Something I don't get about Resistance Sets

So, lots of people speak negatively about the squishiness of resistance sets. But I don't get this. If a blaster can reach softcapped defenses starting from zero, then so can a resistance set. On the other hand, building resistances into a defense set pretty much means taking Toughness.

The general knowledge, cited over and over about why there are no good resistance set bonuses is that the Devs considered combination of resistances plus defenses was considered too powerful.

It seems like resistance sets can get much closer to having both than defense sets ever will.

But most people consider them much weaker than defense sets. What am I missing?

When someone talks about a softcapped blaster, they're probably talking about softcapping ranged defense and hoverblasting or otherwise keeping out of melee. They're not talking about softcapping all three positions or all types.

Scrapper defense tops out at 45%, which is 90% mitigation.

Scrapper resistance tops out at 75%, which is 75% mitigation.

Best might be something in between - like Dark Armor, Invulnerability or Willpower, all of which can be more or less softcapped with the right build, but offer some measure of resistance as well. Then you do have both. However, Shield Defense and Super Reflexes will give you much better defense debuff resistance, which is a big factor in fairly common situations.

I don't think it makes sense for people to look down their noses at resistance sets, per-se, but there is a discrepancy in the peak (average) performance of the two mitigation types, at least for ATs that aren't Tankers and Brutes.

Resistance for Scrappers caps out at 75%. But the mechanics of Defense don't vary by AT. At its peak benefit, Defense can help you avoid 90% of the damage you would otherwise take, on average. Caveats for being debuffed or facing foes with toHit buffs may apply.

So if you compare a character who has only defense but is at the defense "soft cap" to someone that has only Resistance but is at the (Scrapper) resist cap, the Defense character is taking 10%/25% = 0.4 as much damage on average as the resist character. That's a pretty major difference. It's also a lot easier to get powersets with Defense powers to their respective vector caps than it is to get powersets with Resistance to the Scrapper resist cap, at least sustainably (so excluding powers like Unstoppable, etc., which have long cool downs.)

But again, this is mostly while comparing high-end builds, usually operating at level 50. The forums tend to focus on what's possible in the limit, as a lot of the people posting here are very veteran or at least very interested in details (or both).

There's a tendency for folks to poo-poo anything that's not the top performer, even though not everyone is looking to solo AVs or TFs, or tank an 8-man team's aggro on their Scrapper full time. If you're looking for the absolute best average survival you can manage, look to Defense-oriented powersets and try to cap them. If you want to play various things and see how survivable you can make them, maybe look into slapping some +Defense and +Regen on your characters and have fun.

I for one don't particularly link resistance based scrappers, my only resistance based Tank is only 21 and I haven't played him in a few years.

There are a few reasons why I don't like resistance based toons. One is the resistance set bonuses. IMO many of the bonuses are worthless to melee such as Mez Res to Hold/Stun/Sleep and Debt protection (Which should be removed and replaced in all recipes IMO). The defensive bonuses like those in Reactive Armor are just too low. Aegis is nice, but you can only 6 slot it once.

The other reason I dislike resistance sets has a lot to do with my playstyle. Resist sets get hit a lot, too much for me as I am slow. I have died so many times when playing my Dark Armor or Electric Armor scrappers because I fired off a heal or click an inspiration a second too late. For others this isn't a problem as they are quicker than I.

Defensive sets are just so much easier to cap and cheaper. If you decide to invest a lot into them you can even build a defensive based scrapper with decent regen.

I built a Rad/Sonic defender with 51% Ranged and 37% AOE defense, which was a lot easier to achieve than it would have been to cap even just one Resistance category. I am also building a Traps/Sonic Defender with 45% defense to all 10 categories; but I was only able to achieve 65% Resistance to two, Smashing and Lethal.

I think it comes down to personal preference, some of the best players I know swear by Resistance based toons. Resistance toons also have something SR doesn't, and they also do it better than Shield and that's taunting (for herding purposes).

With that said, I have never seen an AV or GM solo'er that relied on just Defense or Resistance or Regen, they have all been combinations, but the one thing that I have seen in common with them is they all have Defense.

I only have limited experience with a defense capped resist toon (my katana/dark scrapper is capped to melee with application of Divine Avalanche and to other positions via power choices and IO sets), but my seat of the pants judgement is that it isn't as survivable vs most foes as my /SR scrapper or brute nor my /SD scrapper. That is even more so when fighting foes that have defense debuffs.

still processing all this. Thanks for the replies everyone.

Thanks for the good read guys. This explain alot for me.

I liken defense to a more "chunky" form of damage mitigation. It may provide more protection (for scrappers) at its best, but at the very least you're at the mercy of the random number generator.
Now, resistance is far more consistent. It resists resistance debuffs by default (as well as damage debuffs if I remember correctly). Excluding critical hits, it's pretty easy to guess how long you can survive in a given situation. That's pretty useful.

Damage resistance does, indeed resist damage debuffs, pretty much in an obvious way. If you have 50% Lethal damage resistance and sword attacks and something debuffs your damage across the board, your sword attacks would have their damage debuffed by only half as much.

Damage resistance resists DR debuffs too, but in a rather interesting way. The the math works out so that having a -X% DR debuff placed on you means that each attack deals X% more damage. (This applies on a per damage type basis, but there aren't many DR debuffs that aren't full-spectrum.

I'll throw my 2 cents out there on this topic as it relates to scrappers. Bear in mind I'm an "old school" (since issue 2) player who made a lot of toons early on back before the new power sets were even a thought and didnt have the heart to delete them so there are some less than traditional builds I've been tinkering with. I'll tell you what, I am simply amazed about the survivability of my BS/Regen Scrapper. I've lightly IO'd him with melee defense sets in his attack powers, to the point that his base melee defense is 23%. The real beauty of this powerset is "PARRY". When entering combat, I lead off with a parry attack and, assuming it hits, walla - 46% defense for the next 10 seconds. The power recharges in less than 2 seconds (in case I miss), does a fair bit of damage, and stacks the +defense effects. While I have almost no resistance, the regen powerset has absolutely no problem healing through whatever damage actually punches through the defense. With dull pain, I have 2409 hit points, regen 75 hit points per second, and have Reconstruction, Instant Healing, and Moment of Glory for the "whoops" situations. The real beauty is I was able to do this for about 300 million influence. Its by no means the best build out there, but it is cheap to make and the survivability is simply amazing.