Defense Soft-Cap

[AkuTenshiiZero]

So since it's been a million years since Live, I still have a few cobwebs to clear out of my brain.  Specifically, I completely forgot what the whole thing with "defense soft-cap" is.  What is the number, and the logic behind it?  Somebody want to give me a refresher?

 

For reference: Shield/Stone.

[Marshal_General]

For regular content the defense soft caps are 45% For incarnate content it is 59%. Depending on how much defense debuff resist your set has, the amount you might want to go above those caps.

[_NOPE_]

I'm not a numbers guy, so I'm sure someone will come around to correct my terrible numbers, but the gist is this. The "soft cap" is the point past which defense "doesn't matter" unless you're facing enemies with defense debuffs. Because of the "streak breaker" code that ALWAYS lets 10% of hits get through no matter what, and I'm sure someone will come along with the actual formula, but basically each point of defense is worth 2% chance of "not getting hit", so 45 defense = 90% chance of not getting hit. So, anything beyond 45 defense is "pointless" unless, again, you're facing enemies with defense debuffs... which is why it's a "soft cap".

[Kruunch]

53 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

I'm not a numbers guy, so I'm sure someone will come around to correct my terrible numbers, but the gist is this. The "soft cap" is the point past which defense "doesn't matter" unless you're facing enemies with defense debuffs. Because of the "streak breaker" code that ALWAYS lets 10% of hits get through no matter what, and I'm sure someone will come along with the actual formula, but basically each point of defense is worth 2% chance of "not getting hit", so 45 defense = 90% chance of not getting hit. So, anything beyond 45 defense is "pointless" unless, again, you're facing enemies with defense debuffs... which is why it's a "soft cap".

I believe the soft-cap refers to all mobs having at least a 5% chance to hit you. An even level minion has a 50% to-hit, hence 45% "soft-cap" reducing that mobs' chance to hit you to 5%. In that scenario, whether you have 45% defense or 450% defense the same mob has a 5% chance to hit you.

 

Once you take into account a mobs' toHit buffs, defense debuffs, tier of mob, etc ... you generally want anywhere from 5-10% above the soft cap (i.e. 50-55%) defense if defense is your primary form of damage mitigation. Overachievers (such as myself) aim for incarnate level defenses which would be around 59% total defense (at least that's the number where I feel comfortable).

 

Hope this helped.

[AkuTenshiiZero]

25 minutes ago, Kruunch said:

I believe the soft-cap refers to all mobs having at least a 5% chance to hit you. An even level minion has a 50% to-hit, hence 45% "soft-cap" reducing that mobs' chance to hit you to 5%. In that scenario, whether you have 45% defense or 450% defense the same mob has a 5% chance to hit you.

 

Once you take into account a mobs' toHit buffs, defense debuffs, tier of mob, etc ... you generally want anywhere from 5-10% above the soft cap (i.e. 50-55%) defense if defense is your primary form of damage mitigation. Overachievers (such as myself) aim for incarnate level defenses which would be around 59% total defense (at least that's the number where I feel comfortable).

 

Hope this helped.

That makes a lot of sense.  I definitely want to be capable of Incarnate-level tanking, so I'm going to be pushing for that 59% minimum.

[jack_nomind]

FWIW, I have no idea why the Incarnate cap is given as 59%.  A level 50 with no level shifts in the Magisterum trial would need 65% or more (because of his self to-hit buff power) defense to softcap against Tyrant, but there's basically no circumstance where you'd be doing that fight w/o shifts.  I could see an argument for 50 or 55% easily enough -- or even more, for tanking specific fights -- but I don't know what prompted people to land on 59% as 'the Incarnate softcap.'

[Marshal_General]

With cascading defense failure being a thing, I am wondering just how useful defense is for a non SR tank if it can be taken away fairly easy.

[marcussmythe]

50 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

With cascading defense failure being a thing, I am wondering just how useful defense is for a non SR tank if it can be taken away fairly easy.

Its handy to mitigate the alpha, and if your on a large team, your teammates should tear apart or lock down even the largest spawn pretty quickly.

 

The place (for me) that CDF really stands out is when one is trying to ‘do the things that shouldnt be done’, IE the now bog-standard ‘what can I solo at +4/x8’.  Some mobs are pretty adamant about insisting the answer is not them, and turning off your character with debuffs if they hang around long.

[Ideon]

7 hours ago, jack_nomind said:

FWIW, I have no idea why the Incarnate cap is given as 59%.  A level 50 with no level shifts in the Magisterum trial would need 65% or more (because of his self to-hit buff power) defense to softcap against Tyrant, but there's basically no circumstance where you'd be doing that fight w/o shifts.  I could see an argument for 50 or 55% easily enough -- or even more, for tanking specific fights -- but I don't know what prompted people to land on 59% as 'the Incarnate softcap.'

According to paragonwiki, "Note that in the Incarnate Trials, enemies have an equivalent to +14% ToHit, so the Incarnate soft cap is 59% instead of 45%."

 

By "enemies", I assume it's all enemies, not just AVs.

 

[Justaris]

4 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

With cascading defense failure being a thing, I am wondering just how useful defense is for a non SR tank if it can be taken away fairly easy.

You can mitigate this somewhat with an Ageless Radial destiny, however, as this gives defense debuff resistance.

 

[jack_nomind]

9 hours ago, Ideon said:

According to paragonwiki, "Note that in the Incarnate Trials, enemies have an equivalent to +14% ToHit, so the Incarnate soft cap is 59% instead of 45%."

 

By "enemies", I assume it's all enemies, not just AVs.

 

That statement has no source and the user who added it provided only the note "Incarnate soft cap."  Nor do I see a +14% tohit power added in any general way to Incarnate enemies in the game files.  (It's possible I'm overlooking it somewhere.)

 

The use of "equivalent" is confusing there, because it suggests that the bonus is relative to something -- but tohit never works that way.  My suspicion is that the person who added it is confusing a level differential accuracy bonus with a to-hit bonus, which does make a relative change to the final hit chance.  But accuracy bonuses aren't affected by Defense, so the softcap wouldn't change in that case.

[nihilii]

This got me curious, I'll sheepishly admit I'm one of the people who talk about the incarnate softcap based on OTHER people saying it, and never bothered verifying it for myself.

Using a Power Analyzer in a +0/x8 mission against lvl 50 IDF (Belladonna's first mission), all mobs from minion to boss seem to have 63.75% tohit instead of the standard 50% tohit. This was done from afar, no aggro, so they don't have any external buff going on (and the value shows as white, too, rather than the buffed green).

Edited July 31, 2019 by nihilii

[Call Me Awesome]

8 hours ago, nihilii said:

This got me curious, I'll sheepishly admit I'm one of the people who talk about the incarnate softcap based on OTHER people saying it, and never bothered verifying it for myself.

Using a Power Analyzer in a +0/x8 mission against lvl 50 IDF (Belladonna's first mission), all mobs from minion to boss seem to have 63.75% tohit instead of the standard 50% tohit. This was done from afar, no aggro, so they don't have any external buff going on (and the value shows as white, too, rather than the buffed green).

That would put the soft cap against those mobs at 58.75% defense.  The simple gist is that you cannot reduce the mob's chance to hit you below the 5% floor so any amount of defense beyond the amount needed to counteract the mobs to hit does not matter (barring debuts of course).

 

The way a mobs chance to hit you is figured is that the game takes the base to hit of the mob, subtracts any defense of the target and then adds the accuracy modifier that LT, Boss and AV's get.  That's why LT's and higher mobs will hit you more, they have an accuracy (NOT to hit) bonus that's applied AFTER your defense is calculated.  I forget the exact amount of the accuracy bonus but if you're soft capped then minions will hit you 5% of the time, LT's will hit a bit more and I think Bosses will hit maybe 8% of the time due to their accuracy buffing the 5%.

[DSorrow]

The (somewhat simplified) formula for hit chance in the game is (Base_ToHit + ToHit_Mods - Target_Def) * (1 * Attack_Acc_Mod * LvL_Acc_Mods * Rank_Acc_Mod), clamped between 5% and 95%.

 

For the most part when you consider an enemy's chance to hit you, it's convenient and practical to assume both ToHit_Mods and Defense DeBuffs are absent as most enemies can't buff their ToHit value and Def Debuffs usually are irrelevant or they cascade enough that your Defense is irrelevant. Additionally, you can't affect an enemy's Accuracy as all Debuffs available to players modify enemy ToHit. Thus, the formula we want to minimize simplifies to (Base_ToHit - Player_Def) with a 5%, 95% clamp. Most enemies have a Base_ToHit value of 50% and because (Base_ToHit - Player_Def) can't go lower than 5% no matter how much Def you stack , 45% Def is enough to reach that, thus it being referred to as soft cap as opposed to hard cap. For incarnate level opponents, the Base_ToHit is 63.75% so again, to minimize their hit chance value you want 63.75% - 5% = 58.75% Defense.

 

All this is basically a long winded way to explain that you need 5% less Defense than your opponents ToHit to minimize their chance to hit you and for most enemies in the game the ToHit value is 50% and thus the corresponding Defense value is 45%. Accuracy bonuses are applied after the clamped base hit chance value is calculated and this results in higher level and rank opponents as well as some higher accuracy attacks having a higher than 5% hit chance floor.

[ed_anger]

What's the numeric value of level differences, ie what bonus does a +2 or a +4 have to hit you? What about Lt, Boss, AV -- do they have to hit bonuses? If so the soft cap only applies to +0 regular mobs then, no?

Edited August 1, 2019 by ed_anger

[Scientist]

Ignoring the Incarnate level mobs mentioned above and mob tohit buffs like Nemesis with Vengeance, the way the formula works out is that 45% defense floors the tohit of everything, Lts, Bosses, AVs.  Higher rank foes floor out at higher than a 5% chance to hit, though, a +0 AV floors out at 6.5% to hit you, and a +4 AV floors out at 9.1% to hit.  A +0 minion is 5%, a +4 minion is 7% to hit you.  

[Caulderone]

On 8/1/2019 at 2:08 PM, Scientist said:

Higher rank foes floor out at higher than a 5% chance to hit, though, a +0 AV floors out at 6.5% to hit you, and a +4 AV floors out at 9.1% to hit.

AV gets 1.5 accuracy bonus.  +4 gets 1.4 accuracy bonus.  Multiplied together, that comes out to 2.1 accuracy bonus using the AccMod formula from the Wiki.

Quote from wiki:  "So for critters, we have a slightly longer formula for figuring AccMods, AccMods  =  the power's inherent Accuracy  ×  the Accuracy of the enemy's Rank  ×  Accuracy factor due to level difference"

 

So, the +0 AV is at 7.5% (5% x 1.5) and the +4 AV is at 10.5% (5% x 2.1 acc.mod), unless I misunderstand something.

 

 

[Frostweaver]

If your tanker is already at the resistance cap, and can full heal from almost 0 every 10-15 seconds, is trying to push her to reach the defense softcap still important? Or is it time to look for more important things to slot?

Edited August 6, 2019 by Frostweaver

[Justaris]

While adding on Defense would certainly further increase durability, outside of certain edge cases it's unlikely that you'd need that level of toughness so overall you might be better served going for better damage output slotting - even from a pure tanking perspective this is useful, as your damage output factors into your threat calculations.  

 

Ultimately, though, it's down to what you personally class as 'important'.

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Justaris
For clarification

[BlueOne]

But isn't the Defense Softcap of 45% based on fighting equal level normal mobs?  And don't most of us usually fight Red or light Purple Lts and Bosses?   So what's the odds of a Red Lt hitting me?  Because the real softcap is likely 5% less than THAT number, not 50% - 5% = 45%

[Eclipse.]

3 hours ago, BlueOne said:

But isn't the Defense Softcap of 45% based on fighting equal level normal mobs?  And don't most of us usually fight Red or light Purple Lts and Bosses?   So what's the odds of a Red Lt hitting me?  Because the real softcap is likely 5% less than THAT number, not 50% - 5% = 45%

Yes and no.

The 45% Def = 5% chance to hit is based on equal level normal mobs.

Fighting Red/Purple mobs still has the same soft cap defense (45%), because their TO-HIT did not change, their ACCURACY changed. Defense is not factored into the ACCURACY portion of the hit calculation Mentioned above.

( (Base_ToHit + ToHit_Mods) - Target_Def) * (1 * Attack_Acc_Mod * LvL_Acc_Mods * Rank_Acc_Mod)

The bolded portion is where Defense plays in, that portion is clamped at 95% on the high end, and 5% on the low end.†
The Underlined Portion is where the Accuracy is factored in.

So you can get the hit chance down to 5%, that is then modified by the Enemies Rank (minion, lt, boss, ...) , Level (-4 to +4), and specific Skill's Accuracy. No amount of defense will compensate for accuracy modifiers.

Accuracy modifiers for Mobs:

Spoiler

 

 

Level-Based Accuracy and ToHit Modifiers
for Critters Attacking Players

Critter's Relative Level	LevelDifferenceAcc	ToHit Modifier
–3	1.0	-27%
–2	1.0	-19%
–1	1.0	-10%
0	1.0	0
+1	1.1	0
+2	1.2	0
+3	1.3	0
+4	1.4	0
+5	1.5	0
+6	1.5	+5%
+7	1.5	+10%
+8	1.5	+15%
+9	1.5	+20%
+10	1.5	+40%

 

Rank-Based Accuracy Multipliers for Critters Attacking Anything

Critter Rank	RankAcc
Minion, player Pets	1.00
Lieutenant	1.15
Boss, Elite Boss, Sniper	1.30
Monster, Giant Monster, AV	1.50

 

So assuming the critter doesn't have any additional +to-Hit, more than 45 Defense will not help you until the mob is 6+ levels higher than you. At which point you need an additional 5 defense per level.
 

---

† Someone more knowledgable than me would have to weigh in. I'm not sure if the Clamp is applied at the ( tohit - defense )  portion, on the whole formula, or both. This page suggests it is applied to both the whole formula and to the ( ToHit - Defense ) portion.

If it was only applied to the whole formula then a +5 Boss would have a 7.3% chance to hit you with the average skill (which I believe most have a base of 75% accuracy?) at 45 def, but you could bump your defense up to 46.4 and get clamped to 5% chance to be hit. or ~46.3 for the more common +4 bosses. or ~46.9 for a +4 AV.

This would vary based on where/how the clamp is applied. Either way, over 47 is overkill for most all content, and beyond 45 you'll have pretty noticeable diminishing returns.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Eclipse.
Additional Note about clamping