Behind the Mask: A glass jaw is not an advantage

Last week, I asked you guys if anyone was interested in a Massively SG. Well, the comments and emails seemed pretty positive, so I'll be forming one up; send a PM or friend invite to @Auspicious if you're interested. I also made a Massively chat channel, creatively named Massively. Feel free to hop in and use it to socialize with me or other Massively readers while you're smashing down villains! I'll be on this weekend and we can think of a suitably "super" SG name.

This week, we're going to be talking about survival. A little bit of tanking info will be included, but I am hoping that Cryptic changes the currently screwy aggro mechanics. Right now, they require tanks to constantly attack everything in a given room at the same time -- certainly a difficult prospect even at the best of times.

Staying alive, however, is universal. Everyone hates dying, even in Champions Online. Not everyone has to take hits all the time, but when those hits come, a little bit of survival sure helps. A lot of survival helps even more.

Stats and surviving, superhero-style

Stats are the most basic element of any character, and while they often aren't the first place for tweaking, they're often the easiest. If a character can swap out a few pieces of gear or some talents and gain a chunk of survivability, he has to make fewer sacrifices in power picks or advantage points.

I talked about stats before. Remember that there is a glass ceiling on stats, because that 250-300 you have in DEX or STR is really doing your character very little good. Always spread whenever possible. That can't be overstated.

Of the potential stats to spread to, CON is great. CON provides a linear +health bonus (15 extra HP per point) that never changes, even at 300 CON or beyond. Even if your hero is superstat CON, it's somewhat resistant to the rule of diminishing returns, just because the health bonus is linear. The bonus that CON gives to energy gain and defense from Defiance is also linear, but both of those have hidden diminishing returns (at some point the extra energy is frivolous, and defense stacking works on a diminishing returns model) so having truckloads of CON can be nice, but it isn't game-breaking.

Another very important thing about +HP is that it has limited benefits on a character's survivability. I'm not saying having more health is a bad thing. However, unlike that other superhero game, extra health doesn't give passive benefits like extra regeneration. Having lots of HP is only a buffer against dying. It won't help your character snap back after taking a vicious hit; it'll only reduce the likelihood that blow will kill you. It's essential in PvE that you don't get killed by big damage attacks, but for most characters it's vastly more important that you recover quickly.

This doesn't mean you should ignore CON, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't ignore DEX if you have Lightning Reflexes or STR if you have Invulnerability. However, stats that help you recover from damage, like PRE (REC if you have Regen, CON if you have Endorphin Rush, and DEX if you have Resurgent Reiki) help a lot more in the tough spots than having extra hit points. Your hero may only be beaten to an inch of her life once or twice per encounter, but healing an extra 50-100 hit points every time she activates Conviction (with a six-second recharge) is a big deal.

PRE also helps in subtle ways. For Protector characters it magnifies threat, and this boost is very significant. For all other roles, PRE helps by diluting the threat you deal. This can be a big benefit if your hero is sporting a damage passive.

In PvP, ignore everything I just said. More HP is always, always better, and if your Champion can teleport (and he should if you're PvPing), healing is really not that crucial since you can always disengage.

Passive defense doesn't mean boring

Not all heroes will choose to bring defense in their passive slot. But for those who choose to, there's quite a few options.

A discussion of passive defense would simply not even exist without speaking of Regeneration. Regen is one of those iconic powers in CO. Even if Regen were perfectly balanced with all the other defensive passives, Regen would get flak from being overpowered, simply because of its iconic status. As it is, I don't think Regen is ridiculously out of line, since it has advantages and disadvantages.

Regen is weak when it comes to taking huge hits, so CON is a must-have stat. Because Regen relies a lot on restoring damage after it's been dealt, it works well with things that reduce damage. Player skill is a big factor in Regen's effectiveness, since blocking, crowd control powers, and kiting allow Regen the precious time it needs to get back on its feet. Soft controls like damage debuffs also help a lot by reducing incoming damage. Regen is often seen as a novice crutch, but the reality of things is that Regen is best employed by a skilled player who knows when to engage and when not to. Regen's only weakness is that it has poor synergy with external healing; healers are better off just ignoring Regen characters and focusing on other allies.

Invulnerability is often seen as a has-been, a throwback to the days of overpowered and imbalanced passive defenses. Even the biggest Invul fans would agree that the power has seen better days, but it's my belief that overall the power is still one of the best defenses a hero can select. Invulnerability works by reducing all incoming damage by a moderate percentage, then subtracting some damage off the top. This damage reduction method makes it hard to predict just how much it protects the user, but some facts are clear.

Invulnerability, like Regen, benefits a lot from reducing incoming damage, but unlike Regen, it doesn't heal over time (without additional powers), so things like crowd control don't exponentially increase its worth. Kiting to reduce incoming damage also has limited benefits. Other ways of reducing damage, like blocking, damage resistance debuffs and external defense buffs, have a massive multiplying effect on Invulnerability. A blocking Regen character might take 200 damage per hit from a series of attacks; a Defiance character might take 100 from those same attacks. Invulnerability, however, will be taking ticks of 1 damage -- a huge benefit in most situations.

Defiance is probably my favorite passive in the entire game. In beta, it was unwieldy and slow to use, often useless by the time a fight was over. As time and patches progressed, Defiance slowly got better and better, until it became the monster it is today.

Defiance has two functions, both of which benefit from CON. Defiance's primary function is a defense boost that increases as your hero suffers from attacks. With high CON, Defiance can scale up to cut enemy damage in half. Unlike other defenses that get weaker as incoming damage increases, Defiance consistently provides strong protection. In addition, Defiance scales to CON, which naturally gives a hero more health to soak those big hits. The secondary function of Defiance is what makes it truly great, though. Every time a Defiant hero is hit (up to once every 3 seconds), she gains a huge boost of energy. A Defiant hero is rarely out of a battle -- she's constantly got energy and she's hard to bring down, no matter what you throw at her.

Lightning Reflexes was once seen as the worst defense in the game. When comparing LR to PFF, people often claimed, "PFF is bad, but at least it's not LR." The developers took heed, and by the time the Super Power Pack finally rolled around, Lightning Reflexes saw a resurgence.

By its nature, LR is a bit offensive, since it scales to DEX. It would still be languishing with PFF right now if not for the changes to Resurgent Reiki. Lightning Reflexes works by dodging attacks, and it has a higher chance of dodging slower-animating power attacks and a much lower chance to dodge rapid, weak attacks. Because the majority of the game consists of minor enemies with fast attacks, LR used to suck.

The changes to Bountiful Chi Resurgence and its Resurgent Reiki advantage (which aren't listed on CO-Wiki, sadly) allowed evasive heroes to get a burst of healing every time they dodge an attack. Combined with Form of the Unfettered Master to reduce the cooldowns of active healing powers whenever your hero dodges, evasive Champions now have the ability to quickly use self-healing powers to recover from damage. LR heroes are somewhat forced to take this combo of powers and advantages, but if they do, their survivability increases massively.

The final defensive passive in the game is Personal Force Field. PFF is widely considered to be awful. It's been buffed several times by the developers, but it continues to languish in the domain of concept characters and "fun builds." PFF isn't an awful power in a vacuum. If one compares the performance of PFF to Lightning Reflexes without self-heals, PFF actually compares pretty favorably. It's not quite on the level of the other passives, but it's by no means horrible.

The problem with PFF comes from its complete inability to work with other defensive abilities. It gives a hero a second pool of imaginary HP, and damage is subtracted from that pool of health first. The imaginary forcefield HP regenerates slowly over time (much slower than Regeneration heals real HP) and isn't affected by defense, blocking, or even dodging attacks. This makes crowd control and outright disengaging from battle the only ways to really increase the longevity of PFF.

PFF is made worse by the fact that attacks "bleed through" the forcefield. The imaginary HP doesn't completely stop damage, so while blocking increases the regeneration speed dramatically, subsequent attacks from the enemy tear up both the field and wear down your character at the same time. In order for PFF to really work, it simply must synergize better with teammates and other powers -- Mindful Reinforcement could heal the field, for instance, instead of adding a second pool of (better) imaginary HP to eat up after the first.

There's more, but...

There's a lot more to staying alive in CO. Stats and passive defenses are ways to fix a hero's glass jaw, but there are numerous ways to stay alive besides these. Stay tuned for more on this subject -- Behind the Mask's take on survival has only just begun. Also, I look forward to seeing all of you in game!