Softcapping for ATs

I understand that most attacks contain a S/L component, so going for the S/L softcap is desirable if you can't softcap the positional(s) that you want. However, I'm unclear on whether that advice depends on the AT involved, and whether or not most mezzes have a S/L component.

For tankers, brutes, stalkers and scrappers, that's not really an issue since they have mez protection. A well-built Blaster can still maintain a full attack chain when mezzed.

But Defenders, Corrupters, Controllers and MMs can't don't anything while mezzed. I understand that they'd still enjoy the 45% S/L Def, but are they trading damage protection for mez protection?

How would 30% to all positions (for example) practically compare with 45% S/L once mezzing is taken into account?

45% def is roughly 4 times the protection of 30% def (45%: 5% chance to be hit by minions with standard attacks; 30%: 20% chance to be hit by minions with standard attacks). I don't have a statistic on how many critter powers contain Smashing_Attack or Lethal_Attack vectors compared to Ranged_Attack/Melee_Attack/AOE_Attack vectors, but at a guess I would put the former set at 70% and the latter set at 90%.

Going off those numbers, 45% S/L defense protects you from ~66.5% of incoming damage/mezzes, while 30% R/M/A defense protects you from ~72% of incoming damage/mezzes. Those numbers are on average over time, based on the assumption (pulled out of my ***) of 70% of critter powers having S/L attack vector components vs. 90% having R/M/A attack vector components, and only approximate since I was only calculating hit chance for minions (lieutenants, bosses, elite bosses, and archvillains/heroes have progressively higher hit chances, but not absurdly so)

Also, it's late and my mind is only half on the problem, so, it's possible that my calculations for the final incoming damage/mez are off.

(My same calculations put 45% R/M/A def at protecting you from 85.5% of incoming damage/mez)

I think this is a perfect time to throw my guide at someone. Please refer to my sig.

It explains with hard numbers and statistical analysis what different % defense gives you.

Ever heard that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics?

This is why.

It's easy to use math to say silly things by messing up the word problem stage.

For example you get 50% def to everything, which was not included in any of these calculations.

Harkness, you may want to try reposting this in the Scrapper forums. Several people that know a ton about this stuff hang out there more than other places.

Thanks for the recommendation. I should probably ask the blappers in the blaster forum too.

Ok, the way defense works is like this: Every attack carries a few types, and to figure out if that attack hits you, it uses the best case scenario. This means that a ranged lethal attack will check your ranged and lethal defense, and take the higher of the two before figuring out whether it hits you or not.

In the case of energy melee, the attack will have smashing, energy, and melee tags. It will roll to hit based on the highest defense you have out of smashing, energy, and melee. Let's say your defense against smashing is highest, so the roll is made and the attack misses. The whole attack misses, not just the smashing damage part.

That's why having S/L is so good. It doesn't just protect you from things like archery and martial arts, but also energy melee because of the smashing component and ice blast because of lethal components. S/L is very common, and if even a small part of the attack is S/L, the whole attack can be avoided by having S/L defense.

Why is positional defense so good? While the S/L tags are on many attacks, every attack in the game, with the exception of a few psionic attacks, have a positional tag attached to them. If you can get softcapped to all positions, or all positions you expect to be attacked from (ranged/AoE as a hoverblaster), then you are protected from virtually everything. An attack that was all energy or fire damage, for example, would get past the S/L softcap, but would still have the ranged or melee tag that the positional defense could stop.

This is why M/R/A will always be better than S/L. The only attacks that M/R/A can't defend against will also completely bypass S/L. Outside of that, most things have some smashing or lethal, but everything has a melee, ranged, or AoE tag.

This is going to be true for mezzes as well. What's better? Being hit by 20% of all mezzes or 5% of most mezzes and 50% of all others... I'm not really sure. Depends, really, on whether you want to tailor your game experience to one kind of enemy or not. If you want equal survivability against everything... go with moderate positional. If you want godmode against anything with S/L and no defense debuffs but faceplant to anything else... go with S/L softcapped.

...

I should probably add this part into my guide somewhere.