comparable to fire/traps corr?

I kind of want a traps toon, but for personal reasons, it's a lot easier for me to level on the hero side. Therefore I'd rather avoid starting in Rogue Isles or Praetoria, which leaves only heroes, and specifically a traps defender.

Is there any traps defender combo that can come even close to the overall power of a fire/traps corr? Assuming the answer is no, which one would come closest?

/ice will be the closest due to the two of the AoEs being at blaster levels and you being able to double stack AM. /sonic will be good for stacking the -res debuffs for AVs. /dark will be good due to the two fast recharging AoEs and adding in tohit debuffs to FFG.

Hmm, not quite sure what you mean about ice. Why would ice allow better stacking of AM?

Which of the 3 you mentioned would have the most AoE and ST damage? I assume ST would go to sonic, but AoE is the one I'm mainly concerned with.

I have a traps/sonic defender and really like it. Mainly single target but I wanted to make a true AV killer and the -res from sonic is what I was going for.

Dark would be nice for more control with tentacles and dark pits stun to stack with seekers.

Ice has good single target and 2 aoe's but ice storm will scatter them a bit and I never really liked frost breath.

One you may want to try is Assault Rifle I really like the set on my blaster, has more Aoe's then the other ranged sets as well - 3 cones (I count full auto because no end drain) - and 2 targeted aoe's. Ignite is very nice although I dont know if it still has a fear part, but it is very nice on Caltrops, web nade and any that are held by Poison Gas trap or hold procs.

Archery would be fun as well can run in lay your traps and launch Rain of Arrows without jumping back out

I might consider /Ice for Ice Storm. If you plan on taking the toon incarnate, paired with reactive, the rain, and trops are impressive. Blizzard I wouldnt take because of the crash, but YMMV.

I've always thought archery would pair well with traps, but standing in the middle of a spawn set for 8 for 4 seconds waiting while animating roa kinda sucks the interest out for me. Explosive arrow could potentially knock the mobs out of your traps if used carelessly.

I might also consider Dual Pistols. Two cones, a Targeted Aoe and a pbaoe add up to a decentish aoe set. The -res from acid mortar helps offset the perceived lower damage of pistols. The -damage from chem rounds has potential to increase your surviveability by quite a bit. Again, if you go Incarnate, and reactive, pretty sure you get a chance to proc off each dot tic if using incendiary ammo as well.

Yeah, I was wondering about DP.

All I've read about it is that it's weak, and is basically just flashy. Is this not necessarily true? You say "The -res from acid mortar helps offset the perceived lower damage of pistols." But wouldn't that help higher damage sets even more?

At this point it's probably between ice and dark for me. But still...wish I could make a fire defender

Thanks guys. I'm on freedom. What's the deal with server transfers these days? Are they free? Or will they ever be free again?

I supposed maybe I'll have to just roll through Praetoria and go hero side at 20 as a fire/traps corr. I keep looking over the defender builds, and I just can't come up with anything that sounds really good.

Freedom, huh? I can lend you a hand getting up in levels there. There really is nothing comparable defender-ish to a Fire/Traps corr.

Well, my idea kinda blew up. I was gonna use my second account to PL a new toon. But after activating the account, I realized that my SO'd tank on it just can't farm. It's so slow, it's barely even worth it. Can barely handle +1/+8.

Just make a Fire/Traps in Praetoria and bring it heroside. Nothing Defenders have compares to Scourging RoF.

I notice that you want damage, but you didn't mention whether you were planning on mainly teaming or soloing. In case you don't know, Defenders gets a substantial damage boost when they are solo or on small teams. From http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inherent_Powers#Vigilance:

"In Issue 17, in addition to the endurance discount, Defenders gained a variable damage bonus based on level and team size, with the largest bonus for being solo and level 20 or higher. A defender on a small team or by himself has more freedom to concentrate on his enemies, which allows him to increase his damage output by up to 30%. Each additional team member reduces this bonus, to a minimum of no buff at all at three or more teammates. Vigilance can be monitored as "Endurance Discount" and "Damage Bonus" in the Combat Attributes window."

There's a chart at that URL which shows the exact level of damage bonus if you want to take a look.

When comparing Defender and Corrupter damage levels this needs to be taken into account. The good news is if you are mainly going to be soloing your damage level will be much higher, culminating in +30% damage from level 20 on up.

This was almost enough to convince me to go with a Traps/Dual Pistol or Traps/Ice Defender instead of Fire/Traps Corrupter. Almost. The AoE damage of Fire is good enough that I was able to get to level 20 in Praetoria pretty quickly using a -1/X4 difficulty setting.

Well, I generally consider powers that can be used every spawn or two as better than full nukes. The nukes are great fun but in practice I rarely use them in normal play unless I have a way to quickly get endurance back (either a couple of blue pills I don't mind using, or a blue pill and an endurance recovery power). So "best AoE" to me is generally whatever allows me the biggest alpha strike (since AoEs are not as useful once the minions are mostly dead), provided I get to use it on most spawns.

As for damage, Rain of Arrows on a level 50 Defender does 3 ticks of 48.77 damage each (unenhanced), for a total of 146.31 to most targets. By comparison, Ice Storm only does 116.78 over a far longer time period with the same recharge. Blizzard does do 500 damage, but with six times the recharge and an endurance crash... Rain of Arrows is available every fight on high recharge builds and every other fight (or every fight, depending on how fast you are going) on most normal builds and you never have to skip using it because you don't want your toggles to drop or because you're out of blue pills.

Granted the normal AoEs do more damage over time due to having much faster recharges, but most fights don't need AoE spam constantly. RoA + Fistful + Explosive fully enhanced means opening each fight with around 470 damage, which is enough to clear or badly damage minions (especially solo where you get a damage bonus). That's almost as much damage (not counting Scourge) as Rain of Fire + Fireball + Fire Breath on a Fire Corruptor... not too bad for a Defender. By comparison, Ice only does about 376 damage with Frost Breath + Ice Storm so on the (at least 5 out of 6) spawns where Blizzard is down Archery deals quite a bit more damage.

That said, the mobs hit by Ice Storm and Frost Breath are slowed almost to uselessness and will be more concerned with running around trying to get out of the storm than shooting you, but from a damage standpoint Archery is better. Ice is probably more useful overall to a team since debuffs > damage for Defenders and Archery has no secondary effects, but that's not what the OP was asking about. If you want to approach the every-spawn damage output of a Fire Corruptor Archery is one of the best ways to do so. If you just want good solid damage, more debuffs, and the ability to occasionally drop the most powerful AoE a Defender can use, go Ice.