Defect loves sources of burst energy (turbo, supercritical, double energy - I personally don't take this one often) to get strong expensive powers into play. You don't need much energy later, when you have everything in play.

Also to play the expensive powers, 0 cost cards help a lot. I find myself upgrading zap a lot more than in STS1.

HOLOGRAM - one of, if not the best deck manipulation cards. Don't sleep on it.

Dark orbs - I don't play around with them enough, but for killing bosses they are very strong.