Rigel_Kent

If you're going to rock the spandex, might as well use both wheels.

Specializing in healing and buffing is a big step up from specializing in just healing. Goodness, we don't need another of those running around. And of course, if you're riding on one wheel just for the fun of it, by all means, do!

But if it's not just for fun, and you really want to contribute to a team as much as possible, remember that you have two power sets. Emp/Dark is not limited to buffs and heals; it can do team damage acceleration (including your own damage, which ain't bad if you consistently hit lots of targets with your AoEs), stun stacking, and +def/-tohit abuse. Since Emp isn't slot hungry, you can probably add at least 1 of those extra team roles easy, without giving up any effectiveness in healing or buffing.

And it looks like your build can already tackle multiple team roles anyway... I think you're being unfair to yourself by saying you're just buffs and heals....

Dual builds did more to buff Defender soloing than Vigilance 2.0. So I expect, as with dual builds, far too many Defenders won't bother to take advantage.

On /Sonic:

Range slotting on Howl is also recommended. The difference between a 50' 30 degree cone (Howl base) and a 70' 30 degree cone (Howl with 2 Centrioles) is often the difference between hitting 5 targets or hitting all 10.

Shockwave's damage is perfectly fine for its recharge and animation time. Howl: 0.81 damage, 10 second recharge, 2.33 animation time. Shockwave: 0.64 damage, 8 second recharge, 2.17 animation time. Its below-average accuracy and above-average end cost can be fixed with slotting. True, it lacks Howl's debuff, but the reason people don't take Shockwave is knockback phobia.

Shockwave with range slotting, and backwards jousting if needed, will cause minimal scattering, since it's a 100% knockback proc on all hit targets. It also buys time to follow up with Siren's Song, RI, LR, EF in absolute safety.

Using Screech on a boss before Dreadful Wail will stack mag to stun the boss. If it survives.

You are correct about Siren's Song's damage and sleep duration. Don't ever use it in PvP, though. Due to a bug, any amount of sleep resistance (either Health or some kind of mez protection) causes sleep+damage powers to self-cancel. That means all Siren's Song does to almost any PvP opponent is a fleeting moment of sleep, a tiny bit of damage, then immunity to status effects for 15 seconds. (Thanks, sucker!)

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On Rad:

AM also protects against endurance drain and recovery debuffs.

RI and EF are strategically different.

Versus normal mobs: RI is mostly protective, with a huge -tohit and so-so -defense. EF is mostly offensive, with a strong -resist and a so-so -damage.
Versus tohit debuff resistant mobs (AVs, GMs, Rularuu eyeballs): RI does basically nothing. EF does both limited protection and improved offense.

This means, against normal mobs, it's important to use RI first, then EF, as RI protects against the alpha strike. Against AVs and GMs, just EF. On a "steamroller" team, just EF. It also means that the common strategy of putting RI and EF on separate targets is not always a good idea, since the two are not interchangeable.

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On APPs:

Dark Melee Soul Drain is permable with large amounts of +recharge. Dark Mastery Soul Drain has arbitrarily doubled recharge, and cannot be permed even at the +recharge cap.

Electric Fence takes some of the headache out of most AVs.

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On pool powers:

Hover gives you the option of vertical Shockwave (using the floor as the "wall" you knock the enemies into). It also attracts melee AI enemies to the point nearest you, similar to the "safest place is in melee right next to the RI anchor" strategy.

Defenders get the highest mods on Maneuvers, Assault, and Tactics, but not Vengeance. Vengeance uses self-buff mods, so weirdly enough, Scrappers have the best Vengeance.

End redux in Stimulant is helpful. 13 base end cost.

Team Teleport has a situational use: getting the team out of Caltrops or Quicksand.

If it's any help, I dropped Shout from my Sonic/Fire blaster long ago, but I still miss it from time to time. The pewpew from Shriek is efficient, but it just doesn't fill that irrational need to hit the bad guys, really, really hard.

Good thing I still have Dreadful Wail and Rise of the Phoenix to get my occasional fix.

Re: Rad def alpha:

I like Torrent or range enhanced Shockwave, then RI and LR while they're down. YMMV.

Heal IO sets are expensive. Sorry bucko, no way around it. Slot basic Heal IOs and start saving up for the good stuff.

On the bright side, if you're still wanting to play the debuff angle, tohit debuffs IO sets are cheap cheap cheap! Same for stun sets for Dark Pit, Oppressive Gloom, and Soul Transfer, and immobilize sets for your Tenebrous Tentacles.

Be careful not to overspecialize your build for the sake of set bonuses. Five slots in Regeneration Aura is, I assume, for the recharge bonus on Doctored Wounds, but it comes at the cost of having a very slow recharging Soul Drain, which will drive you crazy soloing. (Unless you make a soloing build, see below.)

If you like to keep a flexible, generalist build, rather than having two specialized builds, that's fine. You can keep your first build generalized, then make your second build either for strict defensive teaming (with powers like HO, AP, CM, Rez, Fort, AB, Leadership + Vengeance, Recall Friend, and secondaries slotted for debuff), or for strict soloing (with powers like the three Auras, Soul Drain, Soul Transfer, Dark Embrace + Fighting pool, Gloom, Moonbeam, Blackstar + Dark Consumption, and secondaries slotted for pain), or for strict team offending (same as solo build, plus Fort, AB, Leadership + Vengeance, and Provoke, if you swing that way). Cheap IOs and SOs on the second build are fine, since your first Empath build will be expensive enough already. Whichever specialized second build you pick, you'll be using it more than just occasionally, I guarantee!

I'd go 35 Increase Density, 38 Thunderous Blast. My slots would go into Tesla Cage (enough to hit and get a decent hold duration), then Fulcrum Shift, then ID and Thunderous Blast when I take them, with leftovers going to Charged Bolts.

Consider dropping ID and SB from your second build for soloing or for whenever you don't feel like being a buffbot. Or adding both ID and SB to your second build when your team desperately needs a buffbot. Either way, at least one of your builds should have ID for those occasional situations like extreme high damage smashing/energy AVs/GMs (Scirocco on MoSTF runs, much less ouchness), or team setups where teammates without mez protection are taking aggro. (Aggro-teflon coated scrapper instead of a tanker + ID = no problem. Newbie tanker who didn't take Unyielding + ID = no problem. Long TF full of squishies + ID = no problem.)

41 and onward depends on which APP you like.

Your build is solid.

Keep in mind you have two mitigation combos, -tohit plus +def, and also -dmg plus -resist. A little more recharge slotting in Twilight Grasp will help you keep the muzzle on AVs and GMs.

Howl needs range slotting. A cheap old Centriole or two will do nicely. This will ensure maximum coverage on Howl's area of effect.

You don't need Shout. Shout has inherently good accuracy, but its DPS is worse than Shriek. Its debuff lasts twice as long as Shriek, but its activation and recharge times are about three times as long as Shriek. Slot up Shriek instead, enjoy a superior blast, and free up a power choice for another blast or APP.

Unless, of course, you have Shout just for looks -- which isn't a bad reason! It's a fine looking power, and it's not that much worse than Shriek. Slot it up with Centrioles, maybe joust backwards a bit, and enjoy the satisfaction of watching giant sound waves of DOOOM (or is that BOOOM?) barrel across the battlefield.

A little bit of damage resistance enhancement in Shadow Fall will make the tanker in your team very happy someday. Perhaps on an MoSTF run; Shadow Fall takes a lot of the bite out of Scirocco's haxxed EMP.

Oppressive Gloom benefits from duration slotting. Once you tag a minion with a tick (or an LT or boss, if stacked with your other stuns), defenders get several seconds' worth of stun, even if you move away. With slotting, even +2 targets will be left reeling for a good 13 seconds after each tick. Rule of thumb: OG's stun duration is 60% as long as Screech and Dreadful Wail. This is thanks to defenders having better mez duration scalars than scrappers and tankers. Abuse it!

There's a balance point between having lots of set bonuses and having powers well enhanced. You may be treading a little too far on the set bonus side. Don't be afraid to scrap some sets in some of the powers that don't need much slotting (Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Stamina, Maneuvers, Amplify, Dark Embrace), and move slots to get other powers enhanced.

You're doing fine.

If you get bored between missions and want to improve the build even further, look for deals on "frankenslotting" IOs. These are cheap (often very cheap) IOs that combine the enhancement types you want without regard to collecting sets or getting set bonuses. Mixed enhancement type IOs get a bonus, so you come out significantly ahead, as long as you can benefit from the multiple enhancement types. Siphon Speed, Tesla Cage, and Voltaic Sentinel, in particular, will be easy to find cheap Slow, Hold, and Pet/R.I.Pet set IOs for.

You're unfortunately going to be a debt magnet when soloing, until you pick up something like Mass Hypnosis. Your kill speed should be good enough to erase the occasional debt hit, but if you feel you're getting too much debt, try Hover. By hovering a little bit above enemies' heads, you're still in range for Transfusion, Short Circuit, etc., but out of reach of melee. This also encourages melee mobs to bunch together at the point on the ground closest to you, thanks to their dumb AI, perfect for catching them all with your AoEs.

First and foremost, you'll want a second build with more blasts, damage slotting, and Soul Drain in it. You might make it a soloing build outright. It'll come in handy in those not-so-rare teams that have overloaded on defense and just need more DPS from you.

Overall, your secondaries and APPs should be slotted more heavily than your primaries. Your primaries don't need extra range, or extra accuracy, and often only do one thing, whereas your secondaries and APPs need multiple types of slotting to reach their full potential. TT in particular is a power I wish I could 10-slot, while 2-3 membranes in Fortitude is all you need. Yes, the recharge bonus from Doctored Wounds is nice, but permastunning multiple LTs and bosses with a 2-3 endo slotted OG + Dark Pit is nicer.

Your debuffs are equal, stackable, and spammable. Dark Blast, Gloom, and Night Fall have especially good duration versus recharge. -tohit slotting in all these powers will be important part of keeping enemies at the tohit floor.

Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall: slot as much range as you can. Whether you're using cones for damage, debuffs, or status effects, range slotting makes it much easier to catch as many targets as possible within its area.

Torrent: give it a try before deciding you don't like it. It's more like Gale than Energy Torrent, meaning you have a lot of control over where enemies end up. And it applies an AoE -tohit debuff just as good as Night Fall's. If you find it doesn't suit your playstyle, drop it.

Blackstar: not sure this serves a combat purpose in your support build. You're not built for damage (no Soul Drain, no damage slotting in your regular AoEs), everything's stunned and at 5% total tohit anyway, so Blackstar is merely a flashy costume change power. Keep it in your solo/DPS second build, though, and add Soul Drain (for the obvious reason) and Dark Consumption for fast post-nuke recovery.

Fitness pool: do not need. If you need more endurance than Recovery Aura provides, grab Dark Consumption, get fast post-nuke recovery, and save two power choices.

Recall Friend: do not need. If you're going to take it, at least grab Teleport so you can get teammates to the mission door faster. Without Recall, battle rezzing is fine because nearly all enemies will be stunned, rooted, and badly -tohit debuffed whenever you're around. Also, your +def will be sky high thanks to Vengeance.

Leadership: Vengeance on auto cures team wipes. Deaths happen, even on the most practiced MoSTF squads. Vengeance ensures there's only one death every 2 minutes, max, and the team's XP rate is cranked to Ultra Turbo Speed in the meantime. Worse, taking Resurrect "just in case" but not Vengeance is silliness. You knew this from post 1. Trust your instincts; Vengeance does exactly what you thought it does.

Oppressive Gloom: The self-damage is negligible even for non-Empaths. The end cost too. All that matters is being close enough to targets to tag them, having enough accuracy not to miss, and having enough duration that you can go tag other targets or hop away to fire off a ranged cone. For reference, OG's duration is 75% that of Dark Pit, which ain't bad for something you can refresh virtually for free every 2 seconds.

Practice jousting! All builds that have both PBAoEs and ranged cones become doubly good in the hands of a skilled jouster.

To sum up, I really like the +def & -tohit combo strategy you're going for. It's rarely done, but it's certainly a viable approach for an Emp/Dark defender.

EDIT: P.S. Empathy heals are unrelated to the caster's max health. +Health is nice for Empathy mainly for regen tankfending, which you don't need to do thanks to the mez and debuffs you have.

No experience on Mind/Storm. I suspect Mind/TA has an edge against AVs, thanks to unresistable -tohit and -dmg debuffs. Also, non-immobed AVs are a pain, and I'm not just talking about Containment. Mind/Storm would have better area of effect on all of its -resist debuff (due to Acid Arrow radius nerf, /TA gets good coverage on only half its -resist). Poison Gas Arrow (66% chance of mag 2 sleep) + Mass Hypnosis (mag 3 sleep + 50% chance of mag 1 sleep) is borderline helpful if you need to stack mez on two or more bosses. Make sure you have some way of lighting the oil slick!

I suspect Mind/TA and Mind/Storm play very similarly overall. Both sets can debuff resistance -30%, both can stealth through missions if needed, both can de-fly targets, both have AoE damage pseudopets, both have area knockdown slicks, both have anti-AV/GM powers. I'd be thrilled to have either build on my team.

Don't discount /Psi defender too quickly, especially with the blaster version of Psi being nerfed so many ways, and with the new Vigilance's soloing damage buff. The only tricky part is that the solo-friendly primaries don't match the mentalist concept too well. FF/Psi won't have a lot of damage output, but will be very well protected, with partial mez protection and easy Aid Self thanks to all the +def and -recharge. Kin/Psi will be a debt magnet until Mass Hypnosis, but will be a very satisfactory blastfender afterwards. Dark/Psi is an excellent choice but it's up to you whether your concept can bend enough to justify Dark Miasma.

If you choose to go blaster, remember that Mental Manipulation is leaps and bounds a superior set to Psychic Blast. Unlike most builds, you're better off loading up on secondaries as you level up, and only taking a couple of primaries as needed. Yes, MM is really that good. Yes, Psi is really that bad. You may even try something like Archery/MM instead, if that won't violate your concept.

Mind Controller has the same problem as defender. The good soloing secondaries aren't very mentalist. Mind/Emp has good survivability with Regeneration Aura, as long as you're preemptively mezzing stuff before it can mez you back. Mind/FF and Mind/Kin are also decent choices.

"Primaries > Secondaries" is a decent general rule. It's a shame, though, that so many of the exceptions to that rule involve Defender primaries. Speed Boost is a perfect example. There is no difference whatsoever between Controller, Corruptor, or Defender Speed Boost, except that Defenders get it 8 levels earlier.

Another "option" I've heard (though I don't know if anyone has the guts to actually do it)...

Slot SB for runspeed. So teammates who demand it better really, really want it bad.

OP: No need to reduce this to a yes/no question. You've got options.

1) Take SB and spam it like a good little buffbot.
2) Take SB but don't use it.
3) Drop SB and focus on being a good Dark blaster.
4) Take SB on your second build for special teaming situations (like granite brutes).

Of these, the only choice that annoys me is 2. If you don't want to use Speed Boost, fine, so long as you're contributing to the team effort in your own way. I'm a firm believer that letting people do their own thing encourages them to do a damn good job at doing that one thing. Drop SB and take and slot Dark Pit instead, making minions insta-stunned each and every spawn? Great! Drop SB and take Vengeance on auto instead, making the team invincible as soon as any one team member bites it? Great! Drop SB and take Repel instead, shoving loose mobs back into your tentacle zone? Great!

Dark Miasma plays the same as ever, except for a minor damage bonus when soloing or on a small team from Vigilance 2.0. Fun factor is similar to illusion thanks to active defense style. Soloing speed not quite so good, but better than it was with Vigilance 1.0.

Pair it with your favorite aggressive secondary. You won't need much utility on top of full-strength Defender Dark Miasma. No real bad choices, though /Rad, /Psy, /Ice, and /Archery may be particularly good fits.

So I've been away a bit.

Storm Summoning

Balance Issues

• The Freezing Rain pet summoned by Defenders debuffs resistance better than the Freezing Rain pet summoned by the other archetypes, but the Defender version doesn't debuff defense better.

I believe it's 10%. Regardless of the number, slow capping with Freezing Rain alone makes life a bit easier for storm defenders. It also happens to be one of the nice little things storm defenders can hold over other stormy ATs. (Defender FR = -70% base movespd, everyone else's FR = -50% base movespd).

Consider one build tuned for team support, another build tuned for DPS and soloing.

You'll have powers like Recall Friend and Vengeance, which are useless when soloing. And powers like Darkest Night and Howling Twilight, which are debuff/mez overkill when soloing easy stuff (ah ha, now you're even more mezzed!). You can drop these from one build to pick up moar damage from the likes of Shockwave or Dreadful Wail+Dark Consumption, or moar defense from Fighting pool, or even make a hybrid solo/tanking build with Provoke. (Then again, I say all defenders should have a hybrid solo/tanking build to switch to, so grain of salt.)

Similarly, you'll have powers like Shout and Dark Embrace, which become less important when teaming. You can drop these from the other build to pick up moar support from the likes of Assault or Siren's Song+Mass Hypnosis.

Vengeance: If you like it, keep it, but put it on auto. Really! All the worries about teammates not staying dead long enough go away when you put Vengeance on auto.

Dreadful Wail: This, not Screech, is the longest lasting debuff in the Sonic Attack set. But it's probably the stun stacking that's its selling point. Between Dreadful Wail, Screech, Howling Twilight, and Oppressive Gloom, you should be thinking at least a little bit about stun stacking in your build.

Shadow Fall: 20% base resists to energy, negative, and psionic is nice. Pity if you can't find some slots to boost that up. You'll really make some poor Invuln tanker's day if you do. Not to mention one of these damage resistance types will stack nicely with your APP armor (except for Temp Invuln).

Mids' .NET 2.0 requirement unfortunately locks that program to Windows users only. But as long as you have Hasten you're probably on the right track.