The answer is yes, but it won't be as sturdy as a scrapper or tank.
A popular way to go is to soft cap smashing/lethal defense. This is commonly done by grabbing the frozen armor in your epic shield then slotting up Kinetic Combats in your blaps. You can also spec in some ranged defense so you have some other layers of protection, since not all things you face is smashing/lethal damage types (though it's the most common).
For ranged combatants, many choose to focus on ranged and perhaps AoE defense. You can soft cap range on many builds and get respectable AoE defense as well, but that won't help you if you're focused on blapping.
I've tried to see if I could make up melee defense oriented blapper build, but sadly the numbers don't look that hot. Assuming you could get all of the 3.75 melee defense bonuses that comes with 6 slotting Touch of Death or Obliteration, that's still only 18.75% melee defense, with around 2% from combat jumping, 3% from the steadfast res/def and 2.5% from a 6 slotted Gaussians and another 6% from a slotted Weave. You'll probably end up with something like 34-35% defense.
With that said, there's been plenty of blapper players who have been using this style of play successfully before IOs were even introduced (so they had 0% defense), so maybe 34-35% isn't so bad. 
As for combinations, I'd recommend electric/electric, largely because electric manipulation has more attacks than energy manipulation and it even has an AoE (albeit a small one) in thunderstrike. The blaps also have some mitigation in them (though, they're not as good as the stuns from energy). I'd also recommend electric as a primary because powers like ball lightning and short circuit lend themselves well to a blapping style.
As for status resists, you'll have to dip heavily into pools: combat jumping for immobilization protection, acrobatics for hold/knockback protection, health for sleep resistance. Aid self also provides some stun resistance if used ahead of time instead of as a heal.
Thanks so much for the advice, Fury! 
Expect me to be back here when my initial efforts fail epically. XD
Oh, one more question: Are there other routes to achieving effecive immunity from stuns outside of the medicine pool?
Just a note on Kinetic Combats, they are extremely expensive. If you are planning to go the S/L defense route Smashing Haymakers are the next best thing and much much cheaper, but you probably wouldn't be able to soft cap as they only give 1.88% S/L defense
Quote:
Not really. And even the medicine pool only offers resistance not protection. You'll still be stunned, but for a shorter duration. There are IOs that decrease the stun duration if you want to minimize the duration even further. |
Originally Posted by Doctor_Xaxan
Oh, one more question: Are there other routes to achieving effecive immunity from stuns outside of the medicine pool?
|
The good news is that even stunned, your defensive toggles don't drop and you can still fire off your tier 1, 2 blasts and your tire 1 power from your secondary. So, even for a blapper build, I'd still recommend taking these and slotting them out.
A lot of people will often ignore the tier 1 immobilize and not slot it up; however, when slotted up for damage, they (with web grenade and power thrust being the exceptions) can do a respectable amount of damage. For a blapper build, I'd recommend slotting up a power like electric fence, which does about as much damage as charged bolts.
Quote:
Well, as a Blaster don't forget you'll get Defiance which will allow you to keep attacking using any of the powers that were available to you at level 1 (the first two in your primary and the first in your secondary). Not sure if that'd be of any use to you if you're blapping, but having at least your first two blasts could at least keep you attacking when mezed.
|
Originally Posted by Doctor_Xaxan
Oh, one more question: Are there other routes to achieving effecive immunity from stuns outside of the medicine pool?
|
Team up with an FF Defender, and then imagine he's isn't there at all.
Voila, instant Iron Man!
I have an NRG/NRG Blapper in the 20's and while he is fun to play, the NRG secondary sucks big time. If I were to do it again (which I might) I would go NRG/Elec. The only reason I say to keep NRG primary is the knockback. I know most people hate knockback, but very rarely is it actually a problem with people who know how to use it as a mitigation tool.
Your pool choices are definately going to be tight though. I would suggest you go the flight route as you can use both Hover and CJ @ the same time as well as slot them with IOs that get defensive boosts. Its definately going to be an expensive build, and you are going to want to pick your attack powers carefully (tight build). Good luck to you man. If you are on Justice look me up @ Darth_Vernon
An */Energy permadom might be more up your alley. Or some flavor of Force Fields, Sonic Resonance, or Traps. Traps in particular might be something to look at, since the jury's still out on how good or bad it is for Defenders (it's at least semi-good for soloing), and it sounds like a match for your theme.
As far as blasters go, you can get good survivability if you've got the inf to buy it, but don't get your hopes up for mez protection. There's Defiance I guess: Power Bolt, Blast, and Thrust will still work when mezzed.
NOTE: I plan on rolling a Traps/Energy defender soon. If you're still on the fence about it next week, necro this thread and I'll let you know how it's going.
Quote:
I'm just curious as to why you feel this way. I leveled my Nrg/Nrg to 50 (years ago) and if I had known better would have gone /Elec, but I'm just really curious as to your reasons on why?
| I have an NRG/NRG Blapper in the 20's and while he is fun to play, the NRG secondary sucks big time. |
Active 50s:
Zero Defex: DP/MM//Mace Blaster
Mutant X-7: Fire/MM//Mace Blaster
Running my Kin/EA gloriously
Come on I21!!!
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.
|
NRG is considered one of the better secondaries. In fact it was considered the best for a very long time. Why do you believe it sucks big time...
Oh and by the way.. you are gonna get mezzed... and its gonna start happening a lot around late 20's to early 30's.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
For the style of play I enjoy, NGR secondary sucks. As a whole it seems to be a good set, but kind of forces you to Blap. As a blaster I would rather stay @ range and kite, but with the knockbacks of both prim & secndry I found myself having to get into melee range more than I prefer. Just my opinion though. I know a lot of people who love Nrg secondary, just not my cup of team (which is why he hasnt lvl'd in over a yr). YMMV tho.
The game is specifically designed to prevent you from making a tough character with ranged damage. Here are a few ways to get close to that:
A mastermind with henchmen on defensive follow and the /traps (for Force Field Generator) or /force field secondary. The henchmen take a percentage of your damage so that you are tough and the force fields mostly prevent you from being mezzed. Downside is you don't get many personal attacks so it can be boring as your henchmen do all the work.
A claws or spines scrapper, which are very tough and have a couple of ranged attacks. Also, very high level scrappers can now get Blaze Mastery so they can throw a few fire blasts and fireballs.
A blaster with ice/ or sonic/ so that you can freeze, sleep or disorient enemies and then blap them while they are helpless. Also, you can use three purple inspirations at a time to temporarily raise your defenses to 45% (the max) so that you can blap more safely. My new rad/em blaster does this against bosses.
A dominator so you can incapacitate enemies and then hit them from range or melee. Dominators aren't really tough, though.
Defenders and corruptors with radiation emission and dark miasma and storm summoning can debuff enemies and do damage at range, but these tactics can be cumbersome and are not like Iron Man.
There are ways of becoming semi-tough if you have lots and lots of influence to buy special IO's, but I don't know too much about that.
Good luck!
I've been running an elec/elec for a while and the mezzes aren't a problem provided you have the powers mentioned earlier. There are variety of ways to go about blapping, medicine pool is one (I don't have it), but I would suggest keeping mobile to increase survivability.
Totally new to blasters -- I generally play melee ATs, but I'm a sucker for hybrids, and the idea of pewpew + pow pow DPS has had me curious for a while. Hence what is probably going to seem like a silly request:
Is it possible to make a blaster build that can dish out respectable DPS, but has its bases covered as far as survivability and status resistance? In other words, if I want to be up close near the action without getting constantly aggrevated by AOE mezzes, etc, how would I go about doing that?
Bear in mind that I'm not looking for the best of both worlds here. But I'd really like to have an Iron Man-esque character who can dish it out at range and take a hit.
Thoughts? (or links, if this has been discussed ad-nauseum already)