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

[Crysis]

On 2/17/2025 at 3:16 PM, Stormwalker said:

 

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.

 

I think you are being overly broad in your recommendations here.

 

Case in point: Defenders built for OFFENSE.  Poison/anything is a great example.  You really only need 4 powers from your primary for an offensive build.  And even those need minimal slotting, some only the native first slot.  My Poison/Fire Defender still manages to eek out softcapped DEF for both melee and ranged.  And she solo's +4/x8 perfectly safe and fine, and is equally effective on a team because -damage output is the best 'debuff' in the game.-

 

Same for my Marine/DP Defender.  

 

Just because you play a defender AT doesn't mean you have play support roles.  I've seen Brutes play better Support roles than many Defenders just by holding aggro.  

 

My point still stands, and you've somewhat made the same here.  It's always best to be as "self sufficient" as possible, unless you are rolling an AT to play a certain role on a specific team makeup 24/7.  And in this game, self-sufficiency means "I don't need anyone to heal me,"  "I don't need status protection from outside," and most definitely "I can fend for myself with enough DPS to bring down my foes before they can hurt me."  That means almost universally build for softcapped DEF and max DPS.  Regardless of AT.  Some builds will certainly find this more challenging to do than others, and I've always felt that's the real "difficulty slider" in this game.  But if you can achieve softcapped DEF and max DPS, you are highly self sufficient.  Not invulnerable, but quite competent by yourself, on a dedicated team or on a PUG.  

 

Remember: DEF softcaps are fixed in this game regardless of class.  RES softcaps vary by AT.  Some AT's are easier to softcap DEF or RES but you avoid 100% of damage, debuffs, etc that whiff you because of +DEF.  And damage is damage, whether its 100 points coming from a proc, a Controller or a Blaster.  Doesn't matter how you apply damage...it's all the same.  

[Stormwalker]

On 2/25/2025 at 9:16 AM, Crysis said:

 

I think you are being overly broad in your recommendations here.

 

Case in point: Defenders built for OFFENSE.  Poison/anything is a great example.  You really only need 4 powers from your primary for an offensive build.  And even those need minimal slotting, some only the native first slot.  My Poison/Fire Defender still manages to eek out softcapped DEF for both melee and ranged.  And she solo's +4/x8 perfectly safe and fine, and is equally effective on a team because -damage output is the best 'debuff' in the game.-

 

Same for my Marine/DP Defender.  

 

Just because you play a defender AT doesn't mean you have play support roles.  I've seen Brutes play better Support roles than many Defenders just by holding aggro.  

 

My point still stands, and you've somewhat made the same here.  It's always best to be as "self sufficient" as possible, unless you are rolling an AT to play a certain role on a specific team makeup 24/7.  And in this game, self-sufficiency means "I don't need anyone to heal me,"  "I don't need status protection from outside," and most definitely "I can fend for myself with enough DPS to bring down my foes before they can hurt me."  That means almost universally build for softcapped DEF and max DPS.  Regardless of AT.  Some builds will certainly find this more challenging to do than others, and I've always felt that's the real "difficulty slider" in this game.  But if you can achieve softcapped DEF and max DPS, you are highly self sufficient.  Not invulnerable, but quite competent by yourself, on a dedicated team or on a PUG.  

 

Remember: DEF softcaps are fixed in this game regardless of class.  RES softcaps vary by AT.  Some AT's are easier to softcap DEF or RES but you avoid 100% of damage, debuffs, etc that whiff you because of +DEF.  And damage is damage, whether its 100 points coming from a proc, a Controller or a Blaster.  Doesn't matter how you apply damage...it's all the same.  

 

To quote myself:  "As such, a defender may not be practically able to soft-cap ranged defense".  That's not a recommendation.  It's simply a statement that, depending on a defender's build, soft-capped defense may not be feasible.   Which is to say, I'm making an argument against applying a generic recommendation (i.e. "you should have soft-capped ranged defense" to Defenders - my specific point there is that Defenders are complex enough that one generic recommendation can't possibly apply to all of them!