Coming from Defenders, Looking for a team-based Blaster

As the title says, i play ALL defenders. But i really like Drain psyche and sonic so i was wondering if Son/MM would be a good choice. Between the -regen and -res for AV's, tons of controls, and the -rech to help keep the team alive, I think it would be able to add as much as some fenders do. Thoughts? also, is there a better team based blaster i could/should try?

EDIT: what i mean by team based is... i want to feel like im actually helping the team stay alive and kill. Thats why i love my fenders :P i know i wont be the sole reason the team isnt wiping every mob but id still like to feel needed

Personally, I like fire/fire/fire Then again, I am a PBAoE fan.

If the team is good at keeping you alive, your dealing out lots of AoE. Just skip Bonfire in the ancillary and your good to go.

I would almost think if you like Drain Psyche you might be better off playing a Dominator.

Blaster Sonic isn't popular. The -res isn't that high and the set is mostly single target. Your only area attack is howl. Shockwave is a low damage area knockback power that will make many teammates mad at you. While people may not say anything if you use it, there will be lots of excuses to leave after the mission is over.

Edit: You are buffing, a dead mob is a 100% debuff.

The -res is still very significant, and Howl+Psychic Scream is very nice AoE. You also get the potential of an endless cone chain with Electric Mastery or Soul Mastery.

So not only can you contribute solid AoE to your team, you contribute good single target damage, a regen debuff in Drain Psyche, recharge debuffs, and resistance debuffs. Sonic/MM is about as close as you can get to a defender, and it's awesome in my experience.

I personally love in a team setting the Sonic/Ice mixture. The multiple sleeps, the holds, the ice patch all make you really not as damaging but holy cow do you affect everything.

Nothing sweeter than hitting a double sleep on a 2nd aggro'd group and watch even the bosses snoring as you rip into them with knockbacks and sleeps along with stacked holds.

Pairing Sonic /w Mental should be a fine combo. You will make of for the lack of AOE in your primary by adding some in your secondary (Howl, Psychic Scream) and Psychic Shockwave should work well to soften the mobs before a nuke. I have one of these and am fairly happy with it, though I wish I had gone Sonic / Energy purely for the fact that I feel Energy supports ranged toons better.

Drain Psyche: A lot of people swear by this. In my experience though the act of going into melee costs me more hit points than its worth. I can keep a better eye on the mob and assess high value targets easier from range than I can in melee as well.

Food for thought though, if you really enjoy defenders there are many defender combos that can really crank out the damage. Kin/Rad, Rad/Sonic, TA/Archery, Storm/Ice, Traps/???.

No Blaster really helps a team much in the buff department since they really don't get very good numbers on Leadership powers. Although Blasters do shine at providing Vengeance targets... Their debuffs are also nothing great, though Mental's -regen isn't bad. What Blasters do excel at is massive AoE damage... they help a team most by eliminating the enemy. For doing that while still providing some limited support you really can't beat Fire/Mental, since you'll have massive AoE damage plus some -regen for AVs. Sonic/MM isn't horrible but Fire does a lot more damage than Sonic and a Blaster doesn't get anywhere near the level of -resist from Sonic that a Defender does. Sonic does solo very well thanks to the huge area Sleep cone, but you're only going to be doing about 13% -resist with your cone and the -resist from your single target attacks is irrelevant except on AVs since the target of a Blaster's single target attacks rarely lives long anyway. If you specifically want an AV busting Blaster then Sonic/MM might be very good, but for general team support Fire/MM's ability to quickly eliminate every minion in a spawn (and seriously ruin the Lts' days) with about three attacks is going to help more than a little bit of -resist.

Of course if you wait until I21 you can have the best of both worlds by making a Rad/Fire Defender...

BTW I just picked up my Sonic/Mental the other day and I forgot how potent Siren Song-Howl-Shockwave-Psychic Scream combo can be. Put em to sleep, wake em, knock em back, kill em. Well kill em will work if you have hit build up or aim prior to the combo. Otherwise with good recharge you should have sleep back up by the time they are standing up. Rinse repeat.

The only thing i DONT like about son/MM(ive rolled a couple before but deleted them because of this reason) is how hard it is to think of a good name :/

I have a few sonic/mm and since the blast tend to originated from the head, I pretend the sonic blast are psychic in origin. And I love the whole put em to sleep+drain+nukex2 routine as well

Sonic/Mental works rather well together due to all the cones. Shockwave every 8 seconds, Howl every 10 and Psychic Scream every 12 seconds at base values means you can work on a very powerful cone attack chain. Shockwave is worth taking in my opinion, its consistent knockback (rather than 50% chance) so you can learn to not scatter groups, and decent damage, if not stellar.

You will serve your teammates best by concentrating on damage. Have you ever ben on a team that lacks good area damage? It can be quite painful to lay down area controls, for example, and not be able to defeat the stunned enemy quickly enough before they wake up.
Tanks and scrappers need greater surviviability of the enemy die slowly.
So in leveraging all that area damage you are definitely supporting your team. The -recharge in Psychic Scream should be a non-issue because the enemy die too quickly to get off asecond round anyway.

Your debuffs will probabl;y come third to damage and then control - with Sirens Song and Screech you have some good control ability available to help protect your team.