Best

So I came back to COH after going to play WOW and I have to say I love all the changes that have been made to COH over the years. In the past I was disappointed. My last main toon was a FF/RAD defender and I loved it!! I noticed he still sucks at SOLOing but I built him for team support and seemed like the team would rarely take any serious damage if any at all.

I know that powers can get nerfed or buffed over time. So what is the best Defender Primary/Secondary power set to go support a team with? (From what I have read on the forums it sounds like Force Fields is not the best support defender to roll.)

From a min/max perspective, it's cold domination/sonic blast. There are plenty of other combinations that will beat that in specific areas, but overall that combination is top of the heap in terms of team performance.

The very best is a Fun/Fun Defender.

If it's not Fun, it's no fun. You can't win CoH without Fun!

Be Well!
Fireheart

The first two replies are absolutely correct.

I also want to add that FF/ gets a bad rap because of high-end builds. During the leveling process, FF/ is a great support set. It's just when people start getting IO'd builds with their own soft-capped Defense that it starts to really trail off quickly. On my FF/Fire Defender, though, I can basically soft-cap my entire team at level 22 (only .44% away, really). So it's a great low-mid level support set, it just doesn't do well in the high-end game.

Cold/ would be in the same situation, but it's got a heap of great debuffs as well as their buff shields, so it works out for them.


However, if you're looking for a great support character, I would also check out Controllers. They get their support powers as a secondary, but with their controls, if the enemy isn't attacking, your team isn't taking any damage anyways.

I'm of the opinion that most of the defender primaries are at least good/workable/credit to team, and the only set I wouldn't consider is Kinetics (it's not actually bad, you just have more awesome potential as a Kin corr). I prefer sets that provide buffs to the fender as well as the team, loathe ST buffs, and like to debuff hard, but that's a playstyle thing. Support comes in a lot of forms.

That said, not all secondaries are super awesome, and I find that trying to squeeze damage out of them is unproductive. What you should be looking for in a secondary is the debuff attached to them, and trying to spam the crap out of it when you're not using your primary. That is legit support! Sonic is probably the king because of how easy it is to stack massive -res on a single target, but I'm also a fan of Ice for having a solid ST chain, a kickass rain, and two holds if you need 'em. I'd avoid elec and DP unless you know what you're doing, and Fire doesn't leverage defender debuff values at all.

My personal favorite defender is a Time/Sonic, I play her aggressively and debuff the crap out of anything in my way, use buffs when they're up (Farsight and Chrono Shift together cover def, tohit, and recharge), maybe fix people's ouchies if I feel like it. Time is very, very flexible.

More on col/son.

Solo I can solo gms, do better st damage than most (even min/maxed) melee characters and blasters.

On teams I can turn a team of tankers in to murder borgs and can even make a blaster not a complete liability on teams.

The Cold/Sonic brigade are correct for single target fun and general team support, but there are lots of fun combo's to be had with defenders.

Some of my favorites are

Time/Ice - Makes you feel like the tank of the team while debuffing the bleep outta the bad guys plus giving good damage (great damage when you get Dark Mastery Soul Drain).
TA/Sonic - Good debuffs and lots of damage
Sonic/Sonic - great for turning your team into buzzsaw killing machines
Rad/anything - Had to throw in the traditional uber set.
Dark/DP - Dark doing the -tohit and control stuff and DP being versitile

and don't forget the upcoming /water. from what I've seen it should fit with most primaries as long as you can deal with the concept.

My favorite is Time/DP ... see sig.

Traps/Fire, Ice, DP would be my second pick, very soloable.

Rad/Sonic, Fire, Ice is the classic hard target soloer, probably my third pick.

Time, Traps, Cold, Rad, Dark / Fire, Ice, Sonic, DP can all solo.

Ill/Cold controller. Not a defender, but better!

FF/* solos pretty well, once you get the pets. Go to the search window and select "Blasters" ...

My first character was an Emp/Rad. I haven't touched him in years. He has been lvl 42 since right after the lvl cap was raised from 40 to 50. Is this still a decent combo? Would I be better of rolling something new?

Solo, it was rough before, as I have a much more melee-oriented mindset and playstyle. Any better now? I could probably jump into a few TFs (after a respec) and get to 50 fairly easily, then just spend his time in trials. I haven't healed in any MMO in a LONG time, and I think it would be a fun change of pace (and healers are always needed, right?).

I think this game is past the support role defenders used to offer assuming your talking years ago. I think build wise if you can tear yourself away from the support concept and build for you then you will be much happier and actually play a better support role.

Simply today there is a point where many Arch Types can solo the hardest settings that this game can offer without the need of anyone. Yes this game has 50 levels, but by the mid 30s with IOs you will have players that can solo at least 2/6 or 2/8. Now combine 2 of those players together and your at 4/8, add in anything beyond that and all your doing is adding in DPS or some sort of buff that will help those 2 other players kill that much faster.

But I have found by making the toughest toon I can I have been able to step in and take the lead when needed. Bad luck and tank dies, players quit, players AFK. lead players is just too slow to move forward sometimes or just unsure that they cannot take the alpha strike.

As many know I will push for Traps. Though I must admit Linea_Alba does really have a nice Time DP build you could do. Both DP and Time would be new to you so your having fun learning about 2 new sets.

I think another thing you would need to decide because it really does matter if your going to use Inventions or SO's and if your going to min and max or just pick powers that you think are cool regardless of build.

I started playing since Beta and got really bored after Issue 3 came out. Me and my hero friends would just farm our next hero up to 50. There was no content after 50 it seemed… I still haven’t created an invention yet since coming back so I’m not real familuar with them yet.

I don’t understand what you are referring to when you say “2/8” “2/6”.

A lot of people will say “Play what is the most fun” I agree to an extent but to me have the strongest most effective hero I can is my goal and to me is the most fun. Effectiveness=Strong Hero=Win=Stronger Hero . My daughter plays on her hero and she will add slots to the “Rest” ability. I tried to tell her that it wasn’t the best thing to do and she said “I don’t care I use it all the time and I want it there. “ So I just say “ok” …I doubt you are going to have much fun fighting next to my 10 year old daughter who slots her rest ability. Fun to her maybe but not fun to me. You would probably be better off telling her to just put herself on follow. Effectiveness=Fun It was fun when my Phantom army was overpowered. (Then they nerfed them ......)

It sucks that support classes just are not needed anymore. It seems like the only time people team up is to farm. The LFG feature seems like a really nice feature, but it seems as I am the only one that regularly has “Looking for Anything” up and even when I do it seems I am more likely to get a blind invite from someone I run into on the street doing mission than I am from the LFG feature. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. If everyone built a hero that didn’t need someone else to survive, then it just doesn't matter what classes the group is made up of and it doesn’t need to wait around for a support class to survive.

2/8 and 2/6 is probably referring to difficulty. Enemies two levels higher, set for a team equal to 8 players in size or 6 players.

Support classes are still needed and welcome. Not everyone can or cares to get their hero to the defense soft cap, and even when they do the soft cap for incarnate-level content is much higher and much harder to achieve on your own. And even without playing incarnate-level content, being softcapped alone doesn't make fighting +4 enemies quick and easy like stacking defense debuffs, resist debuffs, damage buffs, etc do.

And yeah, the LFG queueing tool is pretty awful. You'll find that there's a new /lfg chat channel now (might need to add it to your chat tabs) that players form their teams in before entering the queue with the full team.

Haven't played Defenders in years. Thinking of trying one again. Play 90% Solo.
How about a D3 Defender? Viable or not? What else could be paired with Dark primary?
Love Dark...