SR is a late bloomer. Until you get to level 22 and SOs, SR barely aids you at all.
So push on 6 more levels and then you'll find yourself saying, "I survived what? grooooooooooooooovy."
Things to help even more: Combat Jumping, tough and weave from the fighting pool and the Steadfast unique that gives +3% defense to all placed in tough.
The magic number for Defense is 45%. If you can get to there with your melee, range and aoe defense, you'll be at what's called the softcap. This means that more defense than that won't generally help you in normal PvE.
Be well, people of CoH.
defense reduces a foe's chance to hit using roughly this formula :
chance tohit = ((tohit - defense) * (1 + accuracy))
These values are clamped at 95% and 5%.
So the chance tohit of an even con minion looks like :
CT = ((50 - defense) * (1+0)) , CT = 50%
if you have 20% defense to the attack they use it looks like:
CT = ((50 - 20) * (1+0)) , CT = 30%
Lieutenants and higher rank / level foes get accuracy buffs ( up to +5 in level, at +6 or higher they also get tohit buffs). I'm not 100% sure of the numbers on the accuracy buffs but to illustrate I'll use the previous example but assume you are fighting a foe with 10% accuracy buff.
CT = ((50 - 20) * (1+0.1)) , CT = (30 * 1.1), CT = 33%
Now due to clampping, the best you can do is drop the first chance tohit in the equation to 5% because (50-45) = 5% and it will not go lower. Accuracy buffs are then taken into account, meaning that any given foe can only be reduced to 10% of his original chance tohit ( if a foe has a 75% chance tohit, the lowest you can get him to go is 7.5%).
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
And because of the way defense and resistance work resistance tends to be a flatter survival curve ... whereas defense is an increasingly sharper curve as you near the soft cap. A little bit more resistance almost always translates to a little bit more survivability. A little more defense is either a little more survivable or a TON more survivable depending on where it sits in the curve. A low level (pre-SO's) /SR is on the low end of the curve, a soft capped /SR is on the high end of that curve.
So can that 50% base tohit number that all bad guys have be increased with tohit buffs, or is it only the accuracy side that can be buffed? (speaking strictly PVE)
For example a custom enemy in an AE mish hits build up which gives a 20% tohit buff, the 50% in your equation is now at 70% correct?
Yes +to hit is far far more dangerous to /SR (and defense builds in general) than +acc as a general rule in PvE.
Edit: Nearly everything in that equation can be buffed and debuffed as well. In addition many of the to hit debuffs and defense debuffs can be resisted. /SR, in particular, can gain a great deal of defense debuff resistance, for example, making it very difficult for a cascade failure in their defense to happen.
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So can that 50% base tohit number that all bad guys have be increased with tohit buffs, or is it only the accuracy side that can be buffed? (speaking strictly PVE)
For example a custom enemy in an AE mish hits build up which gives a 20% tohit buff, the 50% in your equation is now at 70% correct?
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Yes, the baseline chance to hit can be increased by tohit, which is then modified by their accuracy. This is one of the reasons why many min/maxed */SR scraps bite it so quickly in AE. Tohit buffs are exactly the same as def debuffs only they can't be resisted (by the target, that is).
exactly how defense works
(Read until your eyes bleed and your brain turns to pudding, take a break, then read some more. 
)
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
Thanks
You totally need to get the Red Cap Daggers. I can only imagine they fit conceptually as well as in looks.
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exactly how defense works
(Read until your eyes bleed and your brain turns to pudding, take a break, then read some more. )
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*chuckled to myself * yep... that is what he asked for. (I didn't have to click on the link to know what that was, btw)
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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I loved my DB/WP toon but wanted something slightly different - so I created a "Peter Pan" toon. DB was perfect for him with his little knives - but the only secondary that seemed to fit the concept (perfectly) was Super Reflexes.
While he's only 16 now, I placed him in Mid's and gave him every secondary poer except Elude, which I read here isn't needed or isn't so great, though I'm not sure why - but that's a different thread.
What concerns me is that with all those other powers it seemed like defenses weren't really all that high - and right now I am being one-shot killed like crazy.
So how does defense really work? (I usually make dam resist toons) ... and what can I do to make this character less vulnerable as he grows?
Any and all advice appreciated, as usual...
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Others probably explained it better, but I'll try too. This is using my main, a claw/sr scrapper.
Your fighting an enemy, and he's got a 50% chance to hit you. That means half the time he misses, the other half of the time you take damage. This is the default for even level minions if you have no defense. It's also the default for PvP before enhancements are added in.
I have 30.6% defense to melee, ranged, and aoe. I subtract that from the enemy's 50% to hit, giving them a 19.4% chance to hit me. That means a little over 80% of the time I manage to avoid that attack.
I hit elude, and now have 110% defense. Subtract my defense from the to-hit of whatever is trying to hit me now, and it'll likely be below 0. That's not possible, so it give the enemy a 5% chance to hit. This is then modified by the enemy's accuracy bonus. An EB that's my level should have 50% to-hit, and I think an accuracy rating of 1.5
So the EB's chance to hit me is (50-110)=x*1.5
X=5 because the enemy's final to-hit can never be below 5%
Thus the EB will hit me 7.5% of the time if I'm eluding. That also means that defense beyond 45% is overkill. Or is it? In PvP people use a lot of +tohit. As such more defense helps to offset their +tohit. And some foes have really high tohit AND accuracy... such as Rullu overseers.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
I loved my DB/WP toon but wanted something slightly different - so I created a "Peter Pan" toon. DB was perfect for him with his little knives - but the only secondary that seemed to fit the concept (perfectly) was Super Reflexes.
While he's only 16 now, I placed him in Mid's and gave him every secondary poer except Elude, which I read here isn't needed or isn't so great, though I'm not sure why - but that's a different thread.
What concerns me is that with all those other powers it seemed like defenses weren't really all that high - and right now I am being one-shot killed like crazy.
So how does defense really work? (I usually make dam resist toons) ... and what can I do to make this character less vulnerable as he grows?
Any and all advice appreciated, as usual...