Def? S/L or Melee?

Been wondering about this since I got back into the game a few months ago, Do they stack at all? As in if I have 30% S/L Def and 30% Melee Def does that bring me up to a 60% in some sort of way if they are hitting me with S or L damage melee attack?

Nope, only the best applies.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Defense

If one of the attack vectors of an attack Smashing, and you've 30% Smashing defense, that applies to the whole attack (unless you've better elsewhere). Note, just because an attack deals a given type of damage does not mean that damage is used as an attack vector for defense (Fireball deals smashing damage, but is a AoE/Fire attack and only checks vs. Fire or AoE defense)

Damage resist is a little different (Check "Damage_Resistance")

Okay, say you have 30% melee, and 25% lethal defense.


If a mob fires an attack that is tagged melee/lethal, your melee defense will apply because it is the better of the two.

But, if a mob fires an attack tagged ranged/lethal, your lethal defense will apply.

If a mob fires an attack that is tagged ranged/energy, it will have the full chance to hit because you have no defense that will apply to it.

A little explanation of WHY it's done that way might help:

When the game first started, apparently [for instance] a Fire/smash attack would get resisted by the sum, as you've suggested: fire defense + smash defense .

Imagine something with 20% defense to all types (a rikti drone or something.) A Broadsword scrapper was seeing 20% defense to Lethal. A Dark Melee scrapper was seeing 40% defense to Dark/Smash damage, which was pretty much all his attacks.

That's bad.