DrGamma

Prime example of a failed "Detect Sarcasm" roll.

And traps rules! I should work on my trappers more...

Silverado's GM Killer was a Fire/MM, but he didn't cap ranged defense, instead he went for 30-ish ranged (and AoE I think) and used small purples conservatively. I think he did that so he could have more +rech and +dam...

I like my doms even at low level, and even though I have more lvl 50 heroes than villains (because I only bought CoV much after CoH), I like the variety of playing both blueside and redside. I like redside especially when I get to St. Martial and those cool missions in Grandville, so I guess GR won't change that for me.

But, while I risk sounding like captain obvious... I keep seeing all these complaints about the black market... When it won't be an issue anymore come GR. I agree that the lack of SFs or more teams sucks for some people (not me, since I play almost entirely solo anyway), but the market will cease to be a problem once it's all joined... Just thought I'd point it out.

I'm weird, so I play all my defenders (and most everyone else) almost exclusively solo and love them to bits (while I play a bunch of mostly ranged characters, the defender forums are the only place where I lurk regularly)

Rad/Rad/Dark (50) - Dr. Gamma: first character, first 50 (and he got there fast, solo, before IOs, XP smoothing, debt nerfing, patrol xp etc...), and the guy I learned a lot of tricks from and made all the mistakes in the game with (such as almost no slotting in the beginning, not taking EMP or LR ASAP and exploring areas of much higher level and getting owned time and again by snipers, unattended ambushes of much higher level, even supa-trolls)... Now, with moderately priced IOs, he survives even better than before (only time I have to be extra careful is against EBs/AVs), does pretty decent ST damage and great AoE damage.

FF/Son (37) - Vibror: current solo project (along with my 42 crab) and he's a blast with softcapped defs, hover (or FB in low ceilings), lots of control and Assault + sonic's res debufs helping even more than I expected with ST damage. But he does suck up end like crazy. Planning on taking Psy soon.

Plus some lowbies:

TA/A
Kin/Dark
Dark/Psi
Storm/Elec

Can't remember any others right now...

As a loosely related side note... all my corrs remain lowbies...

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I want to have kins, but also do some damage if needed.

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Don't get me wrong, any Kin will do great damage after using Fulcrum and Electric isn't all that bad. But I thought I should point out the usual complaint about its low damage, though (people complain about it lacking a third, hard-hitting blast like most other blast sets, saying that what it gets instead, Voltaic Sentinel, doesn't help all that much). I still enjoy playing my electric blast characters... But if you don't want to sap, electric does look kinda wasted. Kin/Ice is real good, too.

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1. Would it be wise to take stealth to help with travel if I use the Inertial Reduction instead of the leadership pool.

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I wouldn't go so far as grabbing the stealth pool (might as well grab super speed instead, it grants you stealth, too). What I meant is a Stealth IO Enhancement that you can slot in travel powers (even in sprint and, yeah, in Inertial Reduction). They tend to be expensive but you'll make tons of moneyanyway, from your late thirties on, even if you never touch the market. So even if you don't want to worry about Inventions, investing in a stealth IO (and in a knockback protection IO, too) when you have the money will help a lot.

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By "ED", do you mean the enhancements have diminishing returns? Is that 3 per any type of enhancement per power. If I put 3 damage enhancements into a power, the 4th will be less effective and I probably should use an accuracy or endurance reduction. Is that what you are referring too?

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That's exactly what I mean (ED = enhancement diversification). Also: accuracy is probably even more important than damage in your attacks (and it's real important in your kin stuff, too). Plan to add 1 or 2 Accuracy SOs in all of them (more than that is usually overkill).

I won't comment too much on the build, especially because that depends on what you want to do more with the character (at a glance, it looks like you don't want to solo). Even without soloing MUCH, I'd still recommend you try to fit Lightning Bolt in the Build. Charged Bolts aren't so quick like Neutrino Bolt, to make an attack chain all on their own.

With a Kin/Elec, I'd probably try to fit in Short Circuit, too, to sap (drain endurance from the enemies so they can't do anything). Sapping might not work as great as you'd expect, and Short Circuit has a huge animation time, but it's not bad damage (especially after you use FS) and sapping does help.

And while defenders do great with the Leadership pool, it's not helping you that much: maneuvers is adding very little mitigation to you or your team, unless you're teamed with other defense based people. I hardly ever miss Tactics, since everybody slots to hit what they need already (and outside PVP, Knives of Artemis and a few Arachnos, you won't miss the extra perception, either). Finally Assault, which is usually great for defenders, doesn't help you that much from 32 on, since you'll likely be damage-capped almost all the time with Fulcrum Shift. If you team a lot and really want the Leadership Pool, though, try to go for Vengeance. Word is that it's more than worth it, despite being situational.

Finally, I don't think you need BOTH transference and Power Sink. Transference recharges real fast (in case you miss) and comes MUCH earlier, so I'd stick with it. Power Sink could make a 1-2 combo with SC to sap a whole group quickly, though, so later you might wanna try out trading one for the other in a respec.

As for the questions:

1. You can only slot 3 enhancements to the same aspect of a power (for instance, 3 recharge reduction in hasten) before ED kicks in and further enhancements are worth almost nothing. So you can only cut hasten's recharge time in about half (a bit more than that, since hasten affects it's own recharge time while it's up) and it won't be permanent. If you slot some recharge reduction in siphon speed, though, and stack it as often as you can, Hasten is gonna be close to perma. You CAN make it perma using a lot of bonuses from invention sets and stuff, but it gets expensive and not so simple, I wouldn't go for it so soon.

2. Siphon Speed can be tricky to use as a travel power because you might miss, you're running on the ground without the stealth that super speed provides and you draw the attention of the baddie you siphoned from AND from his friends. It's great before you can get a real travel power, but use with care. Inertial Reduction, though, is a great travel power, arguably better than SJ since it cannot be detoggled and has no supression. So you don't need a travel power: stick with careful use of siphon speed for only 4 quick levels and at 18, instead of 14, you get a great travel power. Try to add a Stealth IO for extra safety.

3. You don't need stamina (even with a couple leadership toggles and your armor). But I like having it, too. Especially since Transference doesn't arrive all that quick. Then again, that's 3 power picks, and while Hurdle and Health are really good, they're not as useful to you as some of the other options...

4. The fire/kin's you see all around are controllers (using fire control), not defenders. They make all the enemies stand still doing some fire damage over time, and after level 32 they let their 3 maniac pets go crazy on the controlled enemies (later still, they throw firballs at them). It chews the baddies up fast. If you want to lock everybody in place and let your pets chew them, go fire/kin. If you wanna blast (and maybe sap) and provide even bigger buffs and debuffs, kin/elec is fine. If you wanna blast but don't wanna sap (although I find sapping fun!), you might look at other defender secondaries: kin/ice does huge damage, kin/son increases everybody's damage even more than just a kin, kin/rad is an AoE monster (and the def debuff helps your kinetics powers hit), kin/dark adds some mitigation lacking for most kins (then again, so does sapping)... Every secondary brings something good to the table. People complain about electric being low damage, though. Just pick what you think is fun and give it a try for a while.

5. You skipped 5!

6. There is. Check out the player guides section for guides about macros.

7. Hit backspace. Took me a while to find that one, too.

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The Def EM pulse is a stun as well. Not sure about the animations being the same though, as I haven't played a rad blaster.

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The Def EM Pulse is a Hold (either that, or all those times I used it the stunned enemies just somehow decided to sit still and there's a bug that lets it take hold sets...):

http://coh.redtomax.com/data/powers/...sion.EMP_Pulse

While the Blaster EM Pulse is a Stun:

http://coh.redtomax.com/data/powers/...stery.EM_Pulse

Edit: And so far there are no rad blasters (much to the chagrin of blasters, apparently, but proliferation will eventually get there, I guess)... Unless that means some def or corr with rad blast...

I'll pipe in with En/Dev:

- the joys of KB (in area and at range, not to mention toe bombing) mentioned before as great mitigation for solo play (though in the rare times I played in teams, it wasn't hard to make my KB help instead of hinder)

- plus the joys of the much maligned devices, also mentioned before (caltrops!!!, CD invisibility as someone said before, I like my TD and GD too... and trip mines can be so much fun - if usually slower than just letting loose).

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I love the Energy/Devices because its does good damage and the knockback is another way of mitigating damage.

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This. And elec mastery (and I didn't even take the god mode). It's quite survivable even before the controls from elec mastery or without soft-capping ranged def (I only got around 25%, plus a bunch of bonuses for HP and regen, and found it more than enough).

Plus I love caltrops and like hitting hard targets thanks to TD. And CD's stealth plus a stealth IO make it so YOU are the one starting fights, in the position you want, 99% of the time (bar ambushes, rikti drones, knives and those floating eye things, I guess). I sometimes like opening up with a toe-bombing and when I'm in a patient mood, I even find it hilarious pulling a big bad boss into a minefield (I don't NEED to, but it can be cool). I even enjoy using GD now and then, though it CAN cramp my sneaky style...

I really enjoyed my rad/rad/dark immensely all the time to 50 (though soloing some AVs - even in EB incarnation - was a pain). I know about the awesome-sauce that is rad/sonic, but I'm just not so happy if I can't throw out a bunch of AoE damagey attacks (which /rad and later the dark epic gave me plenty of). While I rarely play my 50's, I've taken that defender to the walls of cimerora, not really to farm, just to have fun decimating over a dozen +0/+1 traitors in the time it takes me to cast my debuffs and AoE chain once (and with very little risk).

Lately, I've been thoroughly enjoying a FF/Sonic I'm leveling up (thankfully, FF helps my hunger for AoE with repulsion bomb).

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It's been KnockDOWN for over 6 months now...


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Uh... Yeah, sorry there. I always say KB (even when it's down or up) and was actually thinking "can't do that when posting"... And then did it anyway. >.<

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FF/Sonic is a great combination.

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This. You'll be helping a lot with damage (which would be sonic/* big advantage over FF) thanks to /sonic's res debuff, with the godlike protection of FF.

For a squishier team, FF helps more than Sonic against most mez, not only damage, cause while both have a sleep hole in their dispersion bubbles, FF makes the mez miss almost always. Sure, now that most things supress instead of detoggling, a quick sleep isn't as deadly as it might have been in the past, but still...

As someone already said, Cold/ is a great team protection set, too, with almost the same level of protection as FF but some amazing debuffs. But since you didn't mention it, I assumed the set's look turned you off or something.

About your Repulsion Bomb mention... No, the stun is not guaranteed. It has a 40% chance of stun and 40% chance of KB, making it a great mitigation tool, but not guaranteed to stack like you said you wanted. It's even got decent damage for a defender AoE, so it helps shore up sonic's lack there (though honestly, debuffing a bunch of enemies for your team's AoEs probably helps a lot more).

I just got a FF/Sonic to the 30's myself and it's great. But it probably doesn't apply to you much, cause since I'm sort of a lone wolf *eyes sig...*, I've played him entirely solo so far (won't even take the ally bubbles - I know, the waste! - and will take tough/weave instead, getting quite survivable in the process). I haven't really had the damage problems I expected I might. He kills stuff almost as fast as many ranged-only blaster I have played or seen. Right now he has some endurance problems, though, keeping up dispersion, assault, maneuvers, hover and his attack chain to kill everything on his own (and that's after stamina... I'm hoping it will improve a lot after I hit IO sets).