Are you fighting even-con minions? Higher-level and higher-rank enemies get Accuracy bonuses, which will raise their tohit above 5% even with softcapped defense.
However, I can guarantee you that the softcap is at 45%. Combat log hit chances and personal experience demonstrate this: on my Bane with 45% defense, I see avoided/dodged/whatever popping up many times for each time I get hit.
The defense softcap is 45% to either all positions (melee, ranged, aoe) or to all types* (smashing, lethal, energy, negative, fire, ice, psi). Once you hit that point, the standard minion/lieutenant/boss/EB/AV will have a floored tohit chance (minions will hit 5% of the time, AVs will hit 7.5% of the time because of accuracy bonuses related to mob rank).
The exception here is if you fight enemies with +ToHit buffs (Rularu eyeballs for example, very uncommon) or if you get defense debuffed below 45%
*There is no such thing as toxic defense
You are misunderstanding the way defense is applied.
Defense is subtracted from the base ToHit chance before accuracy modifiers are applied to determine the final chance to hit.
The base ToHit chance for PvE mobs is 50%, and the floor is 5%, so for mobs in PvE, if you have 45% defense, you floor the mobs' base chance to hit. (50-45=5, and it can't go any lower).
The resulting chance to hit is modified by accuracy modifiers according to the rank and relative level of the enemy, and certain types of enemies have accuracy modifiers cooked into their attacks, too. So for anything other than a regular even-level minion, the chance to hit you ends up being higher than 5%.
But the base modified by subtracting defense, not by multiplication as you have assumed.
For a more complete description, I refer you to Arcanaville's Guide to the relationship between ToHit and Defense.
Ok everyone, thanks for the info...
Just to make sure there was no I15 change, I pulled up Herostats. Now, this is against a crowd of Cimeroran minions with 45.39% positional defense, so they can technically debuff my defense below the soft cap, but it looks like a single hit takes me to 44.99%, so they'd have to stack to get anything significantly over 5%, in theory.
I let them beat on me for about 10 minutes, and it came up 5.47% for Slash, and 10.71% for Slice. Ah, the Broad Sword attacks have a little extra accuracy, which would account for Slash, or just the small sample size. I have no idea why Slice would have twice the accuracy as Slash, though. My AoE defense is the same as my melee defense. Hmmm.
OK, I turned off Maneuvers, dropping my defense to 41.81%. I'm routinely getting debuffed now, but generally something between 0 and 2 at a time. I'm probably averaging about 41.5% defense. Just saw a very brief cascading defense failure down to about 39%, but it didn't last long. I again ran the test for about 10 minutes, and Slash was at 8.90% and Slice was at 9.09%, so about what I would expect.
So other than what was probably just an unlikely string of hits from Slice in the first test, everything looks about like I would expect.
That not to say that you can't see what appear to be anomalous results. There are a lot of different enemies doing a lot of different things. Maybe there were some to-hit buffs when you were paying attention to the hits, or maybe just a lucky streak.
"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
it's ok the formulas for this game aren't exactly in game anywhere that I know of so figuring it out isn't always easy for some people.
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.
Not to make all that hard work seem worthless, but you can see mob Hit rolls on your combat tab now.
>.>
<.<
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Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler
Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?
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Not to make all that hard work seem worthless, but you can see mob Hit rolls on your combat tab now.
>.>
<.<
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Indeed. I really wish they'd add a "enemys last tohit chance" to your stat montering like we have for your last to hit chance. just so i don't have to watch the combat log to see it. It all goes by so quickly when your battling a hord of people. >.> 
@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...
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Not to make all that hard work seem worthless, but you can see mob Hit rolls on your combat tab now.
>.>
<.<
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<face palm>
Right. I, uh... ummmm...
Look! A baby wolf!
<runs away>
"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
The human perspective tends to get in the way. For example, I really think I miss too often even though I have a 95% chance to hit.
Out of curiosity, I ran herostats to track my accuracy and defense. The numbers did average out to what they should be, even though I felt that I was getting hit a lot more than around 5% of the time (6.97% being the average, which fits right in with the accuracy bonuses being calculated).
Those times where they get a few lucky shots are when you'll start thinking this defense system has issues. Perhaps it does. The RNG tends to be oddly consistent at times, but that again can be a human looking for a pattern.
Random numbers are themselves remarkably patterned at times. They'd actually be less random if patterns were avoided. Combine that with the human trait of finding patterns, and it's just something you're going to see a lot, even if, as I suspect, the random number generator in the game is a perfectly decent one.
"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
Them "lucky shots" can ruin your day. I was fighting a crey tank boss and a gunslinger boss with my widow. Elude and mind link going ,mind you. I get hit with a total focus followed by getting shot by the slinger. No defense de buffs, they shot threw elude. I might as well of had my toggles off 
the funny part is that I had just clicked a glowie with them aggroed. Heh
"All problems can be solved by throwing enough scrappers at it."
@Riez on Virtue, Protector, Champion, and Exalted server.
Widows look awesome, but they have lower hit points than scrappers, right? That would seem to make them more susceptible to bad luck. On the positive side, when luck goes their way, look out.
"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
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Widows look awesome, but they have lower hit points than scrappers, right? That would seem to make them more susceptible to bad luck. On the positive side, when luck goes their way, look out.
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Way lower hit ponts then Scrapper. My lvl 50 Widow as 1111.06 Hit points, I have no accoladers and only one hit point bonus that gives my 40.16 hit points.
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time"- Chesty Puller US Marine Corps
Yup. Widow's HP base sucks monkey gas. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it at least to the stalker cap. I think they are like brute in they way you can't cap them with IOs.
"All problems can be solved by throwing enough scrappers at it."
@Riez on Virtue, Protector, Champion, and Exalted server.
I did some research on using Frostwork on various ATs, and even though Widows have less base HP than Scrapper, they both have the same numerical cap; while Scrappers can get up to 80% over base HP, Widows can more than double theirs.
If you can manage to get some mad Max HP buffs on your Widow, then you can get them comparable to Scrapper HP, but you would still have to work harder at it than a Scrapper needs to.
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I let them beat on me for about 10 minutes, and it came up 5.47% for Slash, and 10.71% for Slice. Ah, the Broad Sword attacks have a little extra accuracy, which would account for Slash, or just the small sample size.
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Do Cims always lead with slash and follow with slice? That would somewhat explain your numbers, depending on what your def debuff res is like.
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I let them beat on me for about 10 minutes, and it came up 5.47% for Slash, and 10.71% for Slice. Ah, the Broad Sword attacks have a little extra accuracy, which would account for Slash, or just the small sample size.
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Do Cims always lead with slash and follow with slice? That would somewhat explain your numbers, depending on what your def debuff res is like.
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I don't know, and it went away on my second test run. I'm chalking it up to a lucky streak and/or small sample size. I forgot to look at how many times they'd actually used Slice, which would have been relevant.
"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
Ok, so I dug out my SR, and this has sparked some strange data that maybe others here can help with.
The soft cap theory is that NPCs have a 50% chance to hit, and if you raise your defense to 45% or 50%, then they only have the hard 5% cap chance to hit you.
Here is the problem...
If you take the math on it, it seems like defense is applied first, so that if you have 50% defense and they have a 50% chance to hit, they still end up having a 25% chance to hit you, and this is what my limited testing seems to support.
So if you soft cap with 50% defense, they are whacking you 25% of the time.
So if this is true, It would take 90% defense to reach the 5% hard cap. And again my limited testing shows this by using Elude to shove Defense to over 90%, they are hitting about 5% of the time.
So is the formula mis-understood, or is there additional accuracy or to-hit on NPCs that is factoring in this?
I did testing with a few various NPC groups, but couldn't didn't find any accuracy or to-hit consistency that skewed the numbers with the exception of NPCs that DeBuff Defense that got through. (Regular Street or Mission NPCs, not MA)
Can anyone confirm what I am seeing or why 25% of the attacks are getting through on a level 50 Hero that is 'soft capped'?
Also how does Level difference factor in on the chance to hit you?
Interested to see more data on this or what others can find or show. I did go through the forums, but the data and 'accepted' truths about the soft cap don't seem to show in the game.
Also could this be a SR only issue in how defense is calculated?
I know on my Defender that if Shove To-Hit DeBuff to 45%, they only can hit about 5% of the time, but the reverse doesn't seem to work with regard to a SR scrapper and getting hit.
I would love to be proven crazy or have missed something.
However, right now, hitting Elude to shove defense to over 90% is the only way I am seeing the 5% hit rate.