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Defense Passives; the original primer
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Invulnerability and Lightning Reflexes
These two powers are grouped together because they have an opposite design goals, each working to protect your character from different types of damage sources in a different way. Where one is strong, the other is weak.
Invulnerability [Inv] is specifically designed to make your character very tough against all the tiny, small damage that mere mortal must beware, such as weak punches, kicks, hurled rocks, bullets, radioactive spittle, and any Damage over Time effect. it accomplishes this by two components.
Damage Resistance, based on Strength
Damage Reduction, based on Con [and uses the Damage Bonus numbers I talked about above]
First, once you have this power slotted in either Balanced or Defensive Role, all incoming damage is resisted by a smallish value that will grow higher somewhat with your character's strength score, and this damage is completely resisted. If anything hitting you is lower than this value, it is simply ignored. This value starts low, and rises so far as I could tell to just below 100 at level 40. I have yet to test it above the mid 20s with a character with Super Strength as a Super Stat, and Upgrades supporting Str, so it may get somewhat higher.
Any damage that gets over this resistance value is then reduced further by the Damage Bonus as a reduction value, as I discussed in my previous post, the DB value on Inv does not got much above 40%, and so an Invulnerable character will take little or no damage from all the minions surrounding him, but as soon as a boss charges up big attack, he'd better block or it will hurt him badly. Not as badly as an unprotected character, he'll still take a chunk of the damage, and it still hurts. 1400 resisted by 50 and then reduced roughly by a third is still 900 damage unless you block.
[EDIT] Blocking appears to apply it's reduction value added to the Con based reduction, but before the Str based resistance of smallish damage, so if you block, many hits get absorbed completely. It absolutely pays to max out your ranks of Invulnerable, you ranks for a block power and your Con and Str with Inv.
On the other hand, all those little 60 point plinkers that wear down all the other heroes, hit you for around 10 points each before you block, and if the damage is less than your resistance, you take nothing.
Lightning Reflexes [LR] is designed to be very effective against the slow and heavy, big hits, but much less effective against the small fast attacks. It is essentially the polar opposite of Inv. It also uses two components to accomplish it's goal, but both of them scale up via Dex.
Dodge Chance [Dex]
Avoidance [also Dex, and uses the DB value I discussed with you earlier]
All character have a Dodge Chance of 10% and a Dodge Effectiveness of roughly 18% DB as a starter. Adding Lightning Reflexes and slotting it will also buff these values.
Avoidance is a DB value, ranges from 30 or so on a rank 1 starting low dex character, on up to 85-90 or more on a high level, high Dex statted character [Again I don't have current precise top level high Dex test character available yet].
The wrinkle here is the Dodge Chance, as it is a flat percentage value that scales by activation or charge up time on the incoming attack, and is normalized at a one second activation time attack.
To explain, let's say you have a Dodge Chance of 34%
This means you dodge any one second activation time or one second charged power 34% of the time, and when you do, then you get your Dodge DB value applied to that incoming effect, when you miss this random roll, you take full effect.
If the attack is a fast one that goes off in half a second, your chance to dodge is also halved, to 17%, meaning you are hit for full damage all the time by light, quick low damage attacks.
If the incoming attack is a slow standard "Tell" charge up by an enemy that takes two seconds, your Dodge Chance is doubled, to 68% chance, and a really big, really slow three second charge up effect will triple your Dodge Chance to 102%, or automatic success. Unlike that other game, there is no artificial cap, if you modified chance to dodge goes above 100%, then you dodge it for your Dodge Effectiveness DB every time. So the huge hits that crush ordinary folks, and even hurt the Invulnerable heroes feel it, you glide away from with amazing ease.
Assuming the same 1400 damage attack above that would really hurt an Inv character I mentioned before, if your LR character has a 90% Dodge effectiveness, then you would only take 840 before you block, and that is not counting any extra mitigation your upgrades may be giving you as well.
The only issue is, the little plinkers that an Inv character can safely ignore will tear LR up, since they come too fast for you to dodge. [You will dodge a few of them, but most will get through.]
[Edit] Thanks to Midgardener, pointing out the language change of Dodge effectiveness to Avoidance, I was using the older term from Beta.
These two powers are grouped together because they have an opposite design goals, each working to protect your character from different types of damage sources in a different way. Where one is strong, the other is weak.
Invulnerability [Inv] is specifically designed to make your character very tough against all the tiny, small damage that mere mortal must beware, such as weak punches, kicks, hurled rocks, bullets, radioactive spittle, and any Damage over Time effect. it accomplishes this by two components.
Damage Resistance, based on Strength
Damage Reduction, based on Con [and uses the Damage Bonus numbers I talked about above]
First, once you have this power slotted in either Balanced or Defensive Role, all incoming damage is resisted by a smallish value that will grow higher somewhat with your character's strength score, and this damage is completely resisted. If anything hitting you is lower than this value, it is simply ignored. This value starts low, and rises so far as I could tell to just below 100 at level 40. I have yet to test it above the mid 20s with a character with Super Strength as a Super Stat, and Upgrades supporting Str, so it may get somewhat higher.
Any damage that gets over this resistance value is then reduced further by the Damage Bonus as a reduction value, as I discussed in my previous post, the DB value on Inv does not got much above 40%, and so an Invulnerable character will take little or no damage from all the minions surrounding him, but as soon as a boss charges up big attack, he'd better block or it will hurt him badly. Not as badly as an unprotected character, he'll still take a chunk of the damage, and it still hurts. 1400 resisted by 50 and then reduced roughly by a third is still 900 damage unless you block.
[EDIT] Blocking appears to apply it's reduction value added to the Con based reduction, but before the Str based resistance of smallish damage, so if you block, many hits get absorbed completely. It absolutely pays to max out your ranks of Invulnerable, you ranks for a block power and your Con and Str with Inv.
On the other hand, all those little 60 point plinkers that wear down all the other heroes, hit you for around 10 points each before you block, and if the damage is less than your resistance, you take nothing.
Lightning Reflexes [LR] is designed to be very effective against the slow and heavy, big hits, but much less effective against the small fast attacks. It is essentially the polar opposite of Inv. It also uses two components to accomplish it's goal, but both of them scale up via Dex.
Dodge Chance [Dex]
Avoidance [also Dex, and uses the DB value I discussed with you earlier]
All character have a Dodge Chance of 10% and a Dodge Effectiveness of roughly 18% DB as a starter. Adding Lightning Reflexes and slotting it will also buff these values.
Avoidance is a DB value, ranges from 30 or so on a rank 1 starting low dex character, on up to 85-90 or more on a high level, high Dex statted character [Again I don't have current precise top level high Dex test character available yet].
The wrinkle here is the Dodge Chance, as it is a flat percentage value that scales by activation or charge up time on the incoming attack, and is normalized at a one second activation time attack.
To explain, let's say you have a Dodge Chance of 34%
This means you dodge any one second activation time or one second charged power 34% of the time, and when you do, then you get your Dodge DB value applied to that incoming effect, when you miss this random roll, you take full effect.
If the attack is a fast one that goes off in half a second, your chance to dodge is also halved, to 17%, meaning you are hit for full damage all the time by light, quick low damage attacks.
If the incoming attack is a slow standard "Tell" charge up by an enemy that takes two seconds, your Dodge Chance is doubled, to 68% chance, and a really big, really slow three second charge up effect will triple your Dodge Chance to 102%, or automatic success. Unlike that other game, there is no artificial cap, if you modified chance to dodge goes above 100%, then you dodge it for your Dodge Effectiveness DB every time. So the huge hits that crush ordinary folks, and even hurt the Invulnerable heroes feel it, you glide away from with amazing ease.
Assuming the same 1400 damage attack above that would really hurt an Inv character I mentioned before, if your LR character has a 90% Dodge effectiveness, then you would only take 840 before you block, and that is not counting any extra mitigation your upgrades may be giving you as well.
The only issue is, the little plinkers that an Inv character can safely ignore will tear LR up, since they come too fast for you to dodge. [You will dodge a few of them, but most will get through.]
[Edit] Thanks to Midgardener, pointing out the language change of Dodge effectiveness to Avoidance, I was using the older term from Beta.
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Keep tuned to this thread for more info on that.
The original version of this thread is located in the Archive here.
First, defense concepts.
All defense passives are balanced around the concept of "works slightly differently, but gives roughly equal measure of protection" for the majority of the game's PvE content. PvP is a completely different beast.
In a game in which any character can select any power, the choice of which defense to select is up to the player, and can be based on playstyle or character immersion reasons, but there are playstyle differences you should be aware of.
Each of the major defense passives is tailored to different playstyles fairly strongly, so if you like feeling tough all the time, Invulnerability or Regeneration will probably be your favorites, but if you like nuking everything down fast before much gets a chance to hurt you, then you will probably prefer Personal Force Field.
Second, basic defense bonus values.
Most [not all, I'll get to that] defense passives are balanced around the same math. All such is given to the player in a number I call, "Defense Bonus", or DB.
Damage Reduction values are rendered in a simple math calculation, whose formula is the following;
[DB/100] + 1 = DR
This Damage Reduction result is the number by which incoming damage is divided.
Block is also rendered in this DB value, so if you heard that basic Block reduces incoming damage by half, that means it's DB is 100%. [It's actually closer to 200% DB, but this is just an example.]
So, here's how that fits into the formula;
[100/100 = 1] + 1 = 2
Incoming damage is divided by 2, so you take half damage.
This means two very important details.
Under most circumstances [with two exceptions], you can not mitigate 100% of all damage. You can however reduce it to a tiny trickle that you hardly feel, and with a health on defeat item equipped, generally get back more than you lose consistently.
A second self heal click power or other heal click power that you can target yourself with [or a teammate healing you] can make you almost undefeatable in PvE at a decent level, so long as you don't agro silly numbers of foes.
Now, for ease of reference, you can tally up your characters current mitigation by adding together all Defense Bonus values from powers and items equipped, and looking at this table;
total Damage Bonus -> Damage Reduction -> Damage Taken by character
100% - 50% - 50%
200% - 67% - 33%
300% - 75% - 25%
400% - 80% - 20%
500% - 83.33 - 16.66
600% - 85.72 - 14.28
700% - 87.5 - 12.5
800% - 88.88- 11.11
900% - 90% - 10%
If your own Defense bonus falls between these values, you can easily plug in and extrapolate how much mitigation you are getting, and how much actual damage you character is receiving.
If you for example have items adding up to roughly 40% defense bonus, and no other power [as many of you will be until level 5 to 8], then you can expect to have this for your mitigation;
[40/100 = .4] +1 = 1.4
40% DB = 38.57% DR = 71.43% DT
The majority of any characters mitigation is most likely going to be coming from his Block powers.
Finally, all numbers currently listed for specific powers and gear are old numbers and not correct, I will be updating the posts as time permits.
*To Block hit /and hold/ your shift key on the Keyboard, or Right and Left Trigger simultaneously on the Xbox 360 gamepad.
* I use a custom bind to make blocking work on just the Right trigger, it is;
/bind joy8 +powertrayexec 16
Even basic blocking is very powerful. Learn to use it, hold it down when you see a big attack tell coming, and you will come to love it, unless you just don't really like reactive gameplay elemants at all. At least it's not a dreaded Quick Time Event.
Blocking as a power gives you a bonus to Defense while active at 200%, or two thirds of all damage reduced. This value is completely independent of the other reductions, and takes place last, making it incredibly powerful. It completely stacks with any and all other defense powers and upgrades to give you serious protection when you need it, at the cost of being inactive while you do it. Block Powers enhance this defense bonus by a respectable amount;
DB 250% at rank 1
DB 300% at rank 2
DB 360% at rank 3
In any "Role" other than offensive, you also gain energy, based on the amount of damage blocked. Block a huge hit, and you will gain quite a bit of energy from it.
In Defensive Role, the value of energy gain from blocking is doubled, so turtleing and then unleashing becomes a valid playstyle.
[Edit] Thank you to J3K for the Joypad block correction
[EDIT] And now Defiance
Like the previous two powers, these two are designed around a polar opposite effect, and thus different playstyles.
Personal Force Field [PFF] Is essentially meant to make you very tough at the start of a fight, but weaker and far less tough as a fight drags on.
It is basically nothing more than a pool of temporary hit points that are separate from your character, scale with [Endurance], and slowly refresh themselves on a slow constant trickle. The refresh rate scales with [Ego]. Since the refresh rate is generally lower than incoming damage, it pays to quickly defeat foes before they can bring down your Force Field, and get to the juicy, fragile hero underneath. Even when it is up 5% of all damage will punch through no matter what, and this scales up out of your characters favor the stronger the attack is.
Note that the Force framework also includes a Field Surge power that spends some of your energy to quickly give your force field a refresh or bring it back up if it dropped [and is designed to be hit as often as it is ready to keep your Force Field at full strength in constant battle scenarios].
The Force Energy building "Fighting attack" also includes an advantage that gives a 10% change to proc a 100 strength Field refresh, and these will even give you a FF in offence role, where you normally couldn't have one. They just won't last long if you don't also have PFF slotted and active in Balanced or Defense Role.
[EDITS] Last I heard the fighting attack advantage bubble no longer goes on top, but underneath the main bubble, and block is underneath it as well. No, I really don't have any idea why.
Regeneration is the polar opposite of PFF, and is designed to be weak at the start of a fight, but escalates in power as a character continually takes damage.
This is accomplishes by a Heal Over Time [HOT] effect, that starts weak but it's intensity scales with damage taken. Recovery governs it somewhat but it is a pretty good power out of the box, and increasing Rec does not over power the defense the way Dex powers Lightning Reflexes. Having more hit points will keep you alive longer for it's effects to strengthen, so Con helps indirectly, simply by giving you a larger buffer of time before you would drop that the effect can then strengthen over.
The Supernatural Framework that Regeneration is in also has a "Health Surge" power, which is a strong self heal that can seriously save your butt as a panic button, but using it Strengthens your regeneration HOT effect to highest levels, so you can use it as an emergency butt saver and it powers up your basic regen to help get you out of those trouble spots. This power scales with Con. It is in essence the Regens version of Field Surge.
Defiance is a cross between Inv and PFF, but designed to be stronger later, like Reg.
This is accomplished by not protecting your character at all until it takes at least some damage, but then applying a stacking resistance buff that seems to come to about +10% DB each, roughly, and this value is supposed to scale with [Con]. Raising the rank of the power itself lowers the time between stacks, so it will hit max resistance [roughly 60-80% DB, slightly above what Inv gives] faster.
Rank 1 allows a new Defiance buff every 5 seconds
Rank 2 allows a new Defiance buff every 4 seconds
Rank 3 allows a new Defiance buff every 3 seconds
And if Con is increased then the amount each stack of Defiance gives for DB should be higher as I mention above.
Tooltips and Devs claim 8 stacks max, I have never seen more than 6, ever.
Defiance also has a built in Energy gain, any time you take damage, you get energy from it, and this is on top of energy gained from blocking if you are doing so. This makes Defiance the premier defense passive for players planning to Turtle or be a tank/brick type. You never gain energy any faster than your rank of Defiance gives stacks. At rank 3, you can get energy at most every three seconds.
It also pairs well with another Brick Power called Enrage, the infamous "hit harder" power with the "Grow Bigger" advantage. Using enrage not only grants one "stack" of Enrage, it also converts all existing stacks of Defiance on your character into Enrage stacks as well. Each one increases your size and damage potential, and then Defiance begins rebuilding from scratch as normal.
This power has an Advantage you can buy that gives your character increasing Knockback and Stun resistance as your health decreases, which is a great addition for any melee character, but taking it prevents you from getting to rank 3, unfortunately, so it's a choice you have to make for yourself. I'd imagine it's worth it if your character does not have Stated Str, and needs the extra KB protection.
I am Rune, and I was the poster here on the Public boards who suggested the first form of "Group Sidekicking" last year that eventually made it into Champions Online with the "Team Champion" Feature. I also suggested it three years ago on the CoH boards, but that's not very important, I guess.
In any event, I suspect that my efforts on the public boards got me into the Alpha test early, and once there, I made understanding Defenses and how they worked my primary goal as a tester.
I tested everything, but made a conscious decision to really grok how defenses were balanced around one another and the math behind them, to better test them and make certain they were fullfilling the Devs stated design goals and yet not be too good, so good you just couldn't die.
So, I now present to you fine folks post NDA-drop, my findings, previously only available on the Beta boards and in the Archives.
I also humbly ask that anyone who finds this useful please hit the report button on the first post, and request a sticky.
Just stepping in as the Minister of Misinformation here
Block on the Xbox 360 controller is triggered by pressing both the Left and Right Triggers simultaneously.
Excellent post otherwise.
Does increasing the rank of defiance also increase its defense?
Thank you.
Very good descriptions of the passives.
/bind joy8 +powertreyexec 16
This makes it so when you hold the right trigger, you block, and sets the top three and right power slots as ones easily usable from block!
No, it makes it so that it builds stacks faster, Con stat increases the value of each stat. You are welcome. I never left, just took a break from the forums to a degree. Got my little Super group going, and schedule planning Blood Moon now. :-)
My pleasure. If you like, feel free to PM a moderator and ask for a sticky on this.
Aura's and Circles came later in beta, and aside from Circle of Primal Domination [which may well be bugged] are one and all weaker than a properly stat supported defense passive. Since they are meant to be either supplemental to one, or a support passive, this is no surprise.
I do think a full team of characters all in support running the same Aura [Radiant Protection] at rank 2-3 would likely all be very tough with all that defense stacking, not unlike an all defender team in CoH could be, such as an all force fields' teams legendary toughness there.
I do not have exact numbers for them, but I have been considering doing some testing on them after the Blood Moon event.
I fully expect to find numbers for the support auras that give approximately half or less of the protective values as a Defense passive, but they affect an entire team, not just it's owner.
No, higher ranks of Defiance lower the time needed to stack each layer, up to 6.
Rune? Love the information, but please please please get rid of "dodge effectiveness" in your bits on Lightning Reflexes in favor of "avoidance" since that's the game term. It's just resistance dependent upon a successful Dodge either way, but I see no use in complicating something folks have on their UI for some unofficial name.
However, it'd be nice if people understood that the Avoidance score they see is based off of the same formula that all resistance uses, just that it's already been worked out for the layman. As you know, Lightning Reflexes technically hits radically higher resist numbers than any other defensive passive, with the dodge chance evening the playing field out a bit. What needs working out is the base Dodge mechanics in the first place.
As one of my signature links illustrates, the area of an attack could be as important as the speed of it when it comes to dodging something. That's just personal theory, but it might make Lightning Reflexes more palatable early on.
Agreed, edited, and credited to you, sorry about that. I was still using the term for that stat from Beta.
Thankee for the update. Yer da rune.
And you are the.. Mid ... Gardener? Midgardener.
Word
By the way, my Super group is up and running, give me a ring, Foo.
*I do not plan to do any more serious testing until after Blood Moon.
Shouldn't that be "You never gain ENERGY..." rather than damage?
Yes, lol.
I make mistakes, it's not like I'm getting paid to do this.. besides, a paid writer would have an editor.
Does Activation time play a role vs Dodge as well? If not, what's the Dodge chance vs non-charge attacks? Just whatever the standard value is? I'm just curious if the activation time on click attacks plays a part in their effectiveness vs Dodge instead of just DPS.
Circle of Primal Dominion and Aura of Radiant Protection seem to have similar defense values. Those being identical to what Invulnerability has without the flat damage reduction on front. I believe at rank 3 that comes up to somewhere around 40% with a high stat, though correct me if I'm wrong. I'm reasonably confident on the Aura values, though I'm not completely sure if CoPD's defense scales with PRE or CON or what. Its healing rate seems dependent on REC, like Regeneration and the Arcane circle's energy regeneration.
I'm trying to figure out how much Earthen Embrace from Tunneling gives but not too many people use that power. I tried it with Defiance for a bit and found it was great for covering the initial stack building gap for about the first 3 stacks or so. But I don't have any numbers just a subjective impression so far. If you have any on it, can you post them?
I could be wrong, but I don't believe that they're that similar in value; the Aura is comparable to Invulnerable resist, while Circle of Primal Dominion seems to hover around half that amount. Both do scale up resistance with PRE, but the regeneration the Circle bestows doesn't use anything outside of personal level and rank of the power.
You have it right, sadly.
Numbers were higher on the defense ranks before the Sept. 1 patch, and there are multiple issues compounding the problem now.
Not only has;
All of that, and I believe the last balance passes made on Defense powers were made before any of these changes, so Invulnerability and Defiance are underpowered now, PFF is a joke since you can't mitigate for it with Blocking, and LR is only good if you overstack Dex with grandfathered pre-nerf crafted +dex items in non Dex upgrade slots on top of regular +dex items. Tegen remains the only well balenced, but no overpowered Passive Defense, and only seems over powered due to it's very good synergy with Blocking.
In my opinion, all of the defense passives except for Regen need a serious balance pass, and a tweak upwards in most cases.
Lightning Reflexes needs to not require massive Dex stacking to be decent, and a softer scaling, so it is much better at lower levels and lower dex, and much less "Uber" at max rank with Normal dex Super statted characters, with normal dex upgrades, not balanced around pre-crafting-nerfed gearing.
Invulnerability has the opposite problem at the moment, it is quite good at low levels, particularly if you fight even slightly under-leveled foes, but even at rank 3 and seriously stacked +str and +con, it is very weak at high levels. Fighting +level foes hurts it bad, and Invulnerability in Champions Online is much like Super Reflexes was in CoH.
^
You have these backwards, the damage resistance on invuln is based on CON, the flat reduction is based off of strength.
Thanks
Oh and I do focus on might with some guns and single blade.
I don't have them backwards, it is an issue of semantics.
The Str based resistance automatically absorbs all damage that is equal or less than it's value.
The Con based reduction reduces what gets past that by the standard defense mechanics I outlined in the main post.
These terms fit what they are called in the Champions Role Playing Game, Damage Resistance stops damage, and Damage Reduction reduces damage.
On my lvl 20 sorcerer, Circle of Primal Dominion is as close to complete invuln as it gets.
Not only does it reduce incomming damage, it heals.
Drawbacks, yes. many. Most is that sometimes - it just drops. Other times, you get knocked out of the circle, leaving you to either fight your way back as a soft target, or run away,
Oh. I havent taken any slotted defensive powers yet, no need.
I can tank all of the bloodmoon heroes, save Virgil (some of his +7 lvl zombies can turn Off my Circle = me dead).
And it is likely that until you are very, very high level and with a LOT of Dex stacked [some say exclusively over what you even CAN stack now, post crafting changes], Regen will be better, particularly if you are good at timing blocks.
Rune is correct in that Lightning Reflexes requires a somewhat absurd focus upon DEX, well beyond the normal "acceptable" levels; at level 24 one LR-using alt I have is hitting 150+ in DEX in addition to Dodge/Avoidance gear.
While I agree that semantics is technically to blame, it is the case that terms applicable to the last version of the RPG simply weren't carried carte blanche over to the MMO by the Cryptic design team. If they were, then what was previously titled "reduction" wouldn't be consistently referred to by the CO devs (and so most forumites as well) as "resistance". Thus the confusion. I wouldn't be surprised if the new PnP edition continues along this path.
I really want to like my might toon with defiance but I have tried every way possible to survive with it. Problem is that by the time it builds up far enough to be useful you are almost dead anyway. Might as well just go out swinging.
You might have better success with Invulnerability, but I only recommend that one if you are really pushing both Str and Con. Regen works pretty well even without pushing up Rec, but you'll still need to turtle sometimes.
Sorry I missed this, but I love Inv, and with these stats you should be pretty darn tough. Only way you could be having a lot of trouble is if you are routinely fighting +level foes, or doing quest chains a couple or three levels over your level, which isn't really necessary anymore.
thank you for re-directing me back to this post
I also have a specific question for you, for when you get back to running tests, regarding lightning reflexes and the "flipping" advantage on swinging.
basically are they working in the same manner? flipping's tool tip says its adding a 5% bonus to dodge (number may not be right.. will edit if not) so on a LR based build how does that affect the way LR works with attack charge times?, or is it simply a straight boost to your chance to dodge and thats that?
reason being is my LR builds seem more effective with this advantage than without.. could be a perception thing.
again, appreciate the effort you've put in here
My pleasure, and I haven't tested Flipping. At first guess [stress guess] that 5% would be simply added right onto your characters dodge chance, and subject to all the same modifiers that every attacks is subject too, IE, it would be multiplied by .44 if an attack had a listed activation time of .44 seconds.
I currently have Inv AND regen in my build. I can even fit Defiance as well into my build as a single target damage machine (although not until late in the build).
If there is a reduction, what is better, multiple passives in a balanced role or single passive in defensive role.
Thanks
The limitation is, you can only slot one of the passive defenses at a time currently***, I'd imagine in multiple builds each with a different focus for defense.. I wouldn't recommend that, as many of them us different stats they scale off of, although and Invulnerable / Defiance thing could work.
As I understand it, you can start a fight in Defiance, and let the stacks build up, then swap to your invulnerable build with the defiance stacks on, and as long as you regularly used a power hat refreshed those Defiance stacks, you could keep both sets of defense up.
I have not personally tried this, I generally just use one defense passive power per character along with other passives powers for other roles.
*** There was mention in the Beta test of possible future Roles unlocked that would use more than one /more than one type of passive slotted at the same time, but nothing has been heard about such ideas in many, many months.
F5-F9 are use to swap your builds...and while most players take only one passive, it definitely do-able to have F5 and F6 as duplicate builds except for the passives, ie Invul. or Defiance in the first build as your main "tanking build" and then having the second one slotted with Regen. that way, if you start to take heavy damage, just switch builds and block(force shield with the sheath advantage=gain end while blocking) and let your regeneration kick in...
the only drawback is the timer on swaping builds...i believe it's 60 seconds...
Hey Nexus, good to see you again! Enjoy the show, eat some popcorn for me.
I'm afraid I'm not the guy to ask, I actually tank using Regen and Force shield + linger advantage. LR's scaling definitely swings way too far into needing a ton of Dex to be great, though, plus one of the +dodge items equipped.