So, would you rank S/L the most useful def to build for in mids?

Seems as if there is only so many attacks that S/L wouldn't help against; fire control's char, mind control's dominate, ranged debuffs with acc checks, elemental blast sets, etc

If you can get capped S/L and then whatever else into ranged it seems like you'd be well covered.

Opinions?

Well, squishies and rangers might prefer ranged and AoE defense, but S/L does cover a lot.

I'd try for melee/range/aoe defense myself. Or at least ranged/aoe and try to avoid melee.

On my squishies I tend to go for Ranged defense first, AoE second and then hover out of melee range for the most part. It tends to be much cheaper to build for ranged than Smash/Lethal anyway and most squishies (except for blasters barring /Dev) have tools to keep large groups out of melee.

It is believed that around 70% of all attacks have s/l components, so focusing on s/l isn't a bad thing. In the long run I really think it all depends on your power selections. If you have powers that give you positional defense, build on your strengths. If you have powers with typed defense, aka s/l, build on that.

Sets that give you s/l defense typically give bonuses in 3-4 slots compared to positional defense bonuses that typically come in 5-6 slots. There are certainly some sets that don't follow this exactly, but it's still fairly typical. If you're going for positional defenses from scratch you can't cover all three positions, but can do pretty well in one or two positions.

Whatever you do, don't sacrifice playability to try and eek out as much defense as possible.

What about debuffs? I assume if anything is going to protect against Sappers, Carnies, Longbow Nullifiers, etc. it would be AoE defense. Is that correct?

Generalities are just that. General.

Trying to get Smashing Lethal Defense on a positional defense toon is really horrible.

I also stand to believe that getting defensive bonuses on toons that are not primarily defense based, or have no DDR to begin with (Elec, DA) are going the wrong way. People in the present IO days are too focused on getting high amounts of defense. My personal opinion is that if you do not have the DDR to back up your defense, it is better to go for +HP instead. This might be that my first defensive toon was an SR toon, so anything sub 90% DDR is 'Squshie'. However It drives me mad when my defense drops like a rock in a pool. I would rather be able to take more hits with extra HP than spend lots of money on defensive bonuses that will drop as soon as I get debuffed.

One thing to remember is that it's a lot easier for melee characters then ranged to get high s/l. Thanks to Kinetic Combat. On ranged character (and specialy cause you'll want to stay away), ranged is easier thanks to thunderstrike.

The ice APP and Scorpion's shield gives s/l def, so if you go for one of those, you're better with s/l.... past 41.

I'm with Dechs and Claws. "ten times tougher, most of the time" will do you better than "1.2 times tougher, all the time".

A lot of people (myself included) for for smashing/lethal defense on squishies simply because the APP defense shields give s/l defense, not positional.

Blasters can go with Ice Shield, Controllers can go with Ice or Stone Armor, Corrs, MMs and Doms can go with Scorpion Shield, etc.

I always go for S/L on every one of my builds except in a few cases.

Why S/L I have tested on a number of builds on my characters, and on my wifes and are survivability is much better going S/L every time. Its so funny now to see my wifes squishy on a speed ITF right there in the thick of things with no problem at all. Yes we also do get some decent ranged and aoe defense but we soft-cap S/L.

Next its much easier to soft-cap S/L over positional for 2 reasons.

1. All the APP/Patron Armors give S/L defense.
2. Most of the S/L you can get with 4 slots over 6 for Melee etc...

The only reason that I can see going for positional over S/L is if powers in your primary/secondary give you positional defense instead of typed.

Those are Shield defense, Super Reflexes, Ninjitsu, Cold Domination (arctic Fog only gives Positional which I think is already bugged)

The biggest problem with S/L defense on squishies is that the one type of attack they most need to defend against is the type least likely to have a S/L component... namely mezzing attacks. Melee stuns usually are at least partly Smashing, but ranged stuns are sometimes Energy and ranged holds are almost always Psi or one of the exotic damage types. Since holds and stuns are the single greatest threat to most squishies that makes Ranged defense more important than it otherwise would be. Not to say S/L defense is bad, but it's not going to keep a Chief Mentalist or Master Illusionist from ruining your day.

On characters with mez protection, S/L defense is probably the most useful single type since it covers over half of ranged and melee attacks. Of course the biggest factor is what sort of defense you can get... if you already have positional defense you're better off adding more than adding typed, while if you already have typed defense you gain little from adding positional. If you have no defense outside of pools and set bonuses, you aren't going to softcap anyway (at least not without crippling your damage) so go with whatever you can fit in your build best and carry purples. That's why S/L defense is popular with Blasters... you can softcap it by taking Weave and the Ice epic but you can't softcap Ranged without totally gimping yourself... on the other hand, 30% Ranged can be safer than 45% S/L if there are lots of mezzers around.