Shields Defense question

Hello all.
I just read a very eye opening post on the advantages of softcapping Smash/Lethal defense, which means Kin Combats.

My question is how does this apply to Shields. With Shields you softcap Melee defense, and ignore S/L which is good except that I understand that machine guns and their like can tatter Melee defense and bring it to it's knees...and S/L has the lion's share of damage type in game.

So, how does Shields and it's Melee defense survive S/L attacks???????? I know it does fine because my Elec/Shield's fav pasttime is fighting Romans and she has not a single S/L bonus....

Unhappy sigh. I just do not understand the different defenses and how they work with the different secondaries.

Does City Of Heroes have some documentation that I can read about this subject?

Lisa-Deeply disturbed and wanting to understand

Shield gives positional defense. Most Shield builds try to softcap all three positional types - melee, ranged, and aoe. This will protect you from swords, machine guns, fireballs, and almost everything else.

Almost all attacks check against two or more defenses - swords are melee and lethal, bullets are ranged and lethal, fire blasts are fire and ranged, fireballs are fire and aoe, et cetera. The game uses the highest applicable defense, so if you have softcapped melee defense, you're safe from swords, whether they're regular lethal-damage swords, or fire swords, or ice swords, or Titan Weapon smashing swords.

Edit: Here's the paragonwiki page on defense. Also applicable is attack mechanics, although that gets more into the math of exactly how it works, rather than just understanding the concepts.

Essentially, when you're attacked, the system checks against positional and typed damage, whichever is higher is the one that gets rolled against. So if you've got 45% melee damage and 25% smashing/lethal and a cimeroran takes a swipe at you, it will roll against your positional defense.

Shield Defense is a positional defense set, in contrast, invulnerability is a typed defense set. That means that you should slot for melee/range/AoE defense on a shield toon and ignore your typed defense as your positional defense should always be higher.

Edit: Wiki link that gives some basics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Defense

Just to also add that Shield comes with Defence Debuff Resistance (DDR), so when you get smacked by a sword that lowers your defence, DDR will resist that debuff.

So powers like Grant Cover, which offer defence to the team only and not you, become a viable choice because of the DDR.

-H

For shields you want to focus on things like Obliteration (melee defense), Mako's Bite (ranged defense) and Touch of Death (AoE defense). Also six-slotting buildup with Gaussian's Syncronized Fire Control will give 2.5% to all three positions, well worth doing. All of those require six-slotting, unfortunately, but you can get some ranged & AoE defense from three-slotted Blessing of the Zephyr, and of course be sure to slot your Steadfast Protection 3% defense IO, and the Glad Armor 3% if you can afford one or earn the 30 a-merits to buy it... and then you add in weave, combat jumping, and manuevers and make sure your core defensive powers are well slotted for defense and you should be in good shape.

The brute and scrapper ATOs give smashing/lethal defense primarily, but a lesser amount of melee defense for only 3 slots.

That's the 2 minute answer to softcapping shields. And as everyone else said, you won't need to worry about typed damage.

Touch of Death is Melee defense, not AoE.

You can get AoE from Scirocco's Dervish or Eradication (I like Eradication because it gives you Max HP, max End, and a little Ranged defense as well as the AoE). Both sets go in AoE powers, so as an Electric/Shield you should have plenty of places to put them.

Just in case this wasn't answer somehow, I have a Shield Defense tanker and she's all but immune to damage. She has 50%+ Defense to Melee, Ranged, and AoE.

What you are missing I think is that damage like S/L also comes in flavors of Melee or Ranged or AoE. Blades for example are Melee S/L damage, and guns tend to be Ranged S/L damage.

What the To-Hit system does is pick whichever you have the highest number. If I have 10% S/L defense and 50% Ranged defense, and I'm hit with a Ranged S/L attack, the system will pick the Ranged number and use that. Ditto with Melee and AoE.

So having three positions covered - and there are only three - means I'm protected against nearly everything. The only thing I'm not protected against are attacks which have no position component, and there's a few Psi attacks that aren't Melee, Ranged, or AoE. Gotta watch out for Fortunatas and Arachnos Tarantula Mistresses.

Since no one else covered it, and because I'm sure the OP will ask at some point, here's the breakdown of what sets use what kind of defense.

Positional Defense: Super Reflexes, Shield Defense, Ninjitsu.

Typed Defense: Energy Aura, Ice Armor, Invulnerability, Willpower, Stone Armor.

No Inherent Defense: Electric Armor, Fiery Aura, Regeneration.

All Defense: Dark Armor. (Dark Armor's defense toggle, Cloak of Darkness, covers all types and positions equally)

The worst part of defense is defense failure.
If you are held/stunned/sleep or otherwise incapacitated your defense goes to ZERO, and let the damage begin.
Most tanks and scrappers have some type of protection against these while squishies usually don't.
Defense also has the so called soft cap where no matter how much defense you have they still have a chance to hit you. ( grrr )
I've played on teams with >=100% defense and they still take damage ( use >=3 bubble defense )
It seems to work much better with a mixture of defense and resistance, so a team of >=3 ice shields works best since you have both defense and resistance.