Smashing/Lethal vs Melee for Brute

I'm sitting here staring at my mids for hours. I have discovered the ultimate build for my brute, which is beyond top secret due to the extremity with which my brute will rock faces. However, I have one question nagging at my mind, and I'm wondering if it's the exhaust port on my death star.

Smashing/Lethal defense vs Melee. To my understanding the game makes a check against one for attacks, whichever one is higher. It would seem smashing/lethal covers most if not all melee attacks and is much easier to cap.

Are there any melee attacks that are not smashing/lethal? Is having a melee defense redundant with a high smashing/lethal defense or vice versa?

There are very few melee attacks that don't have some kind of S/L component to them. So much so that having capped S/L Def you wouldn't notice them, hopefully.

Having high S/L Defense, on top of high S/L resistance is not a bad thing. You avoid most attacks, and those that do get through hurt a heck of a lot less. That's a good thing. Layered defenses are always better than a very high amount of only one type.

The layering I'm talking about though is specifically melee defense. I can't think of any attacks that are melee that doesn't have a smashing/lethal component and wouldn't be avoided by that before falling to melee defense.

So that kind of makes me wonder what the point of melee defense is.

I went with melee Def on my Claws/fire and she has been very strong all the way along.

Took a bunch of imfluence but well worth it and not too tough to actually do. Oblits are your friend. The Kin Comabts didn't hurt either though.

There are melee attacks that S/L doesn't cover, but it makes up for that by covering a large amount of the Ranged and AoE attacks as well.

Melee only covers melee attacks though. If a Hellion stops punching you and pulls a gun to shoot you in the face, even though it's in melee range, it's still a ranged attack. Same with the Buckshot attack used by any thug or soldier with a shotgun. If a Troll, or a Winter Horde or a Giant Monster, or any of a dozen other enemies uses Foot Stomp, that's AoE too, even though it must be used at melee range (or at least, pretty close). All three of those attacks are covered by S/L, by the way.

Melee defense will protect you from just under half the attacks used on you by all enemy groups. S/L will protect you from half or more of the attacks from most enemies, and ALL the attacks from enemies that mostly use weapons or unarmed attacks. Adding Energy def covers Plasma rifles, Sapper rifles and so on for high-tech groups. Pretty much the only things you'll be completely vulnerable to are ghosts (mostly negative), fire demons (from Circle of Thorns and Infernal), and psi users (some Carnies, Seers, and Mother Mayhem's old minions).

Short version: S/L is best of those two. S/L/E is better if you can do it.

I can say this much: I have a capped vs melee elec/elec brute. She can run at x8 against only those enemies who have primarily energy or fire attacks because her resists handle what her defenses don't (CoT and Rikti and basically no one else ((well council but they're such wimps they don't count))).

If I pop enough purples to get S/L to 45% she can handle x8 romans, malta, and usually arachnos (sometimes the psi is still an issue depending on spawn).

That difference is enormous to me. I can feel it immediately. S/L is vastly superior.

". Lots of things hurt me a lot (Malta gunfighters, for example). "

Well, Malta gunfighters are always going to hit disproportionately hard because they have both Accuracy and ToHit. But, yeah, they do S/L.

(also, for the OP: As mentioned earlier, some things that do Lethal damage don't have the "Lethal" keyword on their attacks. I thought Behemoth Fire Sword was one of these but Red Tomax says otherwise.

I will also point out that if you pop "enough purples to get S/L to 45%" then you're probably boosting all other damage types and positions to at least 25%, cutting damage from those types by half as well.