If you want to go nuts and set your difficulty to -1X8 or something you'll need the area attacks, but at the bare minimum you want all three single target attacks and swap ammo.
The best way to solo a Dark/DP Defender would be to cap your ranged defense and use the excellent power that is Darkest Night and Tar Patch to keep enemies at distance while you attack from range. It is super easy and very cheap to cap the ranged defense on a Dark/DP Defender so that would be my advice to you.
Additionally that build will work solo or in teams just as effectively.
"People love to talk, but hate to listen." Alice Duer Miller, American Author (1874-1942)
I'd recommend everything except for Suppression Fire and maybe Hail of Bullets. You might skip the two other AoEs if you like running at low team size difficulty (i.e. +1/x2 or something) but otherwise I'd say take it all and laugh manically while doing so.
I will now be extremely vain and repost my opinions on DP for Defenders:
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Yeah, I've been thinking a bit about this and I'm inclined to say that Dual Pistols is one of those blast sets which really needs a lot of powers to be effective, especially for a Defender/Corruptor.
If you look at the "generic" Blast set you have the following: 3 Single Target Attacks 1 Cone 1 Targeted AoE 1 Aim 1 Single Target Mez 1 Snipe 1 Nuke Obviously most of them don't follow this exactly but it's pretty much the base version that they differ from. So... in general with the generic set you want 5 powers: the 3 single target attacks and the 2 AoEs. This gives you a decent single target attack chain for tough enemies and AoE damage for dealing with minions. These 5 powers also tend to be in every set (although in some sets the format for them is a little unusual such as Ignite for the third st attack in AR). The other four powers in the set (Aim, the Snipe, the Mez power and the nuke) are the more skippable powers (depending on the rest of your build) and are also the ones most likely to be replaced with set-specific powers. In Dual Pistols three of these four powers are replaced with other powers that are generally more attractive than the original power (in 2 cases MUCH more attractive). Swap Ammo replaces Aim, Piercing Rounds replaces the Snipe and Hail of Bullets replaces the nuke. Swap Ammo and Piercing Rounds are both VERY attractive to a defender since they increase your ability to perform your primary goal of debuffing enemies, in particular Swap Ammo allows you to tailor your debuffing to fit the situation. Hail of Bullets is less attractive since it isn't quite as good as the other crashless mini-nukes (Full Auto and Rain of Arrows) but for a Defender who will be in melee range anyway (such as Traps or Kinetics) it makes a lot of sense. So for a Dual Pistols Defender we have got the 5 damage powers most Defenders will want plus two powers that provide solid increases to the Defenders debuffing potential. The last two (Suppressive Fire and Hail of Bullets) are less essential but depending on your primary there is a good chance that one or both will be useful to the Defender. The net effect of this is that Dual Pistols is a more power intensive set than most other Defender secondaries (for example on my Traps/AR I only have 6 AR powers but on a Traps/DP I would take or even 9 of them). Now the question I'm sure you're thinking is "but Adeon, surely a Defender doesn't need all 5 damage powers?" Well technically no he doesn't but for most sets skipping them is a poor idea. Archery and Radiation are the main exceptions since the lower than normal recharge on their first two blasts make it easier to spam their T1 blast and skip their T2 but for other sets the longer recharge means more downtime between blasts without this. As for skipping the AoEs, doing this decreases the value of the blast debuffs. The debuffs in blast sets are relatively short duration and often impossible to enhance (for example the -dam from using Toxic Ammo) as such stacking two different AoEs provides better debuffing than you get with just one. This also applies to skipping one of the single target blasts when you are fighting a tough AV. The primary purpose of blast sets for a Defender is, of course, damage but the debuffs they provide do have utility and it's important to keep this in mind when planning out a defender build. |
Thanks for the help 
I'm now level 30 and I just had to work hard on getting teams. Without them it would have been agony, the damage just is rather poor.
I'm a little disappointed with swap ammo, the debuff is absolutely minimal and it seems almost pointless right now. Hopefully I'll see something more soon that justifies its expenditure.
I am intending to take pretty much every DP power just to mess with them I might respec out later and get something a bit leaner.
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The value of swap ammo is twofold. First it allows you to tailor your damage a bit to avoid enemy resistances (for example most robots are resistant to lethal damage but not fire or cold). Secondly it allows you to change the debuff type of your blasts. The debuffs from any blast set are weak, after all it's a blast set not a debuff set, and the ones from Dual pistols are slightly weaker than most. However the advantage for Dual Pistols is the ability to switch debuffs on the fly according to your needs. Knockback, Slow and -Dam all have different uses depending on team, enemy group and the situation and no other blast set has the ability to switch between the three at will.|
Originally Posted by BunnyAnomaly
I'm a little disappointed with swap ammo, the debuff is absolutely minimal and it seems almost pointless right now. Hopefully I'll see something more soon that justifies its expenditure.
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On my DP/Storm Corr I tend to use Toxic ammo as my default since it complements Storm but I use the other types when doing so makes sense.
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Only a small fraction of the damage is actually converted on the element of your choice. So for Executioners Shot, your hardest hitting single target attack, only 1/3 of the damage will change to fire/cold etc. Often the resistances are merely a matter of 10% either way, so really you only manage to get 3% more damage in this instance. 3% damage on a Blaster might be something you'd think about but 3% for a Defender is well... garbage. That proportion is worse on some other attacks; the T1 and T2 blast have damage of only 1/4 of the total that will shift to what is applied.|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
The value of swap ammo is twofold. First it allows you to tailor your damage a bit to avoid enemy resistances (for example most robots are resistant to lethal damage but not fire or cold). Secondly it allows you to change the debuff type of your blasts. The debuffs from any blast set are weak, after all it's a blast set not a debuff set, and the ones from Dual pistols are slightly weaker than most. However the advantage for Dual Pistols is the ability to switch debuffs on the fly according to your needs. Knockback, Slow and -Dam all have different uses depending on team, enemy group and the situation and no other blast set has the ability to switch between the three at will.
On my DP/Storm Corr I tend to use Toxic ammo as my default since it complements Storm but I use the other types when doing so makes sense. |
When playing as a Dark Defender, my debuffs are basically 40 or 50 times the power of the minimal effect my weapons have. I just generally stick to fire for the miniscule extra ticks of damage and leave it at that.
When you break it down by the numbers, 3% damage on a defender (if the enemy even has resistances you can toy with, so frequently 0% damage) is no justification for a power choice.
I consider the debuff change to be MUCH more relevant that the damage change which only really matters in a few specific cases (such as going up against robots who often have 50% lethal resistance). Yes, the debuffs from your primary are more powerful but DP allows synergy, for example Dark has -to hit so combining that with toxic ammo decreases damage even further in the same manner as layering resistance and defense does.
That being said if you're only using Fire ammo I'd say respec out of Swap Ammo entirely and stick with lethal. At least that way you can get the -resistance from piercing rounds without needing to change ammo.
Hi all
Long time player, but mostly I've stuck to villains and not a whole lot into heroes. I was hoping to get a bit of advice about how to best level a defender. I expect I'll probably be soling quite a bit so keep that in mind please! I know the best way would be to get into groups but I play at the oceanic night time so it's not always possible.
If anyone has tips about what in general I should take first please let me know. I have a 39 energy/dark corrupter so I know the ins and outs of the dark tree but would liketo hear what people think about the 'needed' skills for solo, especially Dual Pistols
Thanks!