Valorin

Well, either the quality of the issues has been declining steadily or... Nah, couldn't be.

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Be it -DAM RES or a personal +DAM of some sort, it effectively makes those sets with a +30% (or more) type damage boost effectively gimpy.

They don't all have to be group beneficial, but FF getting a "focusing lens" single-target bubble that you cast on an enemy that boosts your damage against him (and maybe *only* your damage) would make FF a much more viable soloer.

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Why not a -def? That'd be thematically correct. Make it massive enough and I'd imagine it'd be especially helpful at lower levels, especially before SOs, say.

I'm going to join the debate, and probably regret it. I'll throw this out there, Defenders aren't valued for their secondaries the same way other ATs are. Why? Because of their two effects generally generated by their secondaries, neither is particularly useful to a team. 1) Damage, 2nd worst compared to controllers and pitiful compared to the "Big boys" scrappers and blasters. Really, this isn't going to change because too much of a boost to the damage dealing capabilities of defenders means they'll step on blaster toes once certain sets lay down their -res or -res/-def/+dmg or what-have you. So.. that brings us to 2) Their debuffs. There really are only two defender attacks with a noticeable debuff effect... irradiate gives a nice -def and short circuit does fairly nice end drain (not as nice as it used to be from what I hear). My dark/dark never really noticed -acc on her attacks through 50 levels. I notice the heck out of the debuff on my dark/ea brute (possibly because it's paired with a defense set? Any math whizes want to take a shot at that?). Why can't we bump up the debuffs on the defender blasts? Or bump up the duration of the debuffs? Make 'em noticeable. Make em useful to the team. Still, I'm not sure where this would leave energy blast, but I'm sure somebody can come up with something (more consistent knockback than blasters? reliable knockback maybe? Think of how useful Air Superiority is...).

All this useless secondary angst spills over into the primary when we find out other ATs get boosted effects when they use our primary as a secondary. Just my $0.02. Sorry if I derailed the discussion, or if this has already been brought up and dismissed.

Ebonposter, I'm not sure how you got the feel that your defenders are so much more survivable than your scrapper is. I've been alternating between my Dark/Dark scrapper and my Storm/Dark and Rad/Rad Defenders all around 30. My scrapper solos unyielding and has an occasional sweat. Both my defenders can possibly solo tenacious, but that's about it. Something goes wrong and they faceplant faster than you can say squishie. Add to that that the scrapper just plain kills stuff faster...

One thing I thought I'd add. I've had some success using Teleport Foe to separate troublesome minions and LTs out of a group. Target troublemaker, find a corner (preferably out of LOS), turn on hurricane and zap them into the corner. Pretty handy while soloing, and with acc inspirations it seemed to work fairly well when the group I was in was over their head with a particular series of spawns.

A very nice guide. I think I ended up with something similar to your "assassin" build. As a side note, the knockback on Radiant Strike and Incandescent Strikes' Disorient (?) seem to be very helpful in taking down voids quickly... at least solo.