What defense, if any, do people go for now?

[Rikis]

Hello everyone, I stopped playing right before the defense changes in 2022 (but not because of them) so my builds are outdated as they mostly have soft capped S/L defense.

 

I'm wondering what do resist based armor melee ATs go for now? I imagine they go for melee defense? I'm talking for general gameplay, for example farming newspaper missions and not an AE farm that mostly does only one type of damage.

[Maelwys]

Building for S/L Defense still gives pretty good mitigation; because the PVE typed defense changes really only had a major impact to a few enemy groups.

Melee positional defense will certainly perform better than S/L typed defense if you're always in melee... but it won't help hugely if you regularly go over the aggro cap (such as when AE farming) because enemies beyond the aggro cap SHOOT at you instead of close to melee range.

That said; generally melee ATs can steamroll through newspaper missions without even toggling their armors on. "Resist Based" melee ATs will typically aim to cap the important damage resistances; get their MaxHP up a bit; and achieve as high a damage output as possible. If the player driving them wishes to sacrifice some damage output to chase defense; then it's USUALLY Melee typed... but the opportunity cost (in terms of having to chase +Def set bonuses and +Def granting powers over chasing more Damage and Global Recharge) can get quite prohibitive. Also without any Defense Debuff Resistance it's not uncommon to experience cascading defense failure when fighting certain enemies (like Romans!) and maintaining a "buffer" of 10-20% additional defense in case of debuffs isn't always doable.

Different people also have VERY different opinions on what constitutes "sturdy enough"... we were having this very same argument discussion just yesterday... 😉

One thing I will say though is that there are plenty of situational powers such as Rune of Protection and Shadowmeld which can drastically increase your survivability temporarily to let you get past a particularly difficult spot. One of my favourite melee toons is an EM/Rad/Soul Scrapper who can quite happily "Active Farm" AE at +4x8 etc even though they can only reach the Softcap with Shadowmeld running.
 

Edited January 7 by Maelwys

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, Rikis said:

Hello everyone, I stopped playing right before the defense changes in 2022 (but not because of them) so my builds are outdated as they mostly have soft capped S/L defense.

 

I'm wondering what do resist based armor melee ATs go for now? I imagine they go for melee defense? I'm talking for general gameplay, for example farming newspaper missions and not an AE farm that mostly does only one type of damage.

Resist based armors mostly only go for resist, Max HP, and recharge for heal clickies. 
 

Defense is a happy accident and usually melee but not a focus.

[JJDrakken]

If your a squisher: Black Scorpion Shield gives S/L/E Defense.  That covers a lot of attacks and CC.  If your lazy you can do Ice Armor epic then.

 

 

[tidge]

Caveat: I don't farm or use specialty builds for particular content. So for resistance-based characters:

 

Minimally: +6% Defense (All) from the Gladiator's Armor and Steadfast Protection uniques.

 

After that, I usually try to pick up some enhanceable Defense toggle... or leverage a power in the armor set that has a defense component that I can boost. I generally want the equivalent of a Defense IO in such powers (at minimum) although sometimes those powers get more (from sets) or less (if only holding a Luck of the Gambler piece as a mule, and/or the Kismet unique). The Unbreakable Guard Scaling Resistance piece is another must-have IMO; it requires a defense power of some sort.

 

After these... I'm sort of picking up Defense boosts via set-slotting. The only one I can think of that I commonly go for is the 4-set bonus from Unbreakable Guard (3+% Melee positional) because it slots nicely into a resistance set's powers.

 

For some resistance-oriented characters I've gone deep into Presence (for Unrelenting), and Experimentation (Adrenal Booster). for situation boosts to defense (among other things). I tend to treat Sorcery's Rune of Protection as primarily for mezz, but it does more than that. Force of Will (for Unleash Potential) is one of those clickies that is good for resistance-based characters.

[mistagoat]

On a resistance based armor, sometimes I'll ignore def entirely since it can be stripped away so easily. However if the build allows, I like to shoot for 32.5% Melee def. Then you're within a small purple to softcap for rough spots.

[Hjarki]

It depends on what I'm building.

 

For 90% hard cap AT, I'm normally building to tank. That means a combination of hard-capped resists, debuff resistance and healing/regen while my defenses are largely just whatever happens between offensive set, pool toggles and enhancement bonuses.

 

For 75% hard cap melee, I'm probably playing a Defense set that soft-caps most typed or all positional and not caring all that much about resists.

 

For squishies, I'm normally looking at either soft-cap Ranged (for purely ranged builds), S/L/E/R or S/L/E (for builds that need to be in melee range from time to time) or R/A positional (almost exclusively on Defenders since they're the only ones who can do this normally). Again, not concerning myself much with resists.

[SomeGuy]

On 1/7/2025 at 6:30 AM, Rikis said:

Hello everyone, I stopped playing right before the defense changes in 2022 (but not because of them) so my builds are outdated as they mostly have soft capped S/L defense.

 

I'm wondering what do resist based armor melee ATs go for now? I imagine they go for melee defense? I'm talking for general gameplay, for example farming newspaper missions and not an AE farm that mostly does only one type of damage.

 

 

I thought the changes were going to be doom and gloom but they aren't that noticeable. I personally haven't changed the way I build. I still shoot for SL softcap and the rest still gets really high along the way. DPS still trumps all. Making things dead is still, and always has been, the best way to mitigate something's damage.

[Biff Pow]

If you're on an AT without a defensive set and starting at zero, six-slotting the Winter IO sets provides a nice base of Melee, Ranged and AoE defense.

[Riverdusk]

Even just shooting for 20% can be a baseline really and it isn't hard to reach.  Then a medium purple will get you to softcap defense on occasion when needed and they aren't that hard to come by.  One advantage of going resist is how much more powerful purple inspirations are compared to orange ones.