Wilfred

On the money. Tactical withdrawal (aka running away when in trouble) is the Blaster's best defence; Aid Self minimises recovery times. Either that or take part in an Adopt-A-Empath scheme.

They get good end usage with an extra end reduction slotted in Temp.Inv., Unyielding and Invincibility. At 41, Conserve Power will sort it if you're still in a hole. Have to say, I've never had any end problems whatsoever, but then I'm very taunt-heavy.

I mostly worked with small teams when wilf was in fashion, so 3 def/3 acc.

I've a small amount of experience with both emp/psi and kin/psi (I won't post the number of hours on each but needless to say it's intimidating) - this doesn't mean I'm right but I'll gladly give my take on this situation, having been through many 'phases' with emp/psi.

I've been a pure healer, a complete offender, and all sorts of mixes of both (two respecs while playing through, four more since).

The first point I'd like to make, is that your role is whatever you make it. You're not confined to healing and buffing.

When on a team, you won't always be needed to be healing. You'll have your buffs cast, noone's taking much damage, and everything's happy - at this point the difference between a pure healer and a defender becomes apparent. The pure healer can't do much, except brawl and unslotted psychic blast - quite frankly you might as well not be there.

I believe it's important to strike some kind of balance. I'm not saying go mad, noone wants to see their defender keep running away because he's drawn too much aggro, but there's no reason on earth when RA's running and everyone's buffed and healthy why you wouldn't help the team take down the foes - it all increases the xp/min.

Psychic blast is quite ideally suited to this - your two major attacks (Will Domination + TK Blast) both have natty tack-on effects which leave your target (if it's a minion or a puny lt.) unable to attack back, in the former case because he's asleep, in the latter because he's flying through the air trying to spot his house. So you *should* be able to run a (however slow) attack chain with minimal peril to yourself.

I'd advise steering completely clear of the AoE's - Psychic scream and Psi tornado will bring a world of aggro down on you and Wail isn't the insta-mob-dropper it used to be pre-ED.

Subdue and mental blast are, frankly, puny. Subdue has a small amount of utility bringing flying foes down to earth - but such a limited utility is not worth a power slot, in my reckoning.

Psionic lance IS powerful. It's also the joint-longest range attack in the game (along with Dark's moonbeam). As you'll be mostly picking off stragglers with the blasters while the melee types grind the mob, psionic lance has a high amount of utility. It's also good for pulling.

Scramble thoughts is a purely utility power - you can't do any mentionable damage with it, but it'll keep a foe disoriented for a comparatively long time.

My recommendations? Go with TK Blast and Will Domination. Six-slot them both, one accuracy, three damage and two recharges, sleep durations or knockback distance depending on preference. This tools you up for any situation. Epics complement your arsenal nicely - mass hypnosis, dominate and telekinesis especially will turn you into a team support machine.

TANC is opening its doors once more...

The Awfully Nice Chaps (or for ye villains who be looking at the wrong forum... damn your eyes... The Astoundingly Nasty Cads) are opening to invites once more! We've been closed to new applicants for a while now, but with the influx of our US counterparts (The Luminous Path SG), we've decided to open up again!

We do trial new members, and we hope to make it extraordinarily nerve-wracking and put new recruits through a fresh kind of hell, but it never works out like that. On account of we're a tad too laid back.

We are a fairly mature SG (well... sort of), and have fairly close contact with all our Coalition partners (please devs, let us coalition with more!) - TANC have been involved with Defiant since the UK beta. Our membership is large, and we look for active heroes (or villains) who don't mind (and who can contribute to) the SG/Coalition banter which is fairly non-stop at peak heroing times.

So, what are TANC's rules? Well... they're more guidelines really, but they basically run along the lines of

1) Chill, chaps.
2) Do you fancy a cuppa?
3) Grand, make me one while you're at it. With a custard cream biscuit, that'd be fantastic, ta.

Oh, and the other one is we try to stay out of anything remotely politic-looking; we take a fence-perching attitude to most things. That way we hope to remain Awfully Nice, long into the 1990's. Ahem.

So, what to do if you're interested (or wish to insult us most mightily for spamming the forums)? Well, we're mostly forumites - you may have noticed myself, WarEngine_One, hoplite, Laustin d'Woods, Dimension and co haunting the forums. Send any of us a PM and you'll get either fobbed off with excuses or passed onto the right person! Then we'll arrange you a trial or somesuch and see where it goes!

Sucks... like a fox!

Yum, Energy Aura. 2 End recovery powers? I'll buy that for a dollar.

Anyone know if taunt counts as a click attack for purposes of fury buildup?

SS = Smash damage = widely resisted. I'd go with EM/Inv or EM/DA.

SS/Energy Aura. SS has few visual effects at all, and Energy aura is very subtle.

And EM/Inv is disco ball with pompoms, btw.

Fire gets earliest END replenishment power, tis true, but for the endurance beastie look to /EA.