Defense question I can't find the answer to..

I am attacked by a RANGE ENERGY beam that does smash, lethal and energy damage.

I have typed defense cap for smash and lethal at 45% and Range and energy defense is 10%.

Will the system look at my 45% smash and lethal and use that against the whole attack or will I still get energy damage regardless. Meaning I can be saved from the smash and lethal component but not the energy depending on the roll.

I was under the impression that you will still get the energy damage but will be saved from the smash and lethal. So in a sense your getting less damage from each attack and this is why many take smash and lethal if they cannot obtain positional defense cap since it is the most common type of damage and is part of many attacks. So at least your not getting all the damage from the attack if you make the roll.

I hope I made sense with all of this. If by chance someone has a link I wouldn't mind saving it as well for future reference.

Someone else will probably reply before I can finish typing, but here goes anyway.

You always dodge/deflect using the best value you have for that attack type. So if a power is flagged Smash/Ranged/Energy, and your defenses are 10/45/10 as in your example, the defender uses the highest value, which is 45. (If you also had 0 AoE defense, and the next attack was flagged Smash/Energy/AoE, you would use a value of 10, since that is the highest defense against that attack).

[EDIT: Sorry, bad example above, got the numbers wrong. In your case you have Smash/Ene/Ranged defense of 45/10/10. So a Smash/Ene/Ranged attack or a Smash/Ene/AoE attack directed at you faces a defense value of 45. If something attacked you with a power that was pure Ene/Ranged, you'd use a value of 10.]

The only thing that makes it sort of confusing is that tags are not necessarily tied to "damage." Powers that do no damage can still be flagged for an elemental defense (e.g. I believe Freeze Ray has a Cold defense component.) And some powers that might look like they have one kind of tag have something else or lack normal tags--e.g. Mind Controllers lack Ranged or AoE tags on their powers, which is why they can mess up Super Reflex characters or punch through Cold/Force Field shields.

Nope.

Each attack is classified by a damage type and a position, but it may do additional damage types and not be classed that way.

Your defense is all-or-nothing against the whole attack, and only the defense types by which the attack is classified apply.

The classic example is fireball. It does fire and smashing damage, and is an AoE. Its damage type is "Fire" and its position type is "AoE." It is applied against the higher of fire or AoE defense. Although it does smashing damage, smashing defense does not count against it.

If it did, that would make mixed-damage type attacks less useful, because more defense categories would apply against them.

edit: it's my understanding that each (non-weird like Hamidon) attack is applied against one damage type and one position, regardless of whatever other damage types and effects it might carry.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=121258

Read Arcanaville's guide. It is somewhat complicated. As Arcana points out, Fireball is only defended against with AOE and fire.

But if you look at City of Data for more examples

http://coh.nofuture.org.uk/data/powe...ast.Power_Bolt
You see that power bolt for example is classified as a ranged, smashing, and energy attack, so all of those defenses (the max of them) would work against it. So it is a little more complicated than Sailboat seems to be saying.

Basically, read the guide above and then check City of Data for details on powers. Keep in mind that the damage it does it irrelevant and you are looking inistead for tags like smashing_attack, etc.

Well you have to be careful. Fireball does Fire/Smash damage and is purely Fire/AoE tagged for defense. But Ice Bolt and Power Blast do Cold/Smash and Ene/Smash damage and are tagged Ranged, Smash, and Cold or Ene for defense. It depends on the power. Levitate is pure Smashing damage but can be defended against only with Psi. So it is kind of all over the place in terms of what you can expect to deflect even if there are some general rules.

Instead of starting a new thread I'd like to add a related question here.
My kat/wp brute will be capped to melee/lethal, e/n, f/c with holes in smashing, ranged, aoe etc. How effective will this be? I can only think of a few attacks that might use smashing/ranged without some other energy attached. Am I missing something major?

When I clicked into this thread it took me straight to Arcana's reply...

Also considering it's WP, I agree with the statement that you're mostly okay. Just watch for people throwing boulders...

Also here:

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Defense

(which lists as a source Arcana's Guide to Defense. Some may find it easier to read/understand, though.)