Positional, Typed Defenses????

Hello all.

I was in the Paragon Market this morning buying some Kin Combats for my Fire/Shield scrap when I suddenly remembered that there are two different types of Defense. Positional and Typed. So many questions started bubbling up.

(1) How do I identify whether a Powerset is Positional or Typed?

(2) For Brutes and Scrappers, which Invention sets are for Positional, and which are for Typed...wry grin... the answer to the above question answers this question.

And (3) Does it make a big difference, I mean, what would happen if you, because you are as confused as I am, put Positional Defense IO set into a Typed Defense powerset?

And still another question, I often see people putting Kin Combats into their Fiery Aura toons. Instead of Kin Combats on my Fire/Fire Scrap, I have three sets of six slotted Mako's Bite and she does excellent with them. She has very little problems with sappers, carnies, and psi damage dealers..and things close enough to slash at her with weaponery just don't live long enough to cause her too much excitment.

Would replacing the Mako's Bite with Kin Combat really improve things?

Sigh.

Thank you all for helping me to understand this tangle. ..and I am asking this last question because I do not know the answers to the above questions yet, are Kin Combats good for a Fire/Shield scrap?

On this note, I will dash away and run to the corner store for a frosty iced tea.

Lisa-Wanting to understand.

The majority of attacks in the game have two components dealing with whether or not they're going to hit you: Typed and Positional.

The typed component deals with the damage type: Smashing, lethal, energy, et cetera.

The positional component deals with, well, position: Melee, Ranged, or AoE.

It might sound complicated but it's straightforward once you get the general idea. Take Gambler's Cut from Katana for instance. The attack is Lethal typed and Melee positional. Makes sense. If someone tries to hit you with Gambler's Cut your highest defense to one of those two components is taken in to account:

Say you have 15% defense to Melee and 20% defense to lethal. Your lethal defense is the one that is going into the to-hit calculations, your Melee defense doesn't matter(in this case). It's the highest of whatever components are trying to hit you.

This is why people generally pick either positional or typed defense when planning an IO build, it doesn't make much sense to slot for both. If an armor set is based in typed defense, like Energy Aura, you want to slot IOs that offer typed defense. Armors like Super Reflexes that offer positional, you want to slot for positional. You identify what armors and attacks apply to what kind of defense by reading the descriptions: Melee, Ranged, AoE for positional. Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, and Psy for typed.

For non-defense armors like Fire Armor people tend to go for typed defense, smashing/lethal in particular, because a lot of attacks in the game have a smashing/lethal component whether they're positionally melee, ranged, or aoe. Also, many elemental/exotic attacks (fire ball for instance is positionally AoE, typed Fire/Smash) have a smashing or lethal component: If you had zero fire defense, zero AoE defense, but a bunch of smashing defense you would be protected against a fire ball attack. Again, your highest level of defense to the component of the attack is taken into account.

I don't know if you use Mids, but I highly recommend it as being able to look at a bunch of powersets and play with builds with different armors and slotting can really help with this. You could throw your current build in there, then build another based around kinetic combats/typed defense and see what you come up with.

Edit: Also http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Invention_Sets this page has a good breakdown of set bonuses. You can sort IO sets by bonus type, so if you wanted "Sets that improve "Whatever Quality"" you can look at all of them at once.

First off, I would highly recommend downloading Mid's Hero Builder. It can help you out here a lot.

Secondly, Shield, Ninjitsu, and Super Reflexes are Positional Defense sets. Ice, Stone, Invuln, Energy Aura, and Willpower are Typed Defense powersets.


What happens if you mix them? The game takes the highest Defense value to a certain attack, and applies that. So let's say that your powerset gives you 15% Def to S/L/E/NE damage types. You slot IOs giving you 10% Melee and Ranged Defense.

If an enemy attacks you with a Melee Smashing Attack, the game will look at all of the defense values that you have that apply (15% Smashing, 10% Melee) and apply the highest only (the 15% Smashing).

So, mixing and matching doesn't get you as much as you might think.


HOWEVER, if you got attacked by a Ranged Fire attack, your armors don't give you any Defense, but you have 10% Ranged defense, so it'll help there.

To expand on 10joy's last comment, you can read my guide on the softcap.

Edit: crap, the direct link isn't in my signature anymore. If I weren't posting from my phone, I'd get it for you.

To further clarify:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chocolate_Bacon This is why people generally pick either positional or typed defense when planning an IO build, it doesn't make much sense to slot for both. If an armor set is based in typed defense, like Energy Aura, you want to slot IOs that offer typed defense. Armors like Super Reflexes that offer positional, you want to slot for positional.

...because if you already have some typed defense from your powers, it makes sense to stack the set bonuses on top of that, rather than starting from zero positional defenses and wasting bonuses just catching up to where you started on the positional side of things. And vice-versa, of course.

If your powers offer NO defense at all, you could go with either typed OR positional, but once you pick one (and there are some nuances involved in that decision, as other posters have described) stick with whichever one you started building toward.

Also if you have a ranged toon you can take Scorpian Shield as a Patron Power for good S/L/E defenses then chase Ranged IO set bonuses. A mids build I have for a A/TA Corr has the energy defense softcapped with S/L and Ranged over 32.5% (Or small purple skittle range).

Another thing to note with defense set bonuses is that getting typed bonuses will get you half the amount in positional and getting positional bonuses gets you half that in typed.

Melee is connected to Smashing and Lethal.

Ranged to Energy and Negitive Energy.

AoE to Cold and Fire.

Psionic is alone, though.

I think the reason you are enjoying a healthy life using Mako's (6 slotted) against

Quote:

sappers, carnies, and psi damage dealers

is that they are mainly RANGED attacks and Mako give you +Ranged Def. When things get into melee with you as a Fire/Fire you are dealing lots of damage so they die and the Ranged attacks from outside your range are missing.
The 3 Mako's give you +11.25% Ranged Def. Im assuming you prob have Weave, Combat Jumping or Hover which can take your Def up to (assuming good slottings):
Mako +11.25%
Weave +5.91%
CJ/Hover +2.47%
Also add the Steadfast +3%Def Proc (Unique)
Add Maneuvers (+3.58%) and you get to 26.21% Range Def.

Not fantastic by any stretch but not bad.

Also your Self Heal will help hide damage taken if your not always looking at your green bar.

I think your hidden question may be as a /Fire scrapper which is best for you to focus on?
Most would say (and I agree) S/L Defence.
Why? As others have said most attacks have some Smashing or Lethal component in them.
Example1: Fire Sword (Scrapper level 50) does 31.28 Lethal Damage + 59.56+5x4 Fire Damage (total 110.9).
Example2: Fire Ball (Blaster level 50) does 12.51 Smashing + 43.79+7.51x3 Fire Damage (total 78.83).

If you took S/L Defence as your focus that would apply to both those attacks as both have a Smashing or Lethal component.
If you take Ranged Defence (for example with Makos) you would have no defence against Fire Sword as it is a Melee attack with no Nrg/N.Nrg component (see below).

Lets get even more into.
Positional Defence is usually a single Position. Melee vs Ranged vs AoE.
There are some examples where 1 power will offer Def to multiple like Shield Defence Battle Agility that grants +Ranged and AoE.

Typically Typed Defence joins two types.
These are Smashing/Lethal, Fire/Cold and Energy/Neg.Energy.
Psionic is always alone and there is no Toxic Defence (damn you Vazilok/Toxic Tarantulas/Banes/etc).

Now with IO Set Bonuses that give +Def it is to a single Position or a Dual Type (ie: +Melee Def or +F/C Def, etc). However a little while back the devs LINKED Positions and Types together.
What this means is an IO Set Bonus that gives say +3.75% S/L Def (hello Kinetic Combats) also give half that value to the linked Positional Defence.
Melee = S/L
Ranged = Nrg/N.Nrg
AoE = F/C

So Makos give +3.75% Ranged Def AND +1.88% Nrg/N.Nrg Def.
Sciroccos give +3.13% AoE Def AND +1.56% F/C Def.

That being said Defence is not the be all and end all of survival. If it was Super Reflexes would be the king.
Attacks WILL get through Defence. There is always at least a 5% chance no matter how high your Defence.
Stacking Def with Resistance gets some of the best results.
Stacking Def with Res and Regen IS king. If you can get all high in all three you're golden (generally as Im sure there are cases otherwise).

I hope this helps and hasnt confused things more

Thank you all so very much for all the help...I have been working all day on this and am still not 100% sure that what I understand is correct.

I read the answers here, went to Paragon Wiki, and even googled some builds.

I then went looking for the recipe3s and ingredients to craft them. I had almost everything I needed, just had to sift through enough of my toons to find it all.

The result, for my level 43 Fire Shield scrap is...standing in Perez Park with all my toggles on,Tier 9 power off

Ranged-44.01
Melee-44.01
AOE-41.20

Which looked real good and I even started to fist pump..."I did it"...when I took a look at the other numbers

Smashing-18.82
Lethal-18.82
Fire-19.75
Cold-19.75
Energies-18.82
Psionic-15.07

Oh no, those numbers look terribad....I took a look at my Resistances and except for smashing/lethal they were worse.

Smashing-28.82
Lethal-28.82
Fire-11.25
Cold-11.25
Energy-11.25
Psi-not a thing
Toxic-11.25

Current Hit Points-1671.70 (100%)
Regeneration Rate 1.03%/sec 17.20 hp/sec
Recovery Rate 2.89/sec 304.end/sec


So, I understand Smashing/Lethal to be the most common of damage, and Energy damage is king in the higher levels...looking at my numbers anything coming at me with a knife or somthing smashy or energy related will cut right through me like butter....

As far as Mids goes..it hates my computer. Every update, I have to fight with it so I have stopped using it....I wish I could get that program working that takes your build from game..Sentinel?. Everytime I try to open it, it opens 20 or more copies of either itself or of Internet Explorer I forgot which...I just remember the thing generating more copies faster than I could close them. This happened the same way on three seperate occasions....and my gut feeling is it is Internet Explorer which is being made copies of. When I get home from work tomorrow, I will give it another go.


Anyways, are my numbers ok? The top three are great but the rest...Oh meee....

Again, thanks sooo much.

Lisa.

A knife, to use your example, will have 2 potential damage vectors. The knife is a melee weapon and it does lethal damage.

The game will check both of those damage vectors (you have 44.01% defense to melee and 18.82% to lethal) and it will use which ever gives you the most benefit in it's to hit calculation which in this case is the 44.01% vs melee attacks.

Shields lacks layers of resistances under the defense. You can shore them up by taking Tough from the fighting pool, using One With the Shield when it is up, or getting and using the "wedding band" temporary power and toggling it on when you are in a situation where your defenses are useless (like vs the Nuking Nictus in the ITF)

Let me back up a bit.

There are basically ten defense types: Melee, Ranged, AoE, Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Psionic. They correspond to the ten attack types of the same name. Basically, if an attack is typed "Melee" then melee defense works against it. If the attack isn't typed "Melee" then melee defense doesn't work against it. Simple enough.

Attacks themselves have anywhere from zero to three types generally. Some attacks have no type: no (typed) defense works against them. Lets ignore those for now (Hamidon has attacks like this). Most attacks have one of the "positional" types: Melee, Ranged, or AoE. That makes sense. No attack has more than one of those. Some attacks have none of those: Mind Control attacks typically have none of those. Most attacks also have one or two of the other types, almost always based on the kind of damage the attack does.

So Power Bolt is typed Ranged, Smashing, Energy. That means Ranged, Smashing, and Energy defense all work against it.

The rule for defense is: you always get to use the highest of your defenses against each attack that are applicable.

So in the above case, you get to use the highest of your Ranged, Smashing, or Energy defense. Different attacks have different typing, and will engage different defense types.

Now why the "positional" and "typed" distinction? Mainly, its because players recognize that most attacks have one positional type, and one or more of the other so-called damage-typed attack types. That means for most attacks, you'll always be using the higher of your positional defense or damage-typed defenses. So players tend to build for positional or typed to concentrate their efforts. Its better to have all three positional types high and all the rest low than to have all of them be average - remember you only get to use the single best defense type you have against each attack.

Some powersets tend to focus on one set of defenses or the other. Super Reflexes, Shields, and Ninjitsu focus on the three positionals. Stone, Ice, and Energy focus on the other types. Because the highest is what counts, its usually considered better to stack like on like: stack more damage-typed defenses on Stone, and more positional defenses on Shield.

That's the basic rules. There are exceptions: for example the previously mentioned mind control attacks that tend to be typed Psionic only. No position, so no positional defense works, so they tend to slice right through positional sets. Although: most (not all) damage-typed defenses *also* omit Psionic defenses, so that's a problem for a lot of defense sets in general. But in general, most players build for high positional defense or high typed defense, remembering that what matters is the higher of the two for most attacks, because most attacks will have at least one positional type and one damage-type. So having high positional or high typed will give you high defense against most attacks.

Shield Defence is a POSITIONAL DEFENCE set so your S/L, F/C, etc will be low.
However (as you can see) your Positionals are quite high (45% is the target but not always possible without gimping the rest of your build).

Dont look as much at the Typed numbers - focus on the Positionals (for Shield Defence).

Shield Def can get some "OK" S/L Resistance numbers using Tough and putting a RES IO in Deflection. Probably around the 45% mark (guess) which isnt too bad as most attacks will miss you.

Defence Sets will never get very high Resistance numbers outside of using the Tier9's (and then only some have +Res T9's).

It looks like we have overloaded you with all the numbers/details. Dont worry this happens . It took me a while to get my head around all this stuff.

Looking at the different Scrapper Secondaries:
Shield Defence/Super Reflexes use Positional Defense.
Energy Aura/Ice Armor use Typed Defense.
Invul is a Resistance based set with a small Typed Defense bonus.
Willpower is Regen/Resistance based with an even smaller Typed Defense bonus.
Regen is Regen based (duh lol) with a small Reistance bonus and no Defense.
Fire/Electric are Reistance with no Defense at all.
Dark is Resistance with a small Positional AND Typed Defense bonus.

I can understand your questioning as peopel all over the place are focused on S/L only.
Some Armors can get all Positions or most Typed softcapped (45% Defense).
These are the Defensive sets.

Reistance based sets can only get softcapped to 1 (generally) so they focus on S/L as that is the best IF YOU HAVE TO CHOSE 1 ONLY.

How best to make your toon survivable is based on the Sets chosen. There is no "Do this for all Scrapper secondaries" (which is a good thing for diversity).

I just want to thank you for reminding/clarifying my need to explain the difference between typed and positional defense and how it works in IOs for my build guide