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IO set bonuses don't apply to your pets, except the few pet IO sets that have uniques. Those give you an aura that applies to all your pets.

Your two castable shields (~17%), dispersion bubble (~11%), maneuvers (~4%), the protector bot shields (~10% unenhanced), and the Edict of the Master set unique (5%) will get you to 47% positional defense for all of your bots. That's with 2 level 50 common defense IOs in all of the Force Field powers, and in maneuvers. None in the Protectors, as mentioned. If you want, you could go a little higher on the slotting, or pick up some extra defense in the Alpha slot, but it's mostly irrelevant for regular content.

For yourself, dispersion, maneuvers, hover/combat jumping (1 slotted with a defense IO for 2.8%), Scorpion Shield from the Mace Mastery patron pool (~20% to smash/lethal), and the protector's bubble will get you to around 48% to smashing and lethal, and a little over 40% to energy, with everything else hovering just under 40%. A little slotting on the protector shields should get you closer to softcapped everything, and you might pick up some extra defense from IO sets by accident.

edit: And as a sidenote, I believe Personal Force Field is one of the very few powers still in the game that will give you Base Defense. Your base defense checks against literally everything that rolls to hit you, and with 1 defense IO gives 84% base defense. You could probably go dance in front of Hamidon, if you like.

Assuming i22 hits before then, I'll be leveling a new Dark/Dark dominator. Assuming Staff is around before then, I'm gonna need more time and less pants.

In general, I think the idea is cool. On paper both sides probably should be about even, but even on paper you can really see the attention levels being paid to either side being fairly lopsided. I could probably list the advantages villains still have going for them on one hand. Smaller travel times, "better" mission structure for their legacy content, that free Notice they can get from that one SF, Patron sets, and... peace and quiet, I guess? Oh, they do get a buff instead of a debuff in the new tutorial. So there's that. Anyway, adding some appeal or downright advantages to being a villain/rogue couldn't hurt - it's not like the heroes will be switching sides in droves or anything.

Random is random, sadly. I've gotten two of the exact same purple recipe within an hour of eachother, one during a tip mission and one during a BAF trial run. Similarly, I've never gotten a respec recipe once, at all.

Should only be per Power Siphon activation, since it's a click power. Clicks check once per activation, and toggles check once every 10 seconds.

edit: Or maybe not.

Tested it myself by tossing it into Psionic Tornado since Dark Obliteration and other patron attacks couldn't take it. I'm not sure what the PPM stuff is all about, but I'd say it was going off way more often than 20%, and far more frequently than 4 times per minute. I've got no idea if they use new mechanics or if the frequency numbers are accurate, but it's pretty awesome thusfar.

I can give a quick overview, though there are a few guides on every set that can go far more in-depth. As a general rule, unless it's noted otherwise, none of the sets are "bad." Most sets work very well, and it's really just a matter of playstyle.

Broad Sword: The slower recharge, higher damage and less "elegant" cousin of Ninja Blade. Quirks of note include Parry coming kind of late at level 18, but it would certainly help a defense based set like /nin through periods where it's still far and away from the softcap. Head Splitter is actually a very narrow cone, which is great considering it hits pretty damn hard.

Claws: It's set theme is light on end, and fast activating. Quirks of note include Eviscerate losing the cone it has on Brutes and Scrappers, and having a slightly higher crit rate. It also loses Follow Up in exchange for typical Stalker build-up, so it feels fairly different than the other versions overall.

Dark Melee: Theme here is -tohit, which means getting hit less (which happens to be /nin's specialty). Quirks include Siphon Life, the set's self-heal which will blend nicely with Ninjitsu's heal and aid in survivability. Touch of Fear is, as expected, a Fear power, and offers a bit of utility. Midnight Grasp is an immobilize, which while not amazing, can be slightly useful.

Dual Blades: Well, this one's a bit of an oddball. With the i22 changes, Dual Blades looks a bit better, but it loses out on some of the sets unique combos by putting them in Placate and Assassin's Strike. Since the play of it is so tied to the combos, I can't speak much of it otherwise since I haven't played Dual Blades.

Electrical Melee: Considered one of the better Stalker sets due to it retaining a good amount of AOE. The set's theme is end drain, which isn't stellar. Quirks include Lightning Rod, the tier 9 and hardest hitter not breaking Hide. It flows nicely into Thunder Strike, which is a melee AOE that will always crit the selected target from Hide, and has a 50% chance to crit anything else it hits.

Energy Melee: Never bothered with it, and it's been nerfed rather heavily so it's fallen out of favor with most people. Quirks include Total Focus not doing double damage, Energy Transfer not draining health instead of critting, a total lack of aoe, and a utility power in Stun... which, well, stuns.

Kinetic Melee: Theme here is stuns and knockdown, and a bit of -dmg in the first power. KM works rather well, because rather than having its tier 9 crit, it recharges Build Up instantly. Other oddities include Burst, the pbaoe, having a 100% crit chance from Hide. With the i22 changes and putting the new Stalker hide proc into Assassin's Strike, maintaining 100% uptime on Build Up isn't as crazy as it sounds.

Martial Arts: Mostly just stuns here, but there are a few things to note. MA is one of the best single-target only sets, but is literally single target only. No aoe to speak of. Oddities include Cobra Strike and Crane Kick being the same exact power with two different secondary effects (stun or knockback), the aforementioned lack of aoe, and Storm Kick being awesome.

Ninja Blade: As expected, the faster and less hard-hitting version of Broadsword. Not much else to say that Broadsword doesn't cover.

Spines: Toxic DoTs and small magnitude immobilizes in every power, here. Also, an abundance of aoe, -speed, and -recharge effects. Spines is looking to benefit a good deal from the Stalker changes in i22, since it's a bit lacking in single-target as of right now.

Street Justice: Theme here is combos, built with most powers in the set, and finished with 1 of 3. Higher your combo, the better the damage of your finisher, and level 3 combos have extra effects tossed in as well. Oddities include Assassin's Strike building 2 combo points instead of everything else's 1, and the fact that the set kept all of its aoe when it got ported to Stalkers. That, and a combo level 3 Crushing Uppercut crit from Hide hits a tad harder than Assassin's Strike. With the i22 changes, that might be easier to set up though.

Might not qualify as "best ranged damage dealer", but Fortunatas (with the Soul patron) can be quite effective.

Highlights include:
- Double leadership buffs for yourself and the entire team, along with easily softcapped defenses to melee/ranged/aoe. With a little extra effort, you could probably get them to the incarnate softcap as well. Team bonuses are around 20% unenhanced to all defenses, and 30% extra damage.

- A default of 80' range on all their attacks (except for the crashless nuke, that's a PBAOE with a stun). Psionic and negative energy damage aren't as highly resisted as smashing/lethal. Cast times are also very low. The two oddballs are Psionic Tornado (2.37s) and Subdue (1.67s). Everything else is 1.1 seconds or lower.

- A 16 second mag 3 hold on an 8 second recharge by default that's one of your main damage components in your single target chain. A 8 second mag 3 immobilize is there as well, and they're both cycled (along with Gloom from the patron pool) very quickly in a single target attack chain.

- Knock-up for a smidgen of mitigation with Psionic Tornado. Dark Obliteration and/or Soul Tentacles (another immob!) help round out a ranged aoe chain.

- Stealth, and a choice of either a fast recharging single target confuse, or a long recharge PBAOE confuse.

The damage isn't monumental, the end costs can be a tad high unless you build to overcome them, there's no DDR (though the extra defense serves as a nice buffer) and it requires a decent amount of recharge to make work. Not a huge investment, mind you. I've sunk about 100 million into mine and I'm pretty happy with the results.