DrMike2000

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You know it would be very simple for them to fix defender damage, just reduce sonic blast's debuffs and increase base defender damage all around. Since nothing remotely like that has happened it can only be assumed the devs want defenders to have ultra crappy damage for anything that isn't sonic blast or the rain powers in Ice Blast.

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Well, if Going Rogue allows Corrupters to come blue side, I guess that may just happen indirectly.

I agree, Mr Ranger.
No extra user-interface would be required - just remove the power automatically upon a respec and add the option to choose from the badge tab back in. Same with the Nemesis Staff/Blackwand, Noncombat pet and any other choosable vet rewards.

I'd vote Sonic, for sure.

I very rarely see other Sonic Defenders, and lord knows they're difficult to hide with the giant orange musical bubble. I love the set myself, but hardly ever see anyone else using it. /Sonic Controllers seem even rarer.

Cold Domination would tie for a close second, Trick Arrow seems pretty common on Virtue these days.

And Trout Defence sucks, because the scales obscure your costume, and the smell induces nausea in people with medical conditions.

Taking a step back from CoH, I have to agree that the mez system in this game is pretty odd in its stark binary nature.

You either always get mezzed or never get mezzed, depending pretty much on your archetype.

My first character was an Elec/Elec Blaster, I remember one memorable moment of logging out when chain-held by a Rikti Mentallist in order to avoid further debt.
I also learnt the art of pre-emptive mezzing then.

That said, things have improved. We now have:

- combining insps. A level 40+ character with a 16 insp tray should rarely be without a breakfree if they want one. I've combined one on the fly enough times and saved my skin that way.
- knockback protection available to all via IOs
- meaningful defence for squishies available via IOs. Blasters can now cap their Ranged Defence! Blasters!
- toggles dont turn off on mezzing, making it much less of an issue.
- Kheldians can shift to Dwarf form whilst mezzed.
- Blasters can use their tier 1 and 2 powers while mezzed.
- hold Proc IOs that improve pre-emptive mezzing tactics. A Controller can now have over 50% chance of holding a boss in one shot with their hold.

So the devs do appear to have been working on this but stopped short of giving out mez protection to squishies.

One side effect of creating a pool power for mez protection would be to devalue powers liek Clear Mind and Dispersion Bubble that can grant mez protection. Something would need to be rebalanced there.

I had a new thing happen to me today, which is pretty cool after playing the game for three years. It happened in one of those laboratory maps with the four pieces of equipment sealed off in the glass rooms.

Destroying the equipment gave me temporary powers, seemingly at random.

Keen Sight was a +To Hit bonus, with info stating that "I felt strange after the equipment exploded, and was more alert and sharper than before"

One time though I got "Lethargic" - "You feel tired and lethargic after the equipment blew up, and cannot recover any Endurance."
I checked the info and it said -100% Recovery for 3 minutes!!

Are these effects new?
Three minutes of enforced downtime seems a bit steep as a "flavour" debuff. Luckily I was on my own, and defeated the enemy befroe my endurance ran out, so I just made a cup of tea and waited. But this could quite easily have been a death sentence in the wrong circumstances.

I guess I'll be more careful in those labs in the future!

I thought something was different!

My Fire/Rad Controller's keeps clutching her throat, coughing and dying in the middle of a blue burn patch, and I was sure that Malta never used to do this before.

Now I know why...

On the subject of the 30 second stun grenades. I assume that they were intended to stack on tanks and scrappers with their long durations, I always wondered why they didn't just make them higher mag instead, eg Mag 6 for 15 second instead of Mag 3 for 30 seconds.

[edit]: Just saw the name Pinball Blizzard! Very nice!

If you're 35 with that build, you dont have Bitter Ice Blast yet, and you have 3 slots in Ice Bolt, so I'll wager its not 3-slotted for damage. So your single target attack chain is sorely lacking at this point, and doesnt need to be.

If you want to solo, get all three major single target blasts and six slot them soon as you can.

You could lose a few slots in Aid Other, I reckon.

Dispersion Bubble could use a few more slots. Bare minimum is 3 Def SOs and 1 end redux. The Red Fortune IO set is even better.

The extra slots in superspeed are for set bonuses?
Is Aim six-slotted for set bonuses? If not, 3 Recharges is all you need.
Maybe put another slot in Hasten? You want Aim, Repulsion Bomb and Ice Storm back up as soon as possible for best damage output.

You've picked the lowest damage primary here, and the third worse soloer in my opinion (Empathy and Sonic are even worse) but you do have access to two good AoEs in your secondary. Frost breath does 1.4 scalar damage instead of 1.0, and Ice Storm does Blaster level damage, and can be fired off after Repulsion Bomb to get some decent ticks in before the enemies run out of it. Repulsion Bomb gives you a third AoE. Thats way more than any Controller AoE damage output.

I would drop Manouvers for now and get Frost Breath. Freeze Ray and your bubbles are safety enough, and you have the Medicine pool to patch up anyone between fights, or to turlte up in your PFF and heal yourself while solo.

I agree that Controllers have really encroached on Defender territory since containment. But to make a fair comparison, you have to take and slot the best damage powers available to you. Defenders still beat even Fire Controllers for AoE damage output.

Oh, and be aware that Freakshow resist cold damage. Thats a very pertinent fact for a level 35 /Ice Defender.

Concept loss can happen at any time.

My first character was a Fire/Fire Blaster who really had no clal to be conjuring up a sword.

I've always had trouble with Controllers, many of whom don't really fit with having an animated amorphous lump of whatever they control walking around after them. But the pet power is so useful its hard to go without.

I think its cool that Controllers get defence based epic armours, but they're both visually very specific.

I usually end up taking soem Leadership powers on my Defenders because the bonuses are better than for any other archetype.

Assault isn't a bad choice, since +Damage and -Res sort of multiply each others effects.

Manouvers is either overkill or effectively capping your team's defence when Radiation Infection is running.

Tactics will basically provide +Perception for Arachnos missions. You have a powerful autohit -Def toggle and big additional -Def in you attacks, (-37.5% Def in Irradiate!) so no-one should need the +To Hit.

Vengeance is the best fit for Fallout-Vengeance-Mutate, but requires two of these three. I'd suggest skipping Manouvers and keeping Tactics handy as a panic power for when you need the Perception boost.

The problem with all the Leadership powers is that they chew up more END. If you're running Choking Cloud and both enemy toggles and a couple of Leadership toggles on top, you'll be in danger of running low pretty easily, even with Stamina and Accelerate Metabolism.

I've taken both to 50, soloing much of the time.

The Blaster will be much easier to begin with.

Kin/Elec is a good Defender combo, high risk, good damage and not too team dependent, but it really takes a while to find its feet. Tesla Cage is at 28, Transference at 26. These are your two main pre-emptive damage mitigation powers with Transfusion patching you up as you go.

As an Elec/Elec Blaster you dont have great ranged burst damage, but you get Tesla Cage at 18 for pre-emptive mezzing of any mezzers and some serious melee firepower to finish what you started. End Drain becomes a viable tactic much later, but from your teens you can deal with most solo groups quickly by sniping one, caging the next and then just taking down the third member quickly with your damage.

If you do team every now and then, the Defender is better, but be prepared to slog it out until the mid 20s using Siphon Speed and jousting to stay alive in the meantime if you choose that path.

I agree.
The IO set bonuses are heavily skewed in favour of Defence over Resistance, especially since the typed/positional defence double-bonus tweak recently.

Trying to gather any meaningful Resistance is an exercise in futility right now. It would not be gamebreaking to double most of the Resistance IO set bonuses, either by doubling the values (eg make Positrons Blast give +3.125% vs Fire and Cold in slot 3) or by doubling up on types of damage (Kinetic Crash slot 3 becomes +2.5% vs Smashing AND Lethal)

Its true that defence is susceptible to the streak breaker and defence debuffs, but it also caps at 90%+ mitigation for all ATs and ignores debuffs.

I know this goes against what you said about not choosing particular powers, but one challenging concept I've had kicking around for a little while is a Grav/FF Controller without the single target hold.

Its often debated on the Controller forums if the AoE hold is a must-have, this got me wondering could any Controller go without their Single hold, which is the real bread and butter for that archetype.

Conceptually its very much classic telekinesis, and with Lift and Force Bolt (and Propel) you have a lot of single target control through knockback.
Force Field would allow you enough damage mitigation to get away without your ST hold on teams, and you still have Wormhole and GDF for backup.
Solo, you've got some degree of protection from your Dispersion Bubble, and PFF in a tight spot.

Ethereal Shift (the purchasable phase power) is cool, but once you turn it on your can't turn it off until it naturally expires in 30 seconds.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ethereal_Shift

So its great for a solo-er with a kid who might wake up soon, but not so good if you're providing some vital service to your team.

Unless you want to get stuck in the Phantom Zone and helplessly watch your friends get slaughtered for concept reasons :P

Theres also a re-acquirable phase power you can get from Warburg, the level 30 PvP zone. 5 times 30 minutes will probably do you quite well for the seocnd half of your career.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hyper_Phase

My power pools were all taken with Leadership (for manouvres), Fighting (for Tough and Weave), Leaping (for Combat Jumping's +Def and nowadays Blessing of the Zephyr) and Fitness to be able to run it all.

So Provoke was out.

Repulsion Bomb was my taunt, that tended to draw mass aggro when used as an opener. And any aggro that peeled of me would kind of get absorbed by the huge Defence I offered my teammates.

It was a workable alternative rather than a game-breaking Discovery of the Century. One lucky sleep could still ruin your day, or at least give you cause to panic. When I play an actual Tank I marvel at their incredible durability compared to this build.

My FF/Sonic Defender had capped resitance to Ranged, AoE and Psychic and 38% vs Melee, and 60%+ S/L Resistance (Charged Armour and Tough).

I could tank for teams easily, if they got used to the idea. It often ended up with people complaining that I didnt hold aggro like a tank, to which my answer was "Yes, but I do give you 40%+ defence instead, you dont need me to hold all the aggro."

This was all before I14. Now that toggles dont drop when you're slept it would be even easier, and thanks to the changes in set bonuses (ie more from Thuinderstrike and Aegis) and Blessing of the Zephyr, it would be even easier to do this.

Ive tried Sonic Defenders too, but its very hard to get them as tough, pretty much impossible in fact.

Yeah, I'd agree that Corrupters are better than Defenders for this kind of duo, on the whole. Most defender duos are safe enough that they could trade a bit of that for some extra damage.

I'm still annoyed that Empathy didn't get proliferated to Corrupters for this very reason. Its hands down the most powerful duo set, and Pain Domination is a poor cousin until you've got a whole superteam going.

Dual Empathy is utterly sick, in a good way.
This was the first duo I dual-boxed (Empathy/Energy in my case) and it became incredibly powerful in the 30s with permanent Adrenalin Boost and auras. Alternate auras, ie one fires off Recovery one fires off Regen and then swap when they wear off.
Dont skip the heals until later if you do go dual Empathy - they keep you alive in the early game.
I'd take just healing Aura in a later build, and of course Clear Mind, Fortitude, both Auras and Adrenalin Boost. Each one is a milestone on the path to power.
Take Manouvers (and slot it) and Assault, and dont bother with Fitness. Hasten is probably a very good idea, one I didnt bother with if I recall.

Sonic Blast will be the most powerful blast set, but really take whatever you fancy, because even with Energy Blast (not a top performer), I was getting bored taking on +5 bosses in the 30s. Invincible missions became a total breeze.

As for other powersets...

I've made a Fire/Rad Controller twin duo, thats OK but has range problems and skipping Stamina hasnt been as easy as I thought. Some days its very powerful, othertimes not so much. Stimulant is very handy here to keep all those toggles running.

I've also made dual Trick Arrow/Archery Defenders, with the aim of alternating the long recharge powers like Oil Slick and
EMP, and stacking double manouvers and Flash Arrow on each spawn to get 30% base defence. That was definitely different from most duos I've played, slower and more thoughtful rather than wild unbridled power. You win any fight you start on your terms, but can be quickly overpowered by ambushes or unseen extra groups.

I played a Sonic Defender duo with a friend once, and that was insane after level 12 due to capped resistances to all physical damage and up to 120% -Res easily stackable on hard targets. Endurance was a problem though. Aid Other was nice to have.

I made two Rad/Sonics twice (Corrupters and Defenders) and never got them past level 10 either time. I'm sure they would blossom quickly though if I'd stuck with them.

Two Kinetics would work very well - I havent yet tried that out. But I know you could skip stamina and travel powers.

My favourite mixed Defender duo was Force Field/Sonic and Kinetic/Electric. These two primaries really shore up each others weaknesses and allowed me to regularly duo Praetorian AVs. They made it to 50 together.

I've also tried a Sonic/Energy and Storm/Ice duo, who get some nice Resistance and -Resistance stacking. Nothing spectacular except the occasional mission like Fir Bolg ones where most of the damage is Fire and boith Defenders have over 50% resistance.

Mostly, Ive come to the conclusion that any two Defenders rock

Pushing your team to the limits with a purely defensive set can be a very, well, odd experience.

I'll never forget this one time on my first Sonic Defender, we had another Sonic Defender and someone with a healing aura (Rad, Thermal or Empath). We were fighting Freakshow that were +5 to me. Each fight took absolutely ages since no-one had any +To Hit, but we were all completely invincible due to capped Resistance and our slow health leaks from +5 Tank Swipers etc. being healed back by the normally puny aura power.
I think that radio mission took more than half an hour.

The whole team was in this kind of silent awe of ourselves, but I'm not exactly sure if we were having fun. Well, it was good for one mission but we dropped difficulty after that because you wouldnt want to do it all night.

Its the staggered series of different rewards that draws you in, I reckon. Badge progress, recipe drops, salvage drops, coupled with the small psychological buzzes like beating the mission boss or taking on multiple groups at once.

I first became aware of this pattern playing Diablo II - you were always ten minutes from the next levelup or the next waypoint or felt like something really cool might drop. That complicated pattern of rewards is much more enticing than one big drop very infrequently, and used to keep me up till the small hours.

In CoH these days its similar - each character I have will have a number of goals of different types - badges, IO sets, level up to get a cool power or finish a set, some marketeering goal maybe so they can afford a particular item. Just enough complexity so you can sometimes level up or get a badge by surprise because your mind was on another goal.

Awesome news! Ive just started a new Mind Controller!

I'd definitely defer that decision until you've experienced Hurricane in action, SuperFerret. You may decide after that that you don't need to sacrifice other powers in favour of extra defence.

Like I said, you wont build up much useful Defence until your late 20's, and there are far better power picks than Tough and Weave in your teens and early 20s. What i'm describing above is a bit of advanced mucking around and not standard build advice.

At level 32 you get 18 powers. (and 35 and 38 are Tronado and Lightning Storm). I'd break them down as:

Must haves:

Gravity Distortion
Crush or Lift
Propel (for a solo-er)
Wormhole
Singularity

Gale (because you have to)
Freezing Rain
Hurricane

Hover and Fly (for concept and travel power)
Swift, Health and Stamina (to run Hurricane)

Thats 13 Powers.

Nice to have (you get 5 of these):
Other one of Crush or Lift
Gravity Distortion Field
Steamy Mist
Thunderclap
Crushing Field
Fighting pool (3 powers)
Other pool powers eg Hasten, Stealth, Assault.

So choose from that list, do you want to spend 3 out of 5 optional choices on Fighting, or go for more flash and thunder?

You can try to build up some positional defence using set bonuses and pool powers, and you'd do OK if you focus on Ranged and AoE Defence. Hurricane is your melee defence, and far more useful than what Im about to describe, since it gives a 30% To Hit debuff, 48% when slotted.

So, on to Defence IO basics:

Thunderstrike gives you +3.75% Defence per set, you've got 4 powers that can take that (Crush, Lift, Gravity Distortion and Propel). This set isnt available till level 27 (when you cdan slot level 30 IOs), but its cheapish, and wont compromise the actual powers effectiveness for a solo damage-based Controller.

Blesing of the Zephyr is exepnsive, but stick it in Hover for +3.125% vs Ranegd and AoE.

The Fighting Pool at its best is Weave fully slotted with Red Fortune (4.5% base, 7.2% slotted, +2.5% vs Ranged Set Bonus) and Tough as a holder for the SteadFast Protection unique (+3% Def to all) and the Aegis set (4.6875 vs AoE)

Say for starters you take Hover (2.25% def to all) as well since you're an Air controller, and slot Blessing Of The Zephyr, and four Thunderstrike sets.

You now have:

2.25+3.125+15=20.375 vs Ranged
2.25+3.125 =5.375 vs AoE
2.25 vs everything else

Add in Fighting as slotted above for:

+10.2 vs All (Weave + Steadfast)
+2.5 vs Ranged (Red Fortune)
+4.6% vs AoE (Aegis)

and this costs one power pool, 3 powers, and 10 extra slots.

Totals to:
33.5% vs Ranged
20% vs AoE
12.45% vs everything else

So thats the decision you have to make. Are those powers, pools and slots worth it? As a Controller, you'll often be fighting enemies that dont fight back, so Defence is wasted. On the other hand, the extra defence will often save your bacon if ambushed by a mezzer (or Sapper) or when you're locking down a mezzing boss.

Hurricane gives you an awesome To Hit debuff close up, but wont help in an ambush

Oh yeah, I forgot. Blood Mandate in Tornado give +3.75 vs Ranged and +4.6% vs AoE. If you go chasing defence bonuses, do that too.

Like I said, all this starts to fall together in the late 20's/early 30's. Get Stamina at 20 and Hurricane at 22 and be bold with Hurricane until then.

For Gravity Control, treat Lift and Gravity Distortion as controls, and slot them accordingly, and Crush and Propel as damage powers.

The classic slotting for a single target hold is 2 Acc-2 Hold-2 Rech, you can nowadays get that in 4 slots with 4 Acc/Rech/Hold IOs and add in an extra Hold and Recharge.

But the important thing is to have that hold coming back quickly to stack on bosses. For your teens I recommend slotting Recharge and acc rather than hold duration - it has a good duration out of the box, even if it needs to be double stacked.

My level 50 Grav Controller can use Lift, and then get off two holds before the target gets up off the floor, if Hasten is active.

Dealing with Madness Mages at low levels is just rough - I dont think there is any magic tactic to get you through this. Your best bet is to pack a break free for any mezzing boss, and hold them twice as quickly as possible.

Blessing of the Zephyr is only really useful if you're stacking it with other sources of Defence.

But if you are doing just that, its totally brilliant!
Normally, you have to six slot a set to get one of those Defence bonuses. Here, you get two good bonuses for 2 slots!
If you're building a ranged flier type its even better, since you want to boost Hover flight speed anyway to keep it turned on in combat for the defence bonus and the ability to stay out of melee range. And KB protection doesnt exactly hurt, so it feels like slots well spent.
The base speed of Hover was upped when this set got introduced, and Ive found the +1 2/3 SO's worth of flight speed in the set is as good as 3 slotted Hover used to be. Its enough to use comfortably in missions at least.

Its opened up a new avenue with self-Defenders - if you have a spare power pool and power - take Combat Jumping (even if you fly) and slot BotZ. For almost no end you now have +5.625% Defence vs Ranged and Melee, Immobilise and KB protection and +2.5% defence to all else in one power!

When I first saw Blessing of the Zephyr, I drooled. I havent stopped...

(I must update the guide in my signature)

Ive solo'd both.

Earth allows Sands of Mu (and the Blackwand or Nemesis staff) to hit reliably.
Thats a huge boon for the solo Earth Controller, especially if you can also up the recharge on Sands of Mu with Siphon Speed..

I've got a lot of patience for solo-ing lower damage characters, but Ice/Kinetics really drove me nuts sometimes.