Angelstar

If there's still space i'd like to sign up Starlight Guardian, 27 Peacebringer

My main 50 is FF/Archery, went down a different road tho.
Kept mine more defendery, went light on the blasts and took leadership and medicine.
You'll almost definatly need stamina with all those bubbles and toggles, but as you said, it's a pretty low maintenance set so you can spend your time applying heals and blasts where their specifically needed and take the time to get a good overview of the battle.
Also using Rain of Arrows to gather aggro then turning on PFF is always good fun
I loved it, gave me a good understanding of how things work since you have the time in combat to notice what your teammates and the mob's are up to

I've found Katana damage to be very middle of the road, certainly not as noteworthy as Broadsword or Martial Arts. It's a nice all round set, some AoE with some solid single target attacks with reasonable end costs, looks swish too
Divine Avalanche is a handy power for boosting your defence but as a result works better with SR and Inv where it can stack with your existing armour. Stick with claws and see what you think, with DA tapping your end out as it does the lower end usage set might work out better...

In complete opposition to the threads about the poor state of PvP in CoX, I wanted to send thanks to all the people in Defiants Sirens last night, yes even the stalker convention
Solid 2 hour session with good number balance, no smack in broadcast and in fact it's use for good friendly banter.
So to all present, Good Fight!
Emerald Cat

Ooooh, count me in on that one please, Pinpoint level 16 TA/Archery Defender

People do tend to be surprised when they team with a Defender bubbler. I got mine to 50, mostly through SG teams and a few repeat PuG's. So many players do assume it's wasted but the second you have someone reliably rebuffing bubbles slotted with SO's you can see the difference it makes and you will find converts. I was able to keep entire teams completely healthy with no defensive help aside from bubbles and the occasionaly medicine pool use. From my experiences at the higher levels that cap number seems about right, but bear in mind thats only if the defender is keeping everyone in maneuvers/dispersion range and LOS which means getting into the heart of the fight...

The Empath hate/love seems to stem from the fact they are the celebrity powerset, everything they do is seen by the team. Their effects fighting the falling green bars are there to see, if your getting it their great, if it ain't coming their useless. The other sets tend to be more subtle and as a result people tend to be less critical as they don't see the effects and can only assume their doing their bit. The other end is those annoying few who can't see numbers flying off them or the enemy and assume your slacking. The "pure" defender build is a perfectly viable one in my opinion. I went with a pure FF user and you can really make a difference to a team as your concentrating purely on keeping them alive. People are entitled to kick a pure empath feeling their not contributing, but i think it's a mistake. No matter how awesome your team its always handy to have someone who's only concern is making sure you all stay healthy, even if they only save you from one team wipe in en entire session thats the xp equivalent of killing several maps worth of enemies by themselves for each teammate at high levels...
On the subject of the pure build, don't forget recall friend, no use having rez if your downed teammate has a purple boss standing on his corpse...

Definatly 2 ACC as standard, I personally had spare slots and went up to 3. Why because in the end game content a lot of teams will want to run at the +2/3 level, for the challenge and xp. Add in to that when the mobs use def boosting powers and you could find yourself swinging at air while the vengeanced nemesis smacks you around. Hell it's satisfying for no other reason than to combine 3 ACC with aim and one of your heavy hitters to cut straight through a PP's MoG and take em down.
Stimulant will make you the empath/sonics best friend after they complain everyone else gets protection through them yet their vulnerable.
If you find stealth handy then keep it, power push isn't a great power, has some handy moments for keeping people away from you but hardly vital, power bolt on the other hand really fleshes out your attack chain by filling in the gaps, very handy power.

I can perhaps see it for SR to save you from interupt but the scrapper with stimulant in any other case seems like a bad idea, and frankly iffy even with SR. Your going to be in the thick of it more often than not and in that case finding time to wave your little tricorder around is probably gonna be tricky, thats not factoring in that your putting away your weapon if you have one and the fact your vulnerable during that time.
It must work at least to some extent or so many people wouldn't be using it, and thats what the power pools are there for, filling in gaps in your power sets. Call me a selfish scrapper, i'd rather be putting those two powers and the slots for them to making sure i can remain standing with armour sets and be taking out the enemies faster and let the defenders, tanks and controllers look after the green bars and status...

I'm not entirely convinced by this seemingly increasing trend of taking aid self on scrappers and tanks, especially if your a team player.
Between your defensive abilities, inspirations and teammates you should have plenty of survivablity, plus your giving up another power to take it that you probably won't be using much. As a scrapper your much better attacking and aggro grabbing the thing beating up your teammate then using the medicine pool on him. Plus you need to slot heavily if your gonna use Aid Self in combat and not just as an after fight top-up, and with scrappers between heavy slotting both Offence and Defence, slots can get a little tight. Just my opinions but if all else fails thats what respecs are for!

I bowed to pressure and got taunt, Ice/Ice just didn't do the damage to grab aggro on lts and bosses the old fashioned way. I've found it to be less than game breaking tho. It's a really tricky think going tauntless, but it just means the team has to switch from slaughtering minions first to going after the others that can slip past the aggro aura. With Taunt however Chilling Embrace keeps the minions eyes firmly on me and I can work on taunting bosses and Lt's. Sure a few more break free and go after the squishies, but thats what scrappers are for surely, spare aggro grabbing, keeps em out of trouble

I don't know about the cap for defence but triple SO DEF Buff puts you squarely in the safe zone. My Force Field Defender can walk virtually unharmed through serious plusses, stand around typing in PvP zones full of build up using Stalkers when using it slotted like that. Which is of course the point of the power. You can see a difference between slottings, not huge but you'll definatly take more and those 3 ACC Stalkers will definatly be claiming your scalp more often.
Detention Field is one of those great/useless powers, the only way to resist is if the user misses, otherwise it's time to put your feet up and see how the battle goes without you. Course for every time you swing a battle by det fielding the MM so he can't save his minions and you can take him out when it drops you'll have the battle where your team gets slaughtered punching the fielded brute and doing nothing while his mates chin you all...
If you use it, bind it.

Please add

Angelstar: Forcefield/Archery/Psi Defender

Cheers

I had to add a comment about lotus drops since i've been using it so succesfully in both PvE and PvP. In an arena where Aid self is turning up more and more having DoT on one of your attacks seems vital. I've fought a number of brutes that fought me to a standstill using the power, but if you start throwing in Lotus it can really mess with their plans to use it. Plus since interupts seem to use end anyway you can easily got the equivalent of an end drain on the attack as well. Add this on to the fact that i've come across no finer way of dealing with MM's with grouped minions than triggering build up with drops and flashing steel. With that you can leave him short his lowest grade minions in the space of seconds. It's undeniably a tricky attack to land but i wouldn't leave it out of my PvP builds regardless of fight level...

Right, well i'm back from family commitments so any night but sunday and wednesday work for me.
Couldn't access the website tho so i'll send the bio and screenie when i get home from work to your email.

My favourite lies with my first 50, FF/Archery.
A purely defensive build with medicine and leadership. Taking out any blasts meant i could concentrate solely on keeping the team safe, my only complain could be that with fully slotted bubbles the team stays pretty safe anyway!
I recently started a TA/A defender tho and it's been the most fun since that original toon. Standing back spamming debuffs into packs and dealing with stragglers with ice/acid and arrows is great fun. Plus i can run Super Speed permenantly if i'm not solo and still never run out of end!

I'm rather enjoying it myself. Combined with Repair and some of the other trap powers you can use it to set up a veritable fortress. It's definatly situational, but it's not always burst damage that kills you, sometimes your minions get bled out in a sustained fight, maybe a team member or two goes down. At which point it's handy to drop right in the middle of your pets and play at attrition. It's not a substitute for a directed heal, as someone who can 2-shot you or your minions still will, but when there's a storm of minions piling on your group i've found no better way of staying in the fight.

I've found Repair to be very handy in my bots/traps build. Drop 2-3 recharge into it and it's done, yes aid other is generally possibly more useful, but it takes more slots to get good use out of it, it's interuptable, has a shorter range and requires opening a new pool set. Swings and roundabouts. As a dark user you have damage mitigation and a heal, meaning it's a far from essential power so you probably did the right thing, however if your running traps and your pet squad are sat in a triage beacon for general healing and you need something to keep one of your guys who just took a heavy punch standing, its incredibly useful.

Cool, been looking at work (hey it's the last day before christmas!) and assuming i can make a cossie i'm happy with i'm looking at a Fire/Thermal Corruptor, just need to iron out a backstory.
Dunno about the name but "Feral" is always a good start for animal based stuff i've always thought
Also tho sporadic any day but wednesday or sunday are good.

Ooooh, sounds good, been looking to break into an RP group, attendance is sporadic, stupid RL, but i'd like to get involved. Will have to play around in the costume designer to come up with my toon as i often do.
Let me know on @Emerald Cat.

Petition it as repeated debting i guess, the devs seem to have some very odd ideas on whats acceptable in PvP. For me i never use TP Foe to drop enemies into mobs as the second you do, killing blow or no, your resigning them to debt if you win. The damage ratio debt system means that i see that as griefing, your deliberatly debting, and thats the reason a lot of people do it, it's often not even for the kill as broadcast will often tell you. Personally i'm all for dropping debt in PvP zones, it drives people away and getting rid of it would make idiots like you teledebter easier to stomach...

Yup, no crashes anywhere else, switch to my PvP toon i left in Sirens couple of seconds at most later, crash, reverify files try again, crash, repeat, oh look some villain killed me with the help of NPC's so i have debt, click go to hospital, crash.
Log in as any other toon on any server that isn't in Sirens, runs fine. Sent a petition saying i'm stuck in Sirens and can't get out of the crashfest, i get a reply telling me to type /stuck, awesome support work...

Yeah, i was worried my MM wouldn't be able to stand up in PvP, but last night using my scrapper a Merc/Dark MM fought me to a complete standstill. We beat the hell out of each other for 15 minutes to no final result. I tried going straight for him, killing minions AoE and hitting everything at once, nothing worked. The damage he was throwing out was pushing my Regen to the limit as well, and that was without his final minion, in a 1 on 1 stand up fight MM's definatly are a force to be reckoned with...

Yeah hating the new debt system, it's pretty much ruled out fighting in huge areas of the zone as if your fighting opponents and there are aggro'd NPC's in the area the loser gets debt, if their gonna keep mobs in PvP i saw no debt, no xp, remove the PvE side of it completely.
Hell you can hop by a mob now, who can hurt you as their even level, take damage on the way to a fight, lose a fight to a villain miles from NPC's, and still find yourself looking at a pile of debt, really badly thought out system IMO

Rather interestingly i play pretty much that exact build, compulsary blast power and nothing more, its more active than you might think, between keeping all the buffs up, topping up health with the medicine pool, trying to keep those most in threat close for dispersion and leadership...
Plus your not watching the enemy, i find it allows you to get a better view of the big picture than most of your teammates frantically in the thick, you can spot problems, be the one to call the retreat, warn people before they stray into extra aggro, you form the heart of the team by keeping them safe in more ways than the obvious. I found it a great learning experience as you can see just how everything works...