Which is better, more Defense or Dodge + Avoidance?

jaazaniah1 · November 2012

My son's Might based toon has a couple different options as far as his defenses go and I'm not sure which direction he should take, or if the two options are both good, but under different circumstances.

First, he likes Regen, so that's his basic defense.

Option 1 is a Defense of 342.8 = 81% resistance and the base Doge and Avoidance

Option 2 is is a Defense of 282.4 = 66% resistance with a 39.2% Dodge and 58.7% Avoidance

So, is the best bet to go with a consistent higher damage resistance, or go with less resistance but a reasonable chance to shave off a chunk of the damage before it gets to those defenses? Is one better for going up against Gravitar and Cosmic level baddies?

Thanks for any insights.

ayonachan · November 2012

To answer your question I'd, personally, do option 2 the higher dodge/avoidance route because d&a provides a better, but randomly occurring, mitigation power than the 15% all damage resistance ever could.

Things you SHOULD know are listed below, skip them if you please to.

Rank 3 regeneration gives you up to 30%(scaling down as you lose hp) resistance to all damage.

More importantly you should know that dodge&avoidance is pretty much just a dice roll though you can force a dodge return with masterful dodge(15 seconds of YES!) but you can do without dodge as long as you know how and when to block certain attacks(Know your limits and know when to get the cookies out of there)

Also having 3 Armadillo secondaries gives you a buff that adds 25% all damage resistance(yes it is ALL damage resistance I tested plenty of times). This, too, is optional since sometimes you may find your block provides enough protection.

To give you a hint on how good avoidance is here is how much damage I took with just 63.2% I had no defense/resistance at all(Just used r3 masterful dodge+swingingw/flippin' but yea)
[Combat (Self)] You lose 69 (188) Fire Damage from an unknown ability.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 138 (375) Fire Damage from Yellow Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 375 Fire Damage from Yellow Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 276 (750) Fire Damage from Green Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 553 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam.
[Combat (Self)] Mega-Destroid Terminator deals 5115 (13888) Particle Damage to you with an unknown ability.
[Combat (Self)] Mega-Destroid Terminator deals 7206 (19565) Particle Damage to you with Eye Beams.

And here is 100% Resistance to all damage (Came from only using Experimental Artificial Life Injection...destroid has defense penetration so I can't show you those numbers)

[Combat (Self)] You lose 94 (188) Fire Damage from Red Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 188 (375) Fire Damage from Yellow Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 377 (750) Fire Damage from Green Beam.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 753 (1500) Fire Damage from an unknown ability.

jaazaniah1 · November 2012

Thanks for the input. He indeed has Regen R3. Also has Retaliation R3. My son's not great on remembering to hit lots of buttons, so he just has Resurgence R3 as his back up.

At lvl 40 is the armadillo gear better to have than the purple secondaries?

ayonachan wrote: »

To answer your question I'd, personally, do option 2 the higher dodge/avoidance route because d&a provides a better, but randomly occurring, mitigation power than the 15% all damage resistance ever could.

Things you SHOULD know are listed below, skip them if you please to.

Rank 3 regeneration gives you up to 30%(scaling down as you lose hp) resistance to all damage.

More importantly you should know that dodge&avoidance is pretty much just a dice roll though you can force a dodge return with masterful dodge(15 seconds of YES!) but you can do without dodge as long as you know how and when to block certain attacks(Know your limits and know when to get the cookies out of there)

Also having 3 Armadillo secondaries gives you a buff that adds 25% all damage resistance(yes it is ALL damage resistance I tested plenty of times). This, too, is optional since sometimes you may find your block provides enough protection.

ayonachan · November 2012

The buff is what makes armadillo secondaries better than everything else...their stats aren't great but they do increase all of your superstats just not by too much unlike the expensive questionite secondaries. I'd take the 11ks over the 150k any-day but that is just my personal opinion.

Offense
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 4.7 Defense | 12 Offense
Vigilante's Critical Belt: 44 Primary Super Stat | 6.5 Defense | 47 Critical Strike | 17 Offense

Defense
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 7.1 Defense
Vigilante's Bolstering Bracers: 338 Max Healthpoints | 44 Primary Super Stat | 9.7 Defense

Utility
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 4.7 Defense
Vigilante's Hasten Eyepiece: 338 Max Healthpoints | 44 Primary Super Stat | 6.5 Defense| 46 Cooldown Reduction | 46 Cost Discount
Salvager's Eyepiece: 37 Recovery | 6.5 Defense | 93 Cooldown Reduction | 46 Cost Discount

jaazaniah1 · November 2012

Thanks for the stats. He's not the type who'll grind Questionite for the high end purples, I was mostly thinking of the purples that drop from the baddies. Maybe a set of 3 Armadillos with the added resistance would be worth it?

ayonachan wrote: »

Offense
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 4.7 Defense | 12 Offense
Vigilante's Critical Belt: 44 Primary Super Stat | 6.5 Defense | 47 Critical Strike | 17 Offense

Defense
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 7.1 Defense
Vigilante's Bolstering Bracers: 338 Max Healthpoints | 44 Primary Super Stat | 9.7 Defense

Utility
Armadillo: 8.5 Secondary Super Stat1 | 8.5 Secondary Super Stat2 | 19 Primary Super Stat | 4.7 Defense
Vigilante's Hasten Eyepiece: 338 Max Healthpoints | 44 Primary Super Stat | 6.5 Defense| 46 Cooldown Reduction | 46 Cost Discount
Salvager's Eyepiece: 37 Recovery | 6.5 Defense | 93 Cooldown Reduction | 46 Cost Discount

ayonachan · November 2012

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

Thanks for the stats. He's not the type who'll grind Questionite for the high end purples, I was mostly thinking of the purples that drop from the baddies. Maybe a set of 3 Armadillos with the added resistance would be worth it?

Sadly the only non-questionite purple 40 I had on my person was the salvager's...And I prefer armadillo secondaries over everything else(for tanking that is, damage-specific 11k questionite secondaries for doing damage) but that is just my opinion.

ajanus · November 2012

From those numbers, it looks like he has PSS STR with Juggernaut.

I would definitely slot a Dodge/Avoidance piece in that setup.

With Regen, that should be enough to tank any encounter in the game.

pugdaddy · November 2012

Adding some Dodge/Avoid to decent Resistance make a huge difference to survivability. Having a Primary Defense with Avoidance and adding a Gamblers Gem to it for the Dodge is an easy way to do it.

If you had Dex as your primary stat, that Spec tree has some nice + Dodge/Avoid treats, if you want to be more hard-core about it. Masterful Dodge + Bountiful Chi Resurgence is a good combo but = more button pressing.

I have 3 Armadillo Secondaries on my Regen tank and it does help.

andromeda9899 · November 2012

I have a tank with regeneration as my passive.
Basically, I have rank 3 regeneration, rank 3 resurgence, Nanobot swarm with self healing advantage, and devour essence.
I am using purple gear with rank 6 mods. Currently I have 410 def.
I am still figuring is it possible for me to survive Gravitar if everyone else is down cause I don't have a good computer for gaming. Quite often I experience lag and other technical problem due to graphic.
Anyway, I find that I won't die as long as there is another person alive during Gravitar rampage.
In my opinion I won't match dodge and avoidance with regeneration cause if you fail to dodge an incoming attack, you will take a lot of hit and probably die especially yellow bubble by Gravitar. Dodge and avoidance works better with other passive such as Lightning Reflexes. I have tested my another character AT blade. I tested him with either putting dodge onto primary defense or putting def into primary defense. When I put dodge into it, I get 60% dodge chance and 55% avoidance. Other the other hand, if I put defense into primary defense, I get around 46% dodge and 55% avoidance. But I notice that I survive longer with defense slotted into primary defense and the difference between 60% dodge and 45% dodge is very mile and always fail to dodge.

haleakala · November 2012

More fun with numbers.

Damage resistance in CO is calculated via the formula: (Resist%/100) + 1 = damage divisor.

The 81% mitigation in your option 1 results in a divisor of 1.81: (81/100) + 1 = 1.81, so a 1000 point attack would do 1000/1.81 = 552. The 66% mitigation in option 2 would result in: 1.66, and a hit of 1000 would do 602.

Dodge/avoidance is calculated before damage resistance. In your option 2 numbers, the incoming damage would be reduced by 58.7%, 39.2% of the time. Resistance is then applied to the remainder. A hit of 1000 if dodge procs would be reduced to 413. The 66% resistance would then reduce that to 249.

For the sake of simplicity, assume dodge is rounded up to 40%. The comparison then would be that across 10 hits of 1000, option 1 would result in (552 * 10) = 5520 damage inside, option 2 would result in (602 * 6) = 3612; (249 * 4) = 996; 3612 + 996 = 4608.

Of course, dodge is a random number generation factor, so in any 10 attacks, you might get 0, 10 or anywhere in between actual dodges. So, the resistance is more reliable, whereas on average the dodge will be better.

Finally, ayonachan's numbers for the 100% resistance do not show a straight 50% reduction (which I would expect based on the formula). This is likely because of rounding in the tooltips.

lordhavelock · November 2012

God I love you number crunchers... ayonachan, haleakala... Thanks for sharing your work!

scrapperlok · November 2012

So if Im going for Dodge%, is there a target I should aim for? Currently, the toon in question is level 40 @ 57.6%

haleakala · November 2012

scrapperlok wrote: »

So if Im going for Dodge%, is there a target I should aim for? Currently, the toon in question is level 40 @ 57.6%

Is the character a dodge tank; DPS with dodge as your defense; other? What have you done to generate your dodge chance so far (e.g., is that 57.6% from gear/spec alone, or does it include powers that add to it)? Also, what is your avoidance percentage?

Which is better, more Defense or Dodge + Avoidance?

Comments