Psi Defence and Mind hold/mez/confuse

One thing I never understood is the different damage types on holds/sleeps. If a mob has high defence against Psi damage (or resists) does it mean that mob has a high defence against mind holds/sleep/confuse?

The one thing I hated about my mind/psi dom was that at 40+ my holds/sleep/confuse was missing a LOT.

I could be wrong, but I think it works like this:

For instance this instance, Mezmerize= Ranged Sleep.

Shoot an enemy, doing psi damage and ranged damage. The enemy has 10% psi defense and 15% range defense. So he has 15% defense against my sleep power. That's just the defense check for my power to hit. If his defense checks it, he gets no mez effect, and no damage.

Now, Let's say it does hit. His Psi defense makes no difference now. It's now all up to his mez resist/status effect protection. Let's just say he has 0. The terd just got mezzed. Now, if he has 0 psi defense, and I hit him, but he has REALLY high mez resist, he probably will not get mezzed, even with 0 psi defense.

Could be wrong, but I think that's it. Someone else will have to confirm this

As Elemist has alluded to all attacks in game have some type to them: Melee, Ranged, AoE, lethal, smashing, cold, fire, toxic*, or psi. When you attack an enemy it checks against all types of defense that the enemy has and uses the highest applicable value. If you use Bone Smasher it will check against Energy, Smashing, and Melee. If my theoretical enemy had 20% melee defense, 5% smashing defense, and 0% energy defense, he would have 20% defense against my attack. However, if I had used Power Bolt; which is energy, smashing, and ranged; he would only have 5% defense against the attack.

Now where Mind Control is weird and wonderful, and where Elimist's example goes slightly wrong, is that Mind Control's powers are only typed as Psi. That means all your mind controls only have to overcome one kind of defense while most every other attack in the game must overcome two or more. If any enemy has 15% ranged defense and 0% psi defense, then they will have 0% defense against Mesmerize. For the majority of the game it's a considerable advantage because psi defense is rare. However, the factions that do have psi defense tend to have it in large chunks.

*Toxic is odd. There is toxic damage, however, there is no toxic defense. Most toxic attacks are paired with fire to give players some defense against them.

As for resist, they're quite a bit different. Resistance reduces the duration of your holds, sleeps, etc. It follows this formula: Total Duration/(100%+Resistance). For example, if an enemy had 50% resistance to sleep, it would sleep for 66% of the normal duration of the power. If any enemy had 100% resistance to sleep, it would last only 50% it's normal duration.

Finally, you have mez protection. Mezzes have magnitude, or how much you have to stack a control before it takes effect. All mobs have some level of mez protection inherently: minions have 1 point, lieutenants have 2 points, and bosses have 3 points, EB's have 6 points. For each mez you stack, it subtracts the magnitude of the power from the enemy's protection to that effect. When you reduce the enemy's mez protection below 0, they are affected by the status. The standard magnitude for most mezzes is 3 points. If you hit a lieutenant with dominate, for example, it overcomes his 2 points of mez protection. Some mobs have more protection against specific effects, or powers that confer extra protection to themselves or their allies, such as the Cimerorans' Shout of Command.

Going back to your initial question, if you are playing a Mind Controller and missing with your mezzes a lot you are likely facing an enemy with high psi defense (Carnies, some Arachnos). Other controllers may have a much easier time dealing with the same mobs.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was trying to get across. Ketch is just better at explaining it. Thanks Ketch. That's the second time you're posts have helped me out. I didn't realize mental only checks psi. When you say that, do you mean that it also ignores ranged defense?

Nice