Fire Armor Question

[BrandX]

Working on a Fire/Elec/Soul Tanker.  Planning on just focusing on Resists, which I have S/L/F at 90%, Ene/Neg at 74%, 60%ish for Psi/Tox.  How does playing to just Resists and Healing Flames work out?

[Heraclea]

Reasonably well outside of certain content.   The problem with resistance isn't the incoming damage.  It's the debuffs that are attached to it.  This is multiplied by your role as attracting incoming damage onto yourself and away from teammates.   You can laugh off Cimerorans; their -def isn't going to hurt you much.  But anything with -recharge is going to be a problem; your Healing Flames won't be there when you need it. 

 

Note also that Healing Flames gives you Toxic resistance as well; it stacks with itself and you can get up to 60%.  When I was running Vahzilok missions I'd set it to autofire. 

[BrandX]

I have 70% Slow Resist planned.

[JCMcBoo]

Color me ignorant but isn't 'Slow' a speed debuff as opposed to recharge debuff?

[JCMcBoo]

3 minutes ago, JCMcBoo said:

Color me ignorant but isn't 'Slow' a speed debuff as opposed to recharge debuff?

Never mind,  apparently "Reading is fundamental" is still a thing... 

 

"Slow, also called snare, is a Status Effect. Technically, there are two different status effects that the game calls "slow": reduced movement speed and reduced recharge rate. Many powers do both effects, but some do only one or the other." - Source: Paragon Wiki

[tellania]

One word of warning on resist only builds.    Status effects will hit more often (than a defensive build), and on a large team, you can have your status protection overwhelmed.

 

About the only real negative on resist only builds, easier to apply status effects to you.  Easily solved with a few break free's ...

 

 

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

1 hour ago, tellania said:

One word of warning on resist only builds.    Status effects will hit more often (than a defensive build), and on a large team, you can have your status protection overwhelmed.

 

About the only real negative on resist only builds, easier to apply status effects to you.  Easily solved with a few break free's ...

Just remember that Resist-centric sets have NO NATIVE DDR!
So slapping you with Defense Debuff basically just hits for full value.
This means that jacking around your build to load up as much Defense as possible can be self-defeating.
Because if you jacked around too much, you compromised on your Resists or short-changed your attacks.
So in situations where DDR flies fast and loose, you're going to get stripped naked in short order and, because your Resists are compromised, you basically eggshell.

Whereas, if you concentrate on squeezing out your Resists, and are able to slather a layer of defense (albeit, probably a lesser one), your performance curve should be much flatter in terms of surviveability.

[Khenal]

Way back on live, I had good results with building for s/l def.  There are very few attacks in the entire game that don't have at least some s/l component, and if it has any, s/l defense works on the whole attack.  I use a fire/mace, but you get some silly s/l def if you can manage 5 sets of full obliterate, 4/5 kinetic combat, and 4/6 unbreakable guard.

[Hyperstrike]

On 8/15/2019 at 9:36 PM, Khenal said:

Way back on live, I had good results with building for s/l def.  There are very few attacks in the entire game that don't have at least some s/l component, and if it has any, s/l defense works on the whole attack.  I use a fire/mace, but you get some silly s/l def if you can manage 5 sets of full obliterate, 4/5 kinetic combat, and 4/6 unbreakable guard.

Oblits are "okay" in click-powers when your build is already well managed for Endurance Recovery.
But putting them in ALL your PBAOE is nuts.  The Endurance Reduction is just totally inadequate.

And, as noted, you're rocking 0% Defense Debuff Resistance.
So the second one of these Debuffs land, your Defense rapidly Goes Away.
Once that happens, if you're dealing with compromised Resists, you're in trouble.  Like putting a jackhammer into a big crack in a concrete slab.

If given a choice between 75% Resists and 45% S/L Defense or 90% Resists and 25% S/L Defense, I'd prefer the latter.
Because, in a Defense crash, 90% Resist will still survive almost anything.