Absorber_NA

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

My thoughts on Stone after taking two of them to 50 are that there's little need to build for survivability... on pure SO's a well built Stone tank can solo tank the tower buffed Lord Recluse on the STF. That being the case, what I want is to minimize the penalties.

To accomplish that I look for primarily two things, recharge bonuses and runspeed bonuses. If you've an end heavy secondary you may want to get some recovery/end bonuses. Some sets I'd look at:

• Gift of the Ancients - 4 slot this for a recovery and endurance bonus. Use the runspeed IO as one of the 4 and you get two things you need in one set. Toss this into Rock Armor.

• Crushing Impact - 5 of these gives a 5% recharge bonus; they go nicely into melee attacks.

• Doctored Wounds - 5 of these also gives a 5% recharge bonus; toss it into Earth's Embrace.

• If you've the inf you can toss Luck of the Gambler 7.5% recharge IO's into several of your defense armors... they ARE pricey and something for you to work toward.

Granite is a weird animal... you want ED capped resistance enhancement and ED capped defense enhancement, this makes slotting sets a challenge. You're going to want to Frankenslot resistance and defense, yet most sets won't ED cap you in only 3 slots. I tend to use a mix of common def and res IO's and toss a couple of special IO's in the last two slots, typically the Steadfast Resist/3% defense and Luck of the Gambler 7.5% recharge.

Now your current budget places some tight constraints; you don't have enough to fully slot the sets I listed even disregaurding the expensive IO's. I would work on the sets a piece at a time as I had the money... probably starting with the GotA sets, then Doctored Wounds followed by Crushing Impact. I usually use SO's as placeholders so the character is playable while you're trying to acquire the IO's you need.

Originally Posted by DarkGob

You can craft them from your own recipe drops, of course, but (EDIT: D'oh! Forgot about the crafting tables). Also keep in mind that you can e-mail recipes and enhancements to your own global, effectively allowing you to trade between your own characters.

Originally Posted by DarkGob

I usually start getting IOs at level 25-30, then start working on sets sometime in the 30s.

You're misunderstanding the thing about levels. A Level 30 IO is better than a level 30 SO, for a character who is level 30. (It turns out that a level 30 SO slotted on a level 27 character is better than a level 30 IO, but it won't continue to be.) The added benefit of all IOs, of course, is that they don't diminish as you level, but this is a separate issue. Level 50 IOs are better than level 30 IOs always, just as level 30 IOs are better than level 25 IOs, etc.

Originally Posted by maggotface

I started a Broadsword/Electric Armor scrapper recently myself. I like it so far, but having never built an /ela character, it's going to be a learning experience.