"Best" buffer

So I've been playing a low level scrapper recently, which has been a blast. I love the kinetic melee power set animations, and have been teaming with two defenders, a force field bubbler and a sonic bubbler. Both of which, when combined, make me just about invincible.

My question is, which AT is able to provide this kind of protection best and also provide another team oriented role as well?

Some things I've been throwing around in my head that I may be interested in:

Sonic/Electric Defender
Force Field/Electric Defender
Electric/Force Field Corrupter
Electric/Force Field Controller

I know Cold has two shields and is also a pretty decent debuff set, but not sure what I would want to combine it with

Your buff heavy defenders are: Sonic, Force Field, Empathy, Cold, and Kinetics. All of these can perform different roles on a team.

There is no such thing as the best overall buff type defender. It all depends on the team at hand.

I have an empathy defender that was fun to play to 50 but I'm looking more for mitigation than the "healing" that my empathy was used to.

I guess what I should have asked is, is there a difference between whether I have a defender bubbling or a controller/corrupter giving out bubbles?

Defenders are the best buffers, by quite a bit.

Now for team safety I find a controller is better, since they can lock down things that get through your buffs. I also don't count corruptors out, while they have weakers buffs, they do help kill things faster, and downed opponents do not have attacks to get through your buffs. BTW I don't remember corr having FF as a secondary, though they do have sonic and cold.

I actually didn't check the powersets before I posted haha and just assumed corrupter did have FF.

So a FF Defender will be better at bubbling then say a Controller with /FF ?

Personally, I like Force Fields. When it stops something, it stops the attack cold. There are no secondary effects or mez. Sonic is pretty much about resistance, which absorbs damage but doesn't help mez or any secondary effects like -ToHit or -Damage. (As far as I know; I haven't played Sonic hardly at all.)

With the Alpha slot, Leadership:Maneuvers and Power Boost, it's possible to soft cap a FF secondary. So I'd go the Elec/FF controller. I don't know anything about Elec/, it just seems cool.

Although what I'd really recommend is a Bots/FF mastermind or Crab soldier, but hey, that's just me.

I actually played a bots/ff mm to 32 and just got bored. MMs are fun if you have something else to do which is why my thugs/dark made it to 50.

I think the Elec/FF would be fun, and with a controller primary I'll always be busy.

Thanks for all the great feedback.

A sonic/sonic defender sounds really interesting, but so do some of the other sets.

I'll just have to make one of each and see which I enjoy most.

Well, I'm used to other MMOs that have heal over time effects, which are pretty much regen buffs so I look at regen boosts as a type of proactive heal. As far as Fortitude goes, it's a great power but keeping it on six people is going to require not only very good timing (or more likely a program like Herostats that tracks buffs) but also a high recharge build. Four targets is more reasonable, though that still helps a ton.

I actually like Empathy a lot because if played well it can not only heal better than any other set, it can also reduce the need for healing. (I personally can not play it that well so I tend to use other sets, but I love having a good Empath on the team.) Actually I prefer debuff sets to buff sets, but that's mainly because I'm a Blaster player at heart and I'd rather be hitting the enemy with something than buffing teammates.

Empathy is hands down the best buff set.

It's a shame so many people see/play them as pure healers

Because of the nature of the game, there isn't a best "buffer" because any character has to be really good at several kinds of things to be successful. If what you mean is which characters give the best support, I would skip Defenders (or Corruptors or Masterminds) altogether and roll a Controller. It's not that Defenders are horrible, but any time I play one I find myself envious of Controllers and the safety/sanity they can bring to some very difficult fights.

It should be said that Sonic Resonance is a much better set when used on characters who already have some defense than it is on a team with lots of squishies. A Force Field Defender will carry a completely unarmored team from instant-squish to the defense soft cap (barring defense debuff effects) while also protecting from endurance drain powers.

I have 2 Force Fielders and 2 Sonic Res'ers, one a Controller and one a Defender of each. I frankly find Sonic underwhelming. Force Field meanwhile is ridiculously amazing during the level stretch from 22 to 45 or so, losing some steam later on. The exception to that is on certain Controllers where the constant mezz protection lets you run toggles that otherwise would be threatened. The personal IOing options are also much, much better on Force Field than on Sonic.

As a point of disclosure, my Fire/Sonic Res Controller is the only character I've ever retired simply on account of sucking. Sonic and Fire together are very endurance heavy and the character is just unbearable to play. His buffs also fail altogether to keep the pets alive, to the point that putting shields on them is nearly worthless.

IMO nearly any Sonic Resonance Controller could be improved by rerolling it as a Thermal. I'd say the same for Defenders if they eventually get access to Sonic Res. Meanwhile, nothing really replaces Force Fields. In the end tho, IMO, both sets could use some tweaks from the developers. I wouldn't call either "not worth playing," just giving you an account of my personal experiences.

I agree with the poster above that empathy is underrated as a buffer, and its strength is playing it as a buffer with the heals.