How high can we get S/L defense without using IO sets?

I've been browsing the guides and doing web searches, but I can't find anything that addresses this question. Some of the older guides are pre-ED and suggest 5 or 6 SO's in a given power, which obviously is no longer valid. I'd like to know how high I can expect to get my tanker's smashing/lethal defenses (as well as other defenses and resists) by just using optimal power selection, slotting, and common IO's.

By way of explanation, I enjoy soloing and duoing with a real-life friend; I don't do any PvP and I don't intend to run task forces or even be main tank for large groups. I enjoy tanking the doors for Halloween trick-or-treating and things like that, but otherwise I'd just like to make my character (currently level 40) as durable as I can get him, for my own fun. My original toon is a level 50 fire/fire blaster, leveled up in the old painful days of almost perma-debt, and I have two level 50 controllers and various squishy alts. So my tank is my fun character with whom I can run missions and not worry about death around every corner. It takes a while to defeat enemies, but it's a nice change of pace.

I'm Invulnerability/Super Strength, and I can already run fairly smoothly on my missions, although now that I hit 40 and I am getting Malta missions, I'm taking more of a beating than before. I've read some of the excellent guides to IO sets but whenever I check Wentworth's, the costs of these sets just completely deflates that idea. And, it's probably not necessary anyway to spend millions on sets if I don't plan to tank task forces. So if my goal is to maximize my survivability for solo or maybe small-group door missions only, how well can I do that with common IO's and proper slotting? Any suggestions for powers and slots for an Invuln/SS tanker? I already have everything but Unstoppable from my primary, but my slotting could probably use some work. I still need Tough and Weave (don't have either) and I have Combat Jumping but haven't slotted it for defense yet. I have several veteran respecs I can use to tweak my build. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

If you really want to see number values, use Mids' hero planner, available at http://www.cohplanner.com/

IO sets are far from being unaffordable. Certain sets are very expensive, but are still obtainable. The most expensive non-purple IOs sell for around 100 million for the recipe, but many sell for 1 to 10 million each. To get this much influence, read guides on making influence. The player questions forum and the guides forum are a good place to look. If you don't have time to farm or play the market, hero/villain merits can be used to buy every recipe in the game. Regular IO sets cost 1 or 2 hero/villain merits per IO.

well by now on a invul/ss you should have had tough and weave already.

call me awesome has a guide for just such a tank that should be able to answer everything you got. its not hard to softcap a invul so you should be in luck. take a look and check it out.

Power pools give you defence vs everything, even Psi.

Weave (slotted) give you 8%
Combat Jumping is 2.5% unslotted, plus 0.5% per slot, so say 3% for slotting the default slot, 4% if you invest slots in it.
Hover does the same, and you can run CJ and Hover together.
Manouvers gives 2.3% unslotted, 3.7% slotted.

So all up you can get up 19.7% defence to absoutely everyhting from Power Pools. (Taking all four precludes Stamina of course, not a good idea until I19!)

More realistically, lets say 11% for Weave and Combat Jumping.

---

Your Invulnerability powers give you defence against all types except Psi:

Tough Hide: 8% slotted.
Invincibility: 8% (for one enemy) plus up to 16% extra = 24%.

So in the thick of a crowd you have 32% defence to all types except Psi from these powers.

Add in Weave and CJ and you're at 43% vs everything except Psi, very close to the softcap.

---

My advice for upping your defence is to leverage Invincibility. Play at say +0/x4 instead of +2/x1. Lots of weaker enemies will do similar damage, but saturate your Invincibility more easily, and thats your biggest source of defence by far.

In the old days when I didn't know what I was doing..and teams said I needed..NEEDED..just to emphasise that word a SR scrapper to do Malta Sappers as they would drain my Inv/SS tanky's endurance, I didn't appreciate the word need and so had various ways of trashing Malta.

"Macro T, "$$targetname Sapper" to target the Sappers asap.

I then with my Superspeed (power of choice) sped in and hit them hard up in the face with Knockout Blow. Knockout Blow has slightly better acc than most attacks, Rage makes it more accurate and more damaging and Knockout Blow is of course a Hold just incase you needed to attack chain them down. If I couldnt see where the Sapper was I'd pull the group, pick them out as they came and then smash them. If they flew I'd chuck a boulder at em then smash them. Given a room with 3 sappers in close proximity and a team of headless chickens commiting me there was always unstoppable. I could of had tough and weave but apparently they were needed; and seen as part of the Invuln set but I never liked the word need.

So there was alternative ways to deal with them other than needing defense but nowadays I guess people ain't used to seeing tactics, steam roll or else. On speed runs of LGTF, Penelope, a kid, getting mullered is a good thing as it saves time. Times have changed.

I say all this as the only reason I think a low def Invuln can be beaten by Malta is because of that Sapper.