Legendary 45% softcap... True/False/Sometimes/BS?

[Adeon Hawkwood]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

If we really want to be very mechanical about this, the thing in the game that gives the greatest rewards is marketing.  The thing in the game that gives the second best rewards is farming.  If you're doing something other than those, you're doing it because your personal tastes are that that thing is more fun than a different style of play.

There are also badges. Badges are life.

 

But yeah if your sole goal is the accumulation of Inf then crafting and converting enhancements is by far the best way to do it.

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, Seed22 said:

This community has an annoying and serious problem with toxic elitism in the opposite direction, enforced hyper casualness. 

I for one am very serious.

 

And let me bring a serious issue to the table.  Your leadership has failed you!  Blue, Red, and Gold.  They have let you down horribly.  One example is being overrun by aliens on a daily basis.

 

I am the only one who can change this.  But, i need your help.  Send donations to @Snarky  Together, we can make our world(s) safe and prosperous again!

[aethereal]

53 minutes ago, arcane said:

The only reason a 4 star build couldn’t handle all of the above is because of arbitrary player decisions like foregoing inspiration use. There is no in-game incentive to solo a +4x8 ITF with no inspirations; that limitation is basically only there to justify personal build choices.

 

The challenge settings are in the game, it's not like it's something that players thought up totally separately of anything.

 

And, again, if we're going to take a coldly rational look at all this, you can make billions of inf in hours marketing and buy any of the rewards that you'd get from any other mode (besides badges, I suppose, but if you want to get into 'the only real players are the ones who have every badge,' go for it).  As soon as you aren't doing that, you're talking about how you like to play, not "what the game rewards."

 

Which is great!  People should want to play the game!  Like, seriously, this is a very un-challenging 20 year old game.  Nobody gives a shit about anyone's e-penis here.  If you want to try to parlay "I'm so great at a video game" into...  anything...  other than personal satisfaction, then go play Mobile Legends or League of Legends or whatever.

[arcane]

If challenge settings that the game doesn’t incentivize are the best justification for soft capping… I think we won this debate boys.

[skoryy]

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

At an absolute minimum; by building for +Defence you're sacrificing a few enhancement slots that could have been utilised for Damage Procs instead...

 

OK, here ya go, my (formerly) S/L/E capped Rad/Atomic blaster.  Her main rotation (CB-PV-PF-PC) is all six-slotted, and her backup ranged rotation (CB-PV-XRB-PC) is only missing an X-Ray beam slot.  Only uses six slots among Fighting and Scorp Shield. I probably wasted more in Beta Decay but I use that to make up for losing her defcap. Could she use an extra proc in Irradiate and Neutron Bomb?  Maybe.  Does it matter? I've never worried about it, the nuke and ground pounder do the heavy lifting.

 

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

But there is a good reason why most of the high-DPS builds out there cap out at about ~15-20% Defense rather than ~45%... especially when you can just raid the AH for big purple Insps and/or pop a Barrier Destiny Incarnate.

 

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

 Do i need to chomp a medium purple?  A large purple?  Can i stealth/nuke…nuke…rain…rain…cleanup with just a can do attitude?  Actually, usually.

And this comes down to the point that you can whirl around the map, macro your insps, and press all the debuff keys...

 

... or you can just build up your defenses and faceroll.  Both are valid.

Actionette - Blaster (Radiation Blast).mbd

[Forager]

On 5/22/2025 at 6:03 PM, Andreah said:

You're also more likely to be hit by things that are opposed by a different kind of defense than you have at the soft-cap. Some can get all three of their positionals soft-capped, and this handles almost everything; but often, people will only soft-cap a few types (such as S/L), and then when something shows up that isn't that type, they get hit. 

 

The wording of your post implies that a lower defense to one type or position affects your likelihood of being hit by other types or positions.

 

You didn't mean that, though... right?

[Psyonico]

Wow, this thread has gone a long way from its original “45% defense doesn’t mean what everyone thinks it means”

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

OK, here ya go, my (formerly) S/L/E capped Rad/Atomic blaster.  Her main rotation (CB-PV-PF-PC) is all six-slotted, and her backup ranged rotation (CB-PV-XRB-PC) is only missing an X-Ray beam slot.  Only uses six slots among Fighting and Scorp Shield. I probably wasted more in Beta Decay but I use that to make up for losing her defcap. Could she use an extra proc in Irradiate and Neutron Bomb? 

See; that's exactly the sort of toon that provokes comments like "Yeah; I'm sure they have plenty of fun playing it.... but it's inefficient as heck."

Currently your main ST rotation of (CB-PV-PF-PC) is 227.70 DPS and your backup ranged rotation (CB-PV-XRB-PC) is 215.36 DPS. However just by dispensing with unnecessary set bonuses in those attacks (ignoring defense, bare minimum recharge and 95% Hit Rate vs +3s) you could easily be hitting 276.46 DPS and 278.77 DPS respectively.





Also the 6th IOs in both Atomic Blast and Atom Smasher are also just screaming out to be replaced with another damage or -res proc.
And Aim/Build Up can take up to 70.35% local recharge before the Gaussian "Chance for Build Up" IO drops below a 90% activation rate.

Actionette - Blaster (Radiation Blast) v2.mbd

Those are the kind of tradeoffs we're talking about. You're intentionally forgoing damage output in favour of defense; as well as other things like unnecessary global recharge and accuracy bonuses - although there's an argument that more global recharge is always useful to get your nuke up sooner so that one's less contentious.

(I intentionally didn't go poking at the other powers; even though stuff like unboosted Purples gives me the heebie jeebies)
  

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

Maybe.  Does it matter?

None of this really matters outside of niche content.
You don't need high damage output; just like you don't need high defence... because the vast majority of content in CoX is ridiculously facerollingly easy.

The reason that we're continually being loud about this particular tangent is that it is disingenuous for anyone to claim that you can build a toon for softcapped defense without making non-negligible tradeoffs (such as sacrificing damage output!) - there simply aren't enough power picks and enhancement slots to get everything simultaneously.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Maelwys

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Forager said:

 

The wording of your post implies that a lower defense to one type or position affects your likelihood of being hit by other types or positions.

 

You didn't mean that, though... right?

I don't read what I wrote as implying that at all. If you have 45% defense to S/L and only 20% vs Fire, for example, you are more likely to be hit by a typed fire attack than a typed S/L attack.

[Andreah]

20 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

WOULD IT BE WRONG OF ME TO POINT OUT IT COULD GET MUCH, MUCH WORSE?

 

Not even going to go hunting for the options to make the letter blink. 😁

I looked at his posting history and now suspect his keyboard is broken. That's my best offer.

[Forager]

1 minute ago, Andreah said:

I don't read what I wrote as implying that at all. If you have 45% defense to S/L and only 20% vs Fire, for example, you are more likely to be hit by a typed fire attack than a typed S/L attack.

 

Well, you quoted a post that was addressing my question. You said "also" and "more" so I just assumed that your reply was relevant.

[Psyonico]

37 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I looked at his posting history and now suspect his keyboard is broken. That's my best offer.

At some point somewhere he said that the way he shows up is easier for him to read.

 

but that means he can only easily read stuff that he’s typed, which seems… odd

[Forager]

On 5/22/2025 at 4:53 PM, Maelwys said:

If with 45% Defense; the nasty +3 AV has an 9.75% chance to hit you then with 44.55% Defense they'll have a 10.8225% chance to hit you.
So in relative terms; on average you'll be hit 11% more compared to if you had 45% Defense (10.8225/9.75=1.11)
That's why people argue that the last smidgen of Defense or Resistance before the "cap" is the most important.

But either way you'll still be getting hit on average by roughly 1 in every 10 enemy attacks. So I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

 

Nice. Thanks.