Psylenz, I agree totally with a lot of the choices you made in your build. My Rad/Dark is set up a little differently, don't have a build to post but will critique yours in view of the choices I've made. I'll also point out a couple of places where you might want to tighten up your own build to squeeze the most out of it.
My Rad/Dark operates under the basic philosophy of simply making the team better and enemies weaker out of the box. She is oriented towards maximum weakening of AVs, especially with the -regen aspect of LR and EMP. Teamwise, she has tactics, manuevers, and assault as well as AM to improve the team and the debuff toggles, LR, and RA to keep everyone safe and topped off with health. DB+Gloom can whittle down bosses or AVs, and TT+NF can add some DPS on groups if everything else is under control (plus all her dark blasts have a debuff component that synergizes with RI).
Main differences in powers you took that I didn't take:
Choking Cloud: I have this power on a Grav/Rad controller and like it, but for my defender I just never got into it. It eats up a lot of slots, burns through my end, and I'm not completely sold on its value. On my controller singularity is throwing out random holds, so its like turning the random hold factor up to 11. I guess its value has a lot to do with how you play, so not slamming it.
Fallout: personally I have a hard time taking this over mutation. Both are situational, but mutation just needs one slot and its good. You've got it 4-slotted. Not knocking fallout as a power, just that I enjoy the vibes of rezzing a teammate (more powerful than before) over just turning him into a bomb. I don't think mutation is a must-have and I typically put it off in favor of the powers that I feel will help me do the stuff that I want to do, but it makes me feel heroic.
Blackstar: the end drain effect is too much for me. I run a bunch of toggles, and I hate turning them back on. In a team situation, I feel like blackstar takes too much potential. Its not really a finishing move, its not a proper "oh-isht" button (see EMP), compared to all the other stuff I could be doing with my endurance (and slots) I don't think that Blackstar is worth it.
Again, the above are philosophical choices, not condemnations of how you like to play Rad/Dark.
With the exception of those powers (that I didn't take) I agreed with the order in which you took your powers. For a solo defender, I'd take Gloom at 2 over RI, a defender that always teamed could put it off till later. I agree with putting off EF until after stamina (though I could also see putting it earlier). Rad *especially* wants to get to stamina ASAP. Rad *especially* benefits from hasten (synergizes with AM, synergizes with so many awesome powers).
I agree with you on EMP, and you are right to want to put a couple of more slots into LR. LR needs more emphasis on recharge, less on slow enhance (it only affects movement, not -recharge and -regen). I love EMP to death. Its up enough to where I can basically fire it off whenever I find it useful (conserve power helps me weather the storm). If I were you, I'd switch up the slotting of EMP to include a couple more acc/hold/rech IOs and skip the set bonuses. Basilisk Gaze has the + recharge bonus, so that might be worth it, but if you are trying to maximize EMP frankenslotting is the way to go.
[Frankenslotting is using set IOs not for the set bonuses but for the advantage they have over generic IOs if you would otherwise slot for every aspect they enhance. For example, 3 acc/hold/rech IOs give more total power than using 1 acc, 1 hold, and 1 rech IO of the same level. By frankenslotting, you can maximize the use of slots (at the expense of set bonuses).]
RA and RI slotting: I like my RA a little beefier and feel that RI can be skimped on a bit more . . . 3-4 slots in RI, 5 slots in RA. RI works fine out of the box, 1 end red and 3 to-hit debuff will be more than enough. For leveling up, I would prioritize RA and slot it for recharge. Doctored Wounds is pretty nice in there, or like EMP frankenslot to get 6 IOs of power out of 5 slots.
EF needs 2 end reduction (3 eventually if you can spare it), you have it slotted just right. Just wanted to emphasize that.
Here's my biggest disagreement where I'd ask you to look beyond playstyle: tenebrous tentacles. I think that power deserves 6 slots fairly early on. It does so much. Ghetto control, debuffs accuracy, *and* does damage. Throw a couple of acc/to-hit and acc/immob in there, some acc/dam, dam/rech, etc . . . TT can do it all and with 6 slots (and creative frankenslotting) you can really make it shine. NF is a little different, its more of a straight damage power (but a good one). Moreso than DB and Gloom and even NF, I'd ask you to look at TT in your arsenal and make sure you were getting the most out of it.
That said, my philosophy about attacks is "if you are going to get them, might as well slot them up". DB and Gloom are 3 slotted with TT and NF being 4 slotted. I personally find that having my bread and butter attacks well-slotted gives me more power and flexibility than have a couple of situational powers well-slotted. So I guess I've drifted back into "what works for my playstyle" rather than anything else. TT *screams* for 3 more slots, its awesome, but I really can't fault you for using NF or gloom however suits you best.
I didn't mean to be pedantic or overly critical, we agree on like 80% of what a rad/dark ought to be about. I just figured that in teasing out the 20% where we didn't agree that a new player could see differences of opinions and take points that would fit how they wanted to play. At your level, though, I would seriously look at frankenslotting RA, EMP, and AM . . . with a little thought, you can get some extra oomph out of those bread and butter powers.
