I made a Empath/Energy offender a while back, just to see that I could solo effectively, and I did.
Any Defender can get a decent Def from the Fighting pool, Manouvers and Hover/CJ, and that plus the self heal and Regen Aura for tougher fights kept me alive easily. (And Energy's KB helped too)
Set Bonuses were focussed on recharge mainly, with a bit of Ranged def thrown in where I could. For other blast sets, swap powers out as appropriate, but the aim id to have a Tier 2/Tier3/Snipe attack chain with a couple of AoEs.
These days with the new power unlock levels and not needing to take the Tier 1 Blast, my build might look a bit like this:
1 Healing Aura (Prev Med * 6)
1 Power Bolt (Deci or Thunderstrike)
2 Heal Other (5 x Doctored Wounds)
4 E Torrent (Vig Assault x3 + 2 Dam/*)
6 Hover (LotG unique) +3 Def
8 Kick
10 Power Burst (Defender's Bastion)
12 Fortitude (LotG Unique + 5 x Red Fortune)
14 Tough (Steadfast & Glad Armor unique IOs) +6 Def
16 Sniper Blast (Manticore)
18 Recovery Aura (3 x Rech IO)
20 Weave (LotG) +8 Def
22 Regen Aura (3 * Rech I/O)
24 Hasten (2 * Rech I/O)
26 AB (2 * Rech I/O)
28 Explosive Blast (Vig Assault x3 + 2 Dam/*)
30 Nova (Obliteration)
32 Manouvers (LotG) +5.5 Def
35...
Def: 22.5% + 6-10% ranged
Rech: 66 - 72% ish
I still contributed to teams really well with Fortitude and AB having good recharges, and the auras uptimes being around 2/3 of the time.