Traps solos very well matched with dark, sonic, and ice blast. FF generator, seeker drones into the mob, poison trap, plant a mine, and blast away. With IO's easy to soft cap so you can focus on recharge. And status protection at 8!
Rad/sonic is a well known solo fiend also.
Storm is another strong soloing primary. Dark is probably very safe.
FF, sonic, and emp are below par on the soloing front, but not at all bad sets (well FF is 1 dimensional). Ice will be difficult to solo until 26 when you get sleet.
On that note any team on your servers TF channels will take nearly any kind of defender, and you can start those at level 10.
Try giving your dark/dark a chance. Have dark/psy in 40's and don't have any problem soloing with her. 
"If you want to win you must not lose."
"Easiest way to turn defeat into a victory is to put on the enemy's uniform"
"Better strategic retreat than dishonorable defeat"
- Il Numero Uno (The Number One)
Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps.
Did I mention Traps? Seriously it's one of the best solo Defenders. It's tough, has mez protection, can use seekers to eat an alpha strike, has some mez capability, decent resistance debuffs and can stay out of melee range if it wants. What more can you ask for?
Kinetics. It provides you with -everything-
Heal? Check
Damage boost? Check
Recharge Boost? Check
Travel Power? Check
Endurance Recharge? Check
Whining about everything since 2006.
Ammo switching for Dual Pistols was my idea:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
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Speaking of kinetics - does inertial work with ninja run to provide longer jumpage?|
Originally Posted by Vel_Overload
Kinetics. It provides you with -everything-
Heal? Check Damage boost? Check Recharge Boost? Check Travel Power? Check Endurance Recharge? Check |
Kinetics doesn't provide you with a whole deal of safety. Its kind of like soloing a Blaster.
I'd stick with Dark/Dark for a bit. It was my first solo Defender and really turned me on to the archetype.
Fearsome Stare gives you a safe opener, Tar Patch ups your damage, and at 16 and 20 you get a good fast AoE attack chain going, allowing you to handle large groups at once.
Once you hit 22 and get Stamina, SOs and both NightFall and Tenebrous Tentacles it really starts to take off.
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Oh yes it does.
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Originally Posted by King Krimson
Speaking of kinetics - does inertial work with ninja run to provide longer jumpage?
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thanks everyone for the input thus far. Question on traps - the description for the force field generator says 'the drone will generate a force field bubble that will give all nearby allies increased defense' does it protect me as well?
Yes indeedy. 13.333 (repeating) defense to all, ~20.748% slotted.
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Yep, the FFG is the big reason to play Traps for a solo Defender. It provides 20%ish defense when slotted and protection from Hold, Immobilize and Stun. The only other Defender that can do that is Force Field and they are much weaker offensively.
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Originally Posted by King Krimson
thanks everyone for the input thus far. Question on traps - the description for the force field generator says 'the drone will generate a force field bubble that will give all nearby allies increased defense' does it protect me as well?
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Traps/son if you like taking out singular tough targets. Traps/arch if you like taking out whole spawns.
Other good choices are dark/son and rad/son.
Im able to solo on a number of Defenders.
The list is :
Cold/Ice
FF/Energy
Sonic/Sonic
Dark/Dark
Dark/Elec
Storm/Psi
Traps/Rad
My favorite one to solo with is currently my Dark/Elec Defender.
It saps a mob in 2 shots.Soon as that happens, you dont have to worry about anything.They dont have endurance to behave like criminals.Only like lambs to the slaughter.....
I 3 slotted End Mod SOs in Short Circuit.Didnt bother with damage as im only lvl 25 at the moment.But Lightning Ball does pretty nicely as a combo AoE right after it.
Also, if you consistantly fight Freakshow, you get additional bonus damage on most of them with Short Circuit anyhow.So Adding Damage can be delt with later and you can concentrate on the Sapping part of it.
Id have to say Dark/Dark is Rather good to Solo with, but i find the Dark/Elec is a cut above it due to AoEs rather then Cones like Dark has.Plus its better to sap all endurance in 2 hits from a ob then to constantly fire back to back and pray they dont hit you for half your HP more then once with -toHit Debuffs.
No End, means no 5% chance to get hit for full damage.Iv had the instance where a couple Freakshow Tankers nailed me once each and killed me with a 5% chance to hit me and killed me on my Dark/Dark.
Either way, id have to say any Defender can solo at a certain point if you figure out how they can do it in the first place.
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^^^^
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps, Traps.
Did I mention Traps? Seriously it's one of the best solo Defenders. It's tough, has mez protection, can use seekers to eat an alpha strike, has some mez capability, decent resistance debuffs and can stay out of melee range if it wants. What more can you ask for? |
Positron's i13 letter: We are trying to make PvP more accessible to new players, while giving experienced PvP'ers the advantage that comes with formulating tactics around the new systems we're putting in place. PvP from now on will be on our priority list. If something isn't working out, we'll be in there tweaking it and making it work, for the entire future of the product, not just Issue 13.
Dark/Dark Defender is a great (albiet slightly slow) soloer, and matures fairly quickly.
While I haven't made a traps/ Defender yet, my Sonic/Traps Corr was a hoot.. Had most of the bases covered, and a widely varied play style that you could switch on the dime..
Wanna just charge the mob head on? Send in your Seekers, stun the LT with Sonic's stunning blast, plop down a Mortar, then lay waste..
Wanna be a bit more strategic? Lay a few trip mines around the corner along with a mortar, find a 'big bad boss', drag him in and watch him melt as he walks through your land fill. (that one takes a bit of time to set up, but I had a blast doing it).
Wanna be sneaksie? Get Stealth, and toebomb away! PGT+Acid Mortar+Trip mine on top of a clueless posse is good fun.
I pretty much dealt with every spawn in a different way, which kept me quite entertained.
I love my Traps/AR solo or on teams, reminds me a bit of my SoA Huntsman.
Dark/Dark is also good solo.
I've been playing a Traps / Dark the last little while; I like it a lot.
With traps, you can do silly things with procs, and you can nail mobs in place using Tentacles to make sure the mobs keep on getting nailed by said procs.
Life's gotta suck if you're standing on Caltrops (two damage procs), getting nailed by Acid Mortar (-resistance, and hold procs), being gased out (two damage procs, can't afford the third, waiting for 50 on the fourth), and you're being hentaied by Tentacles.
I'm mostly in agreement with the people above on Dark/ or Traps/. My Dark/Elec soloes more safely than my Traps/Dark, but the latter kills things a lot more quickly. And would go even faster with just about any other secondary.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
I see a lot of references to sonic - Ive fooled around a little with it - seems like most of the attacks except the first are shorter range than most others. Does that cause a problem? How would Ice/Sonic work? I have a concept in the back of my mind about that.
e. seems like they wold work well together - a plethora of control tools. Ice with (infrigidate & benumb, snowstorm, sleet) and so on along with sonic -res and some decent damage potential(?) tho again the ranges in sonic concern me a little.
I also like the idea of dark/sonic (kind of a banshee thing). Im trying to conceptualize for a traps/?
So many choices - so little time. I think Im going to narrow it down to 2 choice and mess around with those to lvl 32 to see how they play out I guess. (i'm afraid I have fallen victim to a wasting disease known as 'altitis')
Any primary that isn't too team-oriented is good for soloing. As for secondaries, I'd recommend Ice.
For one of my future toons, I am leaning heavily towards Traps/Dual Pistols.
I have always liked AR/Dev for its concept and fun-factor, so now Defenders have the equivalent to this (except MUCH BETTER!).
Radiation and Dark also are very good soloers that I have played. Dark is the safer powerset with lots of control and -tohit, while Radiation is the more offensive soloer with a more "generic" debuff/buff feel to it.
Sets to avoid for soloing are Empathy and Kinetics. These powersets "can" solo, but its going to be a challenge to reach higher levels of performance than baseline "heroic".
Sets that I STILL dont know much about; Cold Dom and Trick Arrow.
BIOSPARK :: DARKTHORN :: SKYGUARD :: WILDMAGE
HEATSINK :: FASTHAND :: POWERCELL :: RUNESTAFF
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Oh yeah, I've got both and the Traps/AR just leaves AR/Dev in the dust capability wise.
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Originally Posted by Biospark
I have always liked AR/Dev for its concept and fun-factor, so now Defenders have the equivalent to this (except MUCH BETTER!).
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Traps/DP is VERY good solo.
I run mine at level 16 now at -1 x 6
If you want a fairly active and engaging solo defender, Storm has definite advantages. Some of the powers that are hard to leverage on a team, like Tornado, work very nicely solo since if you get mezzed, for example, the Tornado is still out there bouncing around stunning and knocking around your foes. Since everything you have is ranged, you don't care quite as much about scatter as melee folks would. Its also got some very dramatic powers like Lightning Storm, and you are constantly on the move to leverage Hurricane.
In my opinion, Storm also has perhaps the largest learning curve of any defender powerset to learn to play it well on a team. Perfecting your techique solo can be a good thing, because if you do then join a team, there are few if any other defender sets that can keep a team alive in a tough situation as well, thanks to "controlled chaos".
Consider starting one of those as well, defender sets are SO different in playstyle from each other I don't think having a traps (also very good solo) prevents starting a storm for when you want a change.
Ive played 2 defenders, one to lvl 29 an emp/psi and a 12 dark/dark. The emp gets kind of boring and does not really solo well (maybe I'm the problem) and Im not sure about the dark/dark yet. Do I need to give them more time or is there a set that really stands out? Thanks for your help. Also i just got back to the game a couple months ago from 2 years off so im rusty also.