Back to My First Love: Defenders

[Erratic1]

My first character, back in Beta was a Defender. With Live, because a friend was wanting to play a Defender and we were trying to cover all bases, my first was technically a Controller but I soon grew tired of him, put him aside, and made my beloved Rad/ Elec, who was the first character I took to 40 back when that was cap, then 50 when the cap was raised. Then came the next Defender, then the next, then the one after that. But somehow, since Homecoming has opened to the public, I have only (re)made one Defender, a Kin/Sonic, who languishes in his 40s. 

 

A few months back I decided I wanted to build a roster of characters which were so enjoyable to play they would each be, "The <Archetype>" for me--the character you are referring to when you say, "The Defender", or, "The Scrapper", or whatever archetype name even though you might have more than one of a given archetype. I already had The Brute and The Corruptor. I now have  The Tanker. The Scrapper and The Widow are in their 30s and 40s respectively.

 

This past Saturday I got the itch for a new Defender. 

 

My original Defender really was The Defender for me. I made others and enjoyed them but she was my go to girl for both soloing and team play. When I returned to CoH and until shutdown, Kin/Sonic filled that role. But for the new The Defender I wanted something new.

 

So giving Elec/Psy a whirl. Through her mid-20s she has been fun but I have gotten to 40 on characters before deciding they were not quite right. So here's hoping.

[MoonSheep]

good to hear your defender experiences - until recently i had only made 2 characters on homecoming since 2019, one of them being a kin/sonic defender which seems to tick everybox for the style of play i enjoy

 

like you i often get incredibly excited about a character then kill it off at a similar level

 

keep the style of play varied and level more slowly can make it more enjoyable is what i’ve found with my first alt in 18-20 months

[Without_Pause]

I played a ton of Defenders during live and kind of ODed on Kins. I avoided rolling Defenders at all on HC until more recently. The ones which have stuck out are:

 

Dark/dark. I got the Controller version to 50, and assumed that would scratch enough of the itch to call it good. Well, a funny thing happened. Steamrolling teams didn't feel like they needed that much control/mitigation so I felt like I would be better off with just blasting away and hence, I rolled the Defender version, and it stuck.

 

Poison/rad. I enjoy finding combos which work well together for whatever reason, and more so if they seem below people's radar. Not sure what all rankings for the blast sets would be, but to me /rad feels like an S tier set for Defender. I had never played or paid any real attention to Poison, but I knew it was debuff heavy. Poison also needs to hit. Add in /rad with -def and the ability to slot -res procs, and it feels like a huge debuff machine. Me being me, I still likely play it a bit too aggressively, but I have seen the combo work even on a low level, and just melt things. I felt like people talk about how ST the debuffs are, and in all honesty, I'm not seeing it. 

 

Kin + Rad. I rerolled my Kin/sonic and yet another attempt at Kin/rad, but neither stuck partly because I felt like I was done with playing a Kin. I did get a Elec/kin controller in the 40s before rerolling it, and that's honestly one of the best pairings across all ATs. I might reroll it again. The Poison/rad had me come to terms with X-Ray Beam, as in I skipped it. Fast forward to me rolling a Rad/kin Corr and it just feels right. While, not a Defender, there's almost no real reason why I would deem one better than the other. I think I went Corr since I have played so few of them.

 

In waiting, Time/*. For the life of me this hasn't clicked yet, but it should be really great. I'm just waiting for moment when it flips in my brain. /beam. This feels like one of the sets where a great idea is partially implemented. (Glares at Psionic Melee) When Beam clicks, it is amazing. When it doesn't, I feel like I should be playing something else even if things are fine. It ultimately requires setup and often times that's harder to pull off depending on the team. I have a Time/beam, but the Time/dp just feels better with both wanting to be in melee. While yes, Time/beam will murder AVs, I wonder if that alone will be enough.