Quote:
Well, what do you mean by "first?" Defence sets are generally mainly typed or mainly positional. I.e. it generally makes sense going only after typed or only after positional, and not both.|
Originally Posted by Coldmed
when you guys are trying the reach the soft cap.
which one do you try for first?.. s/l defense or postional? ive always tried postional but wondering why someone might take the s/l over it. |
With the way IO sets work now, S/L defence gives a boost to melee positional defence and vice-versa, so ultimately, you just go for whichever you have more of in the first place. Sets like Inv, WP, Ice, Dark, and Stone all use typed defence. Only Shields uses positional.
The main reason to use typed over positional is simply that you like the rest of the set better. For Tankers, for instance, if you don't want your character lugging around an actual shield, Inv or WP might be better choices, but are both typed defence, in which case all set bonuses should be aimed at increasing typed defence (positional defence will go up as a side-effect). The only thing to watch out for is that IO bonuses will favour either typed or positional based on what the bonus was before the change was made to IO defence bonuses to make them affect both.
Ultimately, positional is more complete, plain and simple. But positional defence sets tend to rely more on its defence and less on other forms of mitigation--SR and Widows have only scaling resists to fall back on, Nin only has a heal, Shields is the most versatile (though not by much), having resists, a damage debuff aura, and extra HP (the first and last improved by its T9) behind the defence.
Typed defence, on the other hand, relies much more on having things to back it up. Layered defence goes extremely well with buffing, as it allows a number of moderate buffs to different categories affect survivability by a greater amount--most noticeably, of course, more defence. That means that generally speaking, a typed defence character at soft cap will be more survivable than a positional one, not because typed is better (it's not), but because there are more layers of mitigation that can be used when defence fails.
tl;dr: try whatever fits your concept and work the numbers from there?
Quote:
I presume you mean working from a clean slate with none of either to start with.|
Originally Posted by Coldmed
when you guys are trying the reach the soft cap.
which one do you try for first?.. s/l defense or postional? ive always tried postional but wondering why someone might take the s/l over it. |
The advantage of S/L is that most attacks have a S/L component from fire sword to guns to cold and energy blasts. In almost all of these cases the S/L part is listed as a type to which defence applies (fireball although it does 20% ish smashing damage, is not affected by smashing defence). There are precious few pure non S/L melee attacks, so S/L def gives you better coverage, although some of the IOs are very expensive now.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
If you're not starting with one or the other, a purely practical reason for choosing typed over positional is that the large typed defense bonuses usually require that you get 3 or 4 enhancements in a set, whereas positional bonuses require 5 or 6 enhancements, most often 6. This means that typed bonuses can be less expensive if you avoid the one or two really expensive enhancements in the set, and it allows for more slotting flexibility; for instance, you might have room in an attack for a proc from another set.
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Short answer: it depends.
On my /SR Brute, I went for Melee Defense first and then added Ranged/AoE until I was all set.
On my /EA Brute, I'll hit up S/L first and exotic damages second.
Most damage being trown (yes, trown) at your tank with have a smashing or lethal component in the damage type. Having 45% S/L defense allows any attack (melee, ranged, AoE), that contains S/L, to be checked against your soft cap.
Yeah, I shoot for S/L on most as it is just easier to hit that softcap.
It can be done with melee almost as easily, but if you are going positional, you need to worry about your defense from each position. So you will be softcapped to melee, but will still have big holes to fill with ranged and aoe. S/L is nice because, as said earlier, most attacks have an S/L component. The position the attack comes from is now null and void.
Going for complete coverage on positional defense really hurts as you are losing slots you can be putting towards other things. Just covering melee, in my opinion, just doesn't work, as if you get around mobs that don't like to get in melee range, they will pepper you with ranged attacks.
Yeah, going for S/L will occasionally bite you in the butt, but very, very rarely.
Nice thing about /Inv and /WP, you can softcap just about ALL of the damage types pretty easily.
Dark Armor is like that kid you knew in school that didn't know when to shut up, and no matter how bad he got beaten down, he got right back up again and kept on talking.
If you can only cap one position or one type, capping S/L is easily the way to go. It gives decidedly more coverage than any other one defense type.
After that, Melee would be next. I had Melee capped on my Fire/Fire tank, switched to S/L and it was a world of difference.
If you can cap the three positional s, that's obviously the best route, but that's generally only realistic on Shields I believe.
Agree with all above. It doesn't matter what Archtype you are playing.
If you have a defensive armor that gives higher numbers to either typed or positional then go with the higher.
If they are both the same(ie like a controller with just weave then S/L will work better for you)
On almost all my higher level characters that I still play if they are not positional then I try getting as close to the S/L softcap as I can. This even works great for squishes.
Everyone talks about you have to be all purpled out to be great. Try telling that to my controllers and blasters who are at the softcap for S/L (along with some high numbers on energy/ranged or AOE)
I love it when I get so many comments on how tough my squishes are from the rest of the team. I just play them smart and know how and when to agro and let the tank/brute lead except for when they get too slow and its a smaller mob.
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when you guys are trying the reach the soft cap.
which one do you try for first?..
s/l defense or postional?
ive always tried postional but wondering why someone might take the s/l over it.