Q about positional def and farming missions

I have been playing with my ele/sd scrapper now for a long while and he is fully built but it seems so many people are now running scrappers. I was thinking of trying a fire/??/ice blaster and try to cap out ranged def and getting aoe pretty decent. I run the Rikti Recon AE mission for farming on Freedom a lot with my scrapper and it works fine but I am dyin to try something else. My worry is that I will still fall flat so fast. My scrap is soft capped in all positions. If I were to make a blaster to try this would anyone have any idea on a good secondary? MM maybe? I would plan on trying hover blasting as there are 100ish guys in the AE. If I can stay above them and force them to throw ranged atacks and I am soft capped on ranged and or close on AE, wouldn't that be pretty decent for a fire blaster strategy? I may be way off on this because maybe the guys just jump to try and reach me and hit me with melee there. I am just sick of the fotm builds now and feel like tryin something new. I also hear ice is good for trying to get the def high than some of the other mastery sets. Thanks for the input

The answer is yes and no. Upping positional defense and going hoverblaster is a decent strategy (particuarly if you are farming a group with no ranged AoE attacks). Mental manipulation is probably a good choice for secondary since it gives you another cone attack and drain psyche is useful for regen/recovery.

However if you're going this route than Cold Mastery is a horrible epic. Frozen Armor provides Typed defense not Positional. While typed defense is a valid strategy (especially in the AE since you can limit yourself to enemies with Smashing/Lethal damage types) it doesn't stack with typed defense and is moderatly incompatible with the hoverblaster strategy. if you want to go with typed defense then you want a more melee heavy secondary so that you've got somewhere to slot Kinetic Combats.

... you mean "try something else than farming?"

Thanks for the reply. Are there any mastery shields that add to the positionals instead of S/L?

And as for the other reply I still run through all the arcs but when I am trying to finish my builds and get some higher return inf rates, yes I farm. I think it is better than buying Inf online.

//Ice mastery is the only epic pool that offers any sort of a defense toggle, and Frozen Armor is just smashing/lethal defense. Munitions has a weak passive resistance power and the rest have strong resistance toggles. Our positional defenses must come from pool powers like Maneuvers/Combat Jumping, our allies, our insp tray, and/or our IO set bonuses. You can still softcap at least one defense type without compromising your overall effectiveness though, and possibly more depending on the exact build. One of my friends boasted a frighteningly strong Psi/Dev/Munitions blaster with softcapped ranged and AoE defense, along with enough +tohit and +accuracy to hit just about anything imaginable, but had almost zero recharge or damage boosts as a result.

Another popular strategy is to get your ranged and AoE defense to the mid-30s so eating a single luck will push you over the edge; backing off of the ranged defense lets you invest more slotting to AoE defense (or recharge or whatever) and offers more versatile protection. You don't always need that level of survivability, but you can have it when you do (as long as you restock your insp tray between missions).

While it offers PFF, you can't do much from inside it.

Thanks for the replies