New Defender Viable Solo?

I read that Defenders playing solo get a 30% damage buff. Will that make them viable or at least playable as a solo toon now? Too slow for me in the past.

I've never had problems soloing with a defender...

30% damage should help out quite a bit. Only you can really say whether it will push the AT over your own personal threshold for soloing speed.

It also depends on the sets you play more than pretty much any other archetype. Not only are the primaries incredibly diverse, but Sonic Blast kind of sticks out as an awesome soloing secondary.
-20% Res per attack, AoE sleep that's perma out of the box, balanced only by slightly poor AoE.

So something like Dark/Sonic should be very solo-able these days.

Defenders now do almost exactly the same amount of damage that corruptors do when solo now. Whether or not that's fast enough for you depends on your own preferences and what your buff/debuff set is.

Well, they were playable and viable solo before the buff. Whether they now solo fast enough for you... we're not you.

Maybe. Try it and see. I'd recommend something debuff-centric since those tend to solo more quickly and easily than the buff-centric sets.

Is "15% faster than Too Damn Slow" still too damn slow? Only you know the answer.

Just FYI, it's not 30% out-of-the-box. It's actually 1.5% a level up to 20, then it sits at 30%. So a level 10 Defender has 15%, level 5 has 7.5%, etc.

Great feedback. Thanks.

Defenders solo alot better now. They are pushing closer to Tanker level damage, which for me is just fine as far as solo speed. For some players though, Tanker-like speed will just not be enough. To each his own.

Before the change, I could not stand fighting Bosses solo. They could be handled, just that it took wayyyy too long to get thru a spawn. Now, after the solo boost, Bosses are still a bit of a drag, but the added speed in defeating Lts and Minions makes it seem alot less tedius.

Corruptors, OTH, have it pretty sweet. Not only do they have about the same solo damage, but Scourge comes into play in a greater way against Harder targets. So bosses are much easier to deal with for them. And they get to keep all their damage when they join a team.

It really depends on what sets you're playing.

An Emp/Elec is still going to have a hard time, because your primary doesn't do much to help you at all, and elec still only has 2 normal ST attacks.

Kin/Sonic, on the other hand, was already a damage-dealing monster in the first place.

Anything in between will see some improvement, but unless you know exactly how many hits it took for you to drop a boss before and see that it takes a few less hits now, you probably won't notice a huge difference.

As others have said, it really depends on your definition of good. I think they can be good, with good powerset synergy. I think traps/sonic with it's defense + mez protection + stacking resist debuffs + sleep and stun could be really good. Through in aid self and + defense set bonuses and you'd be pretty unstoppable.

Before I hit 22 and switched from DOs to frankenslotting (Exception: I had some old L25 Decimations that I paid ~5k for before the market merge that were just collecting dust, so I slotted those into Gloom) with my Dark/Dark Defender, I had absolutely no problem soloing the Faultline chain of EBs.

Part of that is because I had enough blues to keep the end bar going, but to be honest, it felt as fast, or faster than when I did that arc on my Mind/Kin at the same level, and a LOT safer because Dark/Dark is monstrous anyway.

This is purely anecdotal evidence with no scientific backing whatsoever, but for me, I'm enjoying my Defender far more than I did my corruptor because the higher debuff numbers are more important to me versus doing better damage on a team. I'd say try something like a Rad/ or Dark/ primary and see if it's your cup of tea.

The damage bonus slides because the AT modifier slides, but after 22 you'll have a good idea of whether or not it's fast enough for you. For me it's just right.

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