My sonic/electric (Major Drummer) is 50, and I just love playing him. I have him IO slotted up for defense and the elec slotted for sapping, and he has become so much fun. Any Rikti missions/TFs - especially mothership raids - and I bring him, since he is protected from the holds, and the defense prevents him from being slept. End draining the surrounding mobs so that they can't attack also seems to help a bit :-) I have yet to try running the War Zone solo (and I suspect he will be squashed by the 3-boss, level 54 spawns, but what the heck! I'll try it when I get home :-)
I take him to Cimerora and solo farm the Wall. I love playing him solo or on teams. He has the same problems most defenders have solo (slooooow soloing, self-buffing isn't all that) but he has enough tricks up his sleeve that he is just great fun to play. Also, I have yet to find a team that was sad that he was a sonic.
(ok, ok. My one tip of the hat to the 'defenders aren't healzors' stories as well as 'sonic defender love'. I get invited to a team of like 5. The leader says "we just need the heals". I reply "I've got no heals - I am a sonic defender". The other 4 respond with "Sonic? Woohoo!" "YAY" "I want the rings!" "Woot! I am an Ice tank!". Team leader says in team chat "oh. Good." 'cause what else could he say? :-)
Not for the sake of keeping this thread running any longer... but either it served it's purpose or random coincidence is in my requests favor.
I recently rolled a new scrapper and both of my first teams had either a sonic defender (or 2!) It was good times all the time 
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"Fascinating. I'm not bored at all, I swear." -Kikuchiyo
I like the set - I've had a Sonic/Energy I solo'd to 28 and deleted, another one at 50 who I dual boxed with, and a Fire/Sonic Corrupter on the go about level 20.
I think the biggest problem the set has is that it's terrible solo, probably the worse Defender primary to do so with.
You get:
- Sonic Siphon, only really worth it solo if you are going to take more than three atatcks to take down a target, hence good for speeding up boss-killing by 30%.
- Sonic Dispersion. Gives you mez protection, this is very good. Also gives you 25% Res vs most attacks, which isn't that great when you could play a Blaster with 20% more HP.
- Sonic Cage. Not bad solo, but has its problems.
- Liquefy. Very good, but on a long recharge.
So soloing a radio mission, you have a couple of tools for the boss at the end (Liquefy and Sonic Siphon), but for the rest of the time you're a Blaster with mez protection and half damage who gets their powers later.
Playing in a duo, its different - the Sonic set really starts to shine here. When I dual box I select the character who needs the most attention as front, ie typically a melee character or one who relies on click activity to survive. The back character on my second computer will be on follow and targetting through the main one, fully attacking and so on but getting slightly less attention from me.
My Sonic characters almost always take the back position. The front character takes most aggro, and they're tougher thanks to Sonic Shields. This puts Disruption Field on the character Im controlling most actively. The only time I'd want them at front is to place Liquefy, and that's one click every 2 minutes maybe?
So the set to me feels like its really designed to be passive and take a back seat. Unnecessarily so, I think. The only two ally-targetted toggles in the entire game exist in this set (Disruption Field and Sonic Repulsion), it feels like they're a failed experiment one of the powers designers tried in I5.
In short, its a very useful but unrewarding set as it is now.
I played a Sonic/Sonic to lv 24 before deleting it. It was a great character, and everyone I teamed with gave compliments on how effective it was, but I just didn't have fun playing it. That being said, I got a lot farther with a Sonic/Sonic Defender than I ever got on my numerous attempts to make a Force Field defender.
This is not to say that I dislike Force Field defenders. I just don't want to PLAY them.
Sonic plays like a resistance debuffing set that just happens to have some buffs handy. Force Fields plays like a hardcore buffing set with some knockback slipped in. It's easier to solo Sonic, and it's more exciting than Force Fields. Pair it with Sonic Blast, and you have a whole other set that can throw around resistance debuffs, allowing you to turn enemies into jelly.
I just got bored with it. While it's more involved than Force Fields, it's still so effective and easy to play that I just set my brain on autopilot. Buff team mates whenever the shields are going down, and mushify any enemy that looks strong with the variety of powers at your disposal. Watch endurance. Repeat.
My brother got his Sonic/Sonic Corrupter all the way to level 50, and I find it more fun to play from, just because it's a bit more "blastery" than a defender.