First Defender, And I Hate Hate Hate Knockback

Though as a blaster who recently has started enjoying scrapping, I've finally stepped up to the plate, faced my fear about the responsibility of being a defender, and am going to make one.

I'll either be an empath or kenetics. I'm not really asking for advice on that as neither is a mistake, but a personal preference, a role choice.

As a scrapper, and I know tankers feel the same, I abhor knockback. I hate my own knockback so much as a MA scrapper I'm tempted to take my Crane Kick off the bar.

So, need a secondary which is effective, mostly assisting but not castrated as far as self defence goes, and meshes will with my primary choices.

Looks like Electric, Radiation, and Trick Arrow have little or no kb. Energy is a kb machine. Dark and Psycic look too kb heavy...ignoring too many powers = getting goofy pool powers.

And as far as pools, I'm cool.

I've read the guides, but no one seems to compare the secondaries with regard to melee politeness. I'm sure none are bad choices except energy and dark.

Thanks in advance.

Just my 2 infl if you are looking at emp or kin and mentioned some secondaries.

But I have a 50 kin/arch def. Although I could solo/team just fine, the redraw because of switching back and forth from my attacks and kin powers got very old after a while to me. This is in comparison to my son/kin corr, which didn't have the issue.

As for emp, mine is emp/psi and I thought it work welled because I could do my job and it had a few powers to allow me get out of danger if needed. But you are probably not going that route.

Where did you get the idea that /Dark is knockback heavy? There's one power that causes knockback (Torrent) and that's very skippable. /Dark is a solid choice for any Defender primary, although the stacked -ToHit may cause an empath to respec out of some of the heals (ok, maybe not )

If you really really hate knockback, the only secondary you really would have to avoid is energy. All the others only have knockback on a single power, if that, and said power is usually not mandatory.

Archery - explosive arrow (TAoE 50% chance for KB)
Dark Blast - torrent (cone KB, tiny damage, skippable)
Psy - TK blast (60% knockback, high damage - single target, so NOT really melee unfriendly. Side note: Psi tornado is knockUP, so also not melee unfriendly)
Rad - electron haze (cone AoE - only 25% chance for knockback)
Sonic - shockwave (cone KB, minor damage (though more than torrent), no resistance debuff)

As you can see, about the only one of those that is really unskippable is TK blast - and /psi has a good strong ST chain, so if you knock back a target with TK blast, you're likely going to be killing it anyway. As a melee, I find that it's mostly AoE knockback that is annoying. ST knockback isn't bad, as long as you make an effort to avoid KBing the meleer's current target.

Empathy and kin play well with most blast sets, but you may consider one with some personal mitigation - emp is all about buffing others, and kin is all-offense, all the time, so they both could use a bit of self-defense in the blast set. Ice, dark, electric, psi, and sonic all come to mind (although sonic's mitigation is mostly solo-oriented). Kin also plays well with /rad - all those defense debuffs help ensure your kin/ powers hit.

The only secondary you would want to flat-out avoid is energy - the rest are NOT particularly KB heavy! TK blast is useful against things that are psi resist, so it is good to have in your tray - if that is too much, don't take psi. Sonic and dark both have torrent, which is EXTREMELY skippable - as in I don't know of many people who have ever taken that power. Radiation has electron haze, which is also a cone KB and falls into the same catagory of 'easily skippable'. Electric, archery and ice have NO kb powers.

And honestly, there are more than 1 power out of ALL of these sets that you will likely want to skip anyway that will STILL not lead you to pool power hell....

Defender secondaries with zero knockback:
Electric Blast
Ice Blast

Defender secondaries with a single knockback power, which is basically for utility:
Sonic Blast (Shockwave)
Dark Blast (Torrent)

Defender secondaries with a single knockback power, which does good damage:
Archery (Explosive Arrow)
Radiation Blast (Electron Haze)
Psychic Blast (Telekinetic Blast)

Defender secondaries with knockback all up ons:
Energy Blast

First two pools = go for it. The ones that have a knockback power, you can skip that single power without feeling much pain. I'd consider it, though, on an empath or kin, if you plan to solo. As a ranged character, knockback can be your friend, especially when it comes in the form of pointing at every enemy and shouting, 'GET IN THE CORNER AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE.' Both Shockwave and Torrent do 100% knockback, so there's little scattering. Remember, apart from PBAoEs, you do the same damage whether your enemies are next to you or 60 feet away. The third pool would be a bit more painful to skip the KB power on, but they're still all ones you can easily live without. My rad/rad skipped Electron Haze and never looked back.

With empathy or kin, I'd personally try for mitigation in my secondary if I planned to solo. For that, you basically can't go wrong with /ice or /sonic.

I have a kin/sonic, its quite fun to play and kinda blaster-ish. If you are coming from a blaster background I would give kin/ a shot, with the speed and damage buffs you kinda feel like a blaster. (at least after a couple Siphon Powers )

Also, I think you can get a feel of the sonic attacks from Shriek, Scream, and Howl, which are all quite early. I took: Transfusion, Shriek, Scream, Howl, Siphon Speed, Siphon Power. By 8th I had a basic mechanic going. I switched to team mode after that and took ID (10) and SB (12), which teams love. You could probably roll one up and get it 8th to give you a very basic idea of the attacks etc.

If you are skipping the KB (Shockwave), your next attack is Shout at 16, and not so much as far as damage after that (save the nuke, and minor dmg from Siren's Song and Screech). Not much KB in there, but a good amount of -res! (cha-ching!)

Speaking as someone with a 50th level empath/electric....

Perhaps the weakest of these primaries in terms of both utility and damage is the Electric set. The focus of the electric set is enemy endurance reduction, which is generally useful only if it kept up in sustained doses on the enemy (you should check out the SOLO quest thread by Biospark). Although electric has no knockback, I wouldn't choose it just because of that.

Were I to roll another empath defender, I'd probably go with the dark set or rad set, with the enemy debuffs (either -tohit or -def) they provide with almost every power.

My suggestion for an Emp is Sonic; the cone sleep is nice if you need to solo, or just if you want to prevent additional spawns, since you are likely to be watching the whole fight to some extent. Its also fairly low on AoEs, which is nice since you don't want to draw a ton of aggro as an Emp. Finally, its helpful against AVs, where an Emp doesn't provide a ton of damage multiplication compared to some other sets.

Although sonic also works fine for a kin (note that you can do Fulcrum Shift on a sleeping spawn without waking it up), rad is nice as well because you can get a decent AoE set without taking Haze so no knockback, Irradiate fires right where you tend to want to be (i.e. in melee) and all the defense debuffing helps you hit with the kin powers. Rad also takes Achilles procs, so you can do some -resist debuffing on AVs. Neutrino is also nice and fast, leaving time for the frenetic pace of Kin powers.

I'll suggest Dark/Dark for a defender.

It's an excellent combo to play - and is extremely useful in a team as well.

An attack chain of Fearsome Stare - Tar Patch - Darkest Night - Tenebrous Tentacles - Nightfall will reduce any mob to completely useless in seconds.

As a bonus it has a high number heal, which is useful in causing -regen when fighting AV's.

Plus ... You get 'Fluffy'

The dark graphic aspect of the powers does put some people off, but with colour customisation only hours away that will be a thing of the past.

Why complain about knockback when you can do something about it?

It's worth noting you can make almost any Defender primary (and certainly Kin and Empathy) into a Controller secondary, and pair it with earth or Ice control, ending knockback as you know it. Even knockback from other people's powers.

All four holds and immobilizes in Ice (and Earth too, I think) stop knockback for 12 or so seconds (and the AoE immobilizes can be spammed, creating permanently nailed-to-the-ground foes as long as your endurance holds out. If you miss a guy, follow up with the single-target Immob to pin him too.

If you hate knockback, that's one way to go.

lrn2KB, that is all.

I suggest that as your character after THAT that you bite the bullet and make something like a Storm/Energy or some such thing. Knockback is really very useful and helpful once you get past the 'zomg i have to hit r key nao' silliness. I've never had any issues with knockback used around my scrapper, save for on rare occasion.

I am playing an Emp/Energy and LOVE the knockback. As an Emp, I'm not trying to kill stuff as my primary goal. So far, i only have the single target attacks, so I CHOOSE when the knockback occurs. Its a great way to get those stragglers off of you that attack as you are doing your main job.

As long as you stay away from AOE knockback you should be fine.

My energy blaster rule is... if I knock it back, I kill it. Yeah, I run a lot of singletarget attacks.