defense vs resistance capping

Which secondaries go for which?
When do you use one verse the other?

In addition to taking less damage, defensive bonuses are easier to get than resistance.

The resistance cap for everyone but Tankers, Brutes, and Kheldians is 75%, which means you will take 25% of normal damage in most situations. Reaching that 75% is difficult for for any damage type other than your set's primary resistance type(s).

Reaching 45% defense can be done much easier than capping resistance with the right combination of defensive sets, pool powers, epic powers (some ATs), and set bonuses. Most melee attacks include some sort of Smashing or Lethal component, so soft-capping defense will help you avoid up to 95% of all damage in most situations. In situations with other damage types, ranged defense can help you avoid almost all of the rest of the damage.

Read up on defense, limits, and resistance mechanics on Paragon Wiki.

You always emphasize defense bonuses over resist bonuses. It's that simple. Sad, but true.

Not to say you neglect resistance, but it's not where you spend your IO bonuses for the most part. It's just a matter of taking the powers available to you and not skimping on the slotting.

Defense allows you to avoid getting hit by mez and debuffs most noticeably Sappers. Resistance has a much harder time avoiding these which can result in more cascading failures.

Look at it this way:

At 45% defense, even-con minions are hitting you 5% of the time, equating to 95% mitigation. At 75% resistance, you're getting 75% mitigation. There's a reason defense is better than resistance, and the abundance of +def available through the IO system only serves to increase this disparity.

Defence is much more easily counteracted, which is probably why we're allowed to build it up via IOs.

Defence debuffs and +To Hit can cut through it, and do so far more commonly that unresistable Res debuffs.

Build for Defence either way. Softcap defence based secondaries, and build up layered Defence and Resistance on res based secondaries.

When you have both is when it gets really fun. One of the reasons why I enjoy Invulnerability so much. Sure, the Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative Energy Resists are a little on the low side, but the Smashing/Lethal Resists are way up there for a Scrapper. On a higher end build you can even softcap all of the typed Defenses (except for Psi) with only one foe in melee. Awesome.

There are a few things to take into consideration, and I'm actually quite happy the devs chose Defense to be the "dominant" mitigation, inadvertently or not.

At 45% Defense, you are mitigating approximately 95% of incoming damage.

At 75% Resistance, you are mitigating 87.5% of incoming damage, assuming similar conditions as with 45% Defense (enemies have 50% Base ToHit and no debuffs).

However, Defense suffers from two things Resistance does not. First and foremost Def Debuffs: there aren't a big number of powersets that can attain high levels of DDR making their Defense nearly constant. For most builds this means that getting hit once with a -Def power will cascade into taking away all of your Def. Second thing is unlucky streaks, even with high DDR two big hits in a row are usually enough to put you down. Resistance doesn't suffer from this much, if you're capped for Resistance (Scrapper cap, 75%), you'll be mitigating 78.375% damage even if your Defense is debuffed to its low cap. If you're debuffed from the soft cap to the low cap, you'll be mitigating 5% of incoming damage. Ouch.

The only thing Resistance has worse than Defense (not taking into account the current implementation on allowing stacking of set bonuses etc.) is that it gets hit with Debuffs more often. Resistance is its own RDR (Resistance Debuff Resistance) and you can always know if your Res will take you through. Unlucky streaks just don't exist.

@DSorrow

Well said.

If DEF bonuses are more worthwhile from the standpoint that they're easier to stack, then the corollary is that high RES is rarer and thus more valuable. A build that can achieve high RES has a higher upside than a DEF-based build in the world of IOs.

I think DEF is more potent in principle, but the debuff issue seriously muddies the waters. Builds that rely solely on IO-bestowed DEF bonuses are very sturdy in most circumstances, but that very sturdiness is almost a detriment when you do encounter heavy DEF debuffs, because your DEF can lull you into an inflated sense of security.

If it's a squishy build (Blaster/Controller/Corruptor/Defender), then a single mez can lead to cascade failure, too.

It'll be interesting to see how many DEF counters the devs throw at us in the new, high-end content slated for Issue 19.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

To counter the comments saying defense is 'better' than resistance(can't really argue there), on the otherhand resistance is far far more 'valuable'.

What I mean is, if you're teaming, the opportunity for defense buffs being thrown around is high. Either from a Force Field/Ice Shield user to a Dark Miasma user or even a Tanker using Grant Cover and Maneuvers, defense is relatively cheap and easy to come by.

But resistance is not. It's rarer and harder to build up. Case in point, the sets you can cap your defense with are pretty much any if you're willing to IO up and pick certain +def powers but sets like Super Reflexes, Shield Defense or even Willpower are easier to cap. But you're not going to be capping your resistance. Even with tier 9s, they usually never cap every damage type and only for a short time. There are sets like Fire Armor which cap your fire resistance or Electric Armor which will cap energy resistance or Invulnerability which can cap smashing/lethal resists with certain powers stacked but chasing after capped resists to everything most of the time is futile.

The best thing to do is get some good base resists values then stack defense ontop of it.