Biospark

There are so many ways to Duo in this game that I dont think there is a single answer to your question, but have you considered both you and your friend running Empathy-Electric ?

Think about it; Double Short Circuit drain at the start of every fight, Fort (and later AB) on each of you. Alternate your Recovery and Regen Auras. Two AoEs each, 2 Sparkies (if your into a pet). Would be a powerful Duo.

I am sure if DrMike or Hobo are around, they could tell you just how crazy powerful that duo would be. Never tried it myself, but sounds like something that could get you arrested if the Dev police found out.

A couple of months ago I tried to analyze numerically a statement made regarding this phenomena. I believed (at the time) that I could produce numbers that showed that the effect of debuffs becoming weaker as you took on higher level villains was not as devastaing as some would like me to believe and that it was simply an argument against improving the "buffing" powersets.

(since it would take alot of text to re-display my math and convoluted logic to arrive at a conclusion) to make a long story short... Buffers benefit from a steady level of protection.
Their Buffs do not diminish based on mob level, incoming damage does rise due to mob acc and base dmg, but the benefit to team-members does not go down. Debuffers, on the other hand also see the amount of dmg and acc of the mobs increase IN ADDITION to their debuff becoming less potent. In my Analysis I used Empathy and Radiation as my comparison.

The end result is that Radiation supplies much more survival at the +0 to +2 Range than Empathy. And IF the Rad defender is able to overlap his defenses better than 33% (The value I used to simulate real-game situations (no one can hit every mob with RI+EF+LR every spawn)), The Rad defender blows empathy away. But here is where it ends, as you approach +4 and +5, the Empathy defender is actually providing MORE protection to a team than a Rad defender, and that same RAD defender may actually be providing the most protection to his team by using his AoE Heal, since his toggles and LR are reduced to pitiful amounts.

So I also echo the statement that Debuffers suffer in a different way than buffers.
They trade greater ability to solo for lesser ability to fight purples.

The question I have however about balance would be : Is that a Fair trade?
In my eyes, it is not. I think that solo-ability of buffers can be improved along with the team contributions of de-buffers without upsetting the balance of the game.

How to do it is the real trick though

I dont have a high level character with this build, but Biospark was Rad/Elec (Level 24) before I remade him as an Empathy/Electric. And Way back at Launch I had the name Meltdown, who was also a Rad/Electric (Level 22 iirc) on my first game account.

It is a GREAT combo. Some tips I can think of off the top of my head are;

Take RI early and use it and RA as your main defenses till you get stamina.
EF is a great power, but unless you are only teaming, the endurance drain makes it not very useful solo (or anytime you try blasting a little) until you can slot up stamina and reduce the endurance cost of the toggle itself.

I personally dont have experience with Choking Cloud, but I would have skipped it myself. The last thing I wanted was another expensive toggle. RA, RI, EF, AM and LR seem like all the tools you would ever need solo or teamed. Everything else would be playstyle or extra goodies you just want to have.

On Teams, try to put RI and EF on different targets. Team members WILL defeat your anchors frequently, so its nice to have at least one running while you bring up a new anchor. On most of the teams I have joined with my RAD, I would always try and determine my team's usual habits so I could keep my auras running as much of the fight as possible. Usually these two toggles would end up on Harder targets like Bosses or on targets that people seemed to ignore longer and last longer during fights. I dont advise putting them on Minions, especially if you have alot of AoE, Blasters or Scrappers. Minions dont last long enough in those situations to be good targets for your anchors.

I strongly recommend checking out the guides section on Radiation for more tips.
There is alot of excellent advice on Radiation Emission there.

For Electric Blast, I have much more experience so here are some tips;
Take Tesla Cage at 28 ! Its very useful solo and on teams alike. Recycles fast enough to allow holding Bosses. Dont slot it as an attack, but as a hold (Hold, Acc, Rech).

You need to decide if you are going to use powerdraining as a defense or not.
To be honest, with Radiation as your primary, draining everyone's endurance may not be as necessary as it was for my Empath. If you decide to use draining, I highly recommend slotting SC for drain and getting it over 65%. I also recommend not trying to use drain as a tactic until at least level 22.

Electric blast has some flexibility, where you could stay back at range and blast when you need to, but I personally believe that the strength of Electricity is in Melee Range.
You should keep this in mind with regards to playstyle and how you plan on building your defenses. My Character's ultimate (read purpled-out) build will have 20%+ to all positions (Melee, AoE, Ranged and Psionic) due to the fact that I need to operate in close range alot. I could go with a Range-based character, but my melee/AoE would suffer.
With Radiation as your primary, being in melee range would be even safer, as you could put RI on a target (and assuming that target did not run off), you could colapse a mob around you for good old AoE blasting and overlapping protection of your toggles.

I hope this is what you were looking for, but I am sure there is a lot more knowledge out there for your combination.

Although I respect the Logic that made you arrive at this idea, I really, really, dont want a pet-type power.
I would rather see small tweaks that made me personally feel more Heroic.
Buffing a pet to become a killing machine, although interesting to many people, is just not my thing.

Or perhaps I misunderstood how you meant to implement this.

I like the Defender version of Soul Drain alot. Scrappers version does more damage and has a larger overall boost, but the defender version recharges faster and with hasten and slotting you can have it up 75% of the time pretty easily. Not sure about Perma, but if anyone could do it, a defender could.

I have actually been messing around with the math on this idea lately since my new project is a Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker

If you assume baseline Hit-Miss with no resist or bonus defense at 50%, this means that it would take incoming damage of 200% your HP (approx) to drop you. Lets call that a 2:1 survival ratio.

So Isolating Resist and Defense seperately you get something like this;

15% Resist OR 7.5% Defense = 2.35
30% Resist OR 15% Defense = 2.85
45% Resist OR 22.5% Defense = 3.63
60% Resist OR 30% Defense = 5.00
75% Resist OR 37.5% Defense = 8.00
90% Resist OR 45% Defense = 20.00

It starts off slowly but progresses very rapidly as you approach 25% Defense and 50% Resistance.
So now what happens when you stack these.

15% Resist PLUS 7.5% Defense = 2.78
30% Resist PLUS 15% Defense = 4.08
45% Resist PLUS 22.5% Defense = 6.62
60% Resist PLUS 30% Defense = 12.50
75% Resist PLUS 37.5% Defense = 32.25
90% Resist PLUS 45% Defense = 200.00

As you can see the amount of Punishment that you can take surpasses the 10:1 ratio somewhere between 45-60% Resist and 22.5-30% Defense.

You may respond to this, "well very few people can get resists as high as the numbers on the left", but if you consider more HPS as a supplement to resistance, then 60% Resistance could be 45% Resistance combined with 15% more HPS. This would open up the 60% number to alot more ATs/Powersets.

Interesting things start to present themselves.
Because of this I am trying to find the thread where someone stated how much they like the 30% defense number, cause they really knew what they were talking about.

I think you meant Soul Drain when you said Dark Consumption, but yeah, knowing what Epic powers you are gonna use should help you sort out your other powers better.

As far as Pet. Gaze, I have used Tesla + Shocking Bolt on my character, but respecced out of it mainly because I usually only see Bosses on teams. Then its much less my job to hold them. Solo, being an Empath, means I am limited to how high I can crank up my difficulty, so I run without Bosses in my solo missions. Finally, since I went Electric mastery, my first power used on a Boss is Electric Fence to keep them immobilized while I Cycle Tesla twice.

One more thing regarding your powers is that Dark Servant cycles Pet Gaze, so you can often get help from him. If you can fit in Pet Gaze AND Tesla then thats awesome. No real reason not to do it. It just happened in my experience that Tesla is really fast, so stacking it on a boss is not really that hard.

Here is the beauty of your options; If you keep Short Circuit and go the Dark Mastery Route, you could Frankenslot SC for Dmg and Drain and after 2 SC inside your OG+TP+DN circle of pain, everything would be debuffed, severely wounded AND out of endurance. Add in Fluffy and you are a Swirling Black Hole that sucks in bad guys and spits out corpses.

I have 5 of my Electric Blast powers: CB, LB, SC, BL and Tesla.
The other 4 powers in Electric blast are all usefull, but I just could not fit them in.
The most skippable is your Nuke.
If you are going to avoid using Power-draining as a strategy, then you could theoretically just slot SC for damage and take Sparky as well.

Honestly though, you have to decide on your epic powers as well.
I chose Electric Mastery so that I can go into a group of mobs and use Short Circuit + Powersink to drain everything up to +2s right at the start of the fight. And Electric Fence becomes a third attack that I can use for damage in addition to keeping nasty melee mobs at bay.

Since you are Dark/Electric your character plays a bit different than mine, so take my advice with a grain of salt, because I have played Dark/Electric only to 28 in the past.
I would probably take Tesla, but not Pet.Gaze, Take both ELectric Blasts, Both AoEs, and Sparky. That rounds out your number of damage powers nicely. Then I would probably take Dark Mastery and Get OG, Dark Embrace(maybe not needed), Soul Drain and Dark Consumption.
OG adds even more control and combined with Tar Patch, the minions should be wandering around really slowly and staying in your DN area.
Soul Drain is SOOOO much better than Aim and combined with Hasten and/or good recharge will be up every fight. And Dark Consumption will help you refill your blue bar, since you will possibly be running quite a few toggles (especially with Dark Embrace also in the build)

So (if I were building it), Thats only skipping Aim, Zapp and TB. If you think you would like to fit in Zapp (Due to your ability to control/debuff mobs), then Drop SC or Sparky and replace it with Zapp. I would take the AoEs myself because getting in a group of villains and collapsing them in close for all those PBAoEs would be really solid fun I think.

My Energy Blaster went the Hover Blaster route and his Ranged Def of 37% was mighty fine.
But as a supplement he also took Power Mastery for PFF and Medicine Pool for Aid Self.

So, I guess what I am saying is that you should look at Tiered survival.

Powercell (My Blaster)
Tough + Charged Armor : for resistance
Weave + Hover + IOs : for avoidance
Medicine pool + Health + Regen IOs : for healing

Also, dont chase IOs sets and as a result, short-slot your powers that help you actually defeat enemies.

Two of my favorite IO sets for this strategy are Thunderstrike and Blessing of the Zephyr.

I agree with your statement regarding Damage only works on a hit, while Endurance always works. But to generate Taunt and (while Solo) defeat a Bad-guy, you still have to deal out damage. So for me, ACC is first at the lower levels, followed by Damage on low damage, low endurance attacks, or Endurance on High endurance cost, High Damage attacks.

I try to think of it as biggest bang for the buck. 2 ACC TOs make a very large impact on your ACC, while 20% more damage on a tiny attack does very little. Same is true for Endurance. 20% of a small number is yet another small number. But when you get to attacks like, oh... Knockout Blow, slotting ACC then End is really the best way to go.

Just my 2 cents

This is good info.

I originally slotted this way when I began playing, but I choose 2 ACC TOs as my first slots in ANY attack now for a simple reason. If you MISS, you do ZERO damage and still use 100% of the End cost of the attack. PRE-Stamina you are going to need every ounce of Endo to take down anything that cons higher than White. I seem to see lots of Yellows and Orange cons in missions with +0 level as my setting, and lets face it, miss streaks happen, especially on higher Cons.

am glad you posted this Psylenz,

I was trying to put the words together for the OP to explain that alot would depend on how you intend to play Storm. From my own experience, you could make multiple Stormies and play them completely different from each other depending on which powers you focused on.

That being said, I could never quite find the balance for my playstyle with the set and the huge endurance cost of everything. I cannot think of another Powerset that lends itself so much to "specialization" like Storm Summoning.
About the only power in the set that "Every" style would utilize would be Freezing Rain.

Which is why I would throw my vote in for Storm/Ice/Electric mastery

I have to disagree with this logic.
And not trying to start a flame session, just sharing my viewpoint.

What you are saying is that I cannot rely on others to play well, and that having my empath around becomes a backstop to when they do something stupid.

Where I feel my job is to use all my powers effectively and just as responsibly as every other team member. If someone does something ridiculous and then dies or worse causes the whole team to wipe, how is that somehow put back on me.

I guarantee you, while on my team, if you come back at me because someone else screwed up, be prepared to get an "earfull" from me.

Now, on the other hand, if I screw up, I will be the first one to admit it and apologize to the team. Blame falls where it belongs, not on your safety net (a.k.a. Defender)

P.S. On those very rare occasions (because I play more on dedicated teams) when I meet players like you describe, thats when I wish I had Vengeance in my build

Wow, Great Insight Heraclea. I have a MA/WP scrapper and was planning to take the weapon mastery powers, but had debated on Caltrops VS Web Grenade. Good to know this little tidbit.

With the exception of Stone and Ice, I have seen every tank set in action and honestly Invulnerability is THE BEST or at worst a very close second place. Obviously, if you love the set and play the set, you know its weaknesses and want to see it improved, but as an honest outside observer, I would think this kind of improvement would make it undisputably the best tank set.

I would rather see them tone down the overwhelming amount of defense debuffing out in the game. I mean seriously, every time I play a toon and think about defense boosting, I go out and play and realize that unless I can soft-cap, the first time I get in a fight all that defense I worked so hard to get, will just disappear in a puff of gun-fire.

I dont have AP. I used it long long ago on my first Empaths and I really dont like it.
That being said, I am sure there are situations where I may regret not having it.
But I will take my chances.