About D3 Powers
All your secondary effects reduce target accuracy so every time you hit something, you make it harder for them to hit you. If that's not enough, you have a specific power that drastically reduces target's accuracy directly. For this reason, you can lock down enemies in a hurry an fight in relative safety.
The most important reason to choose a D3 though is because it is ONLY a D3 Defender who has access to the Dark Blast and Dark Maisma pools. Most Defender Primaries are shared with Controllers and most Defender Secondaries are shared with Blasters. Dark is entirely your own.
Power Pool Recommendations
Read my Power Pools Guide for general information on the pools, but the following are D3 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.
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Fighting
Waste of time for a D3. If you're desperate for the defensive bonuses later in this set (which you really don't need because you're destroying their accuracy), you'll have to take a worthless melee range power to do it.
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Concealment
Big waste of time. You already have Shadow Fall which is group stealth and can't be used with any other stealth power so what do you need this pool for?
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Presence
Even bigger waste of time: "Hey everyone! Come attack the Squishy little Defender!" sure… With enough effort, it's possible you could make this useful in your build, but you'd have to basically build your character around this concept to make it worth it.
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Medicine
Possibly useful. Each power warns that it can be interrupted, but in a large battle that's going right, you won't have anyone's attention anyway and should be able to use these fine. Use of this pool really comes down to how you want to play your character. I personally saw little point in using powers that I mostly already had in another form (and more powerful).
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Leadership
Though I never took a leadership power because I had too many other powers I wanted to take and I didn't want more drains on my endurance, D3's work well with leadership. This is because you have to stay close to your team members for heals anyway so you'll be in range for your leadership powers to help where another Defender build might operate more at range.
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Teleportation
For a D3, the teleport powers are generally pointless other than Recall Friend. This lets you pull slow teammates to the mission or zone entrances quickly. It also allows you to pull a team mate who's in trouble out of battle or pile dead bodies on top of each other for a killer full team resurrect with Howling Twilight. Lastly, you can sneak to the end of a mission (if you have Shadow Fall and Super Speed) and bring all your allies to you so you can finish "Kill Boss" missions quickly and easily.
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Fitness
You need this, take it. I recommend Swift, Health, and Stamina.
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Speed
D3's have powers that take a long time to recharge. Having Hasten and firing it off pretty much every time it comes up keeps your Howling Twilight and Tar Patch available at the start of most battles. It's also useful when you need to Recall Friend the whole team. I suppose it's not "necessary" but if you want Super Speed, you have to take Hasten or Flurry as a prerequisite and Flurry is pointless for a D3.
You want it to come up as much as possible. Because of the slow recharge of other powers, it's generally best to fire Hasten every time it comes up rather than wait till you're about to fight like some other ATs might.
As for Super Speed, with Shadow Fall, you have full invisibility which is described in my All About Being Sneaky guide in all its glory. All of my builds depend on this combo.
- 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 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.
Yes I realize that I already have a travel power with Super Speed, but I find that both are useful. Even at level 50 (fly gets faster as you go up in levels), Super Speed is still faster. I can run during the flat parts of the map and hit fly to get over or around objects. The most important thing here is that Fly gives me the ability to hunt for targets in a mission, take screenshots, run and battle more effectivly, and badge hunt much better than without it. Super Speed more than anything else gives me invisibility with Shadow fall AND fast travel. Both are useful.
Leaping
Fly
Inherent Powers
Note that in every build, this is my slotting for the three default powers. As a Defender, you won't be close enough to brawl except possible in some situations in the early levels. Either way don't bother with brawl. Sprint is an endurance drain and you don't need it since you have Super Speed (or fly… or both). You will use Rest less and less through the levels, so by the time you need to spend large amounts of money for SOs, don't waste your money on this one.
 | 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.