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New member's question: Lightning Reflexes
knagh
Posts: 23 Arc User
I'm relatively new to Champions Online and am beginning my foray into analyzing powers and whatnot. I have a question on the effectiveness of Lightning Reflexes I hope someone can help me with.
Looking at the power for the fiirst time, it appeared to me that Lightning Reflexes had a Dodge percentage. My first understanding was that, if you made the dodge %, you dodged the attack and took no damage. If you failed, you deducted your "Avoidance", a straight reduction in damage to reflect being nimble and avoiding part of the attack. That seemed reasonable and nice.
Having read more, it seems I was wrong. If you fail your Dodge Percentage you get hit with full damage (which I can accept) but if you succeed you still get hit but you nimbly "avoid" part of the damage.
In effect, this is exactly "Invulnerability" or "Defiance" (Or even Personal Force Field) but with the limitation of a making a Dodge roll first. Why would anyone want to take a defensive passive that has (approximately) only 60% chance of activating? Especially since 80% Damage Reduction means only 40% of the damage is mitigated.
I must be missing something about the power, because why would anyone take it when arguably the other defensive passives are better?
Looking at the power for the fiirst time, it appeared to me that Lightning Reflexes had a Dodge percentage. My first understanding was that, if you made the dodge %, you dodged the attack and took no damage. If you failed, you deducted your "Avoidance", a straight reduction in damage to reflect being nimble and avoiding part of the attack. That seemed reasonable and nice.
Having read more, it seems I was wrong. If you fail your Dodge Percentage you get hit with full damage (which I can accept) but if you succeed you still get hit but you nimbly "avoid" part of the damage.
In effect, this is exactly "Invulnerability" or "Defiance" (Or even Personal Force Field) but with the limitation of a making a Dodge roll first. Why would anyone want to take a defensive passive that has (approximately) only 60% chance of activating? Especially since 80% Damage Reduction means only 40% of the damage is mitigated.
I must be missing something about the power, because why would anyone take it when arguably the other defensive passives are better?
Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.
Post edited by knagh on
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Your primary defense gear can have Dodge/Avoidance on it. If you do not take LR, you will get the full effect of this bonus. If you do take LR, you hardly get any of the bonus due to diminishing returns. So, in order to min/max a defense toon, you take one of the other passives and just use the gear to give you a portion of what LR would have...keeping in mind that Invul/Defiance/Regen's defensive passive bonus did not get hit by any diminishing returns using the Dodge/Avoidance gear.
Also there will be times where attacks cannot be avoided. LR gives 0 defense in these cases, whereas the other defensive passives still provide some protection here.
I apologize for not really answering your question, but instead reaffirmed your way of thinking.
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Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.
Specifically, the mitigation puts it similar to defiance without having to build the stacks, and coupled with resurgent reiki it's on par, if not better than, regeneration. Add on top of this dodge increasing powers like evasive manuevers, that one MA kick advantage, and elusive monk, plus a form that increases your damage and energy recovery for every dodge... well it has a lot of synergy.
In addition to all that, the way the power used to work was that if you were being targeted by a charged attack, you had a higher chance to dodge, which was a different way of mitigating spike damage, and despite remaining as an artifact power to when this was an intended mechanic, it still remains incredibly useful.
Adding in other advantages from other powers might make it better I guess, but then adding powers to the other passive defenses will make them better too. For example, LR + Resurgent Reiki might be nice, but Regeneration + Resurgent Reiki is too. Same as Invulnerability and Defiance.
Lightning Reflexes might be really good at taking spike damage from long-charging attacks ... but only 40-60% of the time (what is the bonus +% Dodge for long-charging attacks?) Why not choose a passive defense that will work 100% of the time? Regeneration might be weak at taking a full-on "power hit" but what about Invulnerability that can take it without the chance for failure?
I'm only trying to understand the advantages of the power, but I don't see any clear benefits.
Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.
Dodge worked differently pre-alert, so 25% dodge was basically enough to dodge any slow moving attack.
LR basically provides the best dodge/avoid numbers you can hit - however, to truly utilize it optimally, you need powers that boost dodge by percentage, like thundering kicks or evasive maneuvers. It's possible to maintain 100% dodge (albeit a pain), and you will actually get better mitigation because of how damage gets calculated.
However, for general use, defiance or invul is typically much easier to manage.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This was awesome while it lasted
_______________________________________________
Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.
Forgot to mention
Pre-alert, dodge/avoid was much weaker.
I don't believe we had base 10/20 dodge avoid then, and the dodge gear sacrificed stat points in your primary defensive slot.
But as the new silver champ recog breastplate of agility allows 39.2/58. something with just an r5 gamblers, unless you build with dodge boosts (powers) you'll still generally get better performance running defiance or invul.
The 70.3% and 88.9% were obtained separately..below are a few things that can be obtain together and what you can idle with(Note:I didn't touch the spec tree yet)
44.4% Dodge/71.3% Avoidance --(153/241)Gear (XX%/21%)Swinging
57.2% Dodge/61.9% Avoidance --(306/139)Gear (XX%/21%)Swinging
66.4% Dodge/87.4% Avoidance --(153/256)Gear (455/455+50%)LR (XX%/21%)Swinging
70.3% Dodge/85.9% Avoidance --(306/139)Gear (470/470+50%)LR (XX%/21%)Swinging
Eh for some fun here is a not idling number with a damage related combat log
Rank 3 LR(470+50%) + Rank 3 MD(126%) + 369 Avoidance +21% grants 90.2%
90.2% Avoidance + 19% Defense
[Combat (Self)] You lose 14 (188) Fire Damage from Red Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 28 (375) Fire Damage from Yellow Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 57 (750) Fire Damage from Green Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 113 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam.
[Combat (Self)] Mega-Destroid Terminator deals 2026 (20776) Particle Damage to you with Eye Beams.
With that I shall take my leave! Until later when I have free time~
71.9% dodge was the highest I could get from idle(with a 87.2% avoidance)(I didn't 'max' this since I lack legion dodge gear)
89.8% avoidance is the highest I could get from idle(with a 66.6% dodge)
92.5% avoidance was the highest I could ever get...this was obtained by mega-stacking +avoidance buffs and such...
I think Lightning Reflexes looks good, but it's also a pain in the butt. And really, I think it only even begins to come into its own in later levels. I don't have exact numbers to back me up, I'm just talking about how it feels when levelling. Every time I've tried it, it feels like shooting myself in the foot.
So maybe it just works best as a 'respec into at 32+' power. You know, when you can get some gear to properly support it and make it work.
Pre-alert dodge was weaker/stronger. Dodge change was proportional to the the activation time on power. Charge powers or long activation time powers increased the doge change. Quick activation powers reduced the dodge change. So big schtick attack from bosses were nothing, but basic henchmen attack would tear you to shreds.
The mechanic is not quite like the other passives because of how it affects incoming damage.
A couple of things to keep in mind are:
1) the various defenses in CO are layered.
2) Dodge occurs before the other layers.
3) Your defensive passive will interact with your gear and certain powers. This can allow you to generate dodge/avoidance numbers in the 80/80 (truly dedicated dodge tanks can reach avoidance numbers in the 90% range) range. This would mean that, against really big hits, you have a very good chance to take very little damage.
4) Avoidance damage mitigation is true damage reduction. 80% avoidance means that only 20% of the damage gets through (and is then reduced by your innate damage resistance). Damage resistance from something like Defiance functions differently. Your damage resistance there is divided by 100 and then added to 1 to get the number by which you divide incoming damage.
so a defiance user with 15% per stack, and six stacks (15 x 6 =90) would divide incoming damage by ((90/100 = .9) +1 = 1.9)). Vs a 5000 damage hit the defiance user will take 2,631 damage. Slightly more than half damage. A Lightning Reflexes (LR) user with 80% avoidance would take only 1000 damage from the same hit.
Since LR might only activate 60-80% of the time (using 70% here as a median) that means that, on average, LR would reduce incoming damage by 56%. This means that, again on average, that 5000 damage hit is doing 2200 (which is then reduced by the LR user's inate damage resistance), 431 less than taken by the defiance user.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
It's not so much better, as it is a different way of accomplishing the same thing, and like I said, it's an artifact power from a mechanic that doesn't really exist anymore, yet still manages to be equivalent to the other passives in practice. It doesn't matter if you're only mitigating 40-60% of the damage if you're healing back for 250% nearly every time you get hit. The only time it does matter is in the case of that rare spike that can hit for 167%(ish) of your HP, or you get chipped enough that it becomes a problem.
Plus what ashen said.
side note - you can't get 100% avoidance. You WILL take some amount of damage no matter what, even if it's 1 point. That's simply..
(o_o)
( <_<)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
Unavoidable.
Pion01 and ayonachan, and everyone else, thanks for the numbers and the more detailed explanations. Lightning Reflexes doesn't seem as bad now that I understand it a bit more. It's still a bit disheartening to me because, to achieve really good numbers, it seems to require getting high-level gear and/or aggressively using other powers to augment it.
I think it's a bit unimaginative to have a "dodging" power that is actually a resist-based set with an activation roll. It would be nice to have a passive defense that allowed you to avoid attacks entirely, reflecting the many, many "super-reflexed" heroes in the comics that simply jump out of harm's way.
Still, it's an interesting mechanic. It looks to be a very "proactive" play style because of the needs to use other powers and advantages to make it work well. I'll try it out a bit more before judging based solely on numbers.
Thanks again to you all!
.
Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.
As a heads up:
Lightning Reflexes benefits most from powers that add dodge/avoidance percentage rather than rating. For example Evasive Maneuvers in the archery set adds actual percentage rather than rating. This is important because dodge rating is subject to some pretty serious diminishing returns while percentage adds directly to your total chance.
Good dodge gear is very easily gained at level 40 as well.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I did like those numbers but I honestly feel safer with all my dodge/avoid gear and bonuses from powers giving me 96% dodge constant in combat with a 74% avoidance before anything even touches PFF's shields. :biggrin:
I'm not saying one passive is better than the other. Lightning Reflexes is really good if you have an idea of how to use the power. I'm just partial to my passive (I've got 3 level 40's so far with PFF.)
"There is only one way to support a PFF tank: Send Cyrone lots of money weekly... because he's the only one to successfully be a true PFF Tank." - chuckwolf
Actually the big hits were still something - you just mitigated them better. Bcr took care of most of it then, as it didn't have the internal cooldown on RR like it does now.
Yeah, some of the best defense you can get in game is layering dodge from gear/powers/etc over another passive. Dodge layered over Invulnerability is truly amazing since it means you are reducing incoming hits with your dodge then applying Invulnerability's damage resistance, and then subtracting Invulnerability's flat damage reduction from whatever damage remains. Done well this sort of set up is pretty much unkillable in PVE.
(this is directed to the OP Cyrone, I know you already knew all of this, just wanted to springboard from your comment about layering dodge over another passive)
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Masterful dodge is an active defense which greatly increase your dodge and avoidance. Matching it with Lightning Reflexes will be cool. If you have bountiful chi resurgence, the healing will work more efficiently with dodge.
I'll test it out and see how it flies!
Eight year, two month resident of Paragon City finding new challenges and combating new evils in Millenium City.