Defenders and Leadership

For my first defender, I'm planning out a storm/dark defender and I was looking at the leadership pool, which I noticed gives the most benefit for defenders. How bad should I feel for not taking these? Should I be a team player and get these toggles?

Leadership's alright, but not so good that you should feel you need them to be a team player. Just because a million permanewbie empaths all take them doesn't mean you should.

Maneuvers - You're a stormy. Stuff can't attack anyway.
Assault - Useful, especially solo, though you'll have to retoggle it every time you nuke. Perhaps have Assault instead of O2 Boost on your soloing build. For teaming, damage buffing should be someone else's job.
Tactics - You're a stormy. Anything that gets wet from Freezing Rain is going to be easy to hit.
Vengeance - Useful, though you'll have to take at least one not-so-useful power out of either Maneuvers or Tactics to get it. Since you're Storm/Dark, power choices are scarce, so be careful not to drop great powers for merely good ones.

Same question, but for a dark/rad...am I thinking along the right lines here? Although running all three might kill my end.

Maneuvers - +def to stack with my -to-hit in dark.
Assault - +dam to stack with the -res in dark, and possibly from -res IO procs in rad attacks.
Tactics - +to-hit to stack with -def in rad attacks.
Vengeance - To use before I HT my whole team back to life. Vengeance is a self-buff, right?

Well if your going to be teaming a lot Leadership is never a bad choice.

Maneuvers : Stacks very well with any other defense buffs. Don't just think of your own buffs here. Think of others. A lot of people have stuff like hover and combat jumping. Maneuvers makes these rather trivial defense buffs not so trivial. Don't forget IO set bonuses either which are quite common these days.

Assault : I believe its about an 18% boost to damage for defenders. Not a bad thing. Much better if you have -Res debuffs to magnify the effect. From a PvP perspective it helps reduce taunt/placate effects. I'm not into PvP myself but if its something you like then it should be considered.

Tactics : About a 12% to-hit buff. I've found this particularly useful against a number of enemies. Annoying Tsoo sorcerers with their hurricane effect and Circle of Thorns ruin mages come to mind. Oh also those avalanche shamans from the banished pantheon. PvP it gives confuse and fear resistance too I believe and a +perception buff.

Vengeance : Nothing to not like here. One of the most powerful team buffs in the game. Can turn a loosing fight into a winning fight.

One last point. Leadership powers stack very well with each other. Having two people on a team running leadership powers can make a very large difference.

Con: Storm already being end heavy.

Pro: If you can find the slots for it, 5/6 slot Maneuvers with Red Fortune for the 5% recharge. Four slots should be typical slotting in Maneuvers, so four slot it with Gift of Ancients for the 2% recovery and 1.8% max end. Tactics can also be 6 slotted with Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control which gives 2.5 ranged, melee and AoE def. May not seem like a lot, but add it to Steamy Mist and Maneuvers and you are looking at over 10% def right there and you haven't even started adding in other set bonuses to up those more. Since Storm lacks a self heal, end recovery and def are the two things I would look at in sets. Steamy Mist is already a free 5% def.

The leadership pool is nice to respec into at 50 when you can use IOs to mitigate the end cost and you have used your primary/secondary stuff enough to know what you can throw away.

On the way to 50, I'd rather spend those power slots on my primary/secondary stuff playing with the toys there and figuring out what I like from it.

A side note on maneuvers, while it's true that -tohit and +def are two sides of the same heads-I-win-tails-you-lose coin, there is a huge practical difference between -tohit which only affects things you have targetted and taken time to apply it to and +def which passively works to counter all incoming damage. Additional +def will improve your survivability no matter how much -tohit you have.

I *like* taking the leadership toggles on my defenders - even the debuffers. SkeetSkeet hit the nail on the head: A buff to you and a debuff to them are NOT the same, when they can resist your debuff...

Maneuvers is a little expensive on my dark, but in the team defensive build I have, I took Shadowfall slotted for def plus maneuvers. Does a nice +12-13% defense for everyone near-ish to you. This a build for Mothership raids, heavy AV content or anytime your debuffs just aren't being as effective as they ought to be. Normal PvE content, I don't use it.

Assault I like because I like doing a little extra damage. As do tanks, trollers, scrappers, blasters and Khelds... More damage is never too much :-) This one is also pretty cheap (end wise) to run.

Tactics I like for the reasons above. Less accuracy is needed in the enhancements; blinding mobs are not incapacitating, etc. And also, I like knowing that I am going to hit the +3 to +5 mobs regularly, as opposed to being limited to even con content.

Vengeance is great - when I remember to use it.

Typically, I will run only assault and tactics on my defenders unless there is a special reason to use maneuvers, or to take veng.

With the high -Res debuff Storm has, Assault is that much better of a pick.

The notion that "boosting damage is someone else's job" is a perplexing one when Freezing Rain debuffs resistance (ergo, increases team damage).

Against an even con, Freezing Rain is a 35% debuff so, combined with Assault's 18.75% damage buff, the additional team damage becomes 1.35 * .1875 = .25 (and change). In other words, Assault becomes a 25% damage buff, not 18.75%. Against +2s where FR is adjusted to a 28% debuff, the gain from Assault is 24%.

Your "job" (whatever a job is in a videogame) is to make your team better using whatever tools you have available, not to pigeonhole yourself into a role, unless you have some rp concept you're adhering to.

Assault on Darks and Storms will make a big impact to both for making a real improvement to a team.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the team DPS lost whenever I retoggle Assault after a nuke pales in comparison to the team DPS gained by running it throughout the 99% of the rest of a mission. It takes less than 4 seconds to turn back on. The opportunity cost of retoggling versus throwing out a pew pew defender level blast is pretty minimal.

And obviously I know that +Dmg and -Res are not exactly the same, I illustrate that in my post by showing their interaction (multiplicative, so more powerful).

Even post 38, my experience isn't one of being on a fully damage capped team with kins FSing all members of the team at all times. Perhaps I run in the wrong circles.

There's always the option of having one build for teaming with a Kinetic, and another build for soloing or not teaming with a Kinetic. If you don't mind the implicit admission that Kinetics breaks the game so much that it deserves a second build more than PvP.

Or you could just turn assault off when it's not needed.

I took Manouvers on my Storm/Ice Defender.

Stacked with Steamy Mist and both slotted thats a +13% defence to the team. Not bad for an incidental effect of me being on the team. Playing along with my BS/Shield scrapper with Grant Cover, the effect's really noticeable.

Its totally overshadowed by Hurricane, but you can't always touch everything with it straight away, especially Council and CoT and other "spread out and fire" mobs.

Basically, I think it's up to you- can you fit the powers in? Do you team regularly enough to get use out of them? Do they provide advantages that your default powers do not?

Also, can anyone tell me why the livejournal export from mids worked just fine on the last post i made, but when i used it for this one, it wasnt showing it properly?