Pyro_Master_NA

First off, 45 IS the softcap, not "45% or so" because 44.5 is actually getting hit 10% more often than 45, and so the full value is important in achieving that survivability.

As to the bonuses, on a /nin, you will want positional defense bonuses (Melee, Ranged, AoE). These are usually found as the last bonus in a set, meaning you need 6 pieces to get the bonus. Ninjitsu gets you around 33% defense to all three positions on just normal IOs/SOs if you pick up weave and CJ. That means you need 12% to cap yourself. Gausian's Synchronized Fire Control in build up will get you 2.5% to all, and a steadfast unique will get you another 3. That means you need 6.5% to all three still. So at that point, 2 bonuses of 3.75 (normal 6 slotted bonus) will get you there. So in 2 melee attacks, slot 6 Touch of Death pieces and in 2 others slot 6 Mako's Bite pieces. That leaves AoE, which is less commonly seen in bonuses.

Now the easiest AoE bonuses come from Scirocco's Dervish, which is slotted in PBAoE powers. Stalkers don't get too many, but you only need 2 to cap, and only 5 slots of SD to cap it. Elec, BS, Kat, Claws, DB, and Spines all have 2 or more PBAoEs for you to slot it in, but other sets only have one, or in some cases none.

There are other ways to do it, but in my opinion, that would be the quickest way.

I'm going to say illusion/radiation troller, fire/radiation corruptor or a fire/radiation controller. Basically anything with radiation is going to be easy, just hit toggle debuffs and kill the non anchor enemies. On a team just debuff the big guy and go to town. Illusion makes it safer but slower in the early levels, corruptor gets the fastest kill speed with least survivability, and the fire troller gets a good medium with the controls and good damage.

I would say keep the originally planned sets, but try for s/l defense with bonuses.

Enfeebled Operation gives some in your teir 1 and the aoe immob
Kinetic Combat gives some in fire sword, although it's a tad expensive
Obliteration will give some even though it is mainly used for melee

And those are just off memory, I'm sure you can find more.

No seismic smash. Why play an earth set that has melee and no SMASH?

Also, it is VERY melee oriented for a blaster secondary, I would add stone spears in somewhere.

And as much as I love the power, Fissure might be too powerful here on blaster damage mods.

I don't have a build off hand, but I can tell you that to solo the LRSF you will need to get higher recharge than just permadom. It will help a LOT if you can get drain psyche to be perma, so the -regen is always there. Otherwise, I'm not sure a mind/psy/cold can pull off the damage needed. And to get that much recharge, softcapping defense will be tough to do, though I'd shoot for ranged over any kind of typed damage.

I would say to skip shockwave and get build up at that level instead. Shockwave does low damage and is one of the only powers in the set that does not have a -resistance debuff added to it. Howl is all you need. Power boost is optional on this one IMO. It will help sirens song sleep them longer, but that's about it, especially since you aren't taking your melee powers that stun enemies.

I suggest taking at least one melee power, probably total focus. It hits like a train. If you are blasting at something, and it manages to get into close range, I would rather use total focus to kill it than use your power thrust to knock him back and kill him with a few weaker ranged attacks (not to say ranged is weaker than melee, it is just a REALLY strong melee attack).

Other than that, it looks like you have the hang of things, and siren's song will help a lot if you are soloing. Just sleep the group and start to pick them off one by one without worrying about their allies attacking you.

Although I would EXTREMELY urge you against playing a "full support" toon, I will say that you are going about it wrong. Defenders are not the best at what I think you are looking for. I would say a controller better fits what you want.

As a defender, your idea of support doesn't include your entire secondary set. That means as far as your plan goes, 8 of your main powers won't be used. However, if you use a controller, you can still get your heals and buffs from your secondary set, and use your primary to limit the amount of damage coming in.

If you want to really protect your team, I would say a MindControl/Empathy defender will work well for someone who just purchased the game and wants to play support. Mind control will make your enemies unable to attack your team, and empathy will allow you to heal them up and make them stronger for when the enemies do attack. Mind control will also make it easier for you to solo, as they have an AoE sleep power, which makes none of the enemies in a group able to attack until you attack them (wake them up). Note, that this power works best solo, as ally AoEs can and will wake them all up at once, thus nullifying the power. But it does have a lot of other team friendly controls, that power just helps for when you can't find one.

Seriously though, as a defender who wants to play "pure" support, you are only playing half of a defender, and are not contributing to the team very well, but as a controller with the same goals, you will do quite well.

Radiation Emission/Sonic Blast. Keep it as a defender, NOT a corruptor. You'll do great.

Take siren's song and use it before every group. It's very nice for stting up drain psyche and shockwave...err, psychic shockwave that is... you don't want shockwave. But after that, jumping up and howling or psychic screaming them is very nice to wrap things up as previously stated.

SS/Fire is a clear cut winner here. Spines/fire is good, but it's really hard to beat the ss/fire brute.

Ice/fire tank with a fire/thermal corruptor.
Tank gets: High defense, mid level resists, +max hp, aoe and st damage, forge buffing damage, 2 taunt auras, end recovery power with auto hit, and someone to heal him in emergencies.
Corruptor gets: good st and aoe damage, big debuffs later on, an aggro magnet on his team at all times, and a self heal that splashes onto his ally if needed.

Haven't tried it myself, but on paper it looks pretty good and I kinda want to try it myself.

I personally think you are going about it wrong. I think a pair of defenders will work better due to the larger returns from (de)buffs. I know from experience that 2 emp/sonic/dark defenders will destroy just about anything in the game. I know, I know, you are probably thinking that 2 empathy defenders aren't going to pump out the damage you want. Well you'd be wrong to assume so, and I'll tell you why, along with other reasons the combo is so strong.

Fortitude + 2 assaults + new vig + soul drain = 210% damage buff that is always on. Now that is in the later levels, and the majority of the game will not have soul drain on your tray since it comes in at 47. But even without that, you are sitting at about 90% damage buff at all times before adding in enhancements. Also add to that the -res that both players are stacking on enemies. You can easily lay down over a 100% resistance debuff in a matter of seconds if you coordinate your attacks.

But that is just the raw damage aspect of it, lets look at recharge for a second. Up until lvl 32, you have your normal hasten cycling going. This by itself can let you keep alternating your 4 (2 endurance, 2 health) RAs in time for only a 5-10 second break between firing, allowing stamina to not be needed, but since i19 makes it inherent, it will just save some stamina slots. But now lets look at your recharge post 32. You get adrenaline boost, which gives you a +100% recharge bonus. Add that to the 70% from hasten, and you have them both perma with only standard IOs or SOs slotted in your character. This puts that attack chain to the point where your -res stacking is in full swing, and it allows you too get soul drain perma with no set bonuses once you get it and slot it for recharge.

Now let's also look at the accuracy of the build. With fortitude on each player, that is an 18% tohit buff before enhancing. Add in tactics because you can afford the power picks, and you get another 25% unslotted tohit bonus. Once those get slotted, you can ramp up the difficulty to +4 and hit them reliably with only one accuracy IO slotted into your attacks, not to mention the tohit buffs from soul drain later in the characters' run.

But won't all those +4 mobs rip those squishy defenders to shreds? No way. Adrenaline boost's +regen makes you regenerate at regen scrapper levels. Not to mention you can fit in tough and an epic shield to get you up close to the defender resistance cap. And just so you know, the regen and resistance is just the backup plan should you capped defenses get in a fight with the random number generator.

Yep, that's right, fortitude(23% slotted) + weave(~8% slotted) + 2 maneuvers(11% slotted) + combat jumping(~4% slotted) will bring you up to around 46% defense to ALL damage types, that aren't from Hamidon of course, which will keep that resistance and regen plenty capable of keeping you alive, especially considering the mezz protection clear mind gives.

If all that wasn't enough, once you get into dark mastery and grab oppressive gloom, you can both stay close together and stack up to a mag4 stun on everything in melee range, and anything that stumbles out can get hit by screech to be stunned again.

If you can't tell, I really love this combo, and as far as "balanced around SOs" go, I would say it is the best 2 person combo out there for almost every situation in the game. I have come across nothing that can stop them once they get going, and almost evey new power you get makes them a LOT stronger.

I would say this will be the most fun for the two of you to play, and the cool part is, their abilities really jump up exponentially when they are teamed compared to when they are solo. Solo you will feel like a horrible character after being used to the duo, and then when the other joins the team, you feel like the game needs to let you go raise the difficulty to +6 x10.

I know brutes recently had their fury and damage cap changed so that scrappers would be dealing higher damage than them, but something crossed my mind the other day. If both a scrapper and a brute are at the damage cap, the brute still outdamages the scrapper, even with the lowered brute cap.

Brute base damage is at .75 and caps at 775%
Scrapper base damage is at 1.125 and caps at 500%

.75*6.55=4.9125 at max damage buff for brute
1.125*4=4.5 at max damage buff for scrapper

So if say, a claws/wp brute and a claws/wp scrapper are both on a team and that team has anything with kinetics in it, and is high enough level to use FS, then the brute will be doing more damage than the scrapper and also be more survivable than the scrapper.

From what I can tell, that means one or more of the following three things needs to happen so scrappers out damage brutes and brutes out live scrappers.

1.)Scrappers need a higher damage cap
2.)Brutes need a lower damage cap
3.)Scrappers need a higher base damage scale

Those are listed in order of what I consider most likely to happen, 1 being most likely and 3 being least likely.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Perhaps I am missing something here, but it seems like the devs overlooked that when adjusting brutes in i18.

I would say an earth/fire/fire dom. Earth has some good controls (while I NEVER understood why people though fire/ lacked control) and /fire will have very good aoe and ST damage, and Embrace of Fire will help Rain of Fire and Fireball in the APP set. Good damage, good control, and lots of lava/fire goodness. I'm not sure if stoney can be turned into a lava golem though, but that would be great for this concept.

Thugs, Mercs, and Ninja are probably last since they deal mainly all lethal, although the ninja teir 3 does some fire IIRC. That leaves Bots, Zombies, and Demons. In my (limited) ex perience, zombies are too squishy to reliably take down AVs. So between Demons and Bots, I would give it to the bots, primarily because they are easier to soft cap. I don't know how well demons would do, but I'd imagine their damage would do fine, especially with the varied types. And to answer that last part, hellfire is a fire attack with toxic DoT.