Excellent Post!! However, I think you may want to rethink the idea that a Forcefielder doesn't solo well considering I do it all the time. Also Dark Defenders also solo well too and can be what you would call a very strong Offender. All in all though this was a very accurate and well thought out post.
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While I can see saying perhaps that psychic is the best, I don't agree that it is by a long shot. I've seen bubbles defenders with dark and rad quite enjoy their choices in secondary sets.
I just didn't believe it made as big of a difference with bubbles as it did with others. YMMV.
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Well, Psychic doesn't STOP you at all from working with tankers&scrappers. It's just that with Psychic powers positioning is nearly irrelevant, which means that you can be where the others of your team are. While with radiation with a bunch of Energy blasters you'd be crippled.
Also psychic has a better synenergy with Forcefields because basicly when you're a FF defender you're always less protected than anyone else (No Deflection or Insulation for yourself) and since psychic is very much a single target set you won't attract heaps of aggro (as you would with for example the cones in the dark set).
No. I'll maintain my stance. Dark blast and Rad blast are two sets that are less than ideal when you're FFing. You can be happy with them, but then you can be happy with almost any Defender combo.
The best sets are Electricity and Psychic. Psychic because it has several strong single target attacks (and they all have built in debuffs, TK with its built in knockback and Will domination with Sleep). It doesn't draw alot of aggro, and who ever you hit is less able to hit back.
Electricity may lack the high powered TK&WD, but it does feature Tesla Cage which is VERY nice if someone starts gunning for you.
Energy isn't an FF Offender set, but can work well if you're primarily using your secondary as defense (balanced or supporter strategy) since it features knockback with everything it has.
Dark likes its cones, which are short ranged and require offensive positioning and pulls aggro like there is no tomorrow. Of course it CAN work, if you're mainly using Dark blast, Gloom, Moonbeam and Dark Pit (and not Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall). If you go the single fire route you will have ACC debuffing and decently powerful attacks which don't require loads of positioning. But Tenebrous and Nightfall are really the most lovable parts of Dark Blast, so giving them up....well, it would pain my heart.
Rad is a lost cause if you happen to end up with blasters, and a dangerous route even if you don't. It doesn't reduce enemies attack with longer ranged attacks and it has short ranged with all its bread and butter. Rad means DYING alot unless you got expert tankers with you, so rad needs a set which is more self-defensive, like Radiation Emission or Dark Miasma.
Of course ALL of these sets (except Rad, and in this case Electricity) work well if you're going to Solo (because you need to debuff enemy aggression) and don't have to care about covering a team, but FF isn't really Solo friendly since its holy trinity (DS, IS, DB) are highly team oriented.
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I have to disagree here. FF/Energy works well together. Not only does the knockback help keep opponents on the ground, also works in synergy with force concept of energy. Energy damage is one of the highest in the game and putting up a bubble and forget it since it auto protects you give you a BIG advantage when it comes to damage mitigation and offesive strategies.
I play a Kin/Dark, and I would also like extol (sp?) the virtues of Dark Blast, being the only secondary power set available, that I know of, that contains a self-heal (if I am mistaken- _please_ let me know!) Being a Kin, that is extremely important, having no other means of healing myself (other than going into melee, which I try to avoid 
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I would disagree with your assessment that the Kin powerset is not so suited in the support role, though. Perhaps I have just not slotted my powers correctly, or reached a sufficient level, but I find that my primary role in a party _is_ support- I work best as a secondary healer, and primary buff/melee support. I spend the lions share of my time in battle buffing the party- I don't have time to be an Offender, 
. I will agree that a Kin is not neccesarily a primary healer: sure, Transfusion is a great AoE heal, but you hit the nail on the head: two misses in a row can spell doom for the combatants. And blasters/ distance fighters? Fa'getabowdit. I have indeed been with several teams that get annoyed with they realize that their "healer can't doing his job" (dispite repeated warnings beforehand.) But Speed Boost (aka Crack) is always in high demand and is unavailable to me, making it a support-only power. Same with Increase Density- which some will say is nigh-useless due to recharge time vs. duration. The first time they stand up in an Earthquake thx to a Kin with this power, they will change their tune a little .
As I said before, I am willing to accept the fact that I have not reached a high-enough level, or have designed my character appropriately to make these comparisons. I do know however, that I thoroughly enjoy playing a Kin in a support role, and do a passable job at it.
At least that's what they tell me. 
Peace.
My assessment about kin's support was more in reference to their ability to keep the party alive than to make them more effective.
A lot of low level kins will slot up their transfusion and throw it regularly but it is unreliable. Its one thing to tell a blaster to stand close to the enemies so they can get heals but when you miss at a bad moment they will probably not trust you a second time.
The only things kin can do for survivability are transfusion, which misses annoyingly often and is centered around the baddies, Increase density which has an absurdly short duration, the single target damage debuff in siphon power, and finally at level 32 they get the ability to debuff the damage output of all the enemies. That is when I feel they finally have some reasonable means to mitigate incoming damage.
I love kinetics a lot. It is easily my second favorite set (behind rad) but it is the weakest when it comes to protecting your party.
On a side note once issue 4 goes live I will see if I can find the time to update and repost this guide. The massive defender changes and minor mistakes made in the original will warrant some serious changes overall. For one thing Dark Miasma will be included in the ideal offender sets if not listed as the new god king due to the impressive resistance debuff in tar patch.
Also Siphon Speed's changes already have me all giddy ;-).
I would dare say that Dark Blast is one of the best sets to go with FF. With FF you generaly run into two types of builds.
The most common is the holy trinity build which largely ignores its primary except for the three bubbles (dispersion, deflection and insulation).
The other is the spacial control build which uses the entire primary and specializes in controlling mob positioning (repel, force bubble, etc..).
Dark Blast helps both of these builds quite a bit. For the holy trinity folks, dark gives you the ability to spend half of your time playing the part of either psuedo-blaster or psuedo-controller. The damage output and mitigation of Dark Blast is nothing to sneeze at.
For spacial control, Dark Blast has some very useful tools.
1. Tenebrous Tenticles. TT is an imobilzation power, but it doesnt stop mobs from being knocked back or repeled by your other powers. This allows you to manuever mobs to your hearts content.
2. Torrent: This knockback cone gives you another power to constantly keep your opponents off of their feet, and gives you a little more flexibility for moving small groups of mobs.
3. Dark Pit. This isnt a spacial control power per say, but it does give you the ability to control the amount of agro you get from using all your other positioning powers. Because of the nature of the FF primary you will always have a much lower defense then your team, and pushing mobs around seems to generate quite a bit of unfriendly attention.
FF can be very similar to Storm Summoning in this regard.
But that's just my opinion 
Great guide. I think you've undersold the solo FF Offender, tho-
Force Bolt, which it's damage is downright laughable, it pretty much assured knockback. It's a fast attack, and knockback = distance from melee hitters + time spent flying/getting up for everyone. Definately handy.
Second, Detention field, which basically lets you put the most dangerous opponent in stasis until everyone else is good and dead. Other solo offender builds WISH they could just point at the most dangerous enemy in a group and say 'yo, deal with ya later'. and shove him to the side while offing his minions.
I respecced these two abilities out, deciding I wanted to focus on blastas and the 'big three' and add the Fitness pool and Energy Torrent to my build- mistake. Big mistake. I'm wishing I had another respec, because it just wasn't obvious how much these two powers were adding to my soloability until suddenly I didn't have them (And Energy Torrent... if it wasn't pretty much assured knockback on minions, I'd call it a waste of a power)
I'm... mainly a group offender now, yeah- soloing has gotten a lot slower now that I'm basically praying my big bubble provides me enough def to survive a decent pack of Council or Family. And I'm really not looking forward to facing the Tsoo before I get DF and FB back.
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Dodgeball Ace- Lv 21 FF/NRG Defender, Victory
Blackout Shadow- Lv 14 DM/Regen Scrapper, Victory
Meeh, whatcha gonna do?
Well my point with the bubbles offender was that it was nowhere near as effective at either improving its own damage, or protecting itself as other offender builds. Not really that it was impossible but that it was not quite as practical.
Kin can heal itself and ramp up its own damage while decreasing the damage opponents do.
Rad and dark can debuff enemies into complete submission and increase the damage output they can do through those debuffs.
Storm can keep all the enemies from standing, hurt them lots, increase their damge through debuffs, and have pretty darned good defenses with their hurricaine.
The best bubbles can do is try to keep the enemies on their backs and resort to their PFF when things get out of hand. They can't ramp up their damage and their personal defenses are quite frankly weak by comparison to the other defenders. They can't even heal themselves without inspirations or medicine.
Empaths can heal themselves, increase their regen, and increase their end recovery but they can't increase their damage or decrease incoming damage.
As a result I would say if you are looking to make an offender and don't already have a concept in mind, Rad, dark, kin, and storm would be where you would want to look. If you do already have a concept in mind, by all means go for it. You can make it work, but it won't be as easy or as effective.
in ur guide for the Dark Def u say that "it does nothing to help damage output of your party members", but Dark Def have Tar Pitt whick lowers the resistance of all the enemies in that area. if u lower the res of the enemy wouldnt that help the team out in attacking with higher dam?
That was added after Neem posted his guide. This guide is still a good guide. But if you want the most current and up to date information, try Blackest Night's. If you look in the "Guide to Guide's" thread you'll see that the individual guides have little green labels to the right of them that say things like I5, I4, I3, etc. the most recent issue is I5. A guide labeled I5 is current through that issue.
I'm suprised TacRedline or Erratic haven't come here to tell you how good electric is for radiation defenders. When using a rad your usually going to be in the middle of a mob to keep everyone nice and close. Electric has short circut which is a PBAoE end drain with nice damage. Electric also has good DPS (I dont have proof thats just IMO) Just though you should know.
Excellent guide by the way.
Actually, the way I played rad was more from a distance with only occasional visits to the middle of the fight to buff/heal.
Though for a more up close and personal play style I can see your point.
This was a very good guide. I play an Emp/Psy Supporter, and this is a very dead-on guide. Good job!
Psychkid- lvl 32 Emp/Psy Defender.
"Hey, being a Healer is hard! I have to bust my [censored] to make sure my teammates aren't busting theirs!" ~Psychkid
ask empathy how much they have teamed with bad teams?!?! Back in the day empathies were a rare breed, now they are all to common, and mostly sucky. Don't take offense if you play your emp well, but i have a lev 50 emp and well lets say I am truely saddened to see the way so amny are played now days. Though what i really want to say is if you are reading this thread and looking for a def type, nothing beats a level 50 dark def (dark miasma dark blast and the dark scrapper powers from the epic pool) more should try them, but be warned, if you play a non empathy defender, just be prepared for a lot of kicked off this team and that team cause your not the 'healer' every one is looking for. Great guide by the way, and if you have any quesions about defenders, I got a level 50 emp rad and lev 50 dark feel free to look me up by this handle in global chat or pm me.