Defence against even opponents is approximately twice as good as resistance.
In reality because you fight higher levels some of the time it less good than twice. About 1.5% is a realistic number.
Also Energy Absorption, from the Ice primary provides scalable defence, it gives you around 0.5% defence base per opponent in melee plus 2.5%. This means you can get 7% extra base defence to all damage types, in practice you rarely get more than 5%. Energy Absorption also has the capability to be double stacked, providing that bonus twice some of the time.
Also the high base number for Inv is unsustainable, as most comes from Unstoppable which is not available more than about 33% of the time. The non Unstoppable resist is more like 42.5%.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
Until I7, where the unique combination of lack of forethought and fudge will make Defence effectively identical to Resistance, Defence is inferior to Resistance as soon as you start facing mobs +2 or more to you.
That said, it has its advantages - if you're not getting hit, you're not being hit by any secondary effects (Stuns/Holds/Debuffs/End Drain/Slows) etc. However, since I5 and ED effectively made it so that you can't cap your defence against anything meaningful any more, you're going to get it anyway, so that advantage has been greatly reduced.
The other downside is that you have no recourse against auto-hit powers like caltrops or CoT auras. Hooray.
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Spad, enlighten me (i bow to your superior maths), how is +2 or better mobs gonna make things worse?
I thought the whole idea of scaling defence was to make things BETTER for defence when facing higher level mobs???
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Spad, enlighten me (i bow to your superior maths), how is +2 or better mobs gonna make things worse?
I thought the whole idea of scaling defence was to make things BETTER for defence when facing higher level mobs???
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If you read my post again, you'll see that I said "Until I7...Defence is inferior to Resistance as soon as you start facing mobs +2 or more to you" 
Right now, defence doesn't scale at all and the ToHit bonuses applied to higher level and rank mobs scale up worryingly fast. Since they started nerfing DEF values into the ground with I4, facing anything a couple of levels or more above you becomes a rather risky affair - especially if they're hard-hitting.
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Ah... pardon me... not living up to my name 
I will stick to discourses on the role of the pre-frontal cortex in metaphysical awareness.... or something... 
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Until I7, where the unique combination of lack of forethought and fudge will make Defence effectively identical to Resistance, Defence is inferior to Resistance as soon as you start facing mobs +2 or more to you.
[/ QUOTE ]I didn't really understand this either... it's rather ambiguously worded.
Lack of fudge?
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Until I7, where the unique combination of lack of forethought and fudge will make Defence effectively identical to Resistance, Defence is inferior to Resistance as soon as you start facing mobs +2 or more to you.
[/ QUOTE ]I didn't really understand this either... it's rather ambiguously worded.
Lack of fudge?
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I think he meant that the system is designed badly.
This might be like a bit of a noob question but I just never thought about it before.
However, playing around with the herobuilder (not that I can vouch that the numbers from herobuilder is correct) i noticed a discrepancy between the other tank primaries and ice.
With all of it's powers that adds (i'm only counting powers from it's primary powr pools) to its defence Ice Armor ends with 20.6% in defence against leathal and smash and 0 in resitance. All the other tank powers have most of their protection in resistance, though all except fire have some defence too. (30% for Fire to a whooping 107/112% for inv)
So I was just wondering if the protection you get from Defence or Resistance is of equal value or if one or the other gives better protection?