Which is better, S/L or R Defense?

I'm thinking of making a Dominator, and was looking for opinions as to which would be better to try to get with IOs, Ranged Defense or Smashing and Lethal Defense?

I may choose another AT, Def, Cor, Con, so it's not Dominator specific. However, it will be an AT that will be able to keep most enemies at a distance.

It depends on how you play. If you're keeping the enemies at range, go Ranged defense. If you get in the thick of it, go S/L. If you do a bit of both, S/L is usually better too.

There is no universally right answer to that question though.

On my Dominator, Defense after the first 10 seconds of the fight is usually a moot point. I basically only need defense if I mis-time my alpha mezz and the enemies have a moment to fire back. So the answer in that case is Ranged.

However the absolute answer really depends on the usage and tactics behind the powersets you chose. Each Control set and Assault set ends up being more or less efficient in different positions, and if you don't have a hard mezz that can reliably shut down each spawn early, then Defense becomes a lot more important.

Please make a Dominator, they are awesome and even if there are growing pains they come out the other side stronger than you could imagine. But just as a final note, Global Recharge should be your highest priority in IO set bonuses, not defenses.

Funny how things turn up when you need them (ie. this thread)

My friend and I were debating this just yesterday and I was going to raise
it as a question (as I don't know the real answer) to the min-maxers out there.

As I understand it, the defense applied against an attack follows these rules:

* If the attack contains a certain damage type (Energy, Smashing, Lethal etc), then
your defense for that type is considered.

* If the attack has a certain vector (Melee, Ranged, AoE etc.), then your defense
against that vector is considered.

* Finally, if more than one of your defenses can be considered against an attack,
then the one with the highest number is the one that is actually applied.

So, the question we were debating is this:

Given the large number of attacks that have a Smashing or Lethal component
to them, is it better, or even effectively viable, to build for S/L defense to protect
against ranged attacks (under the presumption that high S/L def is easier to
get than high Ranged Defense, and many/most have an S/L component)?

Has anybody looked at that sort of approach, and if so, what did you discover?


Regards,
4

If you're fighting from range, S/L doesn't protect you from everything that Ranged does. But it does protect you from some ranged AoEs. In general, it will protect you from less than ranged defense does. If you're mixing melee and ranged fighting, S/L covers you from a lot that Ranged doesn't. It's impossible to say which is best for ALL situations though. There's too many variables.

Thanks for the input. Like FourSpeed, I was trying to weigh the differences between how many attacks have S/L components versus how often I would only receive ranged attacks.

I think the build I'm considering is Mind/Fire/Ice, which is the Praetorian equivalent of my Hero Fire/Ice/Cold Blaster and Villain Fire/Cold/Soul Corruptor. The idea was to keep some things common (fire and cold).

Looking at that build, I see that I can get around 44+% S/L Def without having to sacrifice too much (http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...31D63FA4CC3236). I'm still tweaking the build and will post on Dom forums to get suggestions.

If I were to go Ranged Def, it seems I would be making a lot more sacrifices. Any recommendations for easier higher Ranged Def? I think I was stalling in the 30s% range. If not, I think I'm sold on a tradeoff analysis with the S/L Def.

Also, as a note, I like to be near melee range, and this build will have close cone/ranged Fire Breath and Blaze and melee/pbaoe Combustion, Consume, and Incinerate. It will not have Blazing Bolt. I expect the alpha mezzes to help considerably in providing mitigation on incoming dmg at least long enough for me to not get overwhelmed.

I'll probably also go with Nerve Radial Total Revamp to get the added Acc/Hold/Confuse/Def.

Good and well built Doms dont need much def at all they focus on recharge than nothing tends to move for very long unless you are a melee Dom. Doms as a rule tend to try for Perma Hasten levels of recharge which puts you at 2-3 times Domination and more accuracy and to-hit are always nice. for example my Mind / nrg / Ice Dom has 1.8 global acc , 182.5% global recharge and 86.75% to-hit and stays at 3times Domination as long as i hit hasten the sheild i use reliably is the teir 4 Barrier from the incarnate system.

good luck on your Dom. and totally agree everyone should have at least 1 Dom they are Beasts when they are well built.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

So, I'll infer from the lack of real numbers that nobody has actually done a comparison
of S/L attacks vs Ranged attacks to definitively answer the question.

For the record, I'm in Roderick's camp. I also think that Ranged > S/L purely for
ranged characters, and that's the position I took in the discussion with my friend.

However, that is purely speculative (reasonably so, mind you), following the
Common Sense wisdom of "Well Duh, of course Ranged defense would defend
against Ranged attack better than anything else...."

Since S/L is *so* prevalent though, the only way to prove the conventional
wisdom true is through trial and error, or actual research.

I was hoping somebody had done the latter. Oh well


Regards,
4

Doms do excellent melee damage. It's a shame not to be in melee range.

Followup: In the absence of any definitive info posted here, I did a little research
on my own.

I am satisfied that the convential wisdom is indeed correct.

If you can remain at range, then, for equal amounts of defense, Ranged defense
IS better than S/L Defense.

Looking at several enemy factions on P-Wiki highlight a number of ranged powers
that do not have an S/L component.

Some Examples:
Charged Bolts, Flares, Mesmerize, Gloom, Ball Lightning, Tesla Cage, Char,
Fire Blast, Siphon Speed, Siphon Fire, Life Drain, Petrifying Gaze, Twilight Grasp.

There are several more, including some toxic Vaz stuff, and I'd say that most
factions have one of more mobs with one or more powers in the list, so, it looks
pretty clear cut to me.

About the only faction I could find where S/L probably would work just as well as
ranged defense would be against Family. Otherwise, not so much.


Regards,
4

For my Dom builds, I've found it much easier to cap S/L defense thanks to epic/villain pool shields. Scorp shield being the big help here, along with frozen armor.

It takes more work and costs more inf to cap ranged defense -AND- still get Permadom unless you are slotting purples or PVP IO's.

But with Doms in my stable that have been built using both methods, I can say that Ranged > S/L. I've no issues getting into melee distance once I've locked things down. THAT is your S/L defense. Build for recharge first, then accuracy and THEN Defense.

Hopefully Arcanaville won't mind if I try to answer one of these...

Quote:

Originally Posted by FourSpeed If the example with Fireball is true (and I have little reason to doubt your expertise in this matter), then, on what basis should I assume that something typed AoE would be blocked by S/L ???

The typing of an attack has absolutely nothing to do with the effects of that attack. If the devs wanted to, they could make an attack usable in Melee range that dealt Fire damage, but type it as protected against by Ranged defense and Psionic defense.

Thankfully, the Devs type attacks using a bit more common sense. Many (most?) attacks in the game have both a Positional defense type (Melee, Ranged, AoE) and a, for lack of a better word, "Typed" defense type (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Psionic). A single attack can have as few or as many of these defense types as desired. Usually, the devs pick the appropriate Positional type, and also the damage types that are dealt by the attack.

This is why Fireball is a notable exception, as it deals Smashing damage, but is not protected by Smashing defense - it lacks a type corresponding to the damage it deals. Other notable exceptions include Mind Control powers, which usually have no Positional type, just Psionic type, and Hamidon's attacks which are either a unique type to themselves (thus cannot be defended against) or are completely untyped (not sure which it is, I think the first).

So in short, generally speaking, if an attack deals Smashing or Lethal damage, it is probably defended against by Smashing or Lethal Defense. The fact that so many attacks deal either one or the other is why S/L is so desired. It's not that something typed AoE would be blocked by S/L, but that the attack is typed both AoE and S/L, thus S/L covers it.

<sigh>

At NO point did I say it *couldn't* be typed S/L... But, why would I assume it *IS*
typed S/L when the only info Arcanaville explicitly stated was that it was AoE, and
how would I know that an AoE attack with S/L couldn't also be subject to the same
exception as Fireball?

Essentially, that was the point of my "it would probably be a wash" statement.

In any case, all semantics aside, the issue might now distill down to this question:

Are there, in fact, more AoE/Cones *with* S/L than there are Ranged attacks *without* S/L?

I agree, that the only way to *know* that is to look at every single Ranged/AoE/Cone
attack in the game, and I'd love to have a link to a nicely summarized table of exactly
that information.

Unfortunately, the only information I've seen comes from looking at factions and
their attacks on P-Wiki, a slow, page-intensive, and occasionally inconsistent source.

However, based on my cursory search there, I can see that there are a LOT of
Ranged attacks without an S/L component.

Perhaps some industrious soul would care to review the other side of that question?

A sub-question would also be: On average, which attacks do more damage to the
player - Ranged, or AoE? That might also provide some insight about which gap
would be more dangerous (for instance, there are a lot of Ranged mez/status attacks,
but I'm not sure how AoE would compare in that regard either).


Regards,
4

1. Fireball is typed Fire_Attack, AoE_Attack. AoE defense and Fire defense work on it.

2. Critter AoE follows the same basic AoE factor rules as player AoE: meaning, for a given recharge AoE attacks do less damage than single target attacks, in proportion to a formula based on their radius and arc of effect (for non-cones the arc is 360 degrees). So all other things being equal, AoEs will do less damage than single target attacks, except of course for the special case of Masterminds.

3. About 2/3rds of all attacks, melee, ranged, and AoE, that do any damage at all, have some smashing or lethal component of damage and likely typed smashing or lethal (or both). Many mezzes do no damage and tend to be positionally typed only. This is probably part of the reason why going smash/lethal is a viable alternative for melee characters but less so for blasters. A large percentage of the positional-only attacks are low or zero damage mezzes which melee can usually safely ignore, but those are particularly lethal to an archetype with no mez protection, especially when getting mezzed might take down your otherwise soft-capped defenses.

4. Virtually all attacks have a positional type. The largest exception are psionic-only attacks. Most attacks have a non-positional type that matches their damage components. Some attacks have no damage and thus have no non-positional type (i.e. mezzes like web grenade). A very few attacks have unusual typing, such as Fireball (which is typed Fire but not Smashing, even though it does Fire and Smashing damage). But these are rare exceptions.

If you say for the purposes of valuing defense that all attacks have one positional type and one or more non-positional types that match their damage, except for non-positional psionics, that will account for probably 98% of all attacks in the game.

For me, I think the most relevant question for my dom would be:

When fighting 50 level PVE NPCs (iTrials, TFs, Missions), would S/L or Ranged defense be more effective based on the frequency and damage of the various types of attacks I will encounter (only positional, only typed, combination), particularly when I plan to alphamez from Ranged (Flashfire) but spend the rest of my time in Melee?

I think based on the new build I was considering, I will spend the majority of my time in Melee range, so I think I already have the answer to my question (S/L is better), but it's a combination of dmg per activation and frequency of type of attack that would seem to matter. During an alpha strike if, say, 10 NPCs hit me with Ranged, I might not even get into Melee, which is also a consideration, but I think the more likely scenario is that I can bypass initial Ranged aggro and a couple bosses would escape from a Flashfire and start pounding on me with Melee/PBAOE.

To paraphrase Crysys, my new build is recharge > acc > mez > dmg > defense.

I'm planning around
180% recharge
150-215% Acc
near perma Flashfire 22 rcg : 22/39 dis with 166% acc)
53-95% dmg
35% S/L

I also have Aid Self planned, so I get a little respite there. Plus, I know how to use inspirations and will have some imps and Lores (on occasion) to assist.

It's tight enough that I could ramp up the difficulty nicely on most content or play high level content and still feel like a bit of a monster.