The Defender - Subarchetypes
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The Defender, unlike many other archetypes, can be dramatically different depending on its Power Set, taking on very different roles. This "subarchetype" guide should help those who are looking to play a Defender, or even those who may be interested in a Defender, but may not realize it.
Force Field Defender: The Force Field Defender, unlike every other Defender type, is completely unable to heal himself or others. Instead, he performs another important support role, he provides defense shields to protect his allies. These shields can be very useful to a group, increasing the tanking ability of a Tanker or Scrapper, or even protecting a Blaster or another Defender from ranged attacks. At higher levels, the Disruption Bubble and Force Bubble can protect the whole party at once, keeping the villains away from the Blasters while the Tankers duck in and out of the bubble as needed. Force Field is not a very good solo choice, even though Force Bolt and Detention Shield are very good defensive powers. The Force Field Defender is unable to defend himself, as Personal Force Field, his only defense at low level, prevents him from attacking. However, the Force Bolt can be used very effectively to keep an opponent off his feet, and thus from firing as often. And Detention Shield literally removes an opponent from the combat, cutting a group of two or three down to one or two. These powers can hold the Force Fielder until he gets Dispersion Bubble, his first real personal defense. The lack of damage for Force Field can be a serious drawback, as well. This is one reason why I suggest Sonic Attack as well as Energy Blast above. While there may be other Secondaries that do more damage directly, Sonic Attack's built in Resistance debuffs cause the Defender to do more damage the more he attacks. For other Primaries like Radiation or Dark Miasma this may make them do WAY more damage than any other combination, but for Force Field it may be needed just to be able to solo, and should make him more valuable to a team as well. Ironically, Sonic Resonance may combine better with Energy Blast, as stated below.
Dark Defender: The Dark Defender is a fairly popular type of Defender that specializes in weakening its foes. The Dark Defender actually has fairly powerful healing abilities, but they can only be used in combat. The power of these abilities is directly proportionate to the amount of enemies that can be "drained" to power them, however. The Dark Defender's resurrect is probably one of the best in the game, simply because it doesn't give any penalty to the hero being raised. The Dark Defender also does a lot of damage, even without very strong offensive buffs. If he has a weakness, its that most Dark Powers use a lot of Endurance. This means the solo Defender can find himself out of Endurance, and helpless while surrounded by foes. The solo Dark Defender should watch his Endurance carefully, while making sure to use his debuff abilities to keep his foes weak, even in preference to attacking. The main capability of the Dark Defender is his ability to blind his foes, making it harder for them to hit his allies. In this way, he is similar to the Force Field Defender, in that his role to the team is more defensive than offensive. He also has a lot of Controller-like hold and fear powers, and is the only Defender that gets a "pet". He is very well rounded, able to heal and rez, as well as deal damage if needed.
Radiation Defender: The Radiation Defender, or as it is affectionately known, the "Rad" Defender, is a very popular type. The Radiation Blast Power Set has a number of interesting attacks, including the only eye beam blast in the game. In addition, while the Dark Defender's resurrect might be more useful technically, the Rad Defender's is just plain COOLER. The Defender turns his fallen foe into an unstoppable rampaging mutant monster that tears into his foes. :D Unfortunately, while the Radiation Defender's attacks may look cool, they don't do a lot of damage. The primary strength of the Rad Defender is in its Primary, which has a number of powers to weaken its foes, and make them deal less damage in attacks, and also take more damage when they are attacked. Thus, his buffs are a balance of offense and defense, making this a very powerful choice. It may actually be better to choose a Secondary other than Radiation Blast to combine with Radiation Emission, even though this "breaks theme".
Storm Summoner: The Storm Summoner is another of the Defender types that is unable to heal himself. While he can use O2 Boost to heal others, he has no power to heal himself. Fortunately, like the Force Field Defender, the Storm Summoner has a number of powerful abilities to knock enemies back, and debuff them within a large radius. The Storm Summoner is also one of the few Defenders that is able to do damage with its PRIMARY Powers. This makes the Storm Summoner very dangerous indeed. Solo, the Storm Summoner relies on Gale in much the same way the Force Field Defender uses Force Bolt. Gale is a cone effect, and this is both good and bad. It is good because the cone effects more targets, it is bad because it aggros more of them. Fortunately, the Storm Summoner also has a number of stealth abilities which can help it single out targets. Storm Summoning has one major drawback, however, and that's that knockback, while very useful solo, can make some teammates angry when in a group. Tankers often need meleers around them in order to maintain their defenses, and so a Storm Summoner, with his knockback and powers that cause foes to flee, can put them in danger. This makes Storm Summoners extremely unpopular in groups, making it hard to find a team. It is important if you wish to team to ensure that you have a group of people you can team with that understand your capabilities and can work with them.
Elemental Summoner: While most of these sub-archetypes have concentrated on a single Primary, the Elemental Summoner covers two Power Sets, Cold Domination and Thermal Radiation. Unfortunately, Cold Domination is the only one of the two available at this time, but as these two sets are similar, they can be grouped together. This category may even cover a future electrical-based buff set. Technically the concept should include Storm Summoning, but in practice Storm calls for a very different strategy, while Cold and Thermal are similar. What Cold and Thermal have in common is that like Force Field and Sonic, they have the capability to create shields around teammates. They differ from those sets, though, in that they offer some healing capability as well. Ice's healing is limited, but Frostwork does offer some. While there is no AoE defense bubble, Arctic Fog does offer some stealth, like Steamy Mist, and there are also several debuff powers, like Infrigidate and Heat Loss. Thus, Cold is a sort of combination of Force Field, Storm Summoning, and Dark Miasma. With no knockback like Force Field and Storm Summoning, it can be more welcome on a team, as well. It is not as good at buffing damage as Rad and Kinetics, however.
Kinetic Defender: The Kinetic Defender can get his powers from a number of sources. He could be a Hex Caster, like the Scarlet Witch, a telekinetic/telepath, or even an ordinary guy with some gizmos and a laser gun. Note that Power Blast could represent the knockback capability of telekinesis, or the hero could use Psychic Blast. Note the next combination, however. The Kinetic Defender is mainly built around speeding things up and slowing things down. He is a primarily buff/debuff based Defender, he doesn't have major healing capabilities, although he can heal. He does have a defensive capability, in that he can use Increase Density to increase damage resistance, as a Force Field defender is able to. And he is the only Defender type that can increase movement speed. Primarily, the Kinetic Defender is an offensive buffer. Rather than providing his allies with defense, he allows them to do more damage, and defeat their foes faster. While he does have some defensive buffs, he cannot use them on himself, and they are not as powerful as Radiation or Dark. It's also important to note that the Kinetic Defender's healing ability is only usable in melee, as it requires an enemy target, and only heals those allies in melee with the target. So the Kinetic is not particularly powerful at healing, either. It is the ability to boost damage and slow foes, to make them easier to hit, as well as powers to increase attack speed and provide endurance to allies, that makes the Kinetic Defender valuable.
Telekinetic Telepath: While Kinetics might be a literal interpretation of the term "telekinetics", the type of telekinesis we see in comic books (particularly the X-Men) more closely resembles Force Field. You can even see the "dome" of the shield in the cartoon. So while this is actually only a variation on the Force Field Defender, I am listing it separately. Sonic Resonance could also be a good match with this concept, and the lack of knockback and debuffs from the "sonic scream" may match Psychic Blast more closely, as well. The only difference between this hero and the Force Field Defender is that Energy Blast is more about knockdown, while Psychic Blast is more about stun. Psychic Blast is also useless against robots (although not Clockworks) and so this might prove to be a problem. The Telekinetic can rely on Force Bolt to knock back opponents, but it doesn't do enough damage to defeat an opponent on its own. Fortunately, there is also Telekinetic Blast in Psychic Blast, which also does physical damage as well as psychic.
Empathy Defender: The Empathy Defender is the closest the Defender archetype comes to a "healer". As such, the Empathy Defender is very popular, and popular with those who enjoy playing a support role. Thus, while an Empathy Defender could theoretically choose any Secondary set, or develop those powers to the point where it is able to solo well, I'm going to assume that this subarchetype has chosen to take the support role. It's important to note, however, that even an Empath is NOT JUST A HEALER. He has a number of other abilites to buff his teammates, to allow them to do more damage, to attack faster, and recover endurance faster. He also has one of the only defenses against psionic attack, filling in a hole in most Tankers' defenses. He just doesn't have the ability to debuff enemies, he concentrates on aiding allies instead, but the Empathy Defender still has both offensive and defensive benefits. Unfortunately, because Empathy has very few abilities that effect the Defender himself, it is probably the most difficult to solo. It is not impossible, and as stated above, an Empath could develop his Secondary attacks both for the benefit of himself and his team, it is still extremely hard. As with Force Field, the Empath would have to choose his powers based on which benefitted him, and not his team, and without any ability to knockback or even influence foes, he would have to rely on Radiant Aura, Recovery Aura and Regeneration Aura, and then only at very high levels. Getting to that level will be difficult.
Ranged Gadgeteer: The most common type of Ranged Gadgeteer is the traditional archer hero from comic books, like Green Arrow and Hawkeye. While an archer could be a Blaster, in fact this subarchetype uses his bow not to kill his foes, but to fire elaborate traps and devices, such as nets and gas grenades. He may be even be able to use the gadgets directly, which would make him Traps, instead of Trick Arrow. Both Sets are derived from Devices, and just as the Commando is the equivalent gadget using Blaster hero, the Gadgeteer is the natural choice for a Defender that isn't super powered, but just relies on skill and weaponry. Trick Arrow, Traps and Devices all share as two of their early weapons a net, and a dropped patch that slows any foes entering its area. This sets the tone for Trick Arrow as a very control-oriented set, with lots of debuffs, rather than buffs for the Defender's allies. Traps is similar, although it does provides a small amount of healing with Triage Beacon, while Trick Arrow has no heal. Traps is more about "laying out" devices which then attack to debuff the foes, or the Force Field Generator which protects allies. Both sets are very soloable, although they do tend to require a lot of active involvement to keep up the debuffs. Archery is a natural fit for Trick Arrow, as it does not require redraw of the bow between attacks, while Traps could be combined with either Assault Rifle or Dual Pistols. Dual Pistols might fit the Defender concept better, as a military commando would be more of a Blaster type. The Ranged Gadgeteer has much in common with the Corruptor Mercenary, though, and in fact the only real difference between the two (outside of one being a hero and the other a villain) is that I put the emphasis on Trick Arrow above, and Traps for the Mercenary. :D
Sonic Defender: The Sonic Defender is much the same as the Force Field Defender, only he reduces the damage taken by incoming attacks instead of reducing the chance that they will hit. Thus, he is almost identical in terms of strategy to the Force Field Defender. He cannot heal, and provides shields to his allies in the group to protect them from damage. The Sonic Defender has a couple of advantages the Force Field Defender doesn't. He has an enemy debuff that can boost his damage, and in fact the secondary effect of the Sonic Attack Power Set also reduces the enemy's defense against his attacks. He is thus able to do more damage than the Force Field Defender. He also provides better status protection, although Force Field gives additional protection against status just by making attacks miss. Force Field also protects against psionics, while the Sonic shields do not. Sonic is not quite as soloable as Force Field, however, as it provides no knockback powers like Force Bolt. Thus, most of the early levels of the Sonic Defender are spent without defenses. It is thus much like Empathy in that it is difficult to get to the higher levels by soloing. It may be helpful to combine it with Energy Blast instead of Sonic Assault, in order to get the knockback of that Secondary, instead of the additional damage of Sonic Assault's Resistance debuff.
Powered Armor: The Powered Armor Defender is similar to the High Tech Blaster, in that he is more an Origin than a Power Set. The character of Iron Man is difficult to implement in CoH, as he has both defense (Tanker) and range. (Blaster) Since one hero can't have both, some compromise is necessary. In this case, the hero uses powered armor as in the description of the High Tech Blaster, but reinforces his armor with a force field. It doesn't have to be an actual "bubble" shield, although the graphic will make it appear that way. The problem, of course, is that the Force Field Defender can't actually use his force field on himself, and so the Powered Armor hero will have to wait until he can get Tough or Disruption Field before his powered armor will be "complete". But at least he has the option to "extend" his shield to protect others.
Solo Defender: The Solo Defender is more of a strategy than a Power Set. This, he can have any Powers, although the ones mentioned are the most likely to be soloable. The main thing the solo Defender does is only take powers that directly aid himself, not others. The Force Field Defender will take Force Bolt and Detention Shield, not Insulation Shield, the Dark Defender will take Darkest Night and Midnight Grasp, not Howling Twilight, and so on. Note that the Solo Defender may take a power that effects himself AND allies, but not allies only. While some may say that this is contrary to the concept of the Defender, it is just a much a part of the archetype as the Empath, which goes to the other extreme. It is simply a matter of balance, of choosing which Powers to use and how to develop them. The Solo will obviously develop his attacks as much as possible, so he can do as much damage as possible, while still maintaining enough Enhancements in his Primary powers to defend himself. In theory, the Solo Defender should be able to solo just as well as any other archetype. The Pool Powers recommended will further strengthen his defenses, and increase his survival time. Even if he can't survive as long as a Tanker against the same foes, he should at least be able to level, even if slowly. The only problem I have found with this concept is that bosses are particularly hard for Defenders to solo, because of their low hit points. Even at range they die quickly, and don't have the damage to end the battle quickly. Believe it or not, a Solo Defender may even have a place in a group! Because of their high firepower, they are even better at filling in for a Blaster, although they could never take the place of one. More importantly, many of the powers they use to defend themselves, such as Force Bolt, can also be used effectively to defend others. One of the reasons Leadership was mentioned above is because a team leader may be drawn to this archetype, for it's ability to both deal damage and provide a support role that is of benefit to the whole team. |
