Defense vs Resistance

[Samyrmancer]

I am trying to cap, or soft cap, my defenses for my Hot Feet controller. People talk about soft capping defense all the time, but it seems really hard to do.

 

Scorpion Shield/Frozen Armor - 15% def / 22% or so with good enhancements/incarnate (Shield Wall, etc and Agility incarnate)

Weave - 4.25% def / 7% with enh

Combat Jumping/hover/stealth - 2.13% def / 4% w/enh

 

There are 2 IOs that give 3% each and you can pick up 2-4% here and there with sets like the full Obliteration set, but that will be to Smash/Lethal not (All).

There are also sets that give you positional defense like melee, ranged or AoE, but those are harder to build with.

 

Cap on defense is 45%. So, how does one cap defense without Ice or Mace epic pools and the Agility incarnate ability?

 

When people say they are capping defense but not taking those pools does that mean they are capping Resist Damage? Numbers are higher there, but you have to get to 100 rather than 50 with defense.

 

I understand that we have other abilities that make people miss us, or fall down, or whatever. However, if they get a shot, and if it hits, it frequently one shots me. Please help me understand how non-melee ATs get defenses in a reasonable range so that you can jump in with something like Hot Feet and not die.

[Maxzero]

What people mezn by capping defence is capping defence to the most common damage they will face.

 

Like Fire/Kins usually cap Smashing/Lethal or Fire. Typically they are used in specific farms that have mobs which only do S/L or Fire attacks.

 

The only defence cap that Controllers tend to have access to is Range defence cap. They use Hover to avoid melee (so no need for melee defence), distance to avoid AoE (all pure AoE attacks are PBAoE) so no need for AoE defence and all range attacks have the range 'tag' so your defence works against that.

[DSorrow]

When people talk about soft capping Defenses depending on the context it usually refers to one of:

 

• Soft capping all (or several) positional Defenses (Melee, Ranged, AoE) or all typed Defenses (S/L/E/NE/F/C) on a powerset combo that has a starting point for all of those, such as Super Reflexes, Invulnerability or Time Manipulation
  
• Soft capping just S/L Defense. This can be done with relative ease on Melee characters with no S/L Def from their defensive set as many melee IO sets provide S/L Def. It's also pretty simple on most squishies as your epic shield (e.g. Frozen Armor) helps you out a lot.
  
• Soft capping Ranged Def on a squishy. Very beneficial and not extremely difficult to do due to the abundance of Ranged Def bonuses in ranged damage/control IO sets
  
• Soft capping both Ranged and S/L
  

 

Cap on defense is 45%. So, how does one cap defense without Ice or Mace epic pools and the Agility incarnate ability?

 

Usually, you don't. At least not on a non-melee character that doesn't have stuff like Farsight because they have lesser access to S/L Def bonuses so you either flat out can't accumulate enough S/L Def bonuses depending on your powers, or you could but that would gimp your slotting.

 

When people say they are capping defense but not taking those pools does that mean they are capping Resist Damage? Numbers are higher there, but you have to get to 100 rather than 50 with defense.

 

Positional defenses such as Ranged. Many control/ranged damage sets have pretty sizeable Ranged Def bonuses so it's much easier to stack those. The resist cap for Controllers is 75, not 100, but you'd have to have a pretty niche build to go for 75% Resist over Defense.

 

 

[Ringo]

If you're running Pain Domination, building for +resists is probably preferable

[Samyrmancer]

Thank you for your replies.

 

I got to 43 defense with the ice epic pool but I don't like it because even on min fx, it messes up my costume. I know it's a little thing, but there you go. I can do the same with Scorpion Shield. Maybe I will put up with Ice because the power combos were really nice.

 

I want the defense because I'm using Hot Feet in an offensive capacity, getting in really close and then letting lose PBAoE fear, bonfire and hot feet.

 

Thank you again for your replies. I wish Ice didn't have such a strong animation.

[Maxzero]

Thank you for your replies.

 

I got to 43 defense with the ice epic pool but I don't like it because even on min fx, it messes up my costume. I know it's a little thing, but there you go. I can do the same with Scorpion Shield. Maybe I will put up with Ice because the power combos were really nice.

 

I want the defense because I'm using Hot Feet in an offensive capacity, getting in really close and then letting lose PBAoE fear, bonfire and hot feet.

 

Thank you again for your replies. I wish Ice didn't have such a strong animation.

 

Its not a little thing I have done the same thing yourself. Not hero wants to be ugly.

 

For you the best might S/L defence a lot of melee sets have it so you might be making a few 'mule' powers (powers that are not used but simple taken for IO bonuses -  eg Kinetic Combat IO set) in addition to Brawl, etc to get those needed S/L defences. 5 x Kinetic Combats is 18.75 S/L defence.

[subbacultchas]

There are some secondaries that make it more or less likely you can cap defenses easily due to having defense powers in their secondaries. /Ice and /Dark come to mind immediately, with /Dark having the easier time of the two. Dark actually is useful for building toward defense soft-cap or resistance caps either way, since Shadowfall and Fade provide both, and substantial amounts (~20 def all, 20%res all but fire/cold/tox just from those).

 

So its often choices of powersets that's really going to impact your ability to pull this off or not. You may be able to with any primary/secondary, but you really run the risk of gimping your powers in favor of defense bonuses in a lot of cases.

[Fedifensor]

My Gravity/Time is near the ranged defense softcap, being slightly above 40% ranged defense after counting perma-Farsight.  I’ll probably be able to hit softcap before 50 without making any major sacrifices.

[swordchucks]

I want the defense because I'm using Hot Feet in an offensive capacity, getting in really close and then letting lose PBAoE fear, bonfire and hot feet.

So, I farm sometimes on my Fire/Kin and as long as you're not facing a lot of AVs, you can flip that order to dramatically lower your need for defense.  Start by throwing out bonfire (with KB>KD slotted), then fire cages.  With your foes locked in the "hell of falling down while on fire", you're going to face few attacks as you run in and start grinding your Hot Feet against their faces.  For farming, this works best on maps with tight clusters of foes with a bit of separation between them like the Battle Maiden map. 

 

I'm currently running Fire/Kin/Fire with fire shield, tough, weave, and maneuvers for defenses, though I'd like to reduce (and eventually eliminate) the need for Tough and Weave.  It's not amazingly fast, but I can do +2/x8 barely slotted. 

[Riverdusk]

With how often purple inspirations drop (at least solo), another more reachable goal is to go for 32.5% defense.  Then with one even small purple, you are capped.  If you are in a group chances are good someone else is going to have some kind of defense buff to help you.  Sometimes people get a little obsessive about the 45%, and I can understand why as it is nice, but in the vast majority of cases it really isn't needed.  Especially when you start considering all the controls and other debuffs a controller in particular typically has access to.

 

Even on my /traps controller that has a huge head start with the +10% defense force field generator I'm only planning on hitting mid 30's defenses (to everything in his case).  Instead I concentrated more on recharge and adding some resistances to round him out more.

[Samyrmancer]

I've been tooling along with Frozen Armor and Sleet. Both are really helpful and I turn them off when out of combat so they don't mess up my costume. Incarnates are pretty easy to get high so things are humming right along. Right now, I'm doing a lot of ITF to get cash for Armageddon and Ragnarok. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the char and survivability is getting better with every incarnate advance. I have gone s/l near soft cap at 43.7 with melee at 29.1 as a backup. s/l resist is at 36.7% with fire right behind and cold out ahead. Endurance can be a problem as Hot Feet sucks it down quickly but I do okay as long as I pay attention to it.

 

Thank you for all the responses.

[HelenCarnate]

What is your secondary? I went Fire/Dark/Fire and will eventually have soft capped all defenses both typed and positional (except psi at 39.6%), capped S/L resists, 30%+ to Energy/Psi 40%+ to Negative/Cold and 60%+ to fire with only accounting for Agility Incarnate slotted. In a pinch when hit with defense debuffs I have Darkest Night to drop accuracy even more.  Then you have Soul Absorption which takes care of the endurance issues for Hot Feet and the other toggles.  It does not have the damage of /Kin but it is far more durable.  Honestly /Dark for troller is insanely durable once you get enough recharge and I am surprised it has not been hit with a nerf bat.  Maybe the devs just didn't have the time to get to it before the doors were suddenly closed.

Edited July 31, 2019 by HelenCarnate