Typed vs. Positional Defense

Let me start off by saying that I have been playing CoX for almost four years now, but I'm pretty new to the forum. That said, the concept of typed defenses and positional defenses was recently introduced to me. I play a lot of melee toons, but I used to grab whatever set bonuses I could find, not really focusing on what I should definitely take (because I didn't know any better). Now that I know, however, I would like to be able to slot my toons more efficiently and make my newer ones better than the old ones.

So I have one simple question: what melee sets should be slotted for typed defense, and what sets should be slotted for positional defense?

If you've got Mids you can look through and see which does what fairly easily.

You can also go to the wiki site and search through there: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Category:Invention_Sets

Most sets will cover two Typed Defenses and one Positional defense. If the set bonus favors Typed defense, the Positional defense is about 50% of the Typed bonus. If it favors Positional defense, the Typed bonus is about 50% of the Positional bonus. You'll find that most often typed bonuses will be paired like this S/L, E/N, F/C with Psi being left to it's lonesome as there is no such thing as Toxic defense in the game. Hope this helps.

The answer to 'typed or positional defence?' for melee armor sets is to go with the kind of defense the set already has. Since you use whichever applicable type or position you have the most of against an attack, there's no point in stacking typed defense on a positional defense armor set.

Typed defense:
Ice armor
Invulnerability
Stone armor
Willpower
Energy aura

Positional defense:
Shield
Super reflexes
Ninjitsu

Other:
Electric (no defense)
Dark (minor +def (all) in cloak of darkness, no other defense)
Fire (no defense)
Regen (no defense)

So for sets which already have defense, you want to grab more of the same kind. For sets which have no defense (or dark, which has a minor amount of defense to everything), if you want to stack defense on their other mitigation you're free to go for whichever kind of defense you want.

Note that typed defense sets often have a psi hole - invul, ice, and energy have no psi defense or resistance - and that there is no such thing as toxic typed defense. So, if you're building up typed defense, most people just go for smashing/lethal, energy/negative, and fire/cold defense. Also, stone and ice don't have defense to fire/cold by default, so there's not much point in trying to build those types of defense on them (and fire/cold attacks are less common than many other types, as well).