Re-chiming in here...
Obviously Acyl is delusional and has no idea what he's talking about. Except he's mostly right. Sorta.
It all comes down to playstyle, really. See, I do have a Rad primary defender, and I took that experience into account when making my suggestions. Everything
Sweno said about the primary rad set still holds, I think, except that I still recommend you avoid Choking Cloud.
See, thing is, someone mentioned blastfenders... and, well, Gamma is -not- one. She's a hardcore tankfender all the way. This -- as Sweno demonstrates --
means you get in close and hide behind your enemies' spasmodically twitching bodies to avoid damage. If they can't hit you, they can't hurt you.
That's one playstyle.
The one I favor, OTOH, is the ranged method. Rhea stays out of melee range, mostly; I'll close to fire off her nuke, but other than that she stays on the
sidelines, bouncing and cheering and healing and zotting as opportunity presents itself. When soloing, she -still- stays at range, using Cosmic Burst (with a
good Recharge IO -- or set bonus -- this cycles reasonably fast) to keep enemies stunned and picking them apart. She can take on full groups, and while it
takes longer than it would a true blaster, she gets the job done.
But they are completely different playstyles, and the power choices/recommendations reflect that.
All that aside, Acyl makes a good point, but in my opinion, what he's recommending would be yet another permutation -- a blapfender, perhaps.
As for ancillary pools -- Power Mastery is the best choice, I think. Conserve Power is as awesome as Sweno makes it sound, Power Build Up is equally cool. I
chose Temp Invulnerability for Rhea -- which, by the by, allows her to take a boulder to the face from Terr remarkably well -- but that's a personal choice
and I'm not sure I recommend it unless you've got mad End-recovery skillz. It's a toggle, y'see. Total Focus would be better if you're
after the Active Defense philosophy (Kill them first and they can't kill you).
(PS: I feel that I should note that all the AoE attacks I recommend not bothering with all that much? Rhea -has- them, and uses them... but I've found
that they're less useful to -my- blastfender playstyle than the ones I do recommend slotting out.)
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Obviously Acyl is delusional and has no idea what he's talking about. Except he's mostly right. Sorta.
It all comes down to playstyle, really. See, I do have a Rad primary defender, and I took that experience into account when making my suggestions. Everything
Sweno said about the primary rad set still holds, I think, except that I still recommend you avoid Choking Cloud.
See, thing is, someone mentioned blastfenders... and, well, Gamma is -not- one. She's a hardcore tankfender all the way. This -- as Sweno demonstrates --
means you get in close and hide behind your enemies' spasmodically twitching bodies to avoid damage. If they can't hit you, they can't hurt you.
That's one playstyle.
The one I favor, OTOH, is the ranged method. Rhea stays out of melee range, mostly; I'll close to fire off her nuke, but other than that she stays on the
sidelines, bouncing and cheering and healing and zotting as opportunity presents itself. When soloing, she -still- stays at range, using Cosmic Burst (with a
good Recharge IO -- or set bonus -- this cycles reasonably fast) to keep enemies stunned and picking them apart. She can take on full groups, and while it
takes longer than it would a true blaster, she gets the job done.
But they are completely different playstyles, and the power choices/recommendations reflect that.
All that aside, Acyl makes a good point, but in my opinion, what he's recommending would be yet another permutation -- a blapfender, perhaps.
As for ancillary pools -- Power Mastery is the best choice, I think. Conserve Power is as awesome as Sweno makes it sound, Power Build Up is equally cool. I
chose Temp Invulnerability for Rhea -- which, by the by, allows her to take a boulder to the face from Terr remarkably well -- but that's a personal choice
and I'm not sure I recommend it unless you've got mad End-recovery skillz. It's a toggle, y'see. Total Focus would be better if you're
after the Active Defense philosophy (Kill them first and they can't kill you).
(PS: I feel that I should note that all the AoE attacks I recommend not bothering with all that much? Rhea -has- them, and uses them... but I've found
that they're less useful to -my- blastfender playstyle than the ones I do recommend slotting out.)
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs