A Man In Black

Hasten is essential. Leadership offers a LOTG mule (Maneuvers) and a fantastic tool for those who powerlevel alts/buyers while farming (Vengeance). For fire ambush farming (currently the most efficient AE farm), all other power pools (Fighting, Leaping, Stealth) are only useful as LOTG mules; any defense they offer is useful but incidental.

Why stop at 32.5% defense? Try this on for size. It's softcapped to SL and ENE against everything in RTTC range unless it's an AV. If it's an AV, hitting it with Gloom softcaps you to SL and ENE. Against a cluster of enemies outside of RTTC, hitting them with Dark Obliteration softcaps you to SL and ENE.

You've got enough +recharge to run Gloom > Haymaker > KO Blow > Gloom > Punch > Haymaker > Punch while Hasten is up. You've got a Widow pet with decent uptime, for more single-target damage. For AOE, you've got Foot Stomp (with the Force Feedback proc) and Dark Obliteration. Rage is perma with reasonable overlap; Hasten has 25 seconds of downtime.

Totals: (before incarnate abilities and accolades)
Recharge (before Hasten): 57.5%
Max HP: 2087
Regen (with one enemy in range of RTTC): 51.7 HP/s
Endurance: 3.47/s recovery, 1.62/s for toggles
Attack chain: Gloom > Haymaker > KO Blow > Gloom > Punch > Haymaker > Punch

And all of this is before incarnate abilities. With T3 or T4 Spiritual, you can run G>HM>KO>G>HM>P as your attack chain. (It's .1 second from gapless with T2 Spiritual.) T4 Barrier softcaps you against everything all the time, and lets you push the incarnate trial softcap when your -to-hit debuffs are applied.

As for money, the big-ticket items are the Eradication pieces, the Kinetic Combat sets, the Numina's pieces, the Basilisk's Gaze pieces, and the various procs. You could try a mix of Sweeping Blow and Multi-Strike to cut corners on Foot Stomp's slotting, and lose some ENE def while breaking even on FS's enhancement value. Two of the KC sets don't need the bankbreaking D/E/R Kinetic Combat piece; you can cut costs further by using Smashing Haymaker as an interim set instead. Numina's is only offering you a tiny bit of performance over Miracle or Doctored Wounds in HPT and RTTC; this is probably the easiest place to cut costs. Finally, all of the Performance Shifter pieces could be replaced with common endmod IOs with only a tiny loss of performance.

How could this be improved? I'd like to get an extra slot in Haymaker (a Crushing Impact A/D/E) and Punch (a Perfect Zinger or Hecatomb damage proc). I'd like two more slots in RTTC (probably switching it over to Doctored Wounds 5pc). Manuevers is underslotted. I'd always like to fit in more HP, regen, and endurance. Other than Dark Obliteration, I have no idea where I'd fit purple sets in this build; every other attack is slotted for defense.

One radical revamp I've fiddled with and not yet managed to make work: If you somehow found a way to softcap both SL and ENE without Soul and found a ton of extra endurance somewhere, you could switch to Pyre, slot Ring of Fire for damage, and run a KO>HM>FB>Ring of Fire>HM>FB attack chain, which would cut down on your recharge needs and let you solo AVs/Heroes that like to wander, like Captain Dietrich.

In any event, I hope it suits your needs.

Post a data block and use the short export.

This has kind of random slotting; I'm not sure what your goals are. Are you going for softcapped defenses? High recharge? You don't have softcapped SL, nor do you have the proper attacks for a high-end attack chain, so I don't know what you were going for.

Don't neglect enhancement values when you're going for set bonuses. Smite isn't slotted for damage and Siphon Life isn't slotted for healing (or much accuracy); while Mocking Beratement and Kinetic Combat have nice set bonuses, set bonuses won't make up for poorly slotted attacks.

Are you married to Pyre Mastery? Mu or Soul Mastery would give you a good ranged attack and a good AOE for only two power picks.

Here's a start on something a bit more practical. Softcapped S/L defense, properly slotted attacks, and (I believe) enough recharge to run MG > Smite > Gloom > SL > Smite as an attack chain while Hasten's up. It's a bit pricier, since it uses five Kinetic Combat sets, but I removed an Oblit and a Basilisk's set, so that should help somewhat. Dark Consumption could be replaced with Taunt if you wanted, too.

BA and EA are both rated rather poorly because they're pretty badly outclassed by similar sets. Battle Axe is in an uncomfortable place where it has all the disadvantages of both Super Strength and War Mace without the advantages of either, and Energy Aura is outclassed by Super Reflexes and Shield Defense, which offer better defense numbers and better side perks.

Advice-wise, build for heavy typed defense. BA/EA doesn't have a lot of call for recharge, so you can definitely softcap and make progress towards the incarnate trial softcap.

Neogumbercules's level 3 Claws/Fire farm map got me thinking. Brutes don't get a whole lot out of Blinding Feint or Follow Up on farm maps, and the damage scaling only gets more unbalanced at level 1, where unenhanced Brute Spin does 17.96 damage before Fury and minions have 20 HP. Plus, unlike other ATs, brutes have their full 775% damage cap at level 1.

So I made arc #504371, Level 1 Claws/DB frontload farm. It's is a straightforward frontloaded farm, based on @Fuzzy Kittens' FRONTLOAD!, filled with S/L mobs and locked at level 1. (The map is the same map as FRONTLOAD!, Large - Warehouse Abandoned - City of Villains set - 2, and the mobs are using Dual Blades; I'm open to ideas on improving either.)

I originally designed this with the expectation that you'd need Claws (for Spin) or Dual Blades (for Typhoon's Edge), but it turns out that damage auras do most of the work. Any brute with a damage aura taken before level 6 can farm this effectively; Fury-enhanced damage auras will do the job even without any enhancements. I've tested it with Claws/ElA and DB/ElA brutes, both of which I rolled up just to test it. Both can perform at 0/x8 before enhancing attacks at all; I even had success with the DB/ElA brute before getting Typhoon's Edge, although it was tight in the space between the first wave of ambushes hitting and the minions dying to Lightning Field.

I've also tested it with a DB/ElA scrapper pre-enhancements, and it wasn't self-sustaining, because runners sapped the inspiration drop rate. I'm confident that proper enhancements will likely make it work, by allowing Typhoon's Edge to kill lieutenants without heavily stacked reds. Edit: This is incorrect; enhancements scale down with level, so they don't make any difference. Similarly, an unenhanced SD/FM tanker couldn't kill fast enough to get a decent inspiration drop rate killing with Combustion alone. (I also tested a Fire/Dark Corr; it was a fun challenge, but not terribly efficient.) Other ATs are also hampered by a lower damage cap before level 2, but these two weren't able to sustain themselves on inspiration drops even on an (unpublished) level 3 version of the farm.

I'd still like to test a Claws or DB brute with no damage aura and a tanker with a damage aura; I have a Claws/Inv and a ElA/SS, I just need to respec one of their builds to test it. I'm confident the DB/ElA scrapper could do the job with proper enhancement for damage and recharge, and intend to test it once I've leveled it up properly. Edit: The claws/inv brute faceplanted like crazy. Spin alone couldn't keep up. The tanker couldn't kill fast enough to sustain itself, even when I made an ElA/FM tanker.

This map isn't going to outperform farming on a real SS/Fire farmer with Foot Stomp and PPP AOE attacks, but it's an effective farm that any brute with a damage aura, of any level and any enhancement investment, can do. Between the low-level accuracy bonus and Fury, you can farm tickets or powerlevel your own character any time after level 4.

In addition, I think this is an effective proof-of-concept for lowbie farming. I don't have a purpled out Claws or DB brute to test how it would perform at level 1, let alone a purpled out SS/Fire brute to compare it to. It would be interesting to see how they compare, though.

Yes. Scroll down to Dual Blades.

FA has less resist to smashing, lethal, energy, and psi, the four most common damage types. Even if HF recharges more quickly (while healing for less), you're looking at getting overwhelmed much more easily.

/ElA goes great with Claws, and it's great on brutes. I recommend it, although I can't really figure out how you'd get a ninja out of that. Brutes have issues with stealth effects, because Fury will periodically aggro any nearby enemies if you linger near a spawn.

I don't really know stalkers, though.

Ice Melee

Tanker: Frozen Fists > Freezing Touch > Ice Sword (> Gloom) > (Greater Ice Sword or Frost)

Ice Melee is an ice damage set, with low single-target DPS and middling-high AOE DPS. It also comes with a variety of control effects, but has rather high endurance costs. It has a fairly nasty reputation for low damage, which isn't entirely deserved; Freezing Touch and Frozen Aura now do respectable damage, and Frozen Fists benefited from the addition of Bruising to tankers.

Ice Melee is painful at low levels, with low damage per attack, low damage overall, and fast-recharging attacks. All of these combine to make endurance a serious problem if you don't slot heavily for endurance reduction. The one high point is Frost's exceptional performance, with its large, long cone AOE and decent (albeit DOT) damage. Luckily, this smoothes out around SO levels, as Energize starts to get decent uptime and Power Sink becomes available. The patience to get to this point is well-rewarded, as Ice Patch, Freezing Touch, and (later) Frozen Aura become available. Freezing Touch does respectable damage and can easily stack holds on bosses, and Frozen Aura is comparable to Foot Stomp. The one high-level bummer is Greater Ice Sword, which does mediocre damage for its endurance cost and activation time.

Ice Melee has one high-performance single-target attack, Freezing Touch. Any attack chain will boil down to Frozen Fists for bruising, followed by Freezing Touch, then filler until FT is about to come up again. Ice Sword has decent DPA, but Greater Ice Sword is an end-sucking underperformer. If you're optimizing single-target DPS, you might as well use Greater Ice Sword, but any time you can hit two or more targets with Frost, Frost is better than GIS. If single-target DPS is at all important to you (and it may not be), make sure to pick up a single-target attack like Gloom or Fire Blast from a power pool. Even Ring of Fire (from Pyre Mastery) outperforms everything but Freezing Touch.

Katana

Scrapper: Golden Dragonfly > Gambler's Cut > Soaring Dragon > Gambler's Cut

Broad Sword is a middling-high DPS lethal damage set with weapon redraw, much like Broad Sword. Many attacks inflict a -defense debuff, and like most weapon sets, it has an inherent accuracy bonus. Flashing Steel and The Lotus Drops give it passable AOE ability, and Divine Avalanche gives the user a defense buff against Lethal and Melee damage. The main difference between Katana and Broad Sword is Katana's faster activation and recharge times, making it easier to form seamless Katana attack chains.

Katana is a quick starter. Gambler's Cut is a great attack, Divine Avalanche is helping your survivability, and the accuracy boost and defense debuffs make accuracy a non-issue. Multiple fast-recharging attacks mean that endurance will be an issue before Energize, however; make sure to slot for endurance reduction in your attacks. You'll be able to form great attack chains with double-stacked Divine Avalanche in the mid-30s with nothing more than SOs: DA -> GC -> GD -> GC -> DA -> GC -> SD -> GC is seamless with two recharge SOs in Soaring Dragon and one in Golden Dragon.

While Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly are the top performers, Gambler's Cut is also a great attack, so it's relatively easy to form an effective and seamless attack chain. GD>GC>SD>GC is the top performer, but tacking on >SOTW>GC to the end of that is only a ~5% DPS loss and reduces the recharge requirements from 250% to 128% (or barely more than what you get from recharge SOs and Lightning Reflexes). You can also run the double-Divine Avalanche attack chain with nothing more than SOs, if you need the melee defense. This gives you the ability to build for defenses from IOs, build for top-end DPS performance, or anywhere in between.

Further reading: Werner's posts in Katana Attack Chains?

Pyre Mastery
Pyre Mastery exists to patch up your attack chain, either single-target or AOE. Fire Ball is the best AOE from any epic power pool, although it does require three power choices (compared to Mu's or Soul's two). As for single-target attacks, while Mu Lightning (from Mu Mastery) and Gloom (from Soul Mastery) both outperform Fire Blast, Pyre also has Ring of Fire, which gives respectable performance when slotted for damage. Char is a fairly nondescript single-target hold; I've never found them to be terribly useful. Melt Armor is a loser, though, as it has low debuff values (much lower than for masterminds/controllers/corruptors) and a painfully long recharge.

Lessee. Molten glass would work, especially since /FA has a glass jaw. You can also do things with molten metal: gold, lead, etc. Keeping with the metal/fire idea, steam power also goes with it. Nemesis, locomotives, or any steampunk concept you want to work with.

Lava is an obvious direction to go: volcanoes, demons, earth/fire elementals.

/FA lends itself to being recolored as smoke or fumes; there's potential for a poisonous concept here. Sulfur, uranium, arsenic, mercury, etc.

Hopefully that gets something started for you.

Try this thread.

This will probably need to be rewritten; it's mostly my rambling thoughts on several epic PPs. I haven't even covered scrapper epic PPs yet. I might reformat it to an overview and a power-by-power breakdown, haven't decided yet.

-edit- I rewrote Arctic Mastery and added all of the scrapper pools.

Brute and tanker epic/patrol power pools:

Arctic Mastery
Arctic Mastery for brutes and tankers at RedTomax
Arctic Mastery is all about Ice Storm. Unfortunately, Ice Storm is not Freezing Rain or Sleet; it's closer to Caltrops. Like Caltrops, it causes weaker enemies to attempt to flee the area of effect instead of attacking, and does outstanding damage to anything that can't or won't escape the area. Unlike Caltrops, its large AOE will keep fleeing enemies in the area longer, but its long recharge makes it impossible to stack. The scatter effect is useful for reducing incoming damage, but it also makes it harder to efficiently use AOE attacks.

If you do want Ice Storm, though, you'll have to take two of the losers from the rest of the pool. Chillblains is a single-target immob with -fly and Block of Ice is a single-target hold, but both have such low damage that they're not not attack chain material. Ice Blast is barely better than Chillblains for damage, and Shiver has a surprisingly wide arc but does nothing of value. None of them are much useful as anything but IO set mules.

Earth Mastery
Earth Mastery is the interesting control set that Arctic is not. Unfortunately, you'll need to take Stone Prison or Salt Crystals first, and neither is useful for much more than an IO mule). Quicksand is a (surprisingly fast-recharging) patch of -def and reduced movement speed, and Stalagmites is a PBAOE stun(!). Earth Mastery also allows for some cheap purple shenanigans for stacking +rech, as Salt Crystals, Stone Prison, and Stalagmites all take relatively cheap purple sets.

Leviathan Mastery
Leviathan just isn't very good, unless you have a burning desire to launch sharks at your enemies. All of the attacks have super slow animations and don't do very impressive damage. There aren't even any stupid slotting tricks you can do with Leviathan that you can't do with other PPPs. I guess if narrow cone attacks or flinging sharks makes you happy, go for it.

Mace Mastery
Web Envelope is kind of cool. The rest of the attacks (even the pet!) come with both redraw and knockback, and Focused Accuracy is self-only Tactics with double the endurance cost. If you want Web Envelope, take that, but the rest of this is useful only as IO set mules.

Mu Mastery
Mu goes with anything, especially if you want an AOE attack chain. Mu Lightning slips into attack chains nicely, and Ball Lightning does great damage. Builds with a strong focus on AOE damage (including most AE farming builds) can also take Electrifying Fences and slot that for damage. Alternately, you can sacrifice Fences' damage to use it as a mule to hold Enfeebled Operation (more than 4% each of S/L/melee def and a bit of recharge) or Gravitational Anchor (one of the cheaper purple sets, with a ton of +rech, +acc, and +recovery).

Pyre Mastery
Pyre Mastery exists to patch up your attack chain, either single-target or AOE. Fire Ball is the best AOE from any epic power pool, although it does require three power choices (compared to Mu's or Soul's two). As for single-target attacks, while Mu Lightning (from Mu Mastery) and Gloom (from Soul Mastery) both outperform Fire Blast, Pyre also has Ring of Fire, which gives respectable performance when slotted for damage. Char is a fairly nondescript single-target hold; I've never found them to be terribly useful. Melt Armor is a loser, though, as it has low debuff values (much lower than for masterminds/controllers/corruptors) and a painfully long recharge.

Soul Mastery
Soul Mastery will give you amazing results if you can feed its need for recharge. Gloom has a fast animation and hits like a train with a skull on its front and Summon Widow gives you the only worthwhile pet from a PPP. To get full benefits of these, you'll want a ton of +rech to fit Gloom into an attack chain and to keep the Widow out all the time. You also get Dark Obliteration, a respectable AOE attack which also takes a little of the sting out of alpha strikes, and Darkest Night, a handy tool for keeping big horrible nasties aggroed on you and relatively harmless. Soul Tentacles is junk, but it's not like you were taking all five powers anyway.

Scrapper epic/patron power pools:

Blaze Mastery
Blaze Mastery for scrappers at RedTomax
Blaze Mastery fills in holes in your attack chain. Fire Blast and Fire Ball are the highest-damage and highest-DPA single-target and AOE attacks of any epic power pool, and even compare favorably to attacks from the primary attack sets. They're both great performers for any non-weapon set.

Their only disadvantage is that you'll need to take Ring of Fire or Char first to get them. Ring of Fire has passable DPA and manageable recharge time, so if you can swing its high endurance cost, you can possibly use it in your attack chain as well. Char is a single-target hold with an unusually short activation time, and if you have the slots it can mule four pieces of Basilisk's Gaze, with its non-standard +7.5% recharge bonus.

Just skip Melt Armor. Its recharge is long, its AOE is small, and its duration isn't great.

Body Mastery
Body Mastery for scrappers at RedTomax
Body Mastery is chiefly for improving your endurance management. Conserve Power gives a large endurance cost reduction with poor uptime, and Physical Perfection gives a decent passive recovery buff. (It also has a weak regeneration buff, useful chiefly because it lets you mule Miracle/Numina's recovery procs in the power.) Power Sink and Energize should cover your endurance needs in most cases, but Body Mastery doesn't involve much redraw and works just fine with limited slotting.

The rest of the pool is mostly junk. Focused Accuracy requires an outrageous amount of endurance for a mediocre to-hit buff and what will usually be an overkill amount of increased accuracy. Laser Beam Eyes has far too long an activation time for its poor damage, and Energy Torrent is a narrow cone AOE knockdown attack.

Darkness Mastery
Darkness Mastery for scrappers at RedTomax
Darkness Mastery isn't very useful for anything. It has some bad cone attacks and a pair of passable single-target attacks that are mostly outclassed by Blaze Mastery's. Petrifying Gaze is a single-target hold, notable for its lack of damage and middling duration, and Dark Blast is a single-target blast with passable DPA. (If you just want Dark Blast, though, it's available without prerequisites in Soul Mastery.) The rest of the set is narrow cone AOE attacks with bad damage, to-hit debuffs, and some weak control effects.

Leviathan Mastery
Leviathan Mastery for scrappers/stalkers at RedTomax
Leviathan Mastery gives you a pair of tools to deal with emergency situations. Water Spout is similar to Storm Summoning's Tornado: when you summon it into a pack of enemies, it scatters them and sends them running, stunning any minions. Against target that isn't thrown around, it does quite impressive damage. Hibernate is a defensive emergency option: it freezes you in a block of ice, immune to harm, and refills your health and endurance.

The rest of the set isn't anything special. Spirit Shark is a single-target ranged blast with abysmal DPA (and that damage is over time, instead of all at once) and a large knockback, Spirit Shark Jaws is a mediocre single-target hold, and the Summon Guardian's pet trades damage for low-mag stuns and holds. None of them are necessary to take Water Spout or Hibernate, so there's little reason to take them ever except as set mules.

Mace Mastery
Mace Mastery for scrappers/stalkers at RedTomax
Mace Mastery not very useful, as it's full of blasts with both redraw and knockback. All of the powers have unusually long activation times, making them strictly inferior to any similar attacks, and Mace Beam and Disruptor Blast have significant knockback to boot. The Summon Spiderling pets do decent damage and nothing else, but they don't even do as much damage as Soul Mastery's pet.

Mu Mastery
Mu Mastery for scrappers/stalkers at RedTomax
Mu Mastery is another attack chain filler pool. Mu Bolts and Ball Lightning can fill in a single-target or AOE attack chain. They do less damage than the equivalent attacks in Blaze Mastery, but they contribute to Electric Armor's endurance drain and they don't require a prerequisite filler power before taking them.

The rest of the set is forgettable. Zapp is only useful for pulling, Electric Shackles is only notable for having the longest activation time and shortest duration of any epic pool's single-target hold, and the Summon Adept pet does poor damage and generally won't focus fire long enough to make its endurance drain count.

Soul Mastery
Soul Mastery for scrappers/stalkers at RedTomax
Soul Mastery has the highest-damage patron pool pet, an interesting defense buff power, and a single-target attack chain filler. Dark Blast is a passable single-target blast, with better DPA than Mu Bolts but worse than Fire Blast. Shadow Meld is an interesting defensive power: it's a large defense buff with a decent duration, but its recharge is impossible to perma and its long activation means that it needs to be used before things get bad. It's great for supplementing the survivability of a high-recharge build. Summon Widow is a significant amount of extra single-target damage in high-recharge builds, but only against targets that don't use AOE attacks.

The rest of the set doesn't merit much consideration, since neither power is remarkable or needed as a prerequisite. Moonbeam is a sniper attack, not useful for much other than pulling, and Soul Storm is a single-target hold remarkable more for its animation than its statistics.

Weapon Mastery
Weapon Mastery for scrappers at RedTomax
Weapon Mastery is Caltrops. Caltrops isn't quite as useful for scrappers as it is for ranged archetypes, but it's useful for control against weaker enemies and damage against hard targets. Enemies will (slowly) attempt to run out of the Caltrops instead of attacking, and targets that can't or won't flee the area will take impressive damage over time. If you're willing to put up with how it scatters enemies, it's a great mix of damage and soft control.

The rest of the set is completely skippable. The single-target, zero-damage immobilize of Web Grenade isn't very useful, Shuriken and Exploding Shuriken have poor damage in a highly-resisted damage type, and Targeting Drone costs far too much endurance for a smallish to-hit buff and an overkill amount of accuracy.

On recharge and attack chains:

While the process of creating attack chains and identifying the best attack chains is beyond the scope of this guide, it's important to understand how to figure out how much recharge you'll need to sustain an attack chain. That's easy. I'll use Battle Axe's attack chain (Chop > Gash > Swoop > Cleave) to demonstrate.

First, we figure out which power is going to need the most recharge. If every power is only used once per attack cycle, then that's just the power with the longest recharge. (If an attack is used more than once per cycle, we look at the attack with the largest [base recharge]:[gap between uses] ratio, but that's still going to usually be the power with the longest base recharge time anyway.) This attack is the constraining power: if we can't get its recharge down low enough, we'll be left standing around waiting for it to recharge to continue with the chain. In the case of Battle Axe's attack chain, that's Cleave.

We'll also need to what the recharge goal is. To do so, we add up the activation times of all of the intervening attacks. (If an attack is used more than once per cycle, we use the total activation time of the other attacks used in the shortest gap between uses of the attack we're measuring.) In the case of Battle Axe, we'll add up the activation time of Chop (1.584s), Gash (1.716s), and Swoop (1.98s) to get a total of 5.28s. So we need to get Cleave's recharge time down to 5.28s to keep from having to wait for it to recharge after we've used Chop, Gash, and Swoop. (These numbers are using Arcanatime, a measurement of the actual activation time of powers, not the in-game measurement of the animation time. Mids can be set up to use Arcanatime instead of in-game activation times at Options > Effects & Maths > Use ArcanaTime for Animation Times.)

The formula for required total recharge is:
((base recharge time)/(required recharge time)) - 1 = total recharge required

So, to run this attack chain, we'll need 127% total recharge in Cleave. Total recharge isn't obvious in Mids, but it's easy to figure out. Simply add the amount of recharge enhancement you have in the power (visible in the in-game enhancement screen or Mids by mousing over the power) and your total global recharge.

Two level 50 common recharge reduction IOs gives 83% recharge; three of them gives 99% recharge. The effect of the Spiritual Alpha abilities is a bit harder to calculate; as a rule of thumb the tier 4 Spiritual Alpha (Spiritual Core Paragon), they give +45% recharge enhancement to each power or about 130% recharge enhancement total, whichever is lower. Mids will do this math for you automatically if you prefer.

Global recharge mostly comes from IO sets, but there are two major ways to get it from powers. Lightning Reflexes gives +20% global recharge, and Hasten gives +70% global recharge while it's active.

Going back to our example Battle Axe character, we have 20% recharge from Lightning Reflexes all the time, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% recharge on Cleave from enhancements with proper slotting. This means we only need about 17% recharge from elsewhere. A few IO sets, Hasten, or even the T2 Spiritual Alpha is enough to put us over the top. It turns out Battle Axe doesn't need much recharge at all for its attack chain!


Battle Axe

Brute: Chop > Cleave > Swoop > Gash
Tanker: Beheader > Cleave > Swoop > Gash

Battle Axe is a middling-DPS lethal damage set with weapon redraw. Nearly every attack has a chance to knock down, and it comes with the accuracy bonus typical to weapon sets. The combination of Whirling Axe, Pendulum, and Cleave gives it reasonable potential in AOE situations. The set as a whole is largely overshadowed by War Mace, and adding Electric Armor doesn't do much to change that.

Battle Axe is terribly end-hungry, which will make low levels tough going, but once Energize and Power Sink come into play, that problem tapers off somewhat. Where Battle Axe shines is with SOs (or cheap IOs). Lightning Reflexes and Hasten are just about enough recharge to run a nice single-target attack chain, and Energize and Power Sink help pay for BA's endurance costs.

When building with IOs, Battle Axe doesn't offer much synergy: BA doesn't need much recharge to run the top DPS attack chain, while ElA thrives on recharge. Personally, I would not worry much about recharge at all and focus on reaching softcapped S/L defense and see if I couldn't pick up some E/NE defense at the same time. More recharge than what is needed to run the attack chain will only contribute better Energize uptime, and defense will contribute more to survivability.

Broad Sword

Scrapper: Head Splitter > Hack > Disembowel > Hack (but see below)

Broad Sword is a middling-DPS lethal damage set with weapon redraw, and is very similar to its cousin, Katana. The two sets are essentially the same, save for Broad Sword's longer recharge and activation times. Every attack has the accuracy bonus common to weapon sets, and almost every attack inflicts a -defense debuff. Slice and Whirling Sword give it passable AOE potential. What sets BS apart is Parry, a relatively weak but fast-recharging attack which grants a sizeable defense buff against melee and lethal attacks.

Broadsword starts being great pretty quickly. Hack is a great attack, Parry increases your survivability early on, and Broad Sword's inherent accuracy and copious defense debuffs mean you won't be missing much. The main obstacle will be endurance, as BS attacks can be rough on the blue bar while you're still mostly using fast-recharging powers and before you get Energize and Power Sink. BS/Elec really comes together in the mid-30s, where you only Lightning Reflexes and a couple recharge SOs in Hack to run a nicely saturated attack chain of HS>Hack>Parry>Slash>Dis>Hack>Parry>Slash.

Unlike Katana, Broadsword is very recharge hungry. It's one of several sets with a high-DPS attack chain at the outer edge of what's achievable, as a gapless version of the HS>Hack>Dis>Hack chain needs 304% total recharge for Hack, but even with gaps this chain is still the best option at high levels of recharge that don't quite reach that 304%. Replacing the second Hack with Parry brings the recharge needed down to 272% (and changes the constraining power to Head Splitter). Adding a Parry in with the second Hack reduces the recharge needed to 219%, a much more attainable number. While Slash can be used instead of Parry for a moderate damage increase, Parry's defense buff will likely be a larger contributor to overall effectiveness. Perversely, having Parry available turns recharge into even more of a defensive stat for Electric Armor, as it now contributes to both regeneration and melee defense, until you reach high enough recharge that you can afford to stop using Parry!

Claws

Brute and Scrapper: Follow Up > Focus > Slash (> Strike, see below)

Claws is a high-DPS lethal damage set with weapon redraw. Claws has high DPA overall, an excellent ranged attack, defense debuffs, and a high-quality non-standard Build Up replacement. Spin and Eviscerate are better-than-standard performers, so if you don't mind their smaller AOEs, you can put out near-best-in-class AOE damage. As an insanely recharge-hungry attack set, it benefits from both Lightning Reflexes and Electric Armor's general need for +recharge.

Claws is full of fast-animating, fast-recharging, low-endurance attacks. This makes the low levels before Energize much more bearable. In the case of brutes, it also makes building up Fury a breeze. Follow Up's accuracy buff and Slash's defense debuff also help with accuracy issues early on. The set's chief drawback is the lack of soft control or other defensive secondary effects in the bulk of its attacks. The set is all lethal damage, which can also be frustrating when that damage type is resisted.

In part because you can stack the Follow Up buff, Claws can give you insane performance if you can afford to build for enough recharge, and Electric Armor is one of only two available sets with a +recharge passive. The Strike-less attack chain is attainable, if just barely; even with Hasten and T4 Spiritual Alpha, it takes approximately 95% global recharge from IOs to perform that attack chain without gaps. (You'll need +284% total recharge on Follow Up to make that attack chain work; +314% total recharge makes the attack chain gapless.) With less recharge, you can't stack Follow Up as effectively, and you'll have to use Strike as filler to cover gaps. (The subject of Claws attack chains goes a bit beyond the scope of this guide; FU > Eviscerate > Focus is very close to the Strike-less chain in both DPS and recharge requirements, and a number of other chains are possible at very high but-not-quite-as-insane levels of recharge.) On the other hand, Claws does nearly nothing to protect you from enemies, so defense remains as important as ever. It's possible to build a Claws/ElA character that does nothing but buzzsaw through tanked/heavily debuffed targets, but most players will find something with a bit more defense is more useful for soloing or most groups.

Dark Melee

Brute: Midnight Grasp > Smite (> Gloom) > Siphon Life > Smite
Scrapper: Midnight Grasp > Smite > Siphon Life > Smite
Tanker: Shadow Punch > Midnight Grasp > Smite > Siphon Life > Smite > Midnight Grasp > Smite > Siphon Life ***Not sure about this one...

Dark Melee is mostly negative damage with a little bit of smashing with a -to-hit debuff attached to most of its attacks. Its DPS varies wildly depending how much +recharge you can feed it, but at very high levels of recharge it can put out best-in-the-game single-target DPS. DM's AOE DPS is particularly poor, but its Build Up replacement is more effective when surrounded by enemies. It also comes with a (nearly useless) single-target Fear and a (quite handy) endurance refill.

Dark Melee begins as it means to continue, excelling at focusing on single hard targets from low levels on. While DM benefits from being surrounded by enemies because of Soul Drain, its few AOEs are tiny or pathetically weak, or both in the case of Shadow Maul. The set can stack up deep -to-hit debuffs which stack nicely with ElA's resists and regen, but only with its single attacks. Dark Consumption alleviates end issues for scrappers and brutes much earlier than with other sets (which are waiting ten more levels for Energize). Remember to slot Siphon Life as an attack without neglecting its +heal enhancement; this thread has plenty of ideas on how best to do that.

At the high end, Dark Melee is another set with a powerful hunger for +recharge. The base scrapper attack chain of MG>Smite>SL>Smite needs 292% total recharge to operate gaplessly; that's unachievable without Spiritual Alpha, purple IO sets, and/or extreme slotting for global recharge. With less recharge, you'll either have attack chain gaps or need to use Shadow Punch as filler, dropping your DPS significantly. (Brutes and tankers with Soul Mastery can add Gloom to this attack chain to reduce the recharge needs significantly while maintaining comparable DPS, however.) Again, like Claws, Dark Melee offers no tools to protect you from enemies you aren't attacking, so you may also want to build for defense, unless you're planning to focus entirely on attacking single hard targets. Unlike Claws, DM's debuffs can make up for lower defense in the case of single hard targets, however, so an all-out-offense build isn't quite as one-dimensional.

Dual Blades

Brute and Scrapper: Blinding Feint > Ablating Strike > Sweeping Strike > Ablating Strike (but see below)
Tanker: Nimble Slash > Ablating Strike > Blinding Feint > Sweeping Strike

Dual Blades is a middling-DPS lethal damage set with weapon redraw. Dual Blades is built around weapon combos, which add buffs or debuffs to the last attack of a designated three-attack chain. Its AOE potential is about average, but most DB attack chains include a powerful 90° cone attack. Its Build Up replacement is Blinding Feint, a quick attack with a +to-hit and +damage buff, and high-end builds seek to double- or triple-stack its buff.

Early on, Dual Blades is relatively end-friendly and fast-attacking, with accuracy issues alleviated by Ablating Strike's defense debuff and Blinding Feint's accuracy boost. The best attack combos don't come online until level 28 and 38, however, so the set can feel somewhat bland until then. It's also somewhat frustrating on a steamrolling team at all levels, because the single target combos start with relatively weak attacks and finish with their big ones (on enemies which may have died in the meantime), and the AOE combo requires 4.7 long seconds of fooling around before you get to hit a 360° radius AOE attack.

Dual Blades has an exceedingly high recharge ideal attack chain, but it's not terribly practical, as it needs +314% recharge in Ablating Strike to run seamlessly. More practical single-target attack chains are Blinding Feint > the Attack Vitals combo (requires +128% recharge in Blinding Feint, preferred by Brutes and low-rech Scrappers) or the Empower combo > Sweeping Strike (requires +214% recharge in Blinding Feint, preferred by Tankers and middling-rech Scrappers). With these much-more-modest recharge goals, it's much easier to fit some defense in the build.

If I were going to play a DB/ElA scrapper today, it'd probably something like this.

I'm working on a guide to Electric Armor for scrappers, brutes, and tankers, along the lines of Liliaceae's outrageously comprehensive guide to Dominators. It's not anywhere near done, but I wanted to get what I did have done out there for comment.

Check out this thread. There's a ton of ideas and builds, with varying amounts of offense and defense. More thoughts later.

/Elec is amazing right now, especially against the current Praetorian endgame, with its energy- and psi-heavy attackers. That said, if you're not building for S/L def, you're really missing out. Layering defense on top of /Elec's great resists and decent regen can give you near-Invulnerability survivability, without the Psi hole.