Griff Mender

Always glad to help, I spent entirely too much time respeccing my kin so I know how frustrating it gets.
1) You'd be suprised how long jetpack lasts for. If you use superspeed for your primary travel power (which is perfectly viable for blueside, red not so much.), then you are only using the jetpack for vertical movement and only for very short spans of time (less than a couple mins tops really) and that can stretch out a while. Plus getting a new one when it wears off is easy and relatively cheap). An alternative is, if you have a free power pick after adapting your build, is to take Inertial Reduction. It gives you superjump in one power pick and serves very well as a travel power. Saves you a pool too. (a plus note is that when xmas comes along it helps you on the ski slopes a ton to get that badge)

2) You wont have to worry about mobs in pvp zones with superspeed+celerity:stealth, and if you are heading in there to get the exploration badges, try at an odd hour where there wont be as many aggressive pvpers. If you dont get too close to them and are moving fast enough you can probly slip past and get them. (Side note: I went in with an Ill/Rad controller with superior invis during peak hours and they saw me, and commenced to farm me. I didnt complain tho since I was in a pvp zone and there are great big red letters telling me the moment I came in that they were going to do that. However the comments about what my mother does with farm animals didnt help me mood) So for badging you can do it. Make sure to know where the badges are before heading in to minimize time in the zone.

3) Siphon speed isn't an area of effect debuff, just single target, but still worth it. If you are occupied with your many other powers during combat, it isnt a high priority to fire it off but during hard targets such as AVs or GMs and whatnot you are going to be doing a kinetics debuff chain. Slipping the siphon speed into the chain is easy and only serves to increase the speed of your debuff chain. Debuffing an AVs speed may not seem worthwhile but if it allows you to get your transfusion firing faster and faster after each application of siphon speed its worth it.
Firing off transfusion, siphon power, siphon speed, run up close to hit fulcrum shift despite the fact that its just one enemy (the little boost to damage still helps and if you are up close with the melee team you are giving them more) transferance to keep the melee team filled is a solid chain for AVs/GMs.

My first was an Emp/Dark Defender and, while I enjoyed him quite a bit while leveling up, he became less and less useful as I met more skilled players and started grouping with them only. I switched to Kinetics defender after that to really bolster the already awesome group of friends I made in the Midnight Cove and Cold Front SGs. Even then the fit wasn't quite right. So I took my friends advice and found a tool to meet the aspects of the game I really enjoyed. And so I found my main after reading Local_Man's guide to Ill/Rads, I began working on quite possibly the most fun character I've played in any game, and now that he is as close to perfect as I can imagine him being, I can really enjoy the game. It fills all the needs I have for a fun game experience and allowed me to chase down my goal of soloing every hard target in the game on one character (I'm almost done, gotta go get the redside ones now that I finished up blue). What I learned from that was that you dont need to focus on toons that will fit in well with people here or there, or be an ultimate ubar farmer or some such thing. Just play what you like, find something you enjoy and focus on that. Your friends will support you.

I'm ok with keeping up SB on the team as much as I possibly can because I recognize the benefit of it. Heck, my number pad is one massive set of SB keybinds so I just have to hit a button and it will auto target a teammate and SB them (1 for 1st team mate, 2 for 2nd etc). However I do have one condition, since I do have more than just one power on my bar to contribute to the team...Don't make me chase you to buff you. I'm quite busy between the debuffs on the hard targets, keeping my recharge speed up, maxing out the damage with fulcrum shift, squeezing a few blasts in there, using my stackable holds on trouble targets and generally not dying. If you are down the hall or in another room when you need your crank fix, then you are on your own. Ill be the guy buffing the hell out of the team while you play Rambo on a sugar high off at the other end of the mission.

Ok, a couple things. I'm not sure how you got teleport before you took recall friend, but do you need 2 travel powers? recall friend is a good team power and all especially for someone who can stealth. with your concealment pool, if you are gonna keep grant invis, take out stealth and instead put in a Celerity-Stealth IO into superspeed, that way when you are using superspeed you are already PVE invis. With that you can also skip invisibility since it wont be necessary with superspeed/celerity-stealth. I would definitely take siphon speed as it increases your recharge bonus, and you want to have as high a recharge as possible in order to keep your kin powers firing.

On a side note, I'm not sure how commited you are to NRG as a secondary but if you are thinking about a more team oriented toon you may want to consider electric blast instead, not only does it have no knockback components, which make teams a lil miffy, and also combines really well with kinetics for endurance draining. If you go with elec blast i would recommend taking shocking bolt first in your epic pool so you can combine tesla cage and shocking bolt so you can do 2 hit holds on bosses. If you are sure you wanna go with NRG instead thats cool, just a recommendation. Also note energy torrent has a pretty high knockback effect to it so use it for self defense only when melee mobs rush up on you. Otherwise you might be scattering mobs that have been gathered by your tanks or scrappers.

Gotta agree with Mr_Fallstar on this one. I played all three on my 50 SoA, Huntsman, Bane, Crab. Bane was great. Really reliable, played like a tough stalker with pets. Crab was ok, great on a team since I could mow down the minions and Lts with aoe damage but something just didnt feel right about it. I didnt mind the legs so much, I was running with the Suppresion, heavy burst, frag grenade, bile spray, venom grenade AoE set up but it just didnt feel fun. Then there was huntsman. Purposely didnt take any travel powers for theme, grabbed all the soldier leadership buffs and the full leadership pool. When I was playing it, it just felt awesome. I guess its a theme thing that I am on a team full of these super powered freaks and then theres me. Just some dude with a submachine gun and entirely too much training holding my own right next to them. The team buffs really help out quite a bit and currently I am just running on SOs and am capped out to ranged defense and around 33% to the other positions. Cant wait to get the IO sets into him to really see how much he shines. Got a solid attack chain with just the gun and grenades and still have room for call reinforcements.

I run a 50 Kin/elec/elec defender and I think it works great as a secondary. Great single target sapping. Tesla cage stacks with shocking bolt to hold bosses easily in 2 attacks. Both have great recharge times (on a kin anyway might just be the spammed siphon speed...) I've got one build that is slotted for damage and think its absolutely fantastic, I put hold procs into my elec blasts that recharge very quickly and run a Charged bolts>Lightning bolt>tesla cage>shocking bolt chain that keeps anything perma held between the 2 actual holds and the hold procs (this is in between using my kin powers for the team of course). My second build is more for AoE sapping slotted for end drain and works very well in a team setting. I can drain the minions very easily and then use transferance to drain the boss (who i then run the hold chain mentioned above on for good measure). You can have alot of fun with elec.

after i19 i was able to take my perma PA Ill/rad (based very closely on Local_Man's guide) and add mutation, recall friend, and rise of the phoenix. Due to my high recharge I'm able to use rise of the phoenix at least once a minute which has opened up a whole new world of inappropriate tactics to my arsenal. Havent tested yet to see if self destruct lets you use a self rez or not but I will tonite when i get off work... But anywho, recall friend, mutation, and a self rez really helps out and the fire app is so good for Ill/Rad anyway you dont really have an excuse not to take it.

And now I throw my hat into the ring with Mind control! MWAHAHA
Mass confusion....wait for it....wait for it.....mass hypnosis....total dom....terrify terrify terrify.....cackle with glee! All without a secondary of any kind or wierd creepy hentai tentacle things all over the screen.
This has been a message brought to you by the Please make Mind Control Valid Again commitee. Founded by me. We are currently recruiting and have a membership of...me. Please continue about your day.

(Please note I have no numbers to back this up and im sure your toon is better but gosh I miss seeing mind control around...)

Good point. I was only mentioning the 300% because as a defender my cap is 300% and my build (which is mostly for endurance/accuracy/recharge) doesnt have much of a damage buff already so I really notice the boost. I guess what I was thinking was, that I was suprised people didnt notice the difference when I'm able to land fulcrum shift on the entire team. You make a great point however, that many people already have damage boosts as part of their toon and so are not seeing the huge boost I see on my kin when I land it.

Someone mention Ill/rads???
<.<
>.>
o.0
Where's Local_Man at?
Personally I am really looking forward to the inherents, as my perma PA build had to skip a few powers I really enjoy in teams. I went with the fire APP and i was going to take Mutation, recall friend, and rise of the phoenix. rez, self rez, and tp for when I stealth missions. All of those things were missing in my previous build so I am especially excited about them. and a pleasant bonus is none of them need any slots.

I find it funny that people will commend you more on keeping up SB than when you are keeping the team running at damage cap through an entire ITF. They won't say word one when they are hitting for 300% more damage but if they slow down just a wee bit cuz they ran far off and SB faded you will hear it for sure.

Mike makes great suggestions for the the defense. but have you thought of maybe ice instead of energy? its a good solid blast set with some controls tossed in and an excellent nuke. ice by default could be thrown into a fairy concept (ice fairy anyway..i know im stretching here) or you could chang the colors to look like something else but I think it'd be a good addition to your character personally.

You are going to need about 103%+ base global recharge bonus to keep PA out all the time. You are going to need at least one purple set (coercive persuasion) a couple basilisk gaze sets (boy that hurt the bank) and some other not so bad sets. Then you gotta maintain both hasten and AM during combat to kick you up to 203%+ global recharge. Empowerment buff helps as will the Geas of the kind ones accolade and the timelord accolade bonus. Getting that lvl or recharge is really hard early in the game if not impossible by yourself without a kin around. In the meantime you can have a ton of fun with deceive, blind, spectral wounds, (I took air superiority during my first run through as well) though its not the biggest attack chain out there, later on you will find that most fights you will have so many options that its hard to use them all in one fight. Stick with it. Ill/rad has been the most fun toon I've played in this game and I'm sure you will enjoy it.