Defense - Please help me understand the mechanics!

How does Ranged/Melee/AOE defense work in conjunction with defense to types of damage like smashing & lethal?

For example

Lets say I have a 25% Defense to Ranged, AOE, and Melee attacks...

I also have a 10% defense to Smashing/lethal
And I have 15% defense to fire/cold

Would I have a 35% defense to a smashing melee attack?

Would I have a 40% defense to a ranged fire attack?

Or does it just go by whichever is the highest defense?

If it goes by the higher defense is there any point in increasing your defense to damage types if your ranged/melee/AOE is always higher?

Thank you so much if you can help.

It just goes by the higher defense. I'll let some melee expert answer the is-it-worth-it-to-slot-blah-blah part.

See also: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Defense

"Defense Tags and Stacking

Defense bonuses carry tags as well, to specify what styles of attack they work against. Each Defense bonus applies only versus attacks whose tags match one or more of its own. There is one additional type of Defense bonus called Base Defense, or DEF(Defense), which applies against all attacks regardless of tagging.

Every time an attack is made against a target, the game checks the target's total Defense bonus against each of the attack's tags separately. Once the game has those separate totals, it uses only the best one in its calculations that determine whether the attack hits. The important result of this rule is that, for any given attack, Defense buffs only stack when they all have one of that attack's tags in common.

Example: Deflection Shield gives a Defense bonus against Melee Attacks, Smashing Attacks, and Lethal Attacks. Glacial Armor gives a Defense bonus against Energy Attacks and Negative Energy Attacks. A Tanker with both these buffs is ambushed by a nasty Council Vampyri who tries to hit her with Siphon Life. That power is tagged as a Negative Energy Attack and a Melee Attack. Our Tanker will only be protected by one of her two Defense buffs. Lucky for her, it will be whichever is larger."

But if you read the whole article, you will find that there are some, probably only minor, benefits to having positional and target Def types separately; if it were a matter of spending millions to get those bonuses, I personally wouldn't.

Ty So much gentlemen!

It always goes by the highest number for that attack, and keep in mind that attacks often have more than one damage type. For instance, an attack may be Smash/Fire/Melee, in which case the highest defense of those three will be used.

If you have some defense in your primary or secondary, it's usually positional OR typed, so it's better to build for more of what you have already--typed for typed, positional for positional. Pool powers that have defense (Weave, CJ, Hover, Maneuvers) have both typed and positional defense, so are useful for either.

So if you have positional defense already, don't bother adding typed defense, you'll be covered for the vast majority of attacks. The only exception is that there are some Psi attacks that are only typed Psi, and don't have a positional component. The only defense that will work against those attacks is Psi typed, though they are rare enough that it's probably not worth going to great lengths to defend against them.

Defence powers modify the chance of avoiding the attack by the amount of the modifier.

As an example:

A controller uses brawl at level 1 with no enhancements against a blaster standing still with again no enhancements, that should be an even 50/50 chance of a hit or miss (excluding the beginners luck modifier, we're talking examples here)

if that blaster had an extra 50% defence however, then it would be 25/75 (or a 75% chance to miss) as the 50/100 chance the blaster had, was increased by a further 50% (50+(50/2)) to give 75/100

Hope that makes sense!!!

I appreciate the info guys,

Thanks again.