Weapon Mastery for Defenders?

Hello

Been respeccing a few of my lv 50 Defenders recently and, considering the power proliferations and new sets for defenders, I reckon its about time they got Weapon Mastery as an Ancilliary set.

Here are some cursory ideas for what powers might be available:

Level 41 - Body Armour - same as Blaster WM power (auto +res)
Level 41 - Combat Knife - ST melee attack, lethal (moderate), -def, -res, moderate recharge
Level 44 - EMP Charge - ST ranged (close) Hold, minor energy damage, Special vs. Robots, long recharge
Level 44 - Blinding Powder - Ranged Cone (narrow), confuse, -ToHit, long recharge
Level 47 - Critical Strike - Click, Self, +ToHit, Critical Damage in 10 second period, very long recharge

Now the last power took some rummaging around in my brain before I could come up with a suitably powerful (but not too reliably powerful), um, power!

I'm not even sure if it's possible to give critical damage as an attribute. But I figure this is the suggestions thread.

I also figure that it would be similar in effect to something like Power Build Up in Energy APP. It gives the player the chance to active an attack or two and nothing more before the effect wears off. It doesn't boost the secondary effects of powers, but as a Master/Mistress of Weaponry it is a good theme (well, I would say that wouldn't I?! ).

As for the other powers, I figured that the first two are standard fare. You get the chance for (in my opinion) 2 exciting powers in Blinding Powder and Critical Strike later on so the first 2 need to have a balance. An auto resist power is going to be less powerful than a toggle, but at least gives a permanent buff should the player decide to opt for a nuke or face nasty end drain. And the knife, which I based on the Sky Raider Captains and the CoT Thorn Wielders gives a def and res debuff to the target, which makes up for the lower damage (compared with Total Focus and Thunderstrike).

I'm not entirely sure about the EMP Charge. I was thinking of tazers and such but perhaps that's too Traps defender based? I know that Radiation infection already has an EMP power that's more useful, but for archery and psi blast defenders, perhaps a special vs robots power would be welcome? Could well need some work there.

Blinding Powder just seems like fun and so far only Ninjitsu stalkers get it. Looking at the other Defender APPs, and Defenders as a whole, there are no Confuse powers. Also having the range of Blinding Powder means there is some risk involved in getting close enough to hit the power and let it work its magic.

Please offer constructive criticism, thoughts, pie, cookies, and other Internetz stuff!

It's not possible to add critical damage but it could be turned into a build up clone which would work (Power Build Up is essentially a combination of Power Boost and Build Up).

I'd like a weapons/gadgets mastery set for Defenders as well but I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of your version, the powers are all ok, it's just not how I'd build the set

My suggestion would be along the lines of:
Cryo Freeze Ray
Crane Kick
Body Armor
Wide Area Web Grenade
Gun Drone

Admittedly like Munitions Mastery this is an Assault Rifle based set with two powers that are fired from a gun although from a practical point of view renaming if you renamed Cryo Freeze Ray to Cryo Grenade you could give both it and WAWG a variation of the Web Grenade throwing animation and get the same basic effect without the assault rifle.

Defender Epics seem to mostly focus on Control and Damage with a few self buffs so I think this would offer a nice combination of powers compared to other epics. The one power I'm not really happy with is Crane Kick. I think it works with the set since like Thunderstrike in Electrical Mastery it provides a way for Defenders to get an enemy out of his face while dealing a bit of damage and it sorta fits thematically but it feels out of place.

I see where you've gone with the Crane Kick idea. I was thinkign of some kind of 'self defence' which, at the moment, onmly equates to using some Martial Arts powers for a defender. In other words, my version of this is lame

My decision not to include another 'weapon' in the form of a gun model was that, with Blasters a bit of redraw is okay because you're doing a fair amount of damage anyway, but with Defenders it seemed a little harsh to penalise with redraw.

Having said that, Crane Kick (or something similar) would be better than the Combat Knife I proposed in terms of redraw. As long as the power itself didn't need redraw. So basically that's Kick.

Anyway, thanks for replying.