The Merits of Mag Defense

[Angelo]

I think the general consensus is that defense is kind of a waste. You can (theoretically) dodge everything, but you can only kill so fast if all your attacks hit. So attack scales better with skill, while defense scales worse.
So, if you're skilled, attack is more noticeable. If you're not, defense may be more useful.

It really depends, since you can't always watch your back. I'm building a defensive warcry HU and a tactic I use is to Warcry a group of enemies and then have them follow me while I attack the ones that missed the warcry. Many enemies have leaping/dashing attacks that you really can't dodge since they are readying their attack off camera while you're tying up other enemies. Another problem is if you have groups of enemies pissed off at you with ranged attacks (like the baby Metal Gears in the desert) they can hit your back without you ever noticing.

Still, it can clump them together nicely and make it easy for FOs and Launcher RAs. This is mainly for if you're doing missions 5+ your own level. Defense can be useful.

My main problem with the whole 'if you're GOOD you can just keep dodging and never get hit' is that the more you dodge within a really heated area, the less useful you are to your team because you're losing enemy control/hitstun/juggle and possibly even overall 'dps' (hate that term) by constantly darting around.

[Scarlet_Rain]

It's really just personal preference...Unless of course you're not using to equip a specific armor set the points are probably better allocated elsewhere.

[Dinosaur]

My main problem with the whole 'if you're GOOD you can just keep dodging and never get hit' is that the more you dodge within a really heated area, the less useful you are to your team because you're losing enemy control/hitstun/juggle and possibly even overall 'dps' (hate that term) by constantly darting around.

This is perfectly fine. If you are getting focused by many enemies, that just means you are buying time for your team to fight.

[Zipzo]

I think the general consensus is that defense is kind of a waste. You can (theoretically) dodge everything, but you can only kill so fast if all your attacks hit. So attack scales better with skill, while defense scales worse.
So, if you're skilled, attack is more noticeable. If you're not, defense may be more useful.

These are pretty much my thoughts on the matter.

Although PSO is now an older game, one can easily remember that the most optimal mag builds never brought DEF above 5 (the basic starting defense stat for the mags). It didn't take much pondering on my end to really see how the same logic would translate in to PSO2. If you never get hit...all that defense goes to waste. Where as extra POW is constantly being utilized, because as your POW improved so did your damage.

Raise your hand if you were "5/145/50/0-er"!

[Metalsnake27]

I guess really also it just depends on if you actually need the defense.

If you do, then put some points in it, if not, then maximize your attack, or just put points it in anyways for good measure.

[NoiseHERO]

It really depends, since you can't always watch your back. I'm building a defensive warcry HU and a tactic I use is to Warcry a group of enemies and then have them follow me while I attack the ones that missed the warcry. Many enemies have leaping/dashing attacks that you really can't dodge since they are readying their attack off camera while you're tying up other enemies. Another problem is if you have groups of enemies pissed off at you with ranged attacks (like the baby Metal Gears in the desert) they can hit your back without you ever noticing.

Still, it can clump them together nicely and make it easy for FOs and Launcher RAs. This is mainly for if you're doing missions 5+ your own level. Defense can be useful.

My main problem with the whole 'if you're GOOD you can just keep dodging and never get hit' is that the more you dodge within a really heated area, the less useful you are to your team because you're losing enemy control/hitstun/juggle and possibly even overall 'dps' (hate that term) by constantly darting around.

Wait, shut up, what?

I CAN BRAINWASH ENEMIES???

[Coatl]

I feel that raising defense on MAGs is only important for Hunters. Hunter naturally puts itself into dangerous positions so taking hits is part of the job. That is, unless you're super god-like and Just Guard and Step EVERYTHING.

As for the other classes, it's not as important unless you find yourself actually getting hit(which can because of different playstyles). Force can easily avoid everything in the game as well as fight from great distances. Ranger is a mid-range fighter and will get personal with enemies from time to time. Ranger also has a vulnerable moments such as launcher use and dodge recovery frames. If you're not careful, getting R-Def for stronger units on RA might be a good idea.

Dodging all the time also lessens the amount of DPS you could perform. Let's look at this realistically here now. If you were completely devoted into DPS, and you would have to dodge every single hit in order to stay alive, you'd be

1. Stress yourself out from having to pay attention to every move your enemy makes, lol.

2. You would have to sacrifice time trying to dodge a move, instead of just tanking it and striking back with a powerful attack. Some enemy attacks have stun, or knockback, which obviously in this case the best way to maximize your dps is to evade.

[Zipzo]

Dodging all the time also lessens the amount of DPS you could perform. Let's look at this realistically here now. If you were completely devoted into DPS, and you would have to dodge every single hit in order to stay alive, you'd be

1. Stress yourself out from having to pay attention to every move your enemy makes, lol.

2. You would have to sacrifice time trying to dodge a move, instead of just tanking it and striking back with a powerful attack. Some enemy attacks have stun, or knockback, which obviously in this case the best way to maximize your dps is to evade.

That begs the question though, is a reasonable amount of defense (let's assume nobody is making a 200 defense mag) on a mag going to really do any good in the grand scheme of damage flowing in?

Even with defense on your mag, you're still going to try to avoid as much as you can. This isn't similar to other games where you can stack a resistance so high, or your stamina/hp to where healers can heal you through a mechanic allowing you to just be stationary (like a lot of fights in WoW, for example). Bosses move just as much as players do in PSO2.

[RocSage]

That's not quite true Zipzo. The optimal build was to fill in the non-max stats if for some reason you could max them. By lvl 200 you could max every stat, so the MAG became just a temporary "get me this item quicker" thing where as MAGs are more permanent now and take a lot more time and money to raise.


I think the people who are saying "dodge" every are really fucking over the game mechanics and how the game was designed to be played a bit as it seems obvious to me that the MOBs move around a lot and it's hard to hit them. They however also have aggro and tend to stand still a lot more when they are not having people run around them, plus when the person with the agro moves the MOB moves thus the targets move thus making it harder and more dangerous for the other people.

I have a feeling that eventually the Bosses are going to get to the point where if you don't have a tank you are going to look like an absolute fool trying to kill these things at the proper levels. As it is it looks like what you're supposed to do with Banshee/Bantha is Tank the one that comes down 1st till it's near dead then have that Meleer finish it off while the tank move on to the stronger one. That's how I would handle it with a team and with how much it moves that is likely the key to getting it to stop moving all over the place like it does. And I imagine that there will be more Bosses that press that harder and harder.

[Mikura]

Dodging all the time also lessens the amount of DPS you could perform. Let's look at this realistically here now. If you were completely devoted into DPS, and you would have to dodge every single hit in order to stay alive, you'd be

1. Stress yourself out from having to pay attention to every move your enemy makes, lol.

2. You would have to sacrifice time trying to dodge a move, instead of just tanking it and striking back with a powerful attack. Some enemy attacks have stun, or knockback, which obviously in this case the best way to maximize your dps is to evade.

Glad I'm not the only one that sees it that way. Despite what most people seem to think in this game, I think defense has just as much merit in this game as attack. It's hard to do damage when half your time is spent just simply trying to stay alive since you can't take no more than a few hits without having to pop a drink. Even worse when you full time Fury Stance, which I know a majority of hunters do.