Psyonico

I think I'd use stackable temps, so rather than the limit of 5 shivans at a time, I could run around and get 30 or 40 charges.

no comparison, Emp/Son

Between AB, RAs (which can be staggered to make it perma) you're at capped regen and recovery, slot a single endmod in AB and you've got enough to nuke without penalty

throw in leadership and fortitude and you're doing blaster level damage while having the safety of a perma- IH and Elude scrapper.

so, I guess I'm going to play the bad guy in this discussion.

Empathy by itself is by far the weakest hero-side (de)buff set

however, Empathy, when stacked with itself, is by far the strongest (de)buff set in the game, nothing else can bring what stacked empaths bring.

So, lets examine why it's weak by itself.

the majority of its mitigation is reactionary. I know this seems incorrect, but lets examine the set's non-reactionary powers

Fortitude - starts out with just capable of perma on 2, with slotting and hasten, in theory you can get that up to 5, but the best empaths Ive seen (and ive teamed with quite a few) can only keep it up on 3-4, meaning a full half of a team is left without the mitigation it brings, in a best case scenario.

Regen/Recovery Aura - ok, recovery doesn't really provide mitigation, but if I didnt mention it, someone would complain. Even with slotting and hasten, these powers are not up 1/2 the time, leaving lots of down time where you're playing whack-a-mole with health bars

Adrenaline Boost - slotting and hasten makes its down time still above 20 seconds, not that that's the issue. even perma, it will only be on 1 team mate, assuming it's not one you fortitude (not necessarily the best strategy, but for survivability's sake, I could see it) you've still got 2 team-mates + yourself that doesn't have anything on them.

might I suggest going hover/fly rather than CJ/SJ? Its the difference between never getting in melee and occasionally getting in melee, particularly since you don't have hurdle to make you really fast to get out of melee range.

yeah, his cap is 90% for all but psy, the nice thing about this is that it means you, as a /son, dont need to even slot the +res IOs

As for how it works out, my Earth/Storm has both +res slotted in stoney, he's tanked more than his fair share of +3-+4 AVs while a tank/scrapper is recovering.

*sigh* looks like I disappeared from these forums for a bit too long

AVs, probably not, but here's my Emp/Energy in some fun adventures.

Fruit-Salad vs Heracles on invincible

Fruit-Salad vs Carnies on invincible

Fruit-Salad vs Chimera

I can't find the video, but Hobo Fruitsalad did some AV soloing using Shivans.

I kind of like the idea of a Rad/ actually, since rad covers literally everything, you have a nice choice of secondaries, go with one that suits your wants

/Sonic for insane ST capabilities
/Rad, /Dark, /Archery, /AR for great AoEness

Ancillary pools are designed to fill in the gap of a specific AT.

Defender Ancillaries tend to bring in control and extra damage

you're suggesting a buff/debuff ancillary for a buff/debuff archetype. not really likely.

Earlier today I commented on a munitions mastery type set for defenders which would include

Cryo Freeze Ray - ST hold
Targeting Drone
Stealth Suit - Think Cloaking Device but non-suppressing defense and slightly higher values
Gun Drone
LRM Rocket

This more closely fits the Defender Ancillary type pool, but also gives something new and interesting to the AT.

I was actually thinking a modified munitions mastery would be cool to go along with Traps/AR

something along the lines of

Cryo-Freeze Round
Targeting Drone
Stealth Suit - think Cloaking Device, but slightly higher, non-supressing defense.
Gun Drone
LRM Rocket

I love TK, it's situational, but I can usually find a use for it every couple of missions, even if it's just for mob re-positioning to use for other controls.

Repel is far more situational due to the nature of kinetics. That being said, if you know how to use it correctly it can be an excellent source of damage mitigation, something kin doesn't do very well.

I'm predicting I17 to be a relatively small issue.

let's look at the past as to why.

I9 - Invention System, Wentworth, overall, possibly the biggest free issue up to that time, I10, RWZ revamp

I12: Midnigher and Cimeora zones, VEATs Gameplay improvements, etc fairly large
I13: day jobs, merits and multiple builds, fairly small

I14: Mission Architect, again, massive issue
I15: mission arcitect re-vamp and 2 new TFs, pretty small issue.

Whenever there's a massive update, the next issue tends to be smaller.

do you have any idea how much of a pain that would be for anyone who actually uses the power?

Remember, each time someone is affected by the power, it costs you endurance (which is not affected by endrdx) if it's changed to knockdown, you'll drain yourself dry before you know what happened.

besides, Fire/Son controllers wouldn't be anywhere near as funny if you couldn't use Sonic Repulsion to have your imps go chasing enemies.

similarly, the defender links have all been updated.

I leave the stay logged in thing checked... prior to clearing my cookies/cache it did nothing, now it says I'm logged on... until I click on a link. then I'm magically logged out.

While this issue is firefox related, I feel it is a combination of factors. 1. I only have an issue on this particular forum. Not all firefox users are having trouble, and not all people having trouble are using firefox, though the problem seems more common in firefox than other browsers.

and Golden... While these forums dont give me trouble with IE, the inherent design flaws and security issues in the software make me question the use of that software for anything.

No luck. It's gotten better, but I'm still having to log on multiple times and occasionally get logged off by clicking on links.

I just realized I'm not running firefox 3.5, so that will be my next attempt.