Garent

Try it, you'll like it. Recharge bonuses are very useful to kinetics. Area defense will end up being more useful than ranged defense in many situations. My kinetics corruptor is 13% melee defense, 9% ranged, and 28% area. She has no problem running in right after the tank (role, not archetype) and standing right next to them through the whole battle. Even against +4s.

No one said this.

If we're thinking of the same thread, then it was discovered that the AV in question actually had bad purple triangles. Apologies for double post.

Yes, I can. Kin/Electric defenders can do amazing things, just like most characters in city of heroes can. Kin/electric is amazing at single target draining, thanks to Transference's giant numbers and electric's -recovery, but it falls short in area end drain. Ball lightning's end drain isn't very much, I'd suggest slotting it for damage instead. Short circuit alone is not an effective means of end drain because of its 20 second recharge time and three second animation. If you can survive long enough to drain enemies with it, then your team was going to win anyway.

Kin/electrics crowning jewel is the thunderous blast/transference combo. Thunderous blast can fully drain even level enemies on its own, has a chance for extra end drain to help with higher level enemies, and halts recovery for a full 20 seconds. Transference allows you to quickly recover from the end crash, and if you take a power boost type effect from soul mastery or power mastery, the power becomes ridiculous. But with a 360 second recharge, this is more of an added bonus than something your character can rely on.

What I'm saying is "The only time that this is any kind of advantage is during AV fights, and even then flash arrow is so weak that it's only a couple percentage points stronger than the debuffs found in other sets." In other words, the only situation in which flash arrow is better than other debuffs (and only marginally so) is when those other debuffs are reduced in effectiveness by 85%.

The rule for just about all types of enhancements is to use three at most. You only get six slots, so you usually pick the most important thing and go for three of that, then use the other three slots for things like accuracy or endurance reduction.

For example, for most attacks the best slotting will be something like 3 damage, 1 accuracy, 1 endurance, 1 recharge. The slotting you have for siphon power and fulcrum shift (1 accuracy, 3 recharge) is good.

Also, it looks like you used inventions in that mids build. You probably want to make sure you're using the single origin enhancements instead. Inventions are a pretty complicated system that most people don't get in to until their characters are higher level. I can give you info on it if you want though.

Your original build was definitely not anemic. You slotted steamy mist and your ancillary shield well and focused on defense in the set bonuses. My main issue with it was self sufficiency. You're definitely better off with aid self instead of aid other, but that's the only issue on the personal survivability front.

Your support abilities are definitely more important than your damage abilities. That doesn't mean that they need more slots though. I'll try to explain that in more detail. There will be a TLDR at the end in case I ramble on for too long.
As a defender, you have really huge buff/debuff modifiers. Snow storm combined with freezing rain is all it takes to make even level enemies hit the minimum speed they can run. Enhancing freezing rain with a little bit of slow is a good idea, since it means you can skip snow storm entirely in many combats, and helps you against higher level enemies. It doesn't need a whole lot though.
The best example of this is vengeance. Defenders have a better vengeance than any other archetype (haven't checked this, but I'd be really surprised if they didn't) but slotting vengeance for them is actually -less- important than for any other archetype. Vengeance with just one defense enhancement, alongside the defender's defense buffs which even storm summoning and dark can supply a lot of, can easily soft cap a team.

Speaking specifically about storm/dual pistols now, the ways you contribute to a team defensively are with healing, knockdown, slows, damage debuffs, and to-hit debuffs.
The healing and debuff in O2 boost and hurricane benefit well from slots. Hurricane goes way past what's needed to make even level enemies drop to 5% accuracy, but you'll be wanting the extra power if you're up against AVs or higher level enemies.
Slows I covered up above. Storm summoning has a lot of slow, and you'll have no problem flooring the runspeed of your enemies with just a little slotting.
Knockdown and damage debuffs are probably your most important methods of defense, but you can't slot freezing rain to have more reliable knockdown, and you can't slot pistol attacks to have a stronger or longer lasting damage debuff. What you -can- do is slot these powers for recharge, so they're up as often as possible. When it comes to pistol attacks, the ranged damage sets offer everything you can hope to slot in them. They increase accuracy and recharge so your debuffs are reliable and come back quickly, damage so that your attacks also contribute to killing enemies, and they can give either a recharge bonus or ranged defense, both of which are very useful.

My stance isn't "you're trying to make your character do things it shouldn't" but "your character can do a whole lot more than you realize". Storm summoning will easily cover your slowing needs all on its own. Dual pistols will hit the debuffing needs that storm summoning can't, and it can do damage at the same time.


TLDR!

You don't have to choose between damage and support. Most support abilities only require a few slots to reach maximum effectiveness. After that, all other resources are best used on maximizing your damage output.

Also, if I'm one of the guys who sounds like he's just trying to insult you instead of helping out, I'm sorry and I don't mean it that way.