my melee (and ranged soft-cap on my Blasters).  I don't want to use Barrier as a crutch.

 

Also, you're complaining about being singled out, but most of the people in this thread who are arguing in favor of soft-capped builds ARE giving context.  For example, I was very specific that I solo a large percentage of the time, and my builds are designed to accommodate that.

Edited yesterday at 06:57 PM by Stormwalker

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, arcane said:

I guess I’m not sure why you’re singling out posts from one side and continuing to imply that I’m only running 4 stars and that I’m only functional with a team full of Barriers.

 

It's because you decided to call out an Omega K'ong fight as your basis for why you didn't want a softcapped build.  Hope this helps.

 

 

4 hours ago, arcane said:

Where is all this context you’re asking for?

 

It's nowhere.  As I said from the start, lack of context is endemic on these fora.

 

Why am I responding to you?  Because you're the one who said, "WHAT???  HOW DARE YOU IMPLY THAT MY BUILD IS ORIENTED TOWARDS THE HYPER-SPECIFIC SITUATION THAT I MYSELF CALLED OUT???"