What's the best defender to Solo on SOs as a Premium Player?

What is, in your opinion and why, the best defender to solo on an all SO premium build.

I think traps is a great set to solo. Depending on your tastes, fire, ice, or sonic would help your damage and survival. (Ice blast gets ice storm at blaster modifier levels).

Rad/sonic what else? Dark/Dark also maybe. Rad Infection is -48.75 to hit on SO's alone and you can get it at level 1. Rad also helps with endurance with AM. Even if it wont be perma on SO's it is up may 2/3rd of the time on So's with hasten. You also get a bunch of slots to play with. You also get the wonderful solo tool that is Sirens song.

For teaming Forcefield on SO's alone will softcap a team if the defender takes and slots maneuvers.

Fulcrum shift is up every 35ish seconds on SO's.

I also love that they fixed those timed individual buffs. Speedboost and ID every 2 minutes on every team member or the shield buffs every 4 minutes on every team member was horribly boring/tedious.

If you bought time manip. Times juncture and Farsight coupled with Temporal mending is very survivable on SO's. Especially if you add in Maneuvers and Hover slotted. Cronoshift (the recharge at least) and Hasten are so close to perma together that it will make you want to IO it however.

Really all of the sets are well balanced at SO's. It is IO's that make things like Cold Dom so powerful. Traps,Empathy, and Storm want
the extra recharge, recovery, and defense that IO's brings. IO's just make these do more, keep them sustainable, and alive. On So's you can get out maybe 3 Fortitude's at the same time though.

Cold Dom is meh on SO's. Perma Heat Loss and Benumb with stacked sleet's are where it gains it's at! I hate -def powers that require an ACC check. Especially without Global accuracy bonuses.

As far as secondaries go Sonic all the way. Fire might be top ST now but nothing beats Sirens song for what it does and sonic does very good damage on defenders. Ice is nice for the rains. There are people that love defender psychic blast. I haven't done it but 100 range on attack can be interesting.

Sonic Disp is an insane endurance hog but since you cant slot it with anything but SO's anyway...

Sonic Blast is generally the best blast set all the way due to the -20% Res on every attack. It debuffs resistance on a single target better than any primary.
It also provides a mass-sleep up every spawn with Sirens Song - great for soloing.
Its main weakness is low end area damage, but thats less of an issue solo.

Fire hasnt ported fantatsically well to Defenders since they dropped the damage on Rain of Fire.

Pair with Traps, Storm or Rad for a good solo SO build.

Rad and Dark primaries immediately spring to mind. Both offer very solid offensive and defensive debuffs, and a handy heal. I imagine Time fairs well too, if you have access to that.. I know it's pretty beastly on IOs, should be good on SOs as well.

Some secondaries to consider would probably be ice, sonic, and probably fire.


Ice Blast - Good single target damage, above average AoE damage. Ice Storm and Blizzard use Blaster damage numbers. Also has a very nice single target hold.

Sonic - As stated in a post above, massive res stacking. Good single target damage, but AoE can be lackluster at times. Great control as well, with sleeps and a single target stun.

Fire Blast - Good damage across the board, but little to no control or useful secondary effects (well, its secondary effect is "maor damage!"). Sadly, Rain of Fire does not use Blaster mods, so it takes a considerable hit over the Corruptor version.

Dark/Dark is also very sturdy if you don't mind semi-slow killing speeds, and should have little issues on x6-x8 mob spawns, even on SOs.

As far as Primaries, there are plenty to choose from that will work for a solo player:

Dark Miasma
Kinetics (a little squishier in the early levels)
Radiation Emission
Storm Summoning
Time Manipulation
Traps
Trick Arrow (also a little squishier, avoid bosses for awhile)

For secondaries:

Archery (with the hard-hitting Blazing Arrow at 10, and then Rain of Arrows at 32)
Dual Pistols (for survivability with the Toxic rounds)
Fire Blast (make sure to pick a tougher primary with this, Fire doesn't offer much to help you survive)
Ice Blast
Psychic Blast (no really, it's always been pretty good on Defenders)
Sonic Attacks (hurray -Resistance!)

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Rad is a solid choice, I ran my Rad/Pistols into the 30s on common IOs only and had no issues. My traps is in the late 30s (maybe made it 40) and still mostly on commons (I have a miracle +rec and the lockdown proc in PT).

I'm going to rework my rad/rad. Even though it's at 50, I never felt like I got it where I actually like playing it. But looking at the forums, I have an idea of how I want to respec and play it well.

Really, this sums it all up nicely, as far as I'm concerned, too. I might only add Sonic and maybe FF. As a solo defender, mez protection is very nice, and only Sonic, FF, and Traps provide much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trickshooter As far as Primaries, there are plenty to choose from that will work for a solo player: Dark Miasma Kinetics (a little squishier in the early levels) Radiation Emission Storm Summoning Time Manipulation Traps Trick Arrow (also a little squishier, avoid bosses for awhile) For secondaries: Archery (with the hard-hitting Blazing Arrow at 10, and then Rain of Arrows at 32) Dual Pistols (for survivability with the Toxic rounds) Fire Blast (make sure to pick a tougher primary with this, Fire doesn't offer much to help you survive) Ice Blast Psychic Blast (no really, it's always been pretty good on Defenders) Sonic Attacks (hurray -Resistance!)

I'd avoid Sonic Resonance for a solo character, as it offers little more than the mez resistance.

You get:
- 24% Resistance to most attacks
- a single target non-stacking resistance debuff that does nothing else for your animation time and end spent on using it
- a cage power
- Liquefy on a long recharge timer.

Its great on a team, but many of its best powers require an ally. Traps or FF provide much much more for a soloer if you want mez protection.

Time is a given, softcapping on SOs is just too nice to pass up, along with strong slows to prevent scatter, strong DoT heal, slow resist and a recharge buff becoming that much more important without IOs.

As for secondaries, mmh. Lots of choices there. I'd go Fire because I like good damage and quick animations (allowing me to react to mezzes and damage spikes as fast as possible).

I would not recommend soloing on a FF defender. I actually counted on an FF/Rad and it took some ridiculous number of attacks to take down the Midnighter arc Rikti boss (Ci'don?) I think it was 58 attacks.

Generally Rad/Sonic is still Best at Everything.

Minor weenie notes:

Trickshooter: Rain of Arrows on a defender is level 38, not 32 .
Shadey: When do they get the redside pet, level 38? 41?

Relevant to both points: Soloing through the thirties on a Defender feels like it takes half of forever.

Unless I really like a character, I tend to only IO them once they hit 50. And out of the three Defenders I've taken to higher levels on SOs, I'd say that my Kinetics/Ice had the best time of it. A little squishy in earlier levels as others have said but Ice is very safe to work with and Kinetics gives great recharge and endurance buffs. Kinetics doesn't tend to gain much from IO sets, lots of its powers don't take inventions so the difference between my IO build and my SO build is not huge.

Kinetics/Sonic is also another solid choice (Siren's Song is just awesomeness in a can, especially if you can gain some stealth in some way). Mine's only 30 at the moment though so I can't speak for what it will be like at 50 yet.

I am actually going to depart from my previously held conceptions about solo-ability, which would inlcude Rad/... Dark/... and Time/... and say specifically Storm/Fire Blast.

Don't get me wrong, the first three definitely can solo, but I recently tried Storm/Fire with the Defender ATO proc in Fire Blast and OMG ! This combo can get all of the powerhouse effects at an early age. This is the first Non-melee combination that I have ever gone to X3 before SOs. Freezing Rain + Rain of Fire + Fireball , mop-up, rinse + repeat. Super fun.

Why do I not currently have one in my arsenal ? Too easy perhaps ?

Not to lit any wars, but having both a FF and a Trap fender.... you're way better off if you're thinking about solo-ing to choose Trap instead of FF. I love my FF, even if she is a /elec but my trap/ar just blows her out of the water in being able to solo missions. In fact, out side of a few missions (like a ship raid) I like to think my trap fender helps the team even more then my bubbler who can almost soft cap the team's defense.

So if you want mez protection, go trap... you get alot more in you tool box besides just more KB or bubbles.

The defender proc is a heal. I expect it's the (self) heal combined with fast recharging attack that's making Storm/Fire more desireable. I don't know what the Cor proc is.

I had not intended to include SBEs ATOs nor IOs in the question. I'm well aware of what can be done on a modern build, but it's been ages, issues, and many new sets since I last played SOs only. My personal pick would probably be Traps/Fire. Higher mods for defense and support, while still having strong offense. Traps/Sonic and Traps/Ice would also be contenders.

A Storm/Fire can avoid having to take Gale. Sadly, a Fire/Storm can't. The corr prolly still wins out but I really dislike gale, so I felt it worth mentioning.