QoL +Def attacks

[Battle]

First post - I'd like to thank the devs for bringing back a classic.  For the past decade, I have pointed to COH as having one the most engaging gameplay mechanics of any MMO, where we use multiple skills in a rotation, rather than repeatedly mashing our go-to skill over and over again.

In that vein, we have some skills that are tough to justify incorporating into a build.  The Self + Def Melee attacks could use a small tweak.

I am looking at them as a recently returned player  who is theorycrafting his way through old and new builds. 

Instead of one part of the typical typed pair, (Smashing / Lethal), the +def melee attacks (Defensive Sweep (TW), Guarded Spin (SF), Divine Avalanche (Kat), and Parry (BS), give one half - Smashing OR Lethal.

I'd make the argument that this makes the bonus essentially valueless when building a typed defenses character.  Everything you add covers both of the typed pair, thus overcapping one to get the other up to where you want it.  I can also argue that for the current arrangement of melee defensive sets in the game, those sets that have positional defense are easy enough to cap without the help from these skills.  I would love to get these skills where they are worth building around for the right character.  Maybe instead of X% Melee, X% Smashing OR lethal, we get X% Smashing AND Lethal and X/2 % melee, or even X% ALL as in the Martial Arts Brute/Tanker Storm Kick port.  Guarded Spin and Defensive Sweep being AOE's and Defensive Sweep further being able to initiate the momentum mechanic, may need lower values that the ST skills.

That's my piece for a minor update.

 

 

[Thezanman]

These skills are used pretty often to soft-cap melee defense with sets that don't have any defense inherently, i.e. Radiation Armor. I think that's a pretty solid, if somewhat niche, use for the positional defense component. I would agree that only giving one half of the smashing/lethal pair is very strange, as I don't believe any other power, set bonus, or effect does that.