Calhou

While your question is a bit unclear, the Super Reflexes set offers the most defense, and the Elude power from that set is likely the strongest defense-enhancing power, alongside Overload from Energy Aura.

As for the best single defense power, though... that'd probably be Invincibility from Invulnerability or somesuch.

Finally, for Power Pools, Weave from Fighting is by far the strongest defense-enhancer.

How about, when you hit Broadsword Build Up, your next hit is a critical hit.
No exceptions. No duration limit. This in addition to the normal Build Up effects.

Straightforward Use:
Build Up -> Critical Hit

Tricky Use:
Build Up -> Wait around outside combat -> Critical Hit -> Build Up -> Critical Hit


This:
- Makes Build Up attractive to Brutes, where it's usually less awesome due to Fury stealing its thunder.
- Lets Stalkers guarantee their Headsplitter-from-Hide (or Slice, I guess) being critical against everyone hit, giving the set some slightly better AoE power.
- Makes Scrappers happy with big orange numbers.

A simple pool to get rid of some annoyances while still being sort of useful - and very flavourful for the more pacifist-type heroes, and for sneaky villains. (Especially those packing flame-throwers.)

Kindness

Tier 1:
Gentle Encouragement: Auto, Small PBAoE (Not Self) ally +res (all, ~5%), +regen (~50%), -interrupt

A word of encouragement, a pat on the shoulder - just being there makes your friends and allies feel more at ease, able to handle more punishment and cope under pressure.

Gentle Hands: Toggle, -100 magnitude knockback, +10% strength to healing

Even delivering the most terrible attacks, there's a gentleness to your attacks - your foes are not sent flying, and your allies find your healing touches more soothing.

Tier 2:
Gentle Discouragement: Ranged -dam (-1000%, 5 seconds). 120 second recharge.

No. That's not acceptable behaviour. That over-the-top blast you're charging up? I won't have it.

Tier 3:
Gentle Face: Toggle, -100 magnitude afraid to all powers and summons, self +res (all, ~5%)

With a face like that, who would flee from you? And to strike that face... unconsciously, your enemies tend to hold back.

While I have no experience with beams, AR does have a high-end single-target attack, and a rather strong one at that - Ignite.

Grabbing moderate amounts of recharge, you should be able to keep two of them burning at all times - and while it's not Blaze-level damage, it'll be doing some pretty scary things with those Scourges.

(Web Envelope out of Mace Mastery, or perhaps Electric Fence out of Electricity Mastery, can keep your target in place to be properly grilled.)

I'd rank stunning sets as such, in order of stunning ability:

Stone > Electric*/** > SS* > Energy > Warmace > MA** > Kinetic > StJ > Dark**

*: Too much knockback in the main stun power to be viable.

**: Some attacks take an additional stun procs beyond the taunt proc - specifically,the immobilise and endurance modification sets.

I'm going to go ahead and note here that you should never, under any circumstances, skip storm kick for MA - better to skip Eagle's Claw or one of the mid-range attacks.

Storm Kick does more damage per time spent than any other attack, even without counting the defense boost tankers get out of it!

From my experience, you have a couple of secondaries that stand out. Among them:

- Martial Arts, for the awesome, basically constant, +10% to all defenses. Especially on SO builds, they help get the defense sets to the 'softcap' easily, letting you live easily with moderate slotting in the defense toggles. (For heavy IO builds, you likely want to pair it with resistance sets instead, to get both resistances and defenses up there.)

- Super Strength, for the awesome, basically constant (outside the crash) +80% to all damage. Alongside the best AoE attack available (Foot Stomp) and decent enough single-target smashitude, it offers a very solid damaging set.

- Dark Melee, for the handy Siphon Life, offering you a heal for sets that lack it, and the lovely Soul Drain instead of silly old Build Up.

- Ice and Stone Melee, for Ice Patch and Fault respectively. These do very well on teams, letting you play at being a controller even as you tank away, both also having nice capstone powers in Frozen Aura (a smaller Foot Stomp) and Seismic Smash (a reliable hold in a great attack) respectively.

I appreciate the comments so far, and I've made a sort-of-decision: Dominator it is! I'm pretty attracted by Plant/ and Elec/ both, and /Psi is very attractive with that Drain Psyche, which might even offer the kind of regen shenanigans needed to take down hard targets easily. Then again, Seismic Smash seems to make stacking holds a breeze, and Blaze is also lovely... not to mention the other primaries. And secondaries. Anyway, I'll feel my way around the archetype for a bit until I find something I can stick with in the long run. Thanks.

Hmm... I was looking more towards the 'tens of billions' range, which may be difficult to reach without going crazy on purples and PvP IOs - and Tanker wasn't even on my map to begin with, but I'll certainly have a look at that set combination, see what I can come up with.

I'm looking for a new character - one to put all those millions and billions of influence into.

Being a long-term goal, I'm looking for something that needs, or wants, an overwhelming amount of pure influence invested.

Because of this, I'm asking - what archetype and powersets would you recommend, that really get bang for their buck once you start tossing mass purples and PvP IOs at them?
I'm not looking for something that can become awesome cheaply - consider this a project with no budget concerns whatsoever - but rather something that really feels every last bit of those five (or more...?) purple sets, something that just keeps getting more and more effective as the overpriced enhancements keep piling up.

My thoughts so far are that perhaps something with awesome buffs to permanentise might be suitable - /Time/, a Dominator or a Peacebringer? - or perhaps some AoE fiend with long-recharge powers like a crashless nuke Corrupter or a Crabstermind... Though there's also the SMASHitude of something like a super-solid Brute or Scrapper... well, to sum it up, I'm lost.

Please offer your suggestions.

Given the four-pool limit, the easiest way to find some healing without losing defenses would probably be to drop Hasten and something like Placate for Aid Other and Aid Self.

If it's worth losing the hasten recharge for is another question.

To put it plainly, Mercs is bad.

Really bad, compared to the alternatives. They have ninja-levels of survival, less damage than any of the other sets, and utterly useless control and healing powers. (...when the medic is even alive.)

Serum does not exist, and you should never pick the mysterious empty level 18 slot in your primary powerset.

To add insult to injury, pet AI issues has them try to fight in melee at the most inappropriate times.

That said, it's still a Mastermind primary, so you can solo at reasonable speeds, and your little friends can deal reasonable damage on teams - remember to put damage and -res proc IOs in them, and to keep them at range whenever possible. Tankerminding should also be fine.

My own Mercs/Pain character (General Anaesthesia, how could I *not* make the character?) is in the late 20s, and is doing decently enough so far, both alone and on teams, where your buffs and heals will let you turn questionable teams into sufficient teams.

Still... power-wise, any of the other pet sets would be better. What we do for themes~

While it does indeed cause redraw, I'd also like to note that it's absolutely worth it despite this - a 20% resistance reduction is huge, and the 40% for poison damage is just plain awesome if you can exploit it.

(Which you can. Poisonous Ray and Venom Grenade itself, as well as the bonus damage on your smashes.)

From my experience, Night Widow is quite simply better at both damage and survival - but, and this is important, the Bane Spider comes with a metric ton of resistance reduction (Surveillance, Venom Grenade and Shatter Armor from the mace pool) which helps their teams (and leagues, even more so!) melt AVs into the ground very quickly, beyond anything a single Night Widow piling on the damage can do.

6% from Steamy Mist, 5% from the Call to Arms: Defense Bonus Aura for Pets IO slotted in Tornado.

Defence-wise, you have:
Force Fields (~30%, ~11% for you), Traps (~15%, all for you), Storm Summoning (~11%, ~6% for you) and Dark (~5%, all for you)

Resistance-wise, there's:
Thermal (~24%, none for you), Pain (~18%, all for you) and Storm Summoning (10%, none for you).

(Dark, Storm Summoning and Thermal also have better resistance against certain types, but I'm ignoring that for now. Also note that the Storm Summoning values include both Recharge-Intensive Pet set auras in Tornado.)

Ninjas specifically really need their defences, so I'd suggest either of the three top contenders - Force Fields for unmatched defence, or Traps/Storm Summoning for utility, including questionable heals, resistance reduction (awesome!) an various extra pets.

In a primarily team-based environment, I'd go for one of the slightly less defensive sets, probably Storm Summoning, as I personally dislike traps. Freezing Rain is awesome for all types of battles, Tornado deals significant damage against targets it can't knock about, and when playing solo, good Hurricane use can make up for a lot of the lost defence from Force Fields.

If not a hero or an alpha-unlocked 50, do the Mortimer Kal Strike Force in Sharkhead Isle - it'll give you a semi-permanent minor damage increase, lasting until you unlock your alpha incarnate slot.

If, on the other hand, you are alpha-unlocked - well, Musculature Alpha adds damage, increasing amounts ignoring ED as you increase its tier.

While obvious, fast-recharging Aim and Build Up powers help, as does the Assault power from the Leadership pool. Vengeance also adds damage, but it requires teammates face-planting. (As a blaster, you should be quite cross if it happens, seeing as how it's your job.) You can get additional chances for free build ups from certain IO procs, mainly Gaussian's (which is probably best in Leadership-pool Tactics, for a blaster) and Decimation (which goes in your most-spammed ranged attack.)

Recharge will also increase your damage output - both by letting you use your best attacks more often, and by recharging Aim and Build Up. Hasten, the Spiritual Alpha and one of the Destiny incarnate powers can help on this front.

The Reactive Interface incarnate power can add damage over time to all your attacks, as well as reducing enemy resistance slightly.

Reducing enemy resistances helps, but you're fairly limited in that aspect as a Blaster - Sonic Blast damaging powers do it by default, and the Surveillance and Melt Armor powers from Munitions and Blaze mastery respectively can add some, though it pales in comparison to what bane spiders, sonic defenders and such can stack up.

And, finally, last but not least - Defiance. You'll automatically gain damage bonuses just by doing what you do best - blasting! As a blaster, there's no reason to ever stop attacking unless you've already faceplanted.

Teammates also deserve a mention - Kinetics, Empathy, Pain Domination, Radiation Emission, Pool Leadership and Spider/Widow Teamwork can all provide damage buffs of varying strength. (Empaths and Pain-types especially should keep you Fortituded, Adrenalin Boosted and/or Painbringered as much as possible - I mean, why else would you want them around? (Apart from scraping you off the floor when necessary, of course.(Though the pain-types especially should consider you faceplanting around them a privilege, what with them getting buffs from picking you up and all.)))

Optimal slotting would likely be the four aura uniques, followed by two generic recharge IOs - the last part is quite optional, though, and it might be best off at only four slots. (If low on slots, two slots with the resistance auras will be best, unless you're using a heavy defense-buff secondary like /Traps or /Force Fields, in which case the two defense auras will be more useful.)

I'd think the Super Strength primary is the one most appreciative of the new incarnate abilities, simply because the Judgement slot gives you something new to fire off during your rage damage crash. (Where you won't mind the long activation time of something like Ion, and that thing supposedly hits up to *40* enemies... delicious.)

Basically, all damage bonuses are multiplicative with regards to the base scalar: A brute needs +300% damage bonus to end up at 3x damage. A scrapper needs less than +200%. Certainly, brutes get quite a lot of free damage from Fury - but in exchange, they get much less damage from both enhancements and external damage buffs (The aforementioned /shield and DM/, as well as KM/ and build ups in general.)

Of course, it's more likely that it's multiple ISPs all over Europe that are suffering simultaneous system failures affecting only connections to the European CoH servers, while leaving all other connections unaffected, right after a maintenance of the previously mentioned CoH servers, and the appearance of a large file to download from them. My guess is, certain parts of the CoH server or network infrastructure are/were misbehaving and/or getting bottlenecked, but something present in multiples, meaning not all incoming connections had to go through the problem.