NAD - which one is attacked the most ?

[Istar]

Okay relatively new to 4e.

What is the non armour defence that is attacked the most.

Only at low level now.

It used to be only armour, with some reflex.

Then we had a little bit of will, now its all fortitude.

Are the attacks evenly spread accross Reflex, Fort, Will or is one attacked mroe than the other ?

 

[babinro]

I should note that the monsters I've run from books are exclusive to the Monster Manual 1&2. Without any actual numbers to back it up, the feeling I've had having DM'd 29 levels so far is that Fortitude is a big deal early on as Poison is very prevalent in heroic tier.

As you get into Paragon, you see a lot more Reflex attacks as enemies tend to get more area/close attacks.

In epic you'll find a lot of Will/Reflex attacks because of bursts and Charm effects like domination.

I'd have to say from my experience, they cover all defenses pretty well throughout the game. But if you wanted to shore up only one defense, it would probably be Reflex giving you the most bang for your buck during most the campaign. Perhaps retraining to Will during mid-epic on as it covers a lot of mean conditions.

Though I am of the mind that you can't really compensate for a low NAD with feats to begin with as you'll get hit frequently regardless from my experience. As such, I'd personally only spend feats to further improve your strongest non-AC defense in the hopes that it will protect you on over 50% of attacks made against it.

 

[Istar]

I should note that the monsters I've run from books are exclusive to the Monster Manual 1&2. Without any actual numbers to back it up, the feeling I've had having DM'd 29 levels so far is that Fortitude is a big deal early on as Poison is very prevalent in heroic tier.

As you get into Paragon, you see a lot more Reflex attacks as enemies tend to get more area/close attacks.

In epic you'll find a lot of Will/Reflex attacks because of bursts and Charm effects like domination.

I'd have to say from my experience, they cover all defenses pretty well throughout the game. But if you wanted to shore up only one defense, it would probably be Reflex giving you the most bang for your buck during most the campaign. Perhaps retraining to Will during mid-epic on as it covers a lot of mean conditions.

Though I am of the mind that you can't really compensate for a low NAD with feats to begin with as you'll get hit frequently regardless from my experience. As such, I'd personally only spend feats to further improve your strongest non-AC defense in the hopes that it will protect you on over 50% of attacks made against it.

Last point I think you make here is the most valuable,

Generally you can cover 2 but have 1 weakness.
As a rogue its easy having Dex cover everything in your world pretty much incl. Reflex.
For me Will is the weakness.

I was going to get Epic Will but probably most attacks will get me anyway, so maybe go epic relfex if that exists and bump that up to super level.

 

[fba827]

it really depends on the DM and campaign.

If you take a spread of the monsters in MM1, there is a slightly higher percentage of monster attacks that attack reflex (someone on these boards did a break down of that). However, MM2 does balance it out a little (no hard evidence of this second sentence other than read-through observation on my own).

BUT, if your DM likes to use lots of undead or devils or some other theme going on, then all MM1/MM2 generalizations don't matter since all the other monsters are less relavent if not irrelavent.

So the question is, is there a particular theme in the game so far? Are you fighting lots of goblins, undead, devils, evil mages, priest cults, etc ? each of those groups tend to go for one type of non-AC defense over another.

Monster roles play in to this too, if there is a particular type that shows up a lot in what your DM likes to use... (based on observation only) skirmishers seem to go after a lot of ac and refelex, butes and soliders seem to go after a lot of ac and fort, controllers seem to go after a lot of for and will, etc.

 

[Infiniti2000]

NAD - which one is attacked the most ?

The left one.

 

[firesnakearies]

For kicks, I just went through all of Keep on the Shadowfell and Prince of Undeath (the lowest and highest level published 4E modules, respectively) and added up all of the creatures/traps that attacked each defense.

Interesting results.

In Keep on the Shadowfell (the revised version), I found that MOST creatures just attacked AC. As for the other defenses, these were the tallies:

Fortitude: 10

Reflex: 23

Will: 2

Interestingly, every one of those creatures that attacked Fortitude, except for ONE, also attack Reflex. Also, the two things that attacked Will were both in the very last encounter, so there wasn't a single Will attack through the whole adventure prior to the end boss fight.

But most things only attacked AC, and I felt like the adventure had a very representative variety of low-level 4E monsters.


Prince of Undeath was VERY different.

In this one, nearly every single creature attacked at LEAST one of the NADs, and many of them attacked more than one of them. Here were the tallies:

Fortitude: 81 (50 non-minion)

Reflex: 96 (59 non-minion)

Will: 33

Those numbers for Fortitude and Reflex include the 31 and 37 minions, respectively, who attacked those defenses. So if you don't count minions, it's 50 against Fortitude and 59 against Reflex.


So, judging just from these "archetypal" modules at the lowest and highest levels of play, it's clear that Reflex is by far the most common at low levels, and slightly more common at high levels. Will is almost non-existent at low levels, and still significantly outnumbered at high levels. I was surprised by this latter fact, expecting to see a lot more Will attacks at the upper level.

These numbers are not "weighted" at all based on attacks from elites or solos, so that might skew the results if such an analysis was performed. (For example, the Empowered Orcus at the end of E3 only counts as 1 under Fortitude, but some more mathematical breakdown of the "significance" of each attacker would probably count him as more.)


So, there you go.

 

[fba827]

also keep in mind that Will attacks that cause conditions are generally the more restricting conditions (like stun & daze)
In my case, that actually makes a difference for me. I'm usually more interested in a higher Will to avoid the eventual chance of those conditions than I am worried about getting infected with some poisons/pushes/slow/etc and such that impose fewer restrictions on what I can do with my actions.

 

[Abraxas]

Right now it has been my experience that we have at least one creature that attacks will or fort in every encounter. I'm playing the rogue - guess which are my lowest defenses.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Using only the MM1, the most commonly attacked non-AC defense is Reflex, followed closely by Fortitude. Will is a distant third.

Source: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/229092-lots-statistics-monster-manual.html

 

[Mengu]

The lowest one.

If you're a rageblood barbarian, your Will gets hit most frequently for domination or fear, if you are an artful dodger rogue, your Fortitude often gets hit by poison or necrotic effect, if you are a battle cleric, your reflex will be zapped by lightning and fireballs.

There is no escape.

Your resources are better spent mitigating damage or effects when you are hit. Look for save granting or save bonus powers and items as a rageblood barbarian, buy some deathcut armor as a rogue, get an armor of resistance or black iron armor if you're a cleric. Save your avoidance interrupts for attacks that hit your NAD's for an effect rather than your AC for just a bit of damage.