Sonic Blast
Sonic involves a lot of noise which some people find annoying, but I'm much happier with it because it's a themed character (Gale is supposed to be noisy). Anyway, sonic's secondary effect is lowered damage resistance. This helps you and your team by making the enemies easier to hit.
Some power combinations really don't work conceptually, but Storm (my primary) works with anything. Psychic Storm, yeah, I can see that. Radiation Storm? Dark Storm? Yup. It's all good. Mostly I chose sonic because it's a set that I wanted to try, but didn't think fit well with most of the other primaries. A raging noisy storm made perfect sense and thus, Screaming Gale.
Note that all power calculations have been normalized versus brawl
Therefore, if a power is listed as being 200% the power of brawl and your brawl does 50 damage, then the power will do 100 to the same target. All powers on this page were tested against the exact same level of enemy and were unenhanced at the time.Shriek
 | Score |  | 4 of 5 |  |
A basic low power attack It's nice that it has a secondary effect of lowering damage resistance because that means that the longer you fight, the more you hit your target. Actually… I don't know if the effect stacks… I need to test that.
| Minimum Slotting | |  | |
| Unslotted Strength | | 300% of Brawl | |
For damage dealers with main attacks, the normal slotting is always one accuracy and three damage. For your defender, you can't do strong damage no matter what so save enhancments for other powers. If you find you have room, it never hurts to buff up your damage potential a bit.
Either way, make sure you always slot accuracy in your attacks. They're pretty pointless if they miss.
While in groups where the Aggro is under control, make sure to hit each enemy one after the other (instead of trying to drop the same enemy over and over). By doing this, you are spreading out the damage resistnace effect.
Scream
| Score | | 4 of 5 | |
Looks a lot like Shriek, but they used a different sound effect for it. As with all damage sets, the second attack does more damage than the first, but it works basically the same way.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
| Unslotted Strength | | 389% of Brawl | |
Howl
| Score | | 4 of 5 | |
Aren't AoE powers fun? You burst forth a cone shaped blast of sonic nastiness. It does pretty decent damage so I'd slot this attack for damage before Shriek and Scream. The major difference is that Howl doesn't drop damage resistance (which is a darned shame and why I didn't give it a 5 out of 5).
| Minimum Slotting | |  | |
| Unslotted Strength | | 289% of Brawl | |
It's not too strong and it uses a decent chunk of endurance so try to save it for at least two enemies at a time.
Shockwave
| Score | | 5 of 5 | |
If you took Storm Summoning as your primary like I did, you may find this unnecessary because of Gale. It's quite the opposite though. This power actually does decent damage so if you had to choose, this would be the one to take instead of Gale. However, because of my concept, I took both. If you're going to have all the knockback and positioning powers anyway, might as well have a backup in case Gale misses.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
| Unslotted Strength | | 232% of Brawl | |
It's kind of neat to be able to start a battle by knocking everything into a corner while doing nearly as much damage as your first level attack. Best of all, enemies affected by Shockwave can't Alpha Strike you.
Shout
| Score | | 4 of 5 | |
It's no different than Shriek or Scream, just more powerful. Note that it is a little shorter range though.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
| Unslotted Strength | | 763% of Brawl | |
At this level of power, you should slot it to the max. It's well worth it.
Amplify
| Score | | 5 of 5 | |
The description says it "greatly" increases accuracy and "slightly" improves damage potential for a short time. In tests, it was a little more than 1.5 times normal attack power.
| Minimum Slotting | |  | |
| Damage Boost | | 153% of Brawl | |
As a Defender, you're not going to use this power to the same level as a Blaster would, but it does have it's uses. Last I checked, your pets get the bonus to accuracy and damage so if you use Amplify before summoning them, you give them at least those bonuses and might have time to launch a few attacks too.
The best use for this power is for making your Gale and Shockwave hit pretty much anything. By clicking Amplify before starting your battle, you're just not going to miss any of the enemies and positioning them will be much easier.
Siren's Song
| Score | | ? of 5 | |
Sleep powers are very unsexy because the enemies pop right out of it the second you hit them with something. While this can avoid an Alpha Strike, you can already do that by using a pet as a decoy (and you have two of those if you took Storm Summoning as your primary) or using either of your knockback powers (Gale and Shockwave).
Some less useful ways to use this power is to put a group to sleep so you and your whole team can sneak past them (kind of pointless if you use the Sneak and TP combo I recommended) or to put an entire group to sleep while your whole team uses only single target attacks to take out a particular problem enemy (like an AV).
More likely, you could put down a couple of snipers or a second group that's attack your team or use it to make a hasty retreat when you find yourself in trouble. It may also be useful when soloing since your attacks are mostly single target anyway so the scenario I described above with your team that wasn't that good would be ok for you alone.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
| Unslotted Strength | | Untested.. I'll get it the next time  | |
If you're going to take it, make sure it doesn't miss. If you only care about putting some enemies to sleep and not others to cut down crowd size, one accuracy enhancement might be enough.
Screech
| Score | | ? of 5 | |
A single target disorient. Hmm. If you are dead set on playing PvP, this could be useful to you, but in the real game, I'm thinking it's kind of redundant with the superior Thunder Clap power from your primary.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
If you're going to take it, make sure it doesn't miss.
Dreadful Wail
| Score | | ? of 5 | |
I never got high enough level to play with this Nova, but I bet it's awesome.
| Minimum Slotting | | | |
| Unslotted Strength | | Unknown… | |
In theory, Nova powers don't miss. If you find that it does, replace one of the recharges with accuracy.
Summary
For defender secondaries, Sonic is not bad. Having played a D3 Defender, I could keep the enemies from hitting me, but damaging them was much tougher. With powers that not only do a really good amount of damage, but also reduce their resistance to further damage as a secondary effect, I can actually dish it out pretty well for once.