IOs: Melee vs. S/L Def

Defense is all the rage now and can be acquired fairly easy with IO sets. I typically choose position or typed defense based on the powersets I'm using but usually when building a defensive based armor set.

However, when it comes to a resistance based set like Electric Armor, I'm left wondering if obtaining melee defense is better or worse than obtaining S/L defense.

What say you all? Do you prefer melee over S/L or vice versa, and why?

Thanks!

Just ask yourself two questions.

How many melee attacks don't have a S/L component? I would think that if it's a melee attack, more often than not, it's got some smashing or lethal part of it.

How many S/L attacks can come from range? Melee defense won't do anything to stop ranged or AoE attacks, but S/L will.

It's almost a moot point, however, because melee defense bonuses always give you half that value in S/L and vice versa.

Personally, I'd go with S/L on this one.

One possibility I've tinkered with is to bastardize the approach. In some builds it's viable to go for S/L as a sort of proxy for the Melee positional and then go for positional Ranged/AoE. This works mostly because most melee position attacks are damage typed either lethal or smashing. However, attacks that don't fit this do exist and aren't ridiculously rare, so there are definite flaws in this approach. Dark Melee, for example, has two attacks that are flagged for the melee position but attack typed only negative.

In general, if only trying to mitigate with one position or damage type, I'd go for L/S over just melee, because L/S will mitigate a bunch of ranged/AoE attacks that happen to also be L/S damage typed. However, I rarely try to just mitigate one class or position of attacks. When trying to mitigate in a well-rounded way, I usually prefer positional defenses unless my powersets include damage typed defenses already.

Well, let's look at it this way. You are trying to help close electric armor's holes, correct? Let's look at what you endure from melee range most of the time: slashes, punches, kicks. Almost all typed with some smashing/lethal, and obviously all melee. This leaves what you get hit with from range: lethal (bullets) fire, psychic, and energy ranged attacks. You can close out both most melee attacks and lethal ranged attacks...along with any other attacks with lethal/smashing components. As such, what is left are 'pure' energy attacks, 'pure' fire attacks, and psychic attacks. This isn't bad, as you have excellent energy resistance and okay resistance to psychic and fire damage. Most AoE's have fire/smashing/energy components, so the same holds true.

I'm assuming this is a brute. Whether you go for melee or S/L depends a lot on your primary, and what the maximum reasonable values you can achieve without gimping yourself.

For example, super-strength has lots of single-target attacks available. All of these can take kinetic combat and get some impressive S/L numbers - much higher than the numbers you would get slotting for melee defense. You can easily get around 37% S/L defense on a SS/Elec, without gimping yourself. (including tough/weave/steadfast). You'll wind up with around 27% Melee defense using the same rules, but different sets. HUGE difference.

However, electric melee has 3 single target attacks (one of which is often skipped). The rest are AoEs - Jacob's Ladder, Thunderstrike, Lightning Rod. These three sets offer good values for melee defense, and then Charged Brawl/Havoc and Chain Induction can take Touch of Death for more melee defense. Trying to get higher numbers on S/L defense where there is no good PBAoE S/L defense set complicates matters. You can get around 34% Melee Defense without gimping yourself (including tough/weave/steadfast). Slotting for S/L defense yields around 29.5%. There is potential to get the build higher, but I didn't want to take and slot taunt.

However, there are advantages to S/L defense:
-Reactive Armor also forces you to slot up some moderate Nrg/Neg defense. The neg defense can help that hole in electric armor.
-Having some defense against defense-debuffing bullets is nice. Otherwise, you may find that your Melee defense leaves you more open to cascading failure from bullets.

I personally decide on a case-by-case basis, and see just what performance I can get with those two options on that build. If one clearly yields better numbers, I have to go with that one.

In short:

A) Someone who has positional defenses already: shoot for positional, like M/R/A
B) Someone who has typed defenses already: shoot for typed defenses, like S/L
C) Someone who has no defenses to start with, but is a ranged character: shoot for R
D) Someone who has no defenses to start with, but isn't ranged-only: shoot for S/L

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I tend to go for positional defense because its a lot easier to cap out and it covers everything I will ever require.

I have never found a good enough reason to go for typed and probably never will....

I've gone S/L on a few melee characters, because Kinetic Combat will give you 3.75% for 4 slots, whereas Touch of Death requires 6 slots for 3.75% vs Melee.

Kinetic Combat also gives you more choice in the actual slotting of powers, ie you can Frankenslot with the remaining two slots, possibly throw in the highly useful Knockdown proc as part of your set of 4 for lighter faster attacks.

Touch of Death alone gives pretty poor enhancement values, especially for faster heavy hitting atacks where a bit more recharge is preferable to a damage proc.

Like Umbral says, +Ranged and +AoE are pretty easy to stack up to complement whatever you choose.
You do end up with a hole to purely exotic melee damage, but generally trade it for better offence.

This was how I went on my melee based Elec/Energy Blaster.