HalfFlat

I strongly agree. This distinction between team and self buffs has irritated me from the beginning: it makes little sense thematically, and exacerbates the differences in solo playability between archetypes. It appears to be a decision to support a standard MMORPG class trinity. Frustrated cries for something closer to parity were met with retorts from other parts of the player base along the lines of: no one would team if everyone could solo. Ignoring, of course, the fact that the majority of game content could be tackled solo, if you were playing one of a small number of ATs. But CoH in many other regards has not fully committed to this design choice, and is the stronger for it. A Controller is not a Healer; a Scrapper is not solely DPS. And the problems of a Tank/DPS/Healer design are well known (see e.g. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132607/rethinking_the_trinity_of_mmo_.php). The Defender AT is in better shape than it was initially: Vigilance helps to address the damage problem, and IO set bonuses can ameliorate some of the survivability issues. But the huge disparity in solo capability between ATs remains, and Defenders are certainly in the shallow end of the pool. From a playability point of view: Without a good reason not to support it, the full gamut of ATs and power sets should be able to be employed in creating and playing a particular character concept. One can't presume to always be able to play in a team, nor should players be forced to play in a team. On one hand, it's simply not always possible to find team members. On the other, one might not always want to play in a team. This decision should be independent of the AT one chooses to play. What may be an enjoyable romp through a mission at one speed, can be a dull chore when slowed down by a factor of three or more. Contrariwise, being able to trivially complete missions owing to a different AT choice is also undesirable. The notion of 'feeling heroic' is contentious, but for many players, myself included, if a battle with a single lieutenant of a great many in a mission is a struggle, it pegs the character's power at only one step above a random mook. It can be uninspiring. A character's effective strength against mission foes can in fact decrease with level, at least over part of their career. In the end game, when IO bonuses, epic pool and incarnate powers have bolstered Defender survivability and damage, one finds that the relative utility of the Defender on a team is diminished in end game content: the same advantages that have lifted the Defender up, have also, of course, helped other ATs, and outside special mission mechanics, the benefit of a Defender may simply be less than that brought by adding another damage-focused character. Removing self vs team bonuses can help redress some of this imbalance and promote AT diversity.

So I gave the kin/psy/flame build a try out on the test server, running the Mender Silos TF solo at +1x3. Key obvs: Being defeated is much less frustrating when you have a self-rez, even if you have to wait for it to recharge. I should have been running a self-rez back on live. Survivability is indeed better, though fighting Arachnos I did notice the difference without the psi resist offered by Mind Over Body. Couldn't defeat Lord Recluse (as an EB) without invoking the Lore Pets. Just couldn't do enough damage before his boss adds would become too many, and it was time for a nap. I don't know if +8 knockback protection would suffice, but at +4, there was quite a lot of being thrown about. I tried running Melee Core Embodiment in Hybrid: this also really helped, but again, because I simply can't do a lot of damage, the 2 minute timer will often expire when I'm still very much needing it. The build certainly does more damage on average: with the extra IO set bonus +damage, it takes much less Fulcrum Shift to hit the unfortunately rather underwhelming defender damage cap. Still, it's hard to see how the build could be improved given my goals and the Kin/Psy pairing. I think Kinetics just really wants a team, and if you can't bring your own with pets, it's never going to live up to its potential solo.

Very nice, Darkir, very nice! I'll definitely give this a go — I've been hung up on the Psy Epic, while Flame Mastery still offers a good single target hold and many other benefits besides (not to mention, it's amenable to a hand-wavy thematic justification too). Given the number of naps I have taken on missions, Rise of the Phoenix really should have been in my build since the 40s. I'll probably sub Inertial Reduction for Vengeance though, and eat the loss of the LotG -recharge, just for the convenience of a travel power. EDIT: Would the Sudden Acceleration KB->KD in Psionic Tornado have much of an effect, given PT's knock-up?

That's compelling! The added effect of Neurotoxic Breath aside, I suspect my own experience was tempered by my evident inability to use Psychic Scream effectively, and the resistance of hard, single targets (bosses and up) to -recharge.

I'm surprised to hear this! Only because it wasn't really my experience. Could you elaborate further?

Coming back to this, I'm hoping I might again ask for an eye over my build. I've been running around with Incarnate powers slotted for a while, and it's not so bad on the solo front: can finally run missions with bosses now, even at x2 or x3, with Clarion on. Still, not feeling especially robust, nor frankly that useful in teams in 50+ TFs and trials. Easily (effectively) one-shotted by many AVs and a couple of EBs (Mako was a nightmare); and while Kinetics' damage boost is always welcome, I'm really not convinced I am adding more damage than simply having a high-damage character take my place in end game content. -Recharge and -damage debuffs in this context provide negligible help, though the -regen from Transfusion might be significant. Running knockdown Repel though is amusing. And it also means I'm using Mass Hypnosis much less frequently, so there's an opportunity for rearranging powers some. Mental Blast really only gets in rotation when I'm exemplared down, or under a -recharge debuf, but of course can't get rid of it. Defense overall is much higher now, and S/L resists are significant, but I'd appreciate any further advice! (Note that the extra chance for smashing damage proc in Repel does sod all in practice — haven't gotten around to respeccing that slot into something more useful yet.)

My first (and for now at least, still main) character was/is a Kinetics/Psychic Blast defender, but I can't really recommend Psychic Blast. It is resisted surprisingly often, and when it is resisted, it's typically by a very large fraction, making whole classes of foes torturously slow to defeat. The -recharge debuff is essentially useless. While you might have more success with the cone of Psychic Scream than I do, the other non-nuke AoE, Psionic Tornado, is very slow to cast, doesn't do much damage, and then does that little damage over a very long time. The mitigation from knock-up is brief and patchy. Where it would have most effect — large groups falling under its generous radius — you're likely on a team which will quite happily wipe out any minions who might notice the damage well before they've taken more than a fraction of it. Scramble Thoughts is inferior in every regard to e.g. Dominate from the Psy epic. It's useful if you don't have any alternative though. The problems with resist and damage output won't be so bad with a Corruptor though of course, and you get to skip the lackluster Mental Blast power.

I have no advice, but I've just started a DM/Radiation brute, and I have to agree about the Radiation power effects: unappealing. It is probably too much to hope for new effects options, but you never know...

Repel with KB to KD is inspired: this had never occurred to me! I'd always eschewed it due to its lack of synergy with the rest of kinetics. And the Alpha Incarnate slot does patch the recharge hole, allowing much more slot freedom. It's not that hard to get, once on level 50, so I should definitely build with that in mind.

This is an excellent point: in the interim I've definitely given up on the Kick muling, not least because there are so many things vying for slots. I really would like to keep the psy epic, and not just for thematic reasons: after 30+ levels of abject squishiness, mass hypnosis followed by fulcrum shift is immensely satisfying. You'd think it would get old, but er, not yet. Historically, it has also often saved my bacon when things go pear-shaped, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor. The defense problem is the key: as you say, I'm going to be up and personal a significant amount of time. Especially because of Transfusion. I did have trouble finding sources of S/L defense that also had +recharge. Even then, 30% or so ranged defense was still very far from the cap. But broadly, you'd recommend S/L over everything else? I know I am making things much harder for myself without SS. [I think it's a shame Psychic Blast doesn't come with some psychic defense: given the number of very psionic resistant foes (including mez-resistant mezzers) one encounters after level 20, a bit of a break would have been both a nice gesture and thematically appropriate.] Also a good point. The bonus accuracy is really the only significant benefit, and it's not that much. Yes, indeed. I was over-compensating for lack of control, but Dominate is just a better power all round: faster cast, faster recharge, and consequently usefully stackable on bosses once recharge is good enough. Psy scream was always frustrating to use on the way up: with the standard group of three mobs, it's hard to position in combat efficiently, and even under the best of circumstances it requires running backwards back out of Transfusion range to fire it off, and then back in again, and then back out again, etc. This time around, I respec'ed it out. An AoE slow or immobilize would have been very handy. But it's not like Psionic Tornado is particularly good either: long cast time, anemic damage, and it doesn't seem to knock up very reliably at all. Certainly it's almost pointless solo, and on solid teams, most of the mobs who would even notice the damage are already defeated well before the DoT finishes. And of course, it has zero synergy with Mass Hypnosis. In short, I don't really know what to do about contributing AoE damage outside of Psychic Wail: all the options seem to be somewhat meh.

If it's any consolation, my defender experiences have all been that solo play is demoralizingly awful until maybe level 40. Kinetics included. For an archetype with 'defend' in the name, most of the power sets are terrible at defending their wielders. Kinetics though is great on teams, even with only Speed Boost and Transfusion. I literally had no idea such a thing existed! It would change everything, except of course its justifiably hefty influence cost precludes using it except for very special occasions.

Hello! I'm recreating my first ever hero, a Kinetics / Psychic Blast defender — from memory. And to be honest, I am sure there are opportunities now, with newer fancier IO sets and the like, to do a better job. So I'm hoping I might get some advice from you all on the proposed build below, which if not exactly the same as way back when, is fairly close in powers and themes. This is a character that I want to be able to solo with (hence the crowd control choices in Psychic Mastery) while still being valuable in teams and TFs. High recharge reduction is there both to cycle the limited mezzes for solo survivability, as well as for reducing the chance of being caught flat footed with Transfusion, Transference, or Fulcrum Shift. Historically, I didn't pay enough attention to Defense, which is one of the reasons why I acquired all the debt badges so quickly the first time around. Hopefully the choices of IO sets below addresses this sufficiently, but we're still far from any caps. While the build here is clearly a fully tricked out level 50 target, I don't think the slot levels are too crazy for it to be unusable for slotting as I level up.