Did you ever add Incarnate Power to your 8 man?
Bet that would've been a sight to behold in battles.
Oh yes - you have
no idea how much that added at the high end.
On the Defense end of things, he had the Alpha Slot Innate "Agility" which added to his already over-capped defense. Without any incarnate power activated, C8 hovered around 50-55% Defense for Melee, Ranged, and AOE.
WITH Agility active and if he was in a zone like Dark Astoria where the +3 level kicked in, his Melee shot up to about 62%, his ranged right at 60%, and the AOE defense lagging slightly behind at 58%.
It's true that over 45% Defense in the regular game was "Capped". That meant statistically it no longer mattered much after that point.
Except that it kinda did - there's lots of things that drain or suppress defense. And being over-capped adds resistance to that. So even if a random "autohit" attack that suppresses defense hits, it won't lower you under the cap.
And in the incarnate trials, I seem to recall that 60% was the cap, not 45%. So it did in fact make a difference there.
You just
stop worrying about Malta Sappers and the like when you know that 99% of the time, they're just not even going to hit you at all.
And then there was the addition of the Defense Barrier Shield from the Destiny set. Which throws up a defense bubble around you and up to a few dozen other people around you. If more than one person in a trial threw those up at the same time...
...I had a little section of my HUD set aside to keep track of defense numbers, running and jumping speeds and the like. Ever seen those numbers go to 200% and flash from green to blue, indicating the absolute game limit where the calculator cries "UNCLE"? I did many times. Consider that for a about 10-15 seconds an entire League could be granted that level of defense at a critical point.
On the offensive side of things, one of the passive incarnate boosts added an effect to your normal attacks that each time you hit, had a strong chance to debuff the damage resistance of whatever you were hitting, as well as add a small DOT (Damage over Time) element. Now consider that as a Scrapper, you can get Criticals/Double Damage... Oh yes - Cyberman 8 hit like a freight train. And the more he hit, the the harder the blows landed!
On crack - because I was also IOed out with as much as I could get in recharge reduction as well as defense.
Okay - sure. Martial Arts is mainly a Single Target damage set with only one PBAOE (Dragons Tail sweep kick). But C8's attack chain cycled so fast that AOE almost would have been redundant!
"Where's Cyberman 8? Oh... that other group over there, with the bodies flying out of it. That must be him."
I have two "modes" socially when playing C8. I'm chatty and talk when out of combat. But IN combat, you almost never see me "say" anything. That's because I'm TOO BUSY keeping up with C8's attack chain!
And then things started to get NUTS... The Judgement power Vorpal Core was an AOE cone attack that didn't need to be targeted specifically. A very WIDE AOE cone in front and extreme damage to everything in that cone. EVERYTHING. And the visual effect just RULED - C8 simply VANISHES, and you see ghostly images of him briefly attacking ALL the targets out ahead simultaneusly before all the images zip back and coalesce as he reappears! VERY speedster/Flash-like!
And lastly, the new Hybrid slot added even more - the more enemies that surrounded him, the more his defense and resistance went UP!
Not for nothing did I include Burly Brawl from The Matrix Reloaded Soundtrack --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L91OqOyPjMw--as part of C8's music list when on a TF. ^_^
