f13.net

I did some searching on the CoX official forums and here, but haven't really turned up anything useful regarding whether defender debuffs stack.  My weekly group has two defenders.  Currently, we have a dark/dark and a kin/archery defender.  I'm playing the kin/archery, and have decided that it's just not maturing fast enough as a powerset combo to be super-useful in the earlier levels.  In order to judge whether a different build would be better for the group, I've tossed together a rad/psy defender.  Since radiation emission has defense, to hit, damage, etc. debuffs and dark miasma also has them, it begs the question....just how much stacking do we get on the debuffs?

I feel pretty damn confident that they stack but have a hard cap of overall debuffing at some point, but I can't seem to verify this.  Anyone?

De buffs from different people stack, allways. The same debuff from the same person usually don"t. But there are exceptions. Web grenade comes to mind. Just remember there is a floor. For accuracy you cant go below 5% as an example. And yes, rad and dark are great debuff sets.

I seem to recall that Defender buffs/debuffs stack, but of course the easy way to verify this would be to just try it out with a couple of defenders.

The powers will stack, and whatever caps there are should be sufficiently high/low that combining defenders will be very effective.  Dark and Rad go very well together.

To-hit can't go below 5% or above 95% (whatever your accuracy is, and whatever the defense of your target is, and vice versa).  Resists can go into the negatives, but I don't know how far.

If you have 6 dark defenders all using Darkest Night, they will all stack and drop the accuracy of everything in range to the floor.  However, there's still a 5% chance for each attack to hit, no matter what.

Duplicate power effects from different players *always* stack, no exceptions.

Different powers from the same player will also always stack.

(as will different powers from different players, obv)

Sometimes the same power cast twice by the same player will not stack.

That said, there are caps on how effective some things can be. As Llava mentions, chance to hit can't go above 95% or below 5%, also damage can't go above 400% (depending on archetype) BUT, the +acc and -def effects (for example) that might take you over 95% to-hit will remain in effect, and will count against any debuffs that get applied later, as well as bringing lower level characters closer to the 95% cap.

eg.

Base to-hit for white con = 70%
Add a 40% acc buff on yourself, and a 20% def debuff on the mob.
To-hit becomes 130%, but is capped down to 95%.

Then the bad guys hit you with a 20% acc debuff.

Now you are 110%, but still capped down to the same 95%.

Alternatively, lets add a few levels to the mob....

Base to-hit might drop to 40%
Add the same 40% acc buff to your team, and 20% def debuff to the mob.
To-hit is 100%, capped to 95%.

But now we're getting more xp because we are killing harder mobs.


So, the practical effect of all this is that recruiting more and more players to stack more and more buffs makes you more and more powerful in almost all circumstances. While you will eventually cap out effects, all that means is that you should move up to harder missions.

Buff/Debuff stacking is luv in CoH.

Kin as a primary should be useful about level, oh, 12. SPEED BOOST FTW.

That said, effects pretty much stack without limit. The exceptions are accuracy/defense as noted before, in addition to movement speed. You can't slow things beyond 10% of their natural movement rate. That one was a later addition when a couple of caltrop patches would permanently immobilize anything a blaster was facing down.

--GF

We were having some survivability issues for our team, and it seems that the rad emission debuffs when stacked with the dark debuffs are putting us in the "almost never need to heal" camp.  That's nice, largely because we have one tanker, one blaster, and two defenders...with an occasional controller.  So maybe later I'll dust off the kin/archery defender, but for the time being, we're having an easier time of it.  Most of my weekly group only plays on Wednesdays and has never played CoX before...so it's easier to have the bigger debuffs right now.

Once your group gets to SO level and is a bit more familiar with the game, the tanker and one defender are all you'll need, so you can feel free to switch back to the kinetic around then and watch everybody suddenly wonder why they ever played without Speed Boost.

The stacking effects are why all-defender/corruptor teams are so awesome. Give it a try if you get the chance sometime. Your only problem will be to find large enough spawns to decimate ;)

Kinetic offers Fulcrum Shift as its tier 8 or 9 power, right? Man, that is a hella awesome buff to get as a scrapper!

God back when I was playing my normal group was a mind/storm controller a earth/ice tank myself as forcefield rad and an empathy/psi defender.

This was a while back but we pretty much took no damage and with the empaths great buff had almost full energy all the time.

Defenders or controllers secondary powers stack VERY well. There are caps but a combo of two buffers or a buffer and a debuffer can eliminate the need for any healing. That is probably the thing I liked most about COH. The "healer" arch type was not typically a healer there were different ways to protect your party and they were all valid and worked well. Hell as a Force field defender alone I could make it so a group almost never needed much in the way of healing. HEHE my tank often turned off her active defenses so she could use more energy on attacks because she just wasn't getting hit.

Tell that to the tards who still insist on hunting for Emp defenders.

Based on the vast number of random invites my defender alts get, I have to think that there's not that many tards....or else my lowbie alts are just in demand cause people want some kind of blue shield in the team list.

YMMV, but playing CoH I find less of the idiots who shout 'HEAL ME!' everytime they stub their toe on the way into a mission than I find in any other MMOG.

If anything, I get more people moaning if I let speed boost or FF/sonic shields drop for more than a quarter of a pico-second.

People want blue shields (and red comets) no matter what powerset you run. And this makes a lot of sense, there is no team that doesn't benefit from more blue shields or red comets (On the villian side, I have serious doubts that you can make a case purely on a power basis for inviting any class other than corruptors to a group)

Ideal groups (purely from a power perspective), imo are 2 tankers/scrappers 6 defenders, or 8 corruptors.

Anything else can be fun for variety and style points of course, but the buff/debuff sets stack so well it's all just nuts.

The game has been out long enough that most people have figured out how it works.  Back during release, though, you definitely saw the "Empaths are the only useful Defender" attitude.

Well, my highest toon is only in the upper 30s, so that may explain why I still see this often enough to mention it.