DrMike2000

Yes you are on the right track.

Defenders are the least played main hero archetype according to some informal studies done both here and on the Controllers boards - people logging in and counting heads using the search function. The Defender population is particulalry thin at higher levels if I recall.

Dark/Dark was my first Defender ever, a good solo and team powerset. Twilight Grasp is probably the best heal in the game, and you also get a pet that uses it, and the best defensive debuffage in game to boot, with a sprinkling of offensive debuffage in Tar Patch.

Dark Miasma is the sort of powerset you dont see heaps of (unlike say Kinetics or Empathy), but often gets a Yay! from a team when one joins.

The dev team rocks!

I really wasn't expecting a Walk power. I know its been requested many times, and theres been plenty of times when I've wished I didn't have to run everywhere, hanging around in an SG base or whatever.

Seeing it actually happen (bugs or not) is a really nice surprise.

My level 50 Storm/Ice and 50 Dark/Rad both think it is the bee's knees!

My level 50 FF/Sonic respec'd out of it because it and Screech were making all the defence I'd painstakingly built up worthless since the enemies were all mezzed.

It drains next to no end and very little health, and stuns every minion whjo enters melee range. Stick a Stupefy proc in there and it will repel them too, for extra laffs!

I think its the best epic power available to Defenders out of any set, and even better its available from level 41 and needs no slotting.

Its very good match for Kin/Elec- just dont put the Stupefy knockback proc in there.

Definitely go Traps - having a Force Field Generator follow you looks much more Sky Raider-y than using your un-weaponed hand to put individual bubbles around teammates.

You can still fly around shooting, pausing occasionally to drop one of a number of slightly clunky and very Sky Raider-y looking things on the floor, to great effect too.

Acid Mortar, Poision Gas Trap, Seeker Drones and Trip Mines all feel more Sky Raider than Force Bolt, Repulsion Field and Force Bubble.

Yeah, exactly.

Pain Domination gives everyone on the team 10 bucks worth of buffs, Empathy gives 50 bucks to its best friend and 20 bucks to a couple of runners up. Call me a commie, but sharing with everyone seems more heroic to me

When I saw the stats for Pain Domination I was very let down. I've started playing it now, and I'm not expecting it to be particularly brilliant.

I'd prefer Storm. Both sets offer 8% Defence slotted via their stealth aura powers (Freezing Fog and Steamy Mist) so you'll be sitting at the Defence cap very early on with either set, making the cold shields redundant.

Storm gets Freezing Rain at 8 rather than 26, so its there with its -Def for those awkward teens when beginner's luck has run out and you havent got SO's yet.

Storm's spot heal is also ideal for a SR Scrapper since they dont need gallons of healing, but just a little top up every now and then when something big gets through, thats why Aid Self is popular amongst SR scrappers.

I used to play on a low end machine, so I'd say "dont play melee" - its horrible to be in the middle of a group unable to target a nearby enemy due to lag.

Similarly with a Rad/* Defender, those enemy-centric toggles aren't much use when the lag kicks in if you cant targetenemies quickly and efficiently.

I'd recommend a Sonic or FF Defender. You can buff the team entirely through the UI, ie you dont need to watch the 3D game display at all. If you get hit by lag, your Dispersion Bubble/Sonic Dispersion is still rock solid, as is your Disruption Field if you're Sonic Resonance.
I'd go with Sonic Blast for a secondary, simply because its the most powerful set due to the -Res you can stack with it.

With both sets, it pretty much possible to sit out a single spawn without doing very much at all, and still contribute hugely to the team.

Do try a scrapper sometime, you'll be surprised at their power once they get SO's, but make one for mainly solo and small teams. They totally rock at that, and thrive on the lack of framerate issues.

Thermal's like Pain Domination - it's better than Empathy at spreading the love around on an 8-person team, but not as good for small teams.

Thermal for Defenders will offer 31% Res vs S/L/E/N (is that right?) and 62% vs Fire, but can do so effortlessly for the whole team, whereas Empaths offer 24% Defence (=48% Resistance) vs everything (including Psi, and of course, half the debuffs and end drains now miss) for the select few.

I recently got a Plant/Thermal Controller to 50 playing mainly in dual-box duos, and compared to Empaths I've played, she offered pretty poor mitigation, say when paired up with a Blaster.

That said, this is all logic and reasoned argument, and probably has little to do with the popularity of the Empathy set

SR is a real specialist one trick pony set.
If you take and slot all three toggles and all three passives, you'll have an unequalled 95% Defence Debuff Resistance so that you dont get any noticeable defence cascade failure like you were describing, where the first hit lowers your defence.

To Hit buffs like Devouring earth emanators are still a major pain, but they're pretty rare.

My SR scrapper never got to the softcap, but I found having 40% defence against ranged and melee let in little enough damage that my natural rate of regeneration and the rate at which green pills dropped took care of everything, both on teams and solo. (And this was before we could combine enhancements)

These days its a bit overshadowed by Shield Defence, which offers enough Defence to get by and a bunch of offensive boost and tricks, but it still provides two distinct advantages over Shields - much easier to softcap and the massive Defence Debuff Resistance.

I found my MA/SR scrapper more survivable than my BS/SD scrapper.

I'd suggest doing a quick respec and taking and slotting all passives (if you havent done so already) before you delete.

Gekkoh-

What would you do with Bonfire, Repel and Repulsion Field?

These powers (and Im sure there are others) have knockBACK as an inherent balancing factor. Turn that into knockdown and you have Bonfire becoming an Ice Slick or earthquake with very nice damage, and Repel and Repulsion Field becoming autohit boss level mez auras effectively, both of which are hideously overpowered.

These also have the potential when misused to become some of the most aggravating powers a teammate can use.

I don't think you've really thought this through, to be honest.

There are plenty of MMOs without knockback, I think its one of CoH's nice points of difference myself.

Its a pretty good solo set.

Solo, it has Propel for very good damage-per-endurance, which is a solo Controller's biggest enemy. The long animation doesnt matter if you're facing a small group of enemies most of whom are held, in fact it helps slow down your End consumption in the teens, when this is often a problem.

Later on, Singularlity acts as a good tank for EB fights.

Above all, Gravity is a fun set, Propel and Wormhole are both very satisfying to use.


On a team it has some problems:

- AoE control is late. Wormhole comes at 26 instead of 12 for Flashfire/Stalagmites etc, and Dimension Shift jusy annoys teammates
- Propel takes so long to animate that you end up hitting already dead enemies
- Wormhole annoys some temmates due to the knockback or relocation throwing off their herding of Fulcrum-ing or whatever.

Even so, its not a total stinker on teams, maybe 80% as good as the best team sets for your entire career, with 12-26 being the tough spot.

I'd really like a +Def power in the epics that didnt cover you with Ice or Earth.

Something more like the Kinetic Shield temp power you can get from bank missions, I guess.

Packing some big rez pills works pretty well for a combat rez, you can remove the Stun with Increase Density and provide end and health via Transfusion and Transference if you're quick.
I've managed to pull this off when dual-boxing, whether doing this to another human player would be harder or easier, Im not sure.

Kin/Arch is a bit of an odd pairing in that Kin is very close up and Archery is very good at ranged. I'd maybe suggest the Darkness epic pool simply for Oppressive Gloom. It lets you get into a big bunch of minions much more safely for Fulcrum Shift, and also stacks with Stunning Shot for mezzing boss level enemies.

Thunderstrike's stun is only 50%, it only applies the majority of its damage to the single target, and it scatters everyone with its KB, which isnt so good for Fulcrum, or Fistful of Arrows afterwards.

I hope you were slotting three SO's or equivalent for damage.

The three upsides, in ascending order:

1) The accuracy bonus. This will help you out pretty much only in your teens, as beginner's luck wears off and before you get SO's. Compared to most secondary effects like -To hit, Knockback or even -Def, this is really a downside.

2) Blazing Arrow does extra DoT and has longer range than Energy Burst and other comparable powers. This is definitely a good plus to the set.

3) Rain of Arrows. I've never got this far with the set, but I hear its absolutely awesome, and makes up for the 37 levels before it's acquired.

The downsides I found were:

1) Lethal damage. Its not as bad as its often made out, but its there, dropping your damage maybe 5-10% overall?

2) Stunning Shot - for whatever reason, blast sets stuns have twice the recharge of blast set holds. Go figure.

3) Lack of secondary effects means no extra IO tricks like some sets get - no damage procs or -Res procs or whatever.

From what I've read, Rain of Arrows is the big sell for this set.

My Peacebringer was originally intended to be Human/Nova focussed, but by the 30's I found I rarely shifted to Nova Form, and that ended up being a big set mule for some extra Thunderstrikes and Positrons sets. Before the 20s, Nova Form was great, you're an AoE damage king when you enter Steel Canyon.

Like everyone's been saying, Human form was tough enough and damaging enough for most PvE content, and most importnatly, shifting forms takes too long. That was the really dissapointing part about Kheldians to be honest - I'd imagined fast-flowing combat where you could shift in and out of Nova and Dwarf without hunching over and shaking whilst rooted for 2 seconds.
Once I'd got the recharge up on Proton Scatter, Luminous Detonation and Solar Flare I found I couldn't be bothered shifting forms most of the time due to the time it took me out of combat.

BTW, Duo-ing with a Sonic Defender rocks!!

I seocnd the suggestion of a Storm Defender. Sonic Blast is easily the most effectiove secondary due to the stacking -Res debuffs, and has some conceptual synergy as Thunder powers.
Second best would be Ice Blast with its Blaster level Ice Storm and Blizzard to stack with Freezing Rain, and the two holds dont hurt either. I went Storm/Ice and was not dissapointed.

Good suggestions all round.

Having played a TA/A duo I was quite amazed at the lack of damage mitigation that two Defenders could apply using this set, both duo-ing and on larger teams.

I usually saved it for stationary bosses/EB's/AV's at the end of missions, or as a panic power if an extra group was pulled. Either way, it was for situations where the enemy were going to stay in the patch.

Its not a key power to the set, but not a bad power - it saved my bacon fighting Nostradamus as an EB for example. The recharge is a bit too long in my opinion, but its one of those abilities thats handy to have in your back pocket. I barely slotted it, a couple of Lockdowns for some acc and recharge was all i think.

And yeah, the 3% knockdown triggers repeatedly like Earthquake only weaker. The hold is very shortlived but breaks up an alpha, the knockdown is unreliable, but the main value is the To Hit debuff - if you can get the enemy to stay in the patch you take a whole lot less damage.

Fire's really good for mincing large groups of minions and leiutenants, so it fits your 8-man requirements pretty well.

Every spawn you can Flashfire to stun them all, run in with Hot Feet and spam Fire Cages and hopefully defeat everyone befroe the stun wears off. The +Dam from Accelerate Metabolism and -Res from Enervating Field will help.

Against an AV it's not as defensive as Illusion - you'll really miss the Phantom Army here. The imps are fragile and your controls and debuffs will be limited by purple triangles, so I don't think a solo Fire/Rad will have as much success against a standard AV (like a typical Praetorian) as an Illusionist would.

If you want to protect your Imps better for AV fights, you could try a buffing set like Force Field, Cold or Empathy to pair with Fire, since +Def shields are hampered by purple triangles the way. FF and Emp will drop your damage output. Cold may be the way to go there. Sleet will help you be a per-spawn killing machine.

Since the game has launched, Force Field's role has been impinged on more than a bit by Sonic, Cold Domination and Traps, both of which cover the bare bones of FF and add a number of offensive boosts.

FF was originally the set you'd choose to maximise your team's defence at the expense of offensive boosts.

If I was in the driving seat, I'd make FF the set that provides you better personal protection than other Defender sets. I'd keep PFF's role as turtle mode, I think that adds a nice tactical element to the set which it wouldnt have if you could fire through it.

At the moment, FF-er's can achieve almost tank level defences through careful and expensive slotting (see my guide), but I'd rathert expand this to be the default mode for FF defenders rather than the province of a few rich freaks like myself.

I would add some extra personal Defence though, maybe an extra +10% vs Melee to Repulsion Field and +10% vs Ranged/AoE to Force Bubble.
Combined with Dispersion, slotting all of these, you're now sitting at 31% Defence just like a SR scrapper, and could reach the softcap with slotted Weave and Manouvers. If you wanted to softcap without having to run Force Bubble or Repulsion Field, both of which have their downsides, you could start going for set bonuses.

This would leave FF as the set that makes the whole team as well as you invulnerable, while Sonic, Cold and Traps remain good team protectors with excellent all-round utilities on top.

As for the best build, FF/Sonic hands down. Sonic Blast is numerically way above any other defender blast set, and FF is the primary that needs the damage boost the most.
FF/Rad using damage procs, Achilles Heel procs and Sands of Mu vet power (which hits with all that -Def) would come second.

[Edit]
PFF is currently outdone by both a pool power (Phase Shift) and a temporary power anyone can buy (Ethereal Shift) in that both of these let you become totally immune to damage, instead of just very hard to hit.
I would recommend PFF acting as a phase rather than just massive defence and some Resistance.

Short Circuit is a gret power to "frankenslot", ie mix and match set IOs for the raw enhancement bonuses.

3 Dam/Rech, 1 Acc/Dam and 2 End Mod IOs will allow you to have your cake and eat it.

That's enough End Mod for a Elec/Elec blaster to drain a group with SC and slotted Power Sink.

And Short Circuit has a base accuracy of 1.4, so a 20% acc boost from an enehancement upps that to 1.4*1.2 = 1.68, equivalent to a normal attack with 2 SOs roughly.

Even better, replace the two end mod IOs with an End Mod and End Mod/Rech from the Performance Shifter or Efficiacy Adapter sets.

The extra end crash produced by nukes isn't affected by end reduction enhancements. So putting an end redux in Blizzard means you'll reduce the base cost from 21 End to 15 or 16 and then lose 100 endurance anyway, whether slotted or not. In other words it wont matter.

And I'd question slotting for To Hit over damage - you're risking having a group of debuffed pissed off leiutenants gunning for you rather than a bunch of dead ones.

Any single big boss in the blizzard can be dealt with by Freeze Ray and Bitter Freeze Ray.