What type of defender and partner?

Let me preface this by saying that my highest toons are in their early 20s and both are fire/fire blasters...so my experience is very limitted.

A friend of mine is playing an emp/elec(I think) defender and I'm curious as to the best partner if we're just duoing missions. My blaster seems to do ok just wondering if there's another arch that would be good/better.

Also, like most...I love playing around with new characters and would eventually like to make a defender and I'm curious as to people's thoughts on which is the easiest to play for someone new to healing of any kind.

Well now. Play what you like; any AT is gonna do just fine partnered with a defender. Your friend with the emp will turn you into a tiny god, assuming he uses Fortitude to increase your accuracy, damage and defense and Adrenaline Boost to increase your recharge, regeneration and recovery. Emp is a great set to pair with a blaster because emp has such great single target buffs, and when some damage does get through emp can patch it up.

As far as the "easiest to play defender" there's not an answer for that. One tip though: healing is not what defenders do, mainly, so don't be afraid of using a powerset that doesn't do much or any healing. Sets like traps, forcefields, sonic or trick arrow are very powerful, great at assisting a team and keeping it alive, and they do zero healing (well, Traps has triage beacon but ugh). Healing's just a tool in the box, it's not the whole package.

To be honest, it's my opinion that storm and empathy are the two hardest defenders to play. Storm has to balance chaos and order with all the positional powers. Empathy builds twitch playing skills to keep teammates upright.

Forcefields is forgiving for beginners once you get the 4 minute cycle down for buffing teammates. Sonic is fairly straightforward, too. Cold has a few more twists, but it's the same theme; buff the teammates, debuff the bad guys. Traps isn't bad for beginners. It's self-sufficient but a bit on the edge at times. Trick Arrow is nice for beginners, a bit squishy, but definitely a contributor to teams.

Dark defenders I would say are middle of the road. The debuffs are nice but I think there is a learning curve to what the powers actually do and when they can be used for maximum effect. Rad is very effective with a simple heal aura to fall back on, but again, some learning to do what when. The radiation emission build can be tricky because there is such a crush of options prior to level 20.

Defenders defend.

Thinkin of defenders as healers is a step in the wrong direction right from the start.

Ive yet to find the magical healer archtype.

That being said...

your fire/fire blaster and a dark/dark defender can be a scrary good combination.
Or another emp to buff your emp buddy works great too.

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Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

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Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

On a duo, an Emp/* and a Blaster are a very impressive team.

For your own defender needs: Rad/Sonic is a very good combo of powersets. I recommend it.

One fun combo would be a pair of emp defenders. They can keep each other buffed at all times and will be one of the safest duo's you can play as. You can mix it up too. basicly the secondary could be to theme. a pair of emp/arch angels or something like that. When i first started I rolled an emp/dark while my buddy went emp/elec. it was crazy how much fun we had just duoing missions.

To team with an Empathy Defender, Just about any damage oriented toon (Scrapper or Blaster) would work well.

I'd say scrapper first, but that's just personal preference.

Empathy duos are VERY tough to kill. I'd recommend, if starting from the ground up, two Emp/Sonics so that you can stack resist debuffs and do huge amounts of damage. Also, the "Green Machine" trick is to take the Leadership pool and Hasten instead of Fitness. Recovery Aura means very little time when your blue bar is moving; Adrenaline Boost means NONE. One Fortitude plus two slotted Maneuvers is 32% Defense (close to SR levels) and alternating Regen Auras means "Instant Healing" level regeneration rates.

There will be some downtime on the auras until you get Adrenaline Boost- at which point you get perma-Hasten, perma- Adrenaline Boost, perma- Regen Aura (and perma-Recovery Aura if you want it) and you're running around 2000% Regen rate. Zero to full health in 12 seconds or less.

I haven't done it myself but the theory, and other people's stories, indicate that it's pretty gaudy and unkillable.

Thanks to all who responded! I'm still undecided but definitely have a few ideas now.

From the partner perspective I played with my blaster last night with my emp/??? keeping me alive... very impressive since I tend to charge in with wreckless abandon trying to kill everything as quickly as possible lol.

In terms of playing a defender the one thing that I'm wondering about is targetting. Since defenders seem to be much more complicated than anything else I've played with thus far, how do you guys keep track of what's going on and change targets quickly enough to keep everyone alive or am I thinking too much into it?

I find my Dark/Ice Defender to be very forgiving when playing on a team. The combo doesn't have any power that require a teammate to be targeted so it takes some of the craziness away right there. Others tend to make binds to target teammates so keypad 1 is always the team leader, so you don't have to mouse over and click on their name to buff them.

But back to Dark/Ice, with Darkest Night a -To Hit toggle and Fearsome Stare a large - To hit plus a fear and a small amount of defense in Shadow Fall, you can make it very hard for most enemies to hit you. And you have a slow (Stacks with the slows from Ice) and - Res in Tar Patch, a heal (that also adds more -to Hit), a hold (that can stack with the holds from Ice), plus a pet that does a lot of what you do. Oh ya the rez can be used as a straight up stun. Once I got sued to the combo I found that often I didn't need all those tools at the same time, and I could focus more on attacking.