Slotting for Defense - S/L or Ranged?

I mainly play melee toons, and have virtually no experience IO'ing Blasters. As most of my main toons are near completion, I am taking a look at my Blasters now, and giving myself a crash course on the sets and Bonuses.

My main question is if there is a general consensus as to whether it is "better" to cap S/L Def or Ranged Def. My natural inclination is to go Ranged, but as has been pointed out to me, most of the attacks in the game have some kind of S/L element. Plus, if I take one of the defensive Ancillary powers, it seems easier to hit S/L cap.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

It depends on how you play your blaster. If you plan to be in melee range often, S/L def will be more helpful than ranged. If you plan to stay away from the mobs most of the time, ranged def is better.

Ranged. Common sense and a little twitch skill will make melee/AoE a non-factor and an epic shield will help with the odd S/L shot that does get through.

What are you looking to pick up primary and secondary wise ?

If you go Rogue at 44 you can pick up Scorpion Shield from Mace Mastery which can give you a decent amount of S/L Defense. If you were going to go the route of S/L without a doubt that would be the easiest way of doing it with limited amount of effort of trying to get it through IOs.

Range wise from looking at some Ranged Cap builds I have These are some of the main IO's you will be looking for. Remember the rule of 5.
Thunder Strike
Mako Bite
Gaussian
Red Fortune
Eradication
Cleaving blow
Executioners contract
Stupefy
Numina Convalescences

Honestly Energy Manipulation along with your range attacks will sort of help you get this easier then some other sets might. Since you can slot both Thunder Strike in range attacks and Mako Bite in melee attacks in EM.
Many primary power sets have a snipe attack as well.

I play Dual Pistols which requires a lot of close combat blasting.

I still find I prefer positional defense over typed defense. I get up to 25% (approx) in Melee/Ranged/AoE, then I stop worrying about it. Pop a purple before a brawl and it works very well.

Later game S/L doesn't cover some big damage type (as I understand it), but very, very few attacks are not classified as Melee, Ranged, or AoE.

In my case if I start with HoB, I'm nearly capped in positional def. It's my preference, but in your case, your build would also be a big factor. (if you take Ancillary shields for instance... S/L is probably the way to go.)

If defenses are integral to your concept, you might consider a corruptor.

I have a Radiation/Kinetics/Mace corruptor with 45.9% S/L, 46.7% Energy and 35.2% ranged defense (running Scorpion Shield, Maneuvers, Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping and Hover). Sets used include Thunderstrike, Red Fortune, Enfeebled Operation, Reactive Armor, Steadfast: +Def and Obliteration. Endurance usage seems kind of high until you realize that you can fire off Transference four or five times a minute and completely replenish your Endurance, while totally draining your target (very useful for bosses).

Corruptors get better base numbers for defensive powers, so they can achieve better defenses than blasters. If you choose the appropriate secondary you can get very satisfactory damage (Kinetics) or a huge cushion of safety with decent damage (Dark Miasma).

I hated playing my Rad/Kin corruptor for the longest time, and almost gave up on it several times. But a respec into the current build changed my mind -- it's not bad at all. I've run several ITFs and I just follow the tanker/brute straight into every fight and fire off Fulcrum Shift, getting the full benefit of my own buffs without getting creamed. Irradiate is also a PBAoE, so you need to be in melee range. (Be sure to carry lots of Break Frees, however!)

Knowing what I do now, I'd probably go for Fire/Kin instead of Rad/Kin (Rad seems underpowered; the -Defense debuff isn't worth all that much in these days of IO sets), but I'm not sure you can get quite the same level of defense with Fire without making compromises.

I also have a Fire/Dark that's soft-capped for Range. This character was fun to play the whole time and didn't need any big revamp at 50. This character can play at x8 and is extremely survivable.

Mmm...

Be careful here. but there is great truth on the melee ranged blasters on going smash/lethal defense, but it is difficult for some blaster mixes to soft cap smash/lethal for many of the primary sets do not really lend themselves to get slotted with IO sets that give you reasonably good smash/lethal defense. But if your set allows for smash/lethal to soft cap, you may want to go this route as well for ranged too.

Why? soft cap smash/lethal for ranged blasters?

It is a known fact in this game, an exploit in my opinion, that all attacks are not truly pure in their damage forms. That is an energy blaster, does not solely do energy damage, sadly they do a combo of damage types usually it will be a base damage form (energy) plus either lethal or smashing, but no matter what, it will be smashing or lethal. When the game check for your defense value, it looks at the damage types, say Energy and Smashing; it then looks at your 2 defensive values accordingly and uses the highest of either for the to hit determination, so if you are high defense leveled on lethal and smash, you are just about covered against any form of attack coming at you. There are a few exceptions mostly on the Rikti side where some attacks are neither positional or lethal/smash and can be very painful for those in the receiving end.

Sadly capping smash/defense is very difficult for most blaster combos, and thus if you go ranged you may want to work on your positionals instead.

But if you are ranged type, do not solely defend against ranged, you got to also safeguard against AOE type of ttacks as well, quite a great deal of mob secondary mez effects are AOE. A mezzed blaster is not very impressive...

Sadly trying to def cap a Blaster in 2 positionals is nearly impossible, but you can do a reasonably good job. I have little difficulty def capping range, and with some effort you can attain 30% AOE def as well. You could do the opposite just as easily, soft capping (45%) AOE and bringing range to 30%.

Since AOE tends to be low damage, and you can still fight while mezzed, I tend to give it less of a priority to the hard hitting ranged attacks.

Also if you do go ranged, the flight pool "Hover" is your friend, never land, minimize your opposition's chances to engage with melee attacks. Also if you want to be able to keep contro of your character as much as possible, make sure you have MAG 12 knockback protection! Hover can take a Karma KPB!, pick up Fightin Pool's Tough and you can pick up Steadfast KBP; both easy rolls on bronze low level AE ticket exchanges. To get to the MAG 12, it can get a bit sporting or costly. If you want protections at very low levels, well hover comes at 6th, but you can always purchase a Blessing of the Zephyr and put it on your flight at level 14. You could wait a bit, and put another steadfast KBP on your epic armor as well.

An important tactic against flying opponents such as Hero-1, hover but always strafe left and right, its a shoot, strafe, shoot, strafe, etc. You got to minimize Hero-1s ability to close the range and melee you; if he does, you are toast.

Hope this helps you have a better gaming experience

Stormy

Sounds interesting. What is your overall recharge like? I think mine's at about 137 pre-purples right now.

Granted I sac'd a bit of positional defense to get there, but like I said, starting with HoB, crossing my fingers and stacking with my melee/ranged/aoe, I'm usually ok. What does get through is easily dealt with most times with Aid Self.

In teams, I'm not worried at all really... so this is more I think a solo player's concern, but it is a valid one.

I was aware that most attacks provide an element of smashing/lethal but I found it hard to get that high up on smashing lethal, and usually at the expense of something else I was trying to accomplish.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=250862

It doesn't seem to need much recharge to run Pist-DW-Pist-Exec for single-target DPS.

Best bet for S/L is using the redside Black Scorp APP for the +S/L/E def shield. That's how I capped S/L on my Fire/MM blaster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Elektro_ Sounds interesting. What is your overall recharge like? I think mine's at about 137 pre-purples right now. Granted I sac'd a bit of positional defense to get there, but like I said, starting with HoB, crossing my fingers and stacking with my melee/ranged/aoe, I'm usually ok. What does get through is easily dealt with most times with Aid Self. In teams, I'm not worried at all really... so this is more I think a solo player's concern, but it is a valid one. I was aware that most attacks provide an element of smashing/lethal but I found it hard to get that high up on smashing lethal, and usually at the expense of something else I was trying to accomplish.

Yea, I was just looking over your build. Well done.

I personally live off of the defense combo of Hail of Bullets, then either single target, or AoE combo's... helping me get closer to cap for a few seconds anyway with the 10% bonus.

That being said, I highly value recharge. If you are happy with yours that's great, but if there was one thing I would change in your build... it would be a second slot in Hasten.

You nearly have the recharge I do with hasten in the mix (which wouldn't be up as often as I have it) and I'm still searching for more recharge!!!

I see now how with shadow fall/weave/scorp shield how much easier it is for you to cap S/L. Good for you.... I wish I could do that but apparently I'm living on the edge! I do notice you aren't running Tough, are you? Quite an end hog as you've slotted it up.

I have given up on capping ranged/melee/AoE. Instead I have accepted I'm going to get hit once in a while, and life is much easier with Aid Self, and Force Mastery's Invulnerability.

Great build though. Nice use of the debuff powers you have for some great slotting. (In my build I will say I REALLY like Lockdown (6 slotted) though.)

It's a great build... I definitely use the KB myself though.

Good luck on double XP weekend... I'll probably fire up a tank or scrapper.