Dechs Kaison

Myth: There are no tankers redside.
Fact: MMs are perfectly capable of tanking, and because of pets, can surpass the aggro cap.

Ok, the way defense works is like this: Every attack carries a few types, and to figure out if that attack hits you, it uses the best case scenario. This means that a ranged lethal attack will check your ranged and lethal defense, and take the higher of the two before figuring out whether it hits you or not.

In the case of energy melee, the attack will have smashing, energy, and melee tags. It will roll to hit based on the highest defense you have out of smashing, energy, and melee. Let's say your defense against smashing is highest, so the roll is made and the attack misses. The whole attack misses, not just the smashing damage part.

That's why having S/L is so good. It doesn't just protect you from things like archery and martial arts, but also energy melee because of the smashing component and ice blast because of lethal components. S/L is very common, and if even a small part of the attack is S/L, the whole attack can be avoided by having S/L defense.

Why is positional defense so good? While the S/L tags are on many attacks, every attack in the game, with the exception of a few psionic attacks, have a positional tag attached to them. If you can get softcapped to all positions, or all positions you expect to be attacked from (ranged/AoE as a hoverblaster), then you are protected from virtually everything. An attack that was all energy or fire damage, for example, would get past the S/L softcap, but would still have the ranged or melee tag that the positional defense could stop.

This is why M/R/A will always be better than S/L. The only attacks that M/R/A can't defend against will also completely bypass S/L. Outside of that, most things have some smashing or lethal, but everything has a melee, ranged, or AoE tag.

This is going to be true for mezzes as well. What's better? Being hit by 20% of all mezzes or 5% of most mezzes and 50% of all others... I'm not really sure. Depends, really, on whether you want to tailor your game experience to one kind of enemy or not. If you want equal survivability against everything... go with moderate positional. If you want godmode against anything with S/L and no defense debuffs but faceplant to anything else... go with S/L softcapped.

...

I should probably add this part into my guide somewhere.

I think this is a perfect time to throw my guide at someone. Please refer to my sig.

It explains with hard numbers and statistical analysis what different % defense gives you.

Step 1: Make a brute.
Step 2: Put brawl on auto.
Step 3: Set difficulty for -1/x3
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

Seriously, I don't think it's worth slotting. For my brute (the only character that will use brawl after level 10ish) it doesn't matter if it hits, it'll never do enough damage to matter, but just because I swing it builds fury, so if anything I'll throw a recharge IO in there.

5th Column: Reich back at you!

I agree with you that this is the best issue in a long time.

I made a stage magician (Fire/dark corruptor) named Abrakaboom with a rainbow of colors for his fireblasts. Each power uses a different combination of colors for maximum flashyness. Even his dark powers have colors that are different from each other.

Fire blast is a blue/green, fire ball is pink/yellow, twilight grasp is a turquoise/purple, fire breath is red/white... I can't remember the others, but I made a point that nothing should repeat that I planned to include in the build.

Most everything else, I'm making the powers match the costume. Some 'natural' characters are making very liberal use of the No FX options. I used to make my characters' costumes match their powers, but this is now a thing of the past!

I created a character, largely based on my own traits, that loved card games and gambling. I wanted a bots MM with robot names that followed a theme. The drones were called Clubs, the protectors were Hearts, and the assbot was the Spade.

With a decent concept, I needed a unique name. I wanted it to be in the first name, last name kind of format, not a Superman or Dr. Doom kind of name. He was simply a guy with robots, no need to disguise himself as a supervillain.

Kaison is an adaptation of the word kaiser, which is a word for emperor. And Dechs (pronounced Dex, notably not short for Dexter) was similar to the word deck, as in a deck of cards. So to me the name meant "King of the Deck," which fit very well with his robots, their names, and his personality.

I ended up liking the character so much and playing him so often that I changed my global handle to @Dechs Kaison. After that, it only made sense to have the same global as forum handle so I'd be easy to contact in game.

I only recently got back into the game, and remade Dechs on Virtue as a bots/traps and started from scratch. I also got a lot more in depth with his story.

I checked it out as soon as I got home (almost got a speeding ticket on the way, but that's another story). My verdict is that this issue is full of win.

First thing I did was the power customization on my 22 SS/WP. I used dark colors and some of the alternate animations. Changed the difficulty to +0/x3 for more fury and ran a mission to see if he could handle it. Check.

The next thing I did was pull out my 50 bots/traps, crank the difficulty to +0/x8 to see how well he can farm and jumped into a paper mission of carnies. Walk in the park, soon as they fix the drop rates this is all I'll be doing.

Then I played around with the character creator, just admiring all the new themes, colors, and animations. No more bananas of doom. Ooooh these crystal themes are nice. I like white lightning. Pink pom-poms are gone!

After that, I made a new character I've been wanting to make for some time. He's a fire/dark corruptor in a tuxedo and tophat and shoulder cape. Every power has a different combination of colors. Green and blue fireblast, pink and yellow fire ball, purple and turquoise twilight grasp, red and white fire breath, the list goes on... I have brought to the world of Virtue, a very fancy, elitist attitude, stage magician gone bad named Abrakaboom!

Rather than start a new thread, I'm going to ask some more questions here and pray somebody notices that this pretty much nullifies my first post.

I rerolled as an elec/regen because it fits my concept a little better, doesn't seem to have as many useless powers, and because I'm tired of playing defensive characters that always get shafted by the RNG. Also, I'd like to feel like I have to pay attention to my character.

Is /regen without hasten gimped? I'd like to avoid the power if I can. How about stamina? Do I need to fit this in my build?

Is elec/ the anti-stalker in the sense that everything seems to be an AoE attack? I notice that Jacob's Ladder doesn't auto-crit from hide, is thunderstrike, chain induction, and lightning rod like this?

What kind of set bonuses should I be going for with this combo? I imagine +max health helps the /regen a lot, but aside from that, what's best to go for?

All your Now Zone are belong to Pet's.

Well, it may not have been the best idea, I blindly cranked it up to +0/x8 and opened the paper... Hmmm... Malta, Circle, or Carnies...

CARNIES!!!



Level 50 Bots/Traps, it was a cakewalk.

I'll finally be able to make a Bots/Dark!

No, those didn't just get proliferated, it's just that customization will make the /dark powers a believable swarm of nanites.

I'll also be able to make a scrapper that I've always wanted: elec/elec. Not because it'll be powerful, not even for the looks, but for the bloody concept. For things outside of CoX, I've designed a character that's an electricity elemental of sorts, but doesn't fight from range.

Also, obligatory flaming zombies.