perwira

That there pretty much says it all.

Even thogh I've got a rad/rad redside, traps/dark (having played both sets) looks more than scary to me.

Thanks to contact/mission information from Paragon wiki, I've been selecting arcs with merit bonsues, including the Midnighter Club.

Welcome to the Club.

I'm pondering traps/dark. The debuff potential here is, well,... horrifying.

While I haven't yet rolled a traps/* defender yet (and believe you me, I will! maybe a dark blast...), I'd like to share traps IO slotting ideas here. As a bots/traps MM without a whole lot to choose from in the bots IO sets, I had the 'luxury' of slotting the /traps side of it, so here are some ideas, with the IO build at level 45:

Acid Mortar: Virtually indestructible, it draws huge amounts of aggro and does a yeoman's job of debuffing. One choice is to slot 5 Analyze Weakness excluding the +tohit proc and substituting Achilles Heel chance for -res proc instead. At level 45, this comes to -84.5% debuff, +70.8% acc, +65.8% recharge (meaning occasionally two can be up at one time, even non-hasted) and +40.5 end reduction. Seriously consider going for effect instead of damage with the Mortar. With a multitude of shots, the -res will kick in sometime during its rounds. Set bonus also gives +11% acc, +3% damage and +10% regen, nice numbers in the right places.

For the drones, I put in a pair of Rope-a-Dopes (acc/stun/rech & acc/rech) for 45.5% acc and 45.6% rech as well as +20.3% stun duration (at level 45). Set bonus of 2 gives another hefty +6% regen.

Poison trap has no accuracy component, so accuracy components of IO sets here can be a waste. But the duo of Lockdown rech/hold and end-red/rech/hold provides for 46.3% hold time and 46.3% recharge time as well as 20.6% end-red (again at level 45). Plus another 3% global damage for the pair.

FFG, simply two generic 45 defense IOs. 10% upped +47.7% to 14.77% global D for everyone nearby. Nice. Very nice.

Caltrops: A pair of Tempered Readiness (E/R/S and A/D/S triplets) for good overall total numbers and +1.5% recovery as a bonus.

Web Grenade: 5 of the 6 Enfeebled Operations, less the range bonus IO. It's fast, it stacks, make it good and use it. There's some good D and a 3.75% recharge time bonus. If you're short of slots or want them elsewhere, you can reduce the slots here.

Of course, your IO slotting will vary, particularly with your secondary power. Still, most defender's secondary power IO's are range attacks without much variation (a targeted AOE, a PBAoE, and some holds and sleeps and whatnot), so the variety of set IO's are found in the traps set. And what's more... traps IO sets are cheap-cheap.

And this still leaves open the whole host of pool powers and associated IO's.

I have to agree to with Frosticus and others. Defender traps/* is serious business.

I usually summon drones placed into the midst of the enemy before rushing in, which will draw the initial aggro instead of the FF, which you'd really rather not get hit. The highly rugged mortar should be next as it aggressively draws aggro and clusters any mob towards it and they'll ignore the FF, then the trap, a mine, and caltrops, all centered in the midst.

One thing I'm not quite sure about is whether caltrops draws any aggro to the caster - it's been my experience that when I toss these into a mob, causing minor damage, sometimes I seem to get noticed even when ss/stealthed.

Oops, thanks you two for correcting me, I hadn't realized that had changed, as my current bots/traps MM doesn't have TP.

I might add that defenders spend 49 levels of their career not being (and generally their teammates not being) 50th level. You make a good point in that comparing purely 50th level (and IO'd out) content isn't representative.

Moreover, if you play pick up teams like I do, you really never know what you're in for as a defender. You have to be quick to adapt to the level, team AT/power composition and even combined team play style and chemistry to be an effective defender. If you can fight with both the best and worst of them and still enable the team to succeed, then you're doing your job right. I've have some of the most fun playing on teams with newer, lower level, well-intentioned players who didn't always get it right at first (and that includes me). Amongst the many archetypes, defenders often play a pivotal, multi-faceted role that can determine success or failure depending on how well they flexibly adapt to the team they're with.

I tested this out with a MM /traps:

All of them can be placed while hovering/flying right at ground level, or altitude=0 (hit 'X' until you bump against the ground to be sure) with the hover/flight power on. You don't need to switch the power off.

If you are hovering near the ground, you can place the caltrops, seeker drones and FF generator with the target reticle on the ground.

If you are hovering or flying higher, you need to be in caltrops reticle tossing range or FF generator reticle range to the ground or a non-vertical surface. It will work on building ledges and also on (even steeply) slanted surfaces and other irregular surfaces. (I was actually able to throw caltrops and the FF generator on a slanted gargoyle at the corner of a tall building while flying.)

If you are flying mid-air far from ground or far any other non-vertical platform, you can only throw the seeker drones. Seeker drones are the only trap power that can be given a mid-air target reticle. You can target up or down or any other direction and they will appear and them home towards you and follow you.

Tack on stealth and/or superspeed (+stealth IO) and you're not only highly survivable but also for all intents and purposes invisible even during battle while you're not doing any other attacks. None of the traps draw aggro back to the character, although the FF generator and the mortar (as well as the drones) will themselves draw aggro.

I've got to try the defender trap combination sometime, already experienced with traps in a bots/traps combination with an MM.

And as you say, with such a variety of IO sets, the Mids build possibilities for survivability and capability capping are almost endless.

In general, I agree. An empath often has enough to do and doing damage rates near (if not at) the bottom of the list in terms of priority of what they should be doing. On the other hand, there will always be times when an opportunity presents itself for an empath to contribute to control and damage mitigation, possibly decisively, according to the situation. And after 50 levels of play, I've learned that an empath has to be able to adapt to any number of situations as well as any different number of team sizes/combinations in the mission. This adaptability is the strength of the empath I play and my original question originates in the exploration of increasing the empath's capability range even further.

Damage itself is really only of interest in solo or possibly very small teams (duo or trio, depending on the other AT's and powers). For soloing or some duoing, a second build geared towards more damage delivery would be more appropriate.

From all I've read so far, it seems pretty clear that this is a better way to go than to attempt PBU/TF, pretty much deciding the direction I'll take on the respec.

Would it then make more sense to choose the Electricity Mastery epic set and use its Shocking Bolt attack with TC to combine Hold effects? Because these are both duration over time attacks, would the Hold mag in these two attacks stack? If so, this looks like a far more attractive choice than PBU/TF from Power Mastery. Your thoughts?

In short, these answer the questions I had. As someone else had suggested, I was looking for the combination of both the mez effect and a contributory degree of damage knowing that most bosses/AV's may take more than at least a few rounds to take out. Without some assurance that the mez would take effect, I wouldn't consider it. From what I'm been reading here, PBU does *not* add to the mag 3 effect of the TF attack. The damage is also not extraordinary relative to some other attacks mentioned (LB and snipe) while equivalent mez effects can be had by the electric TC (surprising, given that TF is an epic power and TC is not).

I appreciate everyone's responses and suggestions in this thread. Thanks!

(I also hadn't heard of the term 0.132 second 'Arcana time' although I have been well aware of it's effect in attack cycles. Interesting.)

True, but AM's tend to be quite robust and, with haste, will last long enough for a second one to be up before the first one has expired. It's one of the few 'pet' powers that more than one can be up.

There's also a tactical method of extending the life of the AM as the party moves - team teleport, which although useful for an MM may not be as useful for a traps defender.

Having a both a bots/traps MM and a defender, I can see the potential for pretty good synergy with the traps primary and defender secondaries. At the same time, I don't see how the defender secondaries can even come close to comparing with the firepower put out by 6 fully slotted bots.

Actually, given a choice, I'd rather choose one of the original defender primaries and have the traps as a secondary, even though the traps powers would come a bit later than they do as a primary power.

Having said all this, I could see a traps defender as being fun to play. I've had a lot of fun playing traps with an MM redside with very little problem even in the fastest moving teams, and I'd probably have just as much fun with a traps defender blueside.

I appreciate the constructive comments. See my reply/question to the prior poster about whether the epic set Power Build Up would likely give the Total Focus attack the boost it needs to be effective.

The intent here was not so much control as to provide a single-shot hard blow when the opportunity presents itself, probably used only once or twice (or only a few times) a battle (depending on how long the fight lasts) given the slow recharge time. If it disorients a major enemy combatant (boss or EV) just for the several seconds(?) the disorient lasts, that's sufficient, as it provides damage mitigation/prevention for the team and in particular for the ones up close fighting the boss/AV.

The electric set itself doesn't provide much apart from the specialty of endurance reduction, which can be moderately effective against the surrounding minions in draining them (especially with the Power Build Up preceding the attack), but not as much against larger bosses and AV with their extremely fast endurance recovery - sometimes they can be fully drained for an instant, but they often very quickly recover enough of a sliver of endurance to keep active. The Power Mastery epic set seems to provide an opportunity to give the defender the occasional shot at a potentially effective attack that can support the team effort. The question here is whether it is feasible with this particular attack. I appreciate the comments so far on this, and your comments will largely determine whether I seriously consider adding this into the respec'd build.

Thanks for your comments. I'd probably dismiss the idea outright were it not for the Power Build Up in the same epic set, which reads: "Your mastery of power and energy allows you to greatly increase the damage you deal for a few seconds, as well as slightly increasing your chance to hit. Additionally, Power Build Up greatly boosts the secondary effects of your powers. Your power effects like heals, defense buffs, endurance drains, disorients, holds, immobilizes, knockbacks and more, are all improved."

Would the Power Build Up effectively increase the mag 3 disorient to a higher mag level? And if so, by how much, and would it be enough?

Looks good, and based on all you've posted so far, about what I expected. Bet you can't wait 'til you've got Sparky by your side!

As an aside, you mentioned wanting to increase your defense where you could. You're probably not swimming in inf, but a worthy IO to obtain is the unique Steadfast Protection: Resistance/Defense which provides a +3% Def (All). You might want to eventually slot this into your Tough power.

Thanks for posting your build and I'm curious how it works as you get into the upper levels.

Indeed, this can be said for any archetype, including the Defender.

*cough, cough* What you have must be contagious!