Try comparing 65% resistance to 32.5% defense.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
I think the point where this comparison is wrong would be going for a 0% defense comparison since resistance based brutes usually have a defense component in their powersets (not sure about /elec though). In my opinion, defense is a priori better than resistance, proof of that is that you have powersets that rely 100% on defense while as I said, Resistance powersets have a certain defense degree.
Unfortunately I can't speak properly from a Brute point of view, but talking from a scrapper point of view (which should be similar enough for this comparison), I find that an SR scrapper over the soft defense cap is greatly survivable in PvE, but so is a resistance based one (Inv or DA in my case) with raised defense, as an example, my DM/DA scrapper has positional defenses around 26% plus the debuff from Dark Melee and I find him as survivable as my DM/SR with 50% positional defenses plus the DM debuff.
As I said, I think that either full defense or a combination of defense and resistance are the way to go, but yes, for PvE, a defense component boosts survivability a lot.-
Also, you should factor in To Hit buffs and Defense debuffs (i.e. Superflex Man will probably get hit more often).
CoX 50s: <ill/rad> <ice/ice> <fire/kin> <grav/sonic> <ice/storm> <earth/kin> <kin/elec> <cold/psy> <thugs/dark> <fire/dark> <dark/elec> <night widow> <EM/ninj> <mind/icy>
The 'figures' you have quoted are for even level minions. When AV's/EB's (high accuracy/high damage aggro) have a pop, its a different ball game.
Also, SR is a little less survivable in PvP against certain high accuracy toons and/or debuffs.
I love it when playing my elec/em blaster in team pvp, and seeing defense based toons loafing about, as I know I can cut through their defenses, no probs at all.
Where defensive sets hold up however imo, is against targetted debuffs, eg Kins etc, which is a very nice ability.
to my know how. when PVE'N defence so vastly better. but in PVP resis is best as def in pvp isnt good.
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Try comparing 65% resistance to 32.5% defense.
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An elec brute with tough is at around 60% resistance to S/L, i made it 65% to allow a bit of IO'ing as SR needs around 5-6% from IO'ing to hit 45%. I picked Elec since its a resistance set only.
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Also, you should factor in To Hit buffs and Defense debuffs (i.e. Superflex Man will probably get hit more often).
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If Superflex Man is a SR brute (he is) he has around 101% resistance to defense debuffs, means he'll rarely get debuffed and even then it wont be by much. Also remember there is resistance debuffs too. I have to assume its an equal game for the two types.
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The 'figures' you have quoted are for even level minions. When AV's/EB's (high accuracy/high damage aggro) have a pop, its a different ball game.
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Is it? Check this
Scroll down, seems a +3 boss counts as a +5 in lvls compared to you, hence why it gets a 1.5 acc. modifier. I might understand it wrong tho. :/ A +2 AV would be 6 lvls above meaning you'd need 55% defense to floor a +2 AV, 65% for a +3 AV.
Anyway, I'm still confused and not convinced that they are equal.
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Nightmarer
[/ QUOTE ]Elec is a pure Resistance set.
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If Superflex Man is a SR brute (he is) he has around 101% resistance to defense debuffs, means he'll rarely get debuffed and even then it wont be by much. Also remember there is resistance debuffs too. I have to assume its an equal game for the two types.
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I thought it would be around 95% resistance (at level 50 and with Elude up). In my experience def debuffs are more common than resistance ones (and resistance resists resistance debuffs) and remember there are also auto-hit debuffs (both -def and -res admittedly) and things like attacks which are not positionally-typed (so will bypass defense). So my point was you're likely to get hit more than 7.5% of the time (even at the defense soft-cap).
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Anyway, I'm still confused and not convinced that they are equal.
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Here are some of Arcanaville's conclusions regarding scrapper secondaries:
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3. At high enough damage levels, the broad behavior of Defense and Resistance changes for long term survival: Resistance increases the level of damage sustainable, while Defense increases the average time between bursts capable of overcoming regeneration. This change means that at sufficiently high levels of damage, Defense's effectiveness in increasing average sustainable damage decreases relative to Resistance. However, its ability to increase survival times for constant damge remains effective.
4. At this point, I'm sufficiently convinced SR underperforms the other sets under essentially *all* reasonably fair metrics. Sufficiently so, that I'm disinclined to waste any more time calculating in great detail in what way it underperforms.
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I personally don't think they're equal and am convinced SR is a great set for (PvE) brutes (particularly 40+).
CoX 50s: <ill/rad> <ice/ice> <fire/kin> <grav/sonic> <ice/storm> <earth/kin> <kin/elec> <cold/psy> <thugs/dark> <fire/dark> <dark/elec> <night widow> <EM/ninj> <mind/icy>
Gotta admit that Arcanaville knows how to prove a point, heh. Obviously you can't port the results directly to brutes. For instance the higher hp pool for brutes should help elevate the burst killing of defense based characters. Also we didnt see a complete resist set valued in his analysis, closes is invul which is 50/50 defense/resist based. I also think the biggest advantage SR have now is IO's. There is a major difference between a 32% SR brute and a 45% SR brute, essentially the later takes almost 1/4th of the damage the former does.
In addition I am a bit sceptic towards the DA heal. I hear many people talk about how the delayed heal gets them killed more often than not forcing them to heal at a more non-critical point wasting alot of potential. The heal is the reason DA does so well. I reckon that without the heal, DA is the softest of the targets, atleast during the alpha period which I assume makes the DA brute the one that loses the hitpoints the fastest of the 4 sets making it even harder to time that heal correctly.
Disregarding the heal on DA, SR in elude mode (which is effectively the capped 45% defense after i7) is the best of the sets under "maximum mitigation". I am not trying to make the point that it beats dark or any of the other sets, but merely, that with IO's and capped defense it performs better than Arcanaville gives credit for.
We also have remember that brutes play a more tank'ish role which scrappers don't have to. As such that alpha is often from 8 man groups. This, I assume, never played DA, makes it incredibly hard to time that heal. I'd prefer the set that can take the alpha without robotic timing.
Thanks for the link though, seen the post referenced a couple of times, was nice to actually read it. 
The DA heal doesn't come under Def vs Res. Yes there is a time delay but you are a resistance set with control capabilities. Different sets suit different intentions.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
The way I see it, this comes down to how you want to play - would you rather rely on luck and hope that you don't get hit too many times, or would you rather make sure that, no matter what, you can take a good beating before you hit the floor.
I prefer Resistance for Brutes and Tankers due to my playstyle with them, whereas I prefer Defense for Scrappers and Stalkers, as my playstyle varies with those.
My two most played characters atm (aside from my main) are an Elec/Elec Brute - A. Sunder and a Claws/SR Scrapper - Blue-Jay. They both play very differently but are very survivable in their own respects.
Here's one as well. Consider two Brutes, one at the Resistance cap and one at the softcap for Defense:
Toughy - 90% Res
Dodgey - 45% Def
This seems a little biased, as the Def values could be a lot higher, but I'm balancing it using the oft-quoted "2 Res = 1 Def" arguement. I'm not sure about you, but I know which I'd rather have 
Even with, say, 60% Def (so DeBuffs and ToHit don't hurt it so much) I'd still much prefer the Resistance on my Brutes.
@Jay Leon Hart
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Nightmarer
[/ QUOTE ]Elec is a pure Resistance set.
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Noted, thanks. Will have to try it and see how it goes.-
Also when thinking of a defence set, dont forget the chain breaker kicking in and causing you bother.
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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
[*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*
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Hi all.
I need some explaining on the whole defense vs resistance debate. As far as I can tell defense seems vastly superior to resistance, but in the end I suppose they are somewhat balanced.
Anyway here's what I don't get:
Assuming a +3 boss doing 100 attacks each doing 100 points of damage. Our two characters are Superflex Man with 45% defense and Viva la Resistance with 65% resistance, both within grasp of an SR brute and Elec brute with just minor IO'ing:
Superflex Man:
50% tohit - 45% defense = 5% tohit
5% tohit * 1.5 accuracy = 7.5% tohit
7.5% of 100 attacks = 7.5 attacks hitting
100 damage - 0 resistance = 100 damage per attack
total = 7.5 attacks * 100 damage = 750 damage done
Viva la Resistance:
50% tohit - 0% defense = 50% tohit
50% tohit * 1.5 accuracy = 75% tohit
75% of 100 attacks = 75 attacks hitting
100 damage - 65 resistance = 35 damage per attack
total = 75 attacks * 35 damage = 2625
This means the resistance brute takes almost 4 times as much damage as the defensive brute. Not to mention that a defensive brute will more rarely get mezzes since the mez attacks often miss. It will also help him get off an aid self much more reliable than an resistance brute.
So what am I missing? There has to be something I am missing or else everyone would be defense brutes?