_Malk_

Any combination is fairly viable in this game, although you might have some difficulty soloing with this character. The only reason I'd say that is because, up until you get APPs, you've only got three powers in your primary that you'll be able to use solo -- healing aura, recovery aura, and regeneration aura. That said, Dark Blast is likely a good combo because of it's -acc secondary effect and a couple of controllery powers -- dark pit, tenebrous tentacles, and torrent -- that will help you stay on your feet. The addition of life drain gives you another heal that you can use to keep yourself up. Hmm...actually, it's starting to look like a really enjoyable combo, both solo and with a team.

For APPs, I'd personally go with dark mastery because of all the synergy you're likely to get with your existing powers. All of those powers just look yummy.

Edit: The bolded portion of your statement makes me smile.

Epic archetype does not mean "zomg power!". Epic means canon-bound.

What was the composition of this team, if I might ask? It seems odd that you would need to constantly be healing and buffing if a team is running well.

Fair enough, that was slack on my part. People have already mentioned Irradiate, Cosmic Burst, and Neutron Bomb above and I agree with them, but I will also throw in Electron Haze for some crowd control and added debuff. Cosmic Burst and Electron Haze both act as ghetto control -- CB has a stun/disorient effect to it and does a fair bit of damage, which is always helpful in mitigating incoming damage to your team. That blaster have one big enemy on him that he just can't drop as quickly as his life bar? Throw him a heal and fire this off immediately after. EH can be used if there's a lot of enemies on one character and he just can't handle them. Knock 'em back and debuff 'em at the same time. If the enemies you're fighting are resistant to knockback, let fly with this and start chaining debuffs. This, Irradiate, and NB are all great, and you should not have a big problem finding time to fire most of them off (I prefer hover with this build because you can put yourself above the tank, irradiate, and use healing aura when you need to). If you're standing close to the tank or scrappers, throw NB in between heals and buffs -- you don't even have to switch your target. You'll just nail the target of your ally.

Absorb Pain is...well, let's call it a personal choice. I would never take it but you do make a good case for it. The vast, vast majority of the time, however, you should never need it. If a tank decides he wants to be Evel Knievel and try to take on four large groups of +3 enemies, the burden of those choices should not fall onto you. It is not your fault if his or her stupidity earns him a bit of debt -- it's a learning experience. If you continually sacrifice what you could be doing in order to keep this one person alive because they're being reckless, the only thing they learn is that this is an acceptable way to impact someone else's gameplay. If this is actually the way you like to play, fine. Be warned, though, there are a lot of players in game who will not even give you the benefit of the doubt and they'll just kick you outright if they see you only have one power from your secondary and you don't use it. It would be similar to a tank taking his first attack and nothing else because a tank is apparently just supposed to be a meatshield. Nobody would ever accept this -- why should we have to?

I find this to be an incredibly odd statement given my own experience as a support character player, and it's very likely due to the teams you're playing with. That's not meant to be a criticism, but simply an observation. You will tend more towards your primary in a pick up group until you're familiar with the group dynamic. If everything just clicks right off the bat, you should be able to blast away with them. If you're running with a regular group and this is how they're expecting you to play, try changing their expectations. You'll notice it's a lot more challenging and, at least from my perspective, a lot more fun if you get to do more than just heal and buff.

Sorry to say, but you seem to still be there if you're trying to play an emp/rad as a pure healer. Such a thing doesn't exist in this game. Emp/rad is potentially one of the more aggressive combos, what with the potential team benefit your secondary offers and the way those powers work.

The bolded statement is illogical. The best team oriented defender is not the emp that sits there and hits their heals, it's the one throwing down with the team and healing and buffing where necessary. You inconvenience yourself, you inconvenience the rest of the team. You're thinking of a WoW priest that doesn't ever train their aggressive abilities.

This hurts me, so very, very badly. There are, at minimum, four rad powers which are tremendously useful for a support character, and many would argue a few more. They should be used. Skipping absorb pain is entirely fine. It's like having someone cheat off your test, watching them get caught, and then taking all of the blame yourself.

Reroll illusion/empathy and fly at 'er. You can throw out your pets and go nuts with your empathy powers while adding some control support to the team.

Did you read his posts? The character he's looking to play is very clearly not a defender.

Edit: It's funny that this last quote is actually a response to another comment you've made, which defends "healers."

*A woman with a fake smile and disheveled hair greets you warmly as you wake. You notice a sturdy iron chain attached you your ankle.*

"Welcome to Azeroth. I hope you enjoy your stay. Here's a stick and a paper bag. Come, fight with us..."

Fair enough.

This faction is far, far smaller than you're making them out to be. These people you describe would be vehemently opposed to rad, dark, kinetic, and storm players taking their healing abilities, and those people are rare. Needle in a haystack rare.

Certainly not a unique situation, but there's more to this story that needs to be explained. Was he a jerk right off the bat, or did it start after a flurry of, "Man, we're mowing through these mobs soooooo fast! Thanks, empath! Why isn't that defender healing, though? He sucks." whilst the TA/A did his job? Did the empath actually make poor power choices, resulting in a character that did nothing but heal and essentially leeched xp from the team? Were either one of them simply idiots?

Debatable. Nice players who are crappy but willing to learn make the best teams because you can see things get better and you've likely made new friends along the way. Crappy players who refuse to learn or take well-intentioned advice are the same as jerks -- they make the game a less pleasant place for everyone. There's nothing like being on a team with another crab who takes no team buffs, no defense powers, all of his crab abilities, and then tells the team that because you only have four crab abilities and a huntsman cone that he's a bigger asset to the team and "a better crab" (the phrase "those toggles don't do anything for anyone" was actually dropped in this scenario, and the faceplanting because of said player's idiocy made the run a nightmare for everyone). Same goes for any character, really, but it's much more noticeable on a support class because people are looking for some kind of shiny thing that indicates you're doing your job.

No such thing as a healer/mezzer. Controllers are mez/support. Go with a controller if this is what you want.

Actually, most people are uppity about the fact that a great number of players think the only defender worth teaming with is an empath, and probably two thirds of those empaths are complete crap.

It's not a problem, it's just a big misconception about defenders and controllers. Controllers are pure support. Doms are mez/dps, while controllers are mez/support. Defenders, contrary to popular opinion of bad tankers, poor scrappers, keyboard face rolling blasters and LOLempaths, are not heal/heal -- we're support/dps. If you're only using the support aspect of a defender, you're not playing the class to its fullest. It would be the equivalent of a mastermind taking nothing from his or her secondary and expecting to be useful.

Based on the sections I've bolded, I'd actually say you're looking to play a controller.

From what you've mentioned in your posts, this actually sounds like the best advice. If you're not big on teaming but want team-centric powers, this seems like it would be a good idea.

Or you could try a bots/TA mastermind and rip everything apart. That's fun too. And the sets have surprising synergy (conceptually, as well! Techie MMs should love this set).

Oooh, good luck with trying to find that info yet. I think most of us are still figuring it out as we play our characters. It's going to depend on how many additional power pools you take and how many power choices you'll have left over.

Dual pistols is definitely a fun and useful secondary for defenders, but don't limit yourself -- there's a lot of other secondaries out there that you can choose from and mix'n'match with primaries. Because we can customize powers the way we want them to look, we're no longer left crying if our powers don't match (if you're one of those people that this matters to...I certainly am).

There's two things you need to know about defenders that's entirely different from WoW (former WoWer, myself -- healing and hybrid class player):

1). There's no "best" primary. Each and every one of them has their strengths and weaknesses, as has been pointed out here, and you'll need to find one that fits your play style. Unfortunately for many people accustomed to playing MMOs with really tight class roles, being a GOOD defender doesn't simply mean standing back and healing. The best defenders are the ones who get in there and get their hands dirty. The only defender primary that I have yet to play is cold simply because I don't really have any great urge to play a cold-themed character. I love every single primary (with the exception of kinetics, we have a mutual tolerance for each other) for different reasons, but they're all enjoyable and all useful.

2). Your secondary is just as useful as your primary because many of your secondary choices have additional effects. DP has four wonderful secondary effects thanks to switch ammo, dark has -acc, sonic has -res, rad blast has -def, psy has - rech and so on and so forth. If you're not using these, you're not playing your character to the fullest and the people you team with are going to have to pick up the slack.

My favorite characters in this game are aggressive defenders and corruptors because they're never not busy doing something. The character I play most aggressively is actually an emp/rad defender and she's that way by design. I make very liberal use of my AoE and cone attacks because it's useful and it gets us through things a lot faster. Plus, it's just fun. I loved being a healer in WoW, but this is just so much more interesting.

For a new player like yourself, I'd recommend either dark or rad as primaries. They're both good fun.

Sadly, the vast majority of Emp/TA characters I've seen have been LOLhealorz, and it makes me cry. If I found someone playing this combo that actively used their blasts, I would be one happy co-defender.

Why would you ever roll an empath to run solo?