Sonic and Rad: How, or whether, to combine?
By
Doctor_Kumquat,
Posted on: 2010-10-18 14:29 in Defenders
Great concept and costume.
It's up to you, but for a pure win combo, I'd consider Radiation/Sonic Attack. I also think it will coordinate well with your costume (especially if you take Choking Cloud and color it appropriately to look like twinkling stage lights).
Radiation Emission/Sonic Blast. Keep it as a defender, NOT a corruptor. You'll do great.
Cool. Now that my internet is working properly again, I could even experiment with power colors. So far Rad/Sonic is sounding pretty good, even has a guide for it, so maybe I'll give it a shot.
Sonic Resonance is unfortunately just about the worse primary set to solo with, arguably worse than Empathy. I'd give it 4 out of 5 at least on teams though - there are no teams that you don't noticeably improve with your presence. Its low maintenance and leaves you lots of blasting time.
Radiation Emission rocks solo or on teams.
Sonic Blast is the best secondary set hands down, and great to solo with. If you can make Sonic Resonance work at all as a solo-er, its with a Sonic/Sonic. Its also good on teams.
Sonic Resonance/Rad Blast would be one of the worse solo-ers I can think of due to lack of personal damage mitigation.
With power colors, pay particular attention to Sonic Dispersion - it can be a real eyesore in the wrong colours, especially if tis very dark or bright. A medium blue like your vest might work.
Okay, really starting to seem like Rad/Sonic is the way to go here. Thanks 
Sonic/Sonic and Rad/Sonic are both phenomenal pairings. Either way you go, you'll be fine, and have a rockin' character concept to boot.
Sonic/Sonic is handy in that while a number of teams end up with tons of +defense/-tohit, very few teams can resist-cap everyone. Sonic Resonance is a pretty rare set, but provides dramatic levels of protection - in a vacuum, Force Fields can offer much greater protection to the team, but resist buffs are much harder to access and more reliable in slowing down a sudden takedown enough for reactive measures to be taken. Sonic/Sonic defenders also pack more (sustainable) -resistance debuffing than any other character (aside from long-recharge debuffs like Fallout and Heat Loss). The set as a whole is very loose and low-maintenance, so you can buff up your allies and spend most of your time blasting at will. On the downside, the Resonance set is very ally-focused, and if you aim to solo, setting up a second build is highly advised, so you can focus on your secondary and power pools. My Sonic/Sonic could still solo Rularuu missions on Invincible with ease, but you could find a better soloer.
Rad/Sonic, as Jock Tamson would tell you, is the best at everything. It's the swiss army knife of defenders, able to heal, rez, nuke, buff, and debuff almost everything there is to be debuffed. Rad/Sonics are monstrously effective against Archvillains, with their -regen, -res, and -damage, and monstrously effective at regular hordes with their -tohit toggle and other tools. They can solo or team with ease, and you really can't go wrong with them aside from getting high on your own power and biting off WAY more than you have any business chewing.
Rule number six of an empathy defender is NEVER underestimate a blaster's ability to die. I don't care if he has CM, Fort, both RAs, bubbles (both FF and Sonic), and is fighting next to a Storm defender with hurricane on. If there is a way to die in that situation, the blaster will find it.
All right, so I rolled up a new toon the other night:
She is a Sonic/Sonic Defender. The concept behind her ought to be fairly apparent.
Anyway, just a few minutes ago I had a thought: Should I pun it up by rerolling her with Rad as one of her powersets, or leave her as she is? I don't have any experience with any of those power sets (well, except Radiation Emission, but that was on a troller which is a little different), so I figured I might be able to come here for some insight. Balladeer is also my first Sonic anything, so really I'm a clean slate when it comes to this.
Further information:
Targeted ally shields don't really bother me; I've played a FF/ defender and a /Fire MM before and didn't feel too much like a buffbot.
On the Rad front, my Grav/Rad troller is one my favorite characters, but I have no idea how relevant that may or may not be.
I would like her to be somewhat soloable (read: soloing doesn't take OMGFOREVERRRRR) but it's not what I primarily intend to do, or I wouldn't be a Defender.
She is of Natural origin; if I reroll her the powers would be explained as "Yep, she's just that rad."
I am also not averse to the idea of rolling her as a Corruptor and starting in Praetoria, so that may or may not be relevant.
Thoughts?