Creating Defender (Noob)

Hello all. I just reactivated my account. I'll try to keep this short. In the past I've played other MMO's generally as a healer or support. I don't really like doing damage or tanking, or even controlling. Purely a defensive/support player. I get 100% of my gaming satisfaction in MMO's by helping others do their job better and more easily. Whether that involves buff, debuffs or healing.

I would say I plan on PVP mostly because that's what I enjoy in other games; however I have no idea what PVP is like in this game so I may end up choosing PVE mostly. I guess I can create a build for each?

So I'm wanting to create a defender along these lines of supporting others. The first power set that caught my eye is Empath because I like healing of course, but I'm hearing that healing the team isn't very needed in end-game?

Let me ask this -- at level 50 (can answer for PVE and/or PVP) what do people like from their defenders? Buffs for the team, debuffs for enemies, healing, etc.?

What Defender abilities help you (whatever your role) the most?

Like I said I'm not big on offense, and if I just didn't plan my hero or ask you all anything I might just go full Empath with secondary like radiation or sonic. But I don't want to get to 50 to find out that no one needs healing and I would've been better off focusing on buffs or debuffs primarily.

And I know they'll be suggested so I'm reading through other guides as well as I find them on forums and the web throughout the day.

So far I've gotten to 15 with empath/dual pistols which is cool but after reading up more I'm trying to get an idea of what support/defense is highly sought after in end-game, PVP and/or PVE.

As far as playstyle, I am totally cool with target-click type style for healing or buffing. I can be completely satisfied with a long fight if I never even target the enemy, lol. But I'm pretty open, again the bottom line is whatever helps the team out more. I rarely play solo if ever.


Let me know if I need to give more info or clarify more. Thanks in advance.

Hmmm.... I'm possibly not the best person to answer this because:

1. I'm fairly new to defenders myself
2. AND I play completely opposite to you. When I play as a Defender I WANT TO KILL - for whatever reason Defenders bring out the beast in me
3. AND at the time I am writing this I've had half a bottle of wine and accelerating.

First of all to answer your questions, when I play on a team (irrespective of what I am playing) I generally feel safer with a buffer on the team as opposed to a debuffer and I prefer both to a healer. Now I generally play as support and ranged toons so no doubt people who prefer melee orientated toons would disagree and I accept that.

If you're asking for powersets that can make you feel most useful without being too damage focused then I suggest you look at what i call the "all purpose" primary sets and the secondary effects of the offensive powers.

For all purpose I would suggest rad, dark, cold or possibly kinetics (everyone loves a Kin) and for secondary effects look at dark for its accuracy debuffs or ice for its -recharge debuffs. Sonic and energy are also nice.

One final point I would make is that at endgame heals are nice and empathy certainly has the best set of heals in the game but empathy is a damn good buff set as well. Too many people forget that (myself included)

Hope my, albeit slightly drunken, observations help!

First off, welcome back.

Let me start by saying there are ways to help your team outside of your primary set. Your secondary is there for a reason. I'd even argue the secondary is even more valuable for end gaming than at early levels.

That said, don't overlook controllers just because they have controls (a mezzed foe can't attack back - that's about the best way to protect your team). Or your blasts, just because you want to focus on your team mates rather than help killing/debuffing things. There IS time to do both - again, especially at late levels where most players have most their powers, along with heavily IO'd builds and Incarnates.

I also couldn't help but notice that you seem to look at Empathy set as a healing set. Sure, it has great single target heals but that's not the best bit. It's a great, great buffing set. Take a peek at each power's description ingame (or download Mid's hero designer so you can check the actual numbers easily).

Since you like buffing (in many situations I'd pick a debuffer over a buffer, but that's a different story), you could any primary other than Dark, Storm, Trick Archery and Traps (mind you, some of these sets do have one or another buffs, but they do a much, much better job at debuffing).

I'd say the most popular buffers these days are Cold, Emps (who know what their doing) and Kin, then Sonic and Thermal. Force Fields is a set I love, although Cold does arguably outshines it in most situations. I'm probably missing some set, but I'm sure someone will point it out.

Again, don't overlook controllers. Earth/Emp for example is VERY team friendly with its massive controls and buffs. And your blasts, such as /Sonic can help your team mates kill things much faster.

Welcome back!

I will try to address this in stages, because what you are asking here is a very open-ended series of questions that really do not have straightforward answers. For starters, the idea of support - all Defender primaries do this in one way or another, using some combination of debuffs, controls, buffs and heals. If we were to assemble a list of what powers are most helpful, we would first have to answer the clarify the question - most helpful for what? And the answer would be a short list of powers from a variety of different primaries - there is no one best answer.

I would advise against "going full empath" because the gains from this approach are minimal and the costs are significant - the best empaths make good use of their secondary powerset rather than ignoring it and an overemphasis on healing quickly becomes far less useful once you reach the mid-game to say nothing of the late-game. This is not to say healing is not useful, but it quickly trails behind buffs and debuffs once these powers are available and slotted, to the point that a team where these powers are in place rarely if ever requires healing and certainly not enough to warrant a character solely dedicated to that role.

As for what people want or what is most in demand, again it depends on the situation. Empaths, Colds, Kins and Rads are the most often requested overall, but different tasks favor different powersets. Resistance and Defense buffs, especially when combined are very powerful for steamrolling over most missions. -Resistance and -Regen debuffs are often key when taking down single difficult foes such as Archvillains or Giant Monsters. Kins are often desired (or even demanded!) by Stone tankers since Speed Boost almost entirely obviates the drawbacks of using Granite Armor. And specific niche cases may make a certain primary more desired against a given foe or for a given task (Cold, for instance, is very good for the STF because it can make short work of Ghost Widow with Benumb, an opponent who otherwise represents one of the most difficult parts of the TF).


Lastly, the issue of pvp. This really has to be divided into arena and zone pvp since the two types of play are quite different. I have relatively little knowledge of pvp in general and almost no knowledge of current zone pvp, so take this with a grain of salt, but from I know, Defenders play one of two very defined roles in pvp. You can either be a healer (Empath) or a debuffer (usually Rad). I imagine things are a bit different in zone given the heal decay which would be in effect, but I will let others speak to that.

I'd agree with the above, your secondary is important, a dead enemy is an enemy who can't fight back. As a defender you have a damage dealing secondary, and you need to use it otherwise you are only playing half your class. For support I like ice and sonic, they both put good debuffs on the enemy while outputting decent damage.

Also as noted, the buffs in empathy are what empathy is good for. Heals are nice, but they are the least efficient method of helping your team, it's much better to make your team stronger and avoid taking damage than it is to fix damage once it's happened.

You really can't go wrong with defender sets, defender primaries are all about team play. The debuff sets (rad, dark, trick arrow, storm) are all better at solo play, but they all play with with teams.

I'd also suggest a look at controllers. It seems like you want to make a pure team character and not blast very much. While defenders do have the best buff/debuff values in the game, blasting is part of who they are. Controllers are the ultimate force multipliers, they control with one power set, and buff/debuff with the other, and many builds don't focus much on damage at all(earth comes to mind).

thanks all for the very thorough responses.

i'm taking a look at controllers to see if i can find a build that fits my preferred style of supporting rather than destroying.

also now looking at empathy more as buffing than healing. and going to consider doing kinetic too since it leans towards buffing.

thanks again!

trying a kinetic/sonic at the moment. let me know if you can recommend enhancement slots etc. (i'm assuming i put slots on the buffs?)

i looked at control but i guess i would rather do defender no matter what, would prefer buff/debuff style support to be my strongest abilities even if that means i'm doing blaster dps otherwise

Hello, welcome to the wonderful world of defender...ing.

I always recommend a player's first defender should be Dark Miasma. Two reasons:

1) It contains a little bit of many gameplay elements. A targetable pet (fluffy), a mousebind-friendly drop (Tar Patch), an anchored toggle debuff (Darkest Night), a green numbers maker (Twilight Grasp), sneakiness (Shadow Fall), a cone attack (Fearsome Stare), and a couple of obvious skippable powers for good measure. So if you get a Dark Miasmist to 50, you can apply your experience to many other sets, becoming an "instant expert" from level 1.

2) Dark Miasma is a really good set for both soloing and teaming.

You may find somewhere around mid-levels that Dark Miasma isn't for you. That's okay. Because you've tried a little of everything in Dark Miasma, you'll have a good idea which buff/debuff set is more your style. If you're good with Tar Patch, you'll be good with Freezing Rain, Sleet, etc. And so on.

after giving it a shot for 4 levels dark has me intrigued, trying dark/ice atm tho

At very low levels, some recharge enhancements in Tar Patch to get it recharged faster is the only real priority for Dark, really. Every other spawn slowed to a crawl and taking 30% more damage? From a tier 2 power? Yes please.

A bit of tohit debuff enhancement in Darkest Night is optional but nice, as that will cover your defenses until you get Fearsome Stare. If you do enhance Darkest Night, you might bump up your difficulty to +1 to keep things interesting, since +0 enemies get a serious case of the sucks under defender-grade Darkest Night's effects. Something like hitting you half as often and half as hard. Go ahead and tank if you want.

Twilight Grasp, at low levels, is fine with just enough accuracy to hit; heal enhances can come later. Slots in Shadow Fall aren't worth a damn until SOs. If you like mezzes, a bit of stun duration and recharge in Howling Twilight adds another trick to your playbook -- use it for the mez, don't save it for the rez.

This frees up a whole ton of early level slots for your secondary blasts, which I hadn't thought of earlier, but it's a nice bonus.

Once you get Fearsome Stare, the game breaks-er-I-mean-changes, of course.

Dark/Ice is the most supporty combo you can probably do as a defender. You'll get 2 single target holds, a big aoe -speed, an aoe -tohit and -speed, and a single target -tohit, on top of -recharge everywhere..

Oh, and they all do damage (granted, on Freeze Ray it can be hard to notice) but in most every other case, than damage is quite nice...

The 2 sets have ton of nice synergy, too.

As for slotting advice, I'll mostly second what Rigel said, but will add that I love to get Howling Twilight and Twilight Grasp extra slots early. Mostly for recharge. HT is a great AOE stun, and if you get to thinking of it that way, you'll want it up all the time. And TG is a very nice debuff that happens to heal, so being able to lay on that power is great, too.

I would also want to get some end reduction in Darkest Night and maybe Shadowfall, too.

On the Ice side, slot most of them normally as attacks, except for Freeze Ray I'd slot as a hold, and Ice Storm, if I recall, has insane accuracy out of the box, so just slot for recharge and damage at first, and work in end reduction later or when going to IOs.

Welcome to the game, and to the ranks of defenders.



Aside: If you go back to your emp, you'll still be always in demand, even given late games lessening need for heals assuming you think of yourself like a buffer with a few heals, not as a healer with a few buffs.. But, on the healing side, I'd not neglect Absorb Pain on an Emp. In situations where a meatshield type gets into serious trouble, the other heals often aren't big enough. Absorb Pain, especially if you put some slots into it, is always a big heal..

Usually, single target debuffs in this game are horrible for two reasons: 1) the two types of enemies big enough to bother with a single target debuff, AVs and GMs, have near immunity to most kinds of debuffs, and 2) most single target debuffs are unstackable. (This is why nobody plays Poison.)

Twilight Grasp is an exception to the rule, since it averts both those problems: 1) AVs and GMs don't have special resistance to the -damage part of TG, and 2) it's very much stackable. So I agree with Madadh, spamming TG as a debuff against hard single targets can be worthwhile, I just caution you that this is the exception and not the rule, don't expect single target debuffs in other sets to perform as well as TG.

(Benumb is the only other exception to the rule I can think of off-hand.)