About Defender Powers

Making it easy to take out red level enemies. That's a defender.

Your primary powers are your main Buff/Debuff and control powers. Your secondary is generally ranged attacks (many of these powersets are shared with Blasters, but are less powerful versions). You can afford to be a little more reckless than Blasters, but battles can take a lot longer due to your lower damage potential.

In most cases, you are best paired with high-damage dealers such as Blasters, Tanks, Scrappers, or Kheldians. Storm especially is good with Blasters because you can keep them out of melee range with your various movement powers. This tends to tick them off less than Scrappers or Tanks who want to stay up close to do their thing.

Power Pool Recommendations

Read my Power Pools Guide for general information on the pools, but the following are Storm/Sonic Defender specific issues with power pools.

Remember my Advanced Travel Tips for avoiding travel powers until later levels allowing you to get more regular powers first.

• Fighting

  If you're desperate for the defensive bonuses of the last two powers in this set, go for it, but the melee range stuff is kind of a waste of time. As a Storm/Sonic, your goal is keep them out of melee range.

• Concealment

  The first power in this set, Stealth, is completely negated by your Steamy Mist power in your Primary. It's a team stealth power that gives you defense against everything, and resistance to Fire, Cold, and Energy. The second power, Grant Invisibility, is only good for sneaking teammates past enemies. Since you already have a team stealth power, this isn't as useful and there's a better option. With Recall Friend from the Teleporation pool, you can sneak to a target, then TP the team to you.

• Presence

  There's something to be said for taunting enemies into wanted to close to melee range and then knocking them back out of melee range. It's a concept that has potential, but not my choice of powers so far. I may try this if I have room at the higher levels.

• Medicine

  This can be useful because of the self heal. This pool also gives you a Resurrect which you lack, but an awaken with 02 Boost can be nearly as good.

• Leadership

  Useful for the buffs. The biggest problem here is that Storm/Sonic already has many powers that draw endurance and you won't really have the room for more.

• Teleportation

  I highly recommend Recall Friend for the Sneak and TP combo. Since you already have a stealth power, this works very well. TP Foe could be useful if your Snowstorm anchor tries to run or if you want to corner something, but don't have a good angle on it. As for TP as a travel power, I didn't think it fit well with my concept, but if you want to go for the Tsoo sorcerer thing, go for it.

• Fitness

  There are some Archetypes and builds that can skip the Stamina series. This is not one of them. The only real decision to make here is whether you want Swift or Hurdle. Take Swift if you plan on Fly as a travel power for the speed boost. Otherwise, it's up to preference.

• Speed

• I've noticed that most Defenders benefit from Hasten because they tend to have slow recharging powers. But the most important reason to get the Speed pool is for Super Speed. SS as a travel power is limited because you don't have the ability to move vertically, but by getting Hover, using the Jump Jet Pack (which you can buy separately if you don't have the special Box version of CoH that gives it to you), or by using a temporary travel power (earned on Safeguard missions), you can overcome this. SS with Steamy Mist gives you full invisibility which you can use to get awesome screenshots, sneak through entire missions (awesome for TFs), and travel completely safely (about the only thing that can see through this is Villains in PvP, Archvillains, and Monsters). Best of all, what better fun to whirl around with whirlwind right next to your pet Tornado? (more on this later).

Leaping

• As a squishy character, Super Jump is a risky power to take because you can land in the middle of a group of enemies and get killed very quickly. However, if you're desperate to have Acrobatics for the immobilization defense, you don't really have an option. On the other hand, fly will prevent Knockback effects at the least and you can just avoid story arcs full of Mezzers if it's a huge problem.

Fly

• Fly may be slow, but I've already got Swift from the Fitness pool which will speed it up slightly. It also gives me safe travel, protection from knockback/knockdown/knockup/ground-based slow effects and it's the best power for badge hunting so if you are building a badge-er, Fly will be your best bet. For Gale, I plan to get hover at least, but if there's room, I'll try to add fly in there too.

Inherent Powers

For many of my builds, I leave these unslotted. That's mostly because each power becomes useless over time. In this case, brawl is meaningless after a few levels because you'll use much better ranged attacks instead. Sprint is unecessary after you get real (or temporary) travel powers so there's no point in taking the endurance drain to leave it on. Rest is useful until you get Health and Stamina and sometimes later too, but that's a judgement call based on experience. I find that I don't need it enough to slot it so I leave it unslotted too.

01: Brawl

01

01: Sprint

01

02: Rest

02

As for your Archetype power, Defenders get Vigilance. With Vigilance, your powers cost less endurance as your teammates lose life. This is useful because you can have a lot of teammates and any one of them that's skirting death will give you the bonus (theoretically). The idea is that in a pinch, you can go crazy launching powers to try and save your team.