Dr Harmony

I think thats a very good point about Aid Other eclipsing Clarity.

Clarity is more than just "Adds sleep protection on top of Dispersion" in that its uninteruptable, good for mobile allies who leave the bubble a lot (eg melee Blasters).

But, it doesn't heal. And I've had plenty of times on my Sonic Defender where I watched everyones health bars trickle down slowly and a spot heal would have been perfect.

Aid Other helps enormously for those occasions where say the Controller next to you is asleep and you need to wake them up to turn the tide.

Sorry, thats for Irradiate.

No worries. Ill have to consider that Aegis slotting for my own Tanker - Im working on typed defence mainly but it still applies.

And 50 merits + 20 million inf = 1 alignment merit, do-able once per day. It can definitely up your accumulation rate.

Speaking as an Electric/Martial Arts newbie (level 25 currently)...

I'd go for Spirtual. Better uptime on Energise, plus better healing, plus more endurance due to better recharge on Power Sink.
Cardiac will give you the extra resistance, but the extra end reduction will be wasted. It seems to me you're already overflowin on endurance management tools.

You armors that are three slotted with Aegis - do they cap out your resistance? If not, does replacing the triple with a Rech/Res do the trick? It would be a shame to lose a few points since Electric Armour has such good resists. I doubt you need the extra end reduction. I doubt you need Physical Perfection even, but I'm a low maintenance endurance player who doesn't mind my bar dropping quite a bit.

For the Gladiator's Armor, save up your Hero Merits. Run weekly task forces and convert the merits, and race through the signature arc each week. It can be a long term goal if you like.

Otherwise, loooking good.

I disagree, OOB. I think Gravity could be (and should be) brought up to speed fairly easily.

Shorten the animations on Propel and Wormhole, both to around 1.5 seconds.
Swap Wormhole and Dimension Shift in order of power selection.
Up the radius on Wormhole to match other area stuns.
Give Lift a 1.3-ish Damage scalar like Gravity Dominators and Mind Controllers get.

You now have a set which shines in single target damage, and is no longer too far behind in area control. Ideal for solo Controllers or a more aggresive/less support role in teams.

Borea's missions also accumulate Vanguard Merits.

150 Vanguard Merits = 1 Grai Matter
1 Grai Matter + 2 shard = any other common component.

That can speed up your accumulation of shards nicely, and obviously works even better for ship raids.

I love my Rad/Em Blaster. Stun stacking, punching, heat vision - she's a regular supergirl.

Ive gone for Kinetic Combats, but on a budget I'd prioritise like this:

1) Slot Thunderstrike (6 pieces) in XRay Eyes, Cosmic Burst and Neutrino Bolt. Its cheap, gives you capped damage and 50-60% acc, rech and end redux in the powers, and will grant you 12% or so ranged defence, always on.

2) Crushing Impact, 5 pieces in each melee attack. This gives +Recharge, which means more Aim and Build Up, and similarly good values for you powers. ON a Blaster, I'd skip the Acc/Dam piece, you have Aim and Build Up, Rad's inherent accuracy and -Def, and global accuracy bonuses coming out of your ears by now.
Its cheap, but a bit more than Thunderstrike.

3) Positrons Blast, 5 pieces in Electron haze and Neutron Bomb. More recharge. This is getting a bit more expensive.

4) Eradication (4 pieces) + a cheap Dam/End in Eradication. More energy/Ranged defence. Maybe do the same for Atomic Blast after.

This will also give you +10% recovery and some extra end, and your powers will be cheaper to use, so 1 slot in Conserve Power may be OK.

I've made an Electric/MA tanker. She's only level 22 at the moment, but I can outline what I've got planned.

Thunder Kick - take and slot for Bruising. Im doing 4 Kinetic Combat (not the triple) + an Acc/Dam.

Storm Kick - take for the +Def bonus. 4 Kinetic Combat plus an Acc/Dam

Thunder Kick and Storm Kick will have a 20% chance to knock down this way due to the Kinetic Combat proc. This will not only provide extra mitigation, it should look really cool with both animations.

Kick from Fighting - 4 Kinetic Combat because its a set mule essentially.

Dragon's Tail is a must-have as your only AoE.

Eagles Claw is a must have too for the damage boost, and gets 5 Crushing Impact, so that it gets good actual statistics for the attack.

Focus Chi is worth taking.

This leaves 3 high damage attacks, of which I'll choose two and 5-slot Crushing Impact in.
Crane Kick - probably the worse of the 3 with 60% KB
Crippling Axe Kick - higher damage and -Fly and immobilise
Cobra Strike - 75% Stun, good to stack with other powers.

I'd advise dropping Crane Kick. I'm going without Cobra Strike just for fun, because I like knockback more than hard controls, but I'm aware that it is sub-optimal to do this.

Earthquake's long animation time bugs me.

Stalagmites bugs me by requiring me to be on the ground, and not having an alternate animation to its footstamp.

Power Sink bugs me by having an endurance cost of 13 - which often makes it difficult to fire off when you need it. I know, think ahead, but it still bugs me.

I'm on the fence.

Currently, it cost me 4 Hero Merits effectively to get my Blaster a defence based shield that doesn't have intrusive graphics. (ie do 4 alignment shifts to get the Scorpion Shield and go back to hero).

While I was there, I picked up the Demonic accolade, since its much easier to get than the Eye of the Magus. I have gone the whole way round on one other hero just for this acoclade in fact.

It felt like a bit of a pain having to do this, but to be honest it gave me something different to do, and it wasn't hard to wrap this all up in a story in my head and quite enjoy it. I also helped a friend out with his Patron arc while I was at it., and got to see some other stuff. Different scenery, different villains, and I dont really need those Hero Merits anyway. I like having a varied to-do list on my characters, and this was more fun than just getting the power and then grinding the same hero tip missions for points I dont need.

I agree with the original poster's general sentiment.

Force Field appears to have been designed as the ultimate defensive set - you make your team very safe up front at the expense of no reactive heals and no offensive force multipliers.

It's territory has been encroached on by both multi-purpose sets like Cold, Traps and Time, which provide similar levels of defence, and the ability for characters to build up defence independently. I've got a Blaster at capped Smashing/Lethal and 30%+ to Energy in her low 40s - that was unthinkable when Force Fields was designed.

I would suggest keeping Force Fields as the ultimate defence set by giving it Defence Debuff Resistance (as suggested before) and probably some resistance as well, maybe in Dispersion Bubble, maybe in other powers like Force Bubble providing Smashing/Lethal resistance to everyone inside it.

(Personally, I liked the minimal power pick investment)

Defence alone is easily neutered, and it sucks to have your role defined as the ultimate safety-giver and then face a room full of Earth Thorn Casters or Devouring Earth and realise the bulk of your power set is useless due to some soggy Quicksand floor or a little pink crystal humming away.

Earth brings more control to the table (all of it ranged except for the skippable Salt Crystals). It can control three spawns easily with Earthquake, Volcanic Gas and Stalagmites, with only one of those requiring line of sight.

Plant matures much more quickly and does more damage.

For a secondary I'd suggest Fire, or maybe Electricty, since both have a ranged area attack and a self-damage boost.

With Earth, I really dont think you need to be averse to melee at all. Once youve locked down a spawn and sent your personal Tanker in (Animate Stone) you're in very little danger.

Two people have spoken up about how much they enjoy their Sonic Defenders (Aneko and False Fiction), and both have Sonic Blast as a secondary. Sonic Blast practically out-performs Sonic Resonance in terms of applying resistance debuffs. At least half of any hard-target-meltage you'd see with this pairing comes from the secondary, not the primary, and could be fairly closely matched by a Storm/Sonic, TA/Sonic. Rad/Sonic, and so on.

I do care that other sets can hit the same numbers, because we shouldn't be penalised in terms of performance for choosing sets on concept grounds. I like Sonic too - my Sonic/Energy Defender was the first characterI unlocked the Alpha slot on out of over ten level 50s, but during my career I had a fair few gripes.

- Struggling with endurance in the early levels. I had enough to shield everyone and keep Disruption and Dispersion up, but precious little to blast. This was before inherent Stamina, but wasn't fun.

Suggestion: Lower the end cost of Disruption Field.

- Difficulty soloing. I couldn't do invincible missions until my mid-30s, whereas nearly every other character I played hit that at 22.

Suggestions: Give me better -Res solo. Either make Sonic Siphon stack, or affect multiple targets, or make Disruption Field somehow workable without an ally. Use the "Swap Ammo" trick to unlock two mutually exclusive powers, an ally toggle and a self-toggle maybe.

- Being away for a while and then joining a request to beat up Babbage. Getting a "lol psi" from some articulate teammate when I turned up and realising all my protection powers were useless.

Suggestion: Add Psi resistance to Clarity/and or Dispersion. (Or Psi defence...)

- Limited IO potential, as Burning Chick says.

Suggestion: Give us a new set or two for resistance with some decent bonuses like happened to PBAoE sets. Or add some token defence somewhere, eg Psi Defence in Clarity maybe, so we can slot a LotG/Kismet etc in there. (Make the Clarity Psi Def Power-Boostable too)
At least we can slot a Steadfast IO no problem.
Maybe add some -Def into Sonic Siphon so we could add an Achilles heel in there like other sets often do to boost their existing -Res?

I think theres a lot of little tweaks that could be done to the set without re-writing it that would make it more competitive and fun to play, and hopefully more popular.

If the Stun stagger from OG bothers you, the Immobilise proc from Razzle Dazzle will help some.

And Electric Melee is great for using multiple Eradications (4 pieces + 1 other Dam/End frankenslot): +Endurance, +Energy Defence (covering your resistance hole) and +HP. What you lose on Kinetic Combats you gain here.

No Psi Resistance (still a common hole in many armor sets), very common in the 40s.
No endurance tools or endurance drain resistance, very common in the 40s.
Heavy endurance costs when teaming via Disruption Field mainly.
No reactive healing whatsoever.
Very few tools for soloing - basically a single target -Res and 25% resistance + mez protection.

It gives up a lot to get that 60% -resist against hard targets. Its a solid enough low maintenance team support set, yes, but one with many holes.

And any Defender can take Ageless, Rebirth or Vengeance. I dont see their relevance when any non-sonic can take Barrier.

I agree that Sonic Resonance could use some help, and that Thermal further eclipses it.

Part of the problem is that it is often compared to other sets when combined with Sonic Blast, which makes up for its shortcomings by being the best Defender blast set.

I'd say Defender level Sonic is the king of +Resist buffs, but could use some love to make it king of -Res debuffs. Currently its outperformed by a good few other sets (eg Storm, TA) in this regard in all cases except against a single hard target.

Unslotted, Dark Regen will fill your health bar on about 3 or 4 enemies, so recharge and accuracy should come first before healing. I'd aim for max recharge, 30-40% accuracy, and as much healing as remains.

When you find yourself fighting a single AV, some healing enhancement is nice. Theft of Essence is definitely a good idea though.

I much prefer Oppressive Gloom to Cloak of Fear. The stuns are more likely to stack with other attacks from your team, the end cost is tiny compared to Cloak of Fears very high cost, and Cloak of Fear comes with low accuracy.

In short, Cloak of Fear is very slot hungry, needing accuracy and end redux to function, but Oppressive Gloom isn't. One acc in the default slot is great. The health loss from Oppressive Gloom is minimal, and also I think decreases against higher con enemies. I think that bug is still there.

I really like this idea also.

Fire, Electric or Dark seem like good fits.

- Storm Kick's defence bonus helps you build up layered defence.
- The 33% damage burst from Eagle's Claw (not Storm Kick) works well with a damage aura, because it doesn't cost animation time in those precious 3 seconds.
- The damage aura helps with not having any area attacks until level 35.

For the record, I love both Energy Melee and the "coochy coo tickle" attack in Fiery Melee
And I love your description of it, Lxndr.

Thats why alternate animations are the way to go.

I've just started out with my Alpha slot (crafted the first ability last night), and chose Musculature, reasoning that since I have no other sources of damage boost it's most likely to have a noticeable effect here than on any other character.

I've got recharge coming out of my ears, and Conserve Power on a fairly tight cycle thanks to said recharge, so i thought Id try something different.

Has anyone else tried this, and how was it higher up?