Defender

Overview

The Defender is a long-range support specialist. This archetype is effective with ranged attacks (though not quite on par with the Blaster), but the Defender's true worth shines in another area. Defenders are the premier helpers in the game—they are the best at strengthening their teammates' abilities (buffing) and weakening foes (debuffing). They aren't built for lengthy hand to hand combat, though they aren't fragile, either. The Defender needs to keep an eye both on his teammates and the enemy—in order to see which requires his powerful attention first!

The Defender's powersets are:

Primary: Buff
Secondary: Ranged

The Defender has low hit points and low damage.

Powersets

Primary Powersets

A Defender's primary powersets are designed specifically for buffing. They are:

• Dark Miasma
• Empathy
• Force Field
• Kinetics
• Radiation Emission
• Sonic Resonance
• Storm Summoning
• Trick Arrow

Secondary Powersets

A Defender's secondary powersets are designed for ranged attacks. They are:

• Archery
• Dark Blast
• Electrical Blast
• Energy Blast
• Psychic Blast
• Radiation Blast
• Sonic Attack

Ancillary Power Pools

• Dark Mastery
• Power Mastery
• Psychic Mastery
• Electricity Mastery

Inherent Power

Vigilance is a defender archetype feature that was introduced on 09/20/05. As a defender's teammates lose health, the defender gains an endurance discount. This power does not need to be activated: an icon for vigilance is automatically displayed under the hero's health and endurance bars. The percentage of this endurance discount is calculated by the number of teammates and the average percentage of the teammates' health points. To increase this endurance discount, the teammates will need to have a low health percentage average. The larger the team, the larger the endurance discount.

Any teammates who are too far away from the defender will not have any effect on the defender's vigilance status. Any teammates who are not on the map will not count towards this vigilance scale, as the range for vigilance is quite similar to the range one would use for sidekicks.

External Links

• Archetypes documentation on official City of Heroes site
• Official City of Heroes Manual as a zipped PDF file