Friday, September 4, 2009

Police Drone TH


Posting pictures in this blog is always a crapshoot; either I screw up royally and it looks terrible, or everything fits together supremely well, and it looks like a work of art. Anyway...
Police Drone TH, level 50 Assault Rifle/Energy Manipulation Blaster. He was my second character to hit 50, and by far my favorite character. Even with the PPD long gone, and most likely being one of the last "drones" patrolling the City, I still feel proud to wear that outfit.
As you can see, TH has been fully outfitted with IOs (on his primary build). Among other things, he has Sting of the Manticore 5-slotted, three sets of Positron's Blast 5-slotted, two sets of Thunderstrike 6-slotted, three sets of Mako's Bite 6-slotted, Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control 6-slotted, Essence of Curare 6-slotted, and a few other unique IOs tossed in for flavor.
I specced him for ranged defense, and I succeeded. With Combat Jumping on, he has +32.88% defense to ranged attacks. Math time!
Base accuracy for an even con minion is 50%. With my defense applied, an even con minion has a 17.12% chance to hit me (effectively, I take 66% less damage than other blasters, at range). Of course, it's always important to understand the difference between positional defense, and typed defense.
All attack are classified by "position" and "type". An attack can only have one position (ranged, melee, area of effect), but it can have multiple types (smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative energy, toxic, psychic). For example, if a Council mech fires an energy blast at you, it's a ranged attack that deals energy and smashing damage. Resistance is applied separately to each type, however, only one defensive value is applied. If I have 30% ranged defense, 15% energy defense, and 10% smashing defense, the game will roll to hit against me using the highest relevant value (in this case, ranged defense). If the same mech runs up to me and tries to back-hand me with its' gun arm, the game then rolls to hit against either my melee or smashing defense (which in this case, my smashing defense is probably higher).
This is more important for melee characters, because different sets run different defenses. Super Reflexes is all positional defense, while Invulnerability is mainly typed defense. Knowing which you are when slotting is paramount for making sure IO set bonuses synergize with your character.

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