Nemu_

Team build?

Assault.

Panda Powah!

It's contagious, in a good non-rash causing way. spread it around!

*Edit* OMG now there is a panda rolling around on the page. Yay!

More pandas!

Doncha know the chances of getting drops is inversely proportional to how much you contribute to the team?

Every time someone claims to get a good drop isn't your first response something along the lines of "but you did nothing, I deserve that drop more?" I know everyone types "gratz" in chat but I also know what people really think... They are thinking "you $%#$@!"

That's the panda wisdom of the day.

I use burn in conjunction with energy torrent and footstomp. My usual routine is to hop into a mob with ET, burn and then FS. Energy mastery helps with end usage too on a recharge intensive build.

Some folks don't like the cone nature of ET but I don't find it too much of a hassel to hop out and mid arc change directions back in and fire ET. Fireball is a lot easier to use I'll admit, but I like having another FF proc in ET.

Whatever resist/defenses you've managed to scramble together with this build will not make up for your poorly slotted attacks. The build may be more sturdy than your other build, but the sacrifices you've made on the offensive end means you'll spend more time finishing off foes. I would imagine that this build nets you a reduction in overall effectiveness.

The rage nowadays is all about softcapped defenses and you can build a blaster with softcapped defense to either smashing/lethal or ranged type damage without sacrificing as much offense as you did with this build. There are quite a few threads on this, you should be able to find some ideas that suit your goal of building a more survivable blaster.

Recognizing/understanding what works and how it works better than the alternative is not the same as blindly following the herd. Cookie cutters are what they are because they have been proven to be a cut above others. Some people follow these ideas blindly, you may not like that, but that's no reason to dismiss their potency.

I'm all for breaking new grounds but the "pure" builds have been demonstrated to be less than their balanced counterparts for a long time. The fact is that there is simply no reason other than concept to abandon half your powerset in this game. If you think that the idea of a balanced build is cookie cutter than so be it.

All I'm saying Firewasp, is that you need to dip into your secondary a little. That doesn't mean that you need to shift to the opposite extreme and completely abandon your primary. Post a build, that's the best way to get the advice/help you need.

Specialized toons in the game fall more towards the realm of gimp than the realm of uber. You saw the result of your post in the defender forums when you talked about a attackless ff/dark fender and the responses you will get here is not going to be any different.

Secondaries help a lot to supplement your tanker primary. Knockdowns, stuns, slows, and damage will all help your survivability. On top of that you can supplement your build with IO bonuses and inspirations. Failing that you can always fall back on skill.

For example, my fire/ss tank is much squishier than my stone/em tank but I can tank with either just fine. One is more sturdy by design but I keep my fire/ss on her feet by killing things before they kill me. If I were to build my fire/ss attackless I would be gimp beyond measure. No amount of extra defensive pool powers would salvage her survivability and fun.

Seriously, you have to unlearn most of the dogma that held true for other MMOs and recognize that this game is not like any of them. Those other game experiences are not going to help you much here.

On my Arch/EM specced primarily for ranged defense, I grabbed both CJ and Hover, but I also stuck a -kb proc in the build. This way I can hop and blap if I chose to and then hop away and hover blast. Since the two powers don't cancel each other out I would normally start off hover blasting, then drop hover and arc towards the enemy and let loose a bonesmasher or EP while hopping away, then turn hover on and continue hover blasting.

I enjoyed my Ice/Storm. The build is versatile even though I do spend most of my time in melee.

Ill/Emp is easier than Mind/Emp to play. Drop pets, buff, heal, done.

You don't need perma PA on an Ill/Emp, spectral terror works well as an opener 90% of the time and lets not kid ourselves here, you are not going to be an AV soloing champ even with perma PA. But if you do end up getting perma PA that means you can also rotate your buffs faster. With that level of recharge you can probably put fort on at least 5 people at any given time.

A defender that doesn't use his secondary hasn't learned anything about this game regarding defenders and what they stand for. I'd be annoyed to have such a person on the team with me but I wouldn't boot him if he's honestly trying to do his job with the tools available. While you think you are doing a fantastic job with your FF/Dark, I can tell you that there are better FF/Darks out there, even the ones that took team tp.

To categorize defender playstyle "the way they are meant to be played" as whole to be more or less pacifist is just completely wrong. I can give you more than a handful of defender combos that can/will be played aggressively by people with any resemblance of skill. In fact, any AT can be played aggressively by someone that knows what they are doing.

Your experiences with other MMOs hardly matter here. This is COH/V, not anything else. The tank/healer/DPS schema works in the game, but it's hardly the crux. I think once you start teaming with better teams and more capable people you will find out the real unrealized power of the defender.

Fire/eng or Elec/eng. I still remember mowing over mobs in perez back in the days with those lowbie blasters, which my scrappers can not even dream of because of their single target nature and lack of both BU and AIM for burst damage at those levels.

Player skill will do more on a blaster than soft capping ever will. Blappers did what they did way before IOs and they made it work. Soft capping makes some things easier but by no means is it required to bring blasters on par with other ATs.

I sincerely believe if one were to master a balls-to-the-walls blaster playstyle on a blaster with little to no means of mitigation, everything else in this game will present absolutely no challenge.

I've never been that impressed with soft capped pure ranger blasters. Most of them sacrifice their damage output for safety and any good blapper will outshine them on a team.

Blasters are about mastering movement and exploiting the weak enemy AI. When you can achieve that, which isn't all that hard, you don't need ranged defense.

Sure not getting hit helps, but saying that's the only way that blasters can be on par tells me that people have not seen really good blasters in action.

Having said that, I did dip into experimenting with defense on a blaster. Currently I have a Ice/Eng with soft capped smashing/lethal defense and an Arch/Eng with soft capped ranged defense. I have more fun with the Ice/Eng because he's built to be in melee. I took the melee attacks on my Arch/Eng and with combat jumping I can hop in and out and get my quick hits in before hovering away and blasting from the air again.

But by far my favorite and most powerful blaster is my recharge intensive Fire/Elec. She hits hard and fast and I play her to the limits. Intelligent movement, some insp popping plus hibernate does wonders for survivability when I can't depend on anyone on the team to throw me any buffs.

Who cares what the dream team is? Give whatever your version of a dream team to a bunch of people with no skill and no clue and you end up with a team full of disappointment.

The point is that a team like that with competent players would have ripped that TF apart. And for the most part 2-3 competent to good players can carry a whole team, so an experience like what Fury is describing is saying something about the quality of players on that team.

The second build looks decent with the power picks. Take the auras and Adre Boost asap though.

You can probably drop a power and get power build up from the power mastery epic pool. Intelligent use of that power will instantly bump up your defender rating by 50%. And if your team really sucks, power build up + vengeance can turn the tide in a pinch.

Personally I prefer mobility on any of my support toons. People that play support typically under-value the ability to move fluidly but it's not a make or break deal.

I nuke whenever it's up. And I don't wait for the rest of the team. Pop a purple or two or none, joust the nuke, pop some blues, get back to mopping up. There is no down time or silly claims of loss of dps, especially if you have an emp with AB slotted with endmod or a kin or a cold hero side.

Stone tanks aren't all that hot in PvE on a decent team. I'd rather have a high damage, mobile, less sturdy tank with his survival boosted by buffs than a mobility impaired, damage impaired tank. Aggro control by tanks go right out the window when you have competent team members that just rip everything apart anyways.

You need recall friend and aid other to be pure.

I prefer energy torrent and conserve power to any of the other pools. ET gives you another place to stick a force feedback proc and it also does KD which adds to your mitigation. and conserve power is highly useful especially for a recharge build where multiple rage crashes can drain the blue bar quick.