Call Me Awesome

I've gone with Rebirth +regen on both of my characters who've gone far enough on Incarnate. The reason is it gives me a massive heal and a minimum of +200% regeneration... it's also perma at tier 3 with a 120 second duration/recharge. Rebirth is interesting in that the Radial line is vastly superior to the Core line; the +HP only gives you about an 8% boost for much of it's duration and a ~30% boost at it's maximum. Radial gives you a 1,600% regen boost to start out and never drops below 200%.

Well, an Arch/Dark corruptor should be a great choice for your preferred style and unquestionably it'll output a lot more damage than a Dark/Archery defender.

I'd approach it like so:
Open with Fearsome Stare to cower the spawn
Drop Tar Patch
Let loose with Rain of Arrows/Fistful of Arrows/Exploding Arrow
Kill any survivors with another Fistfull & Blazing Arrow where needed.
Move on to the next spawn.

If you have a nasty baddie then drop Darkest Night on him to keep him out of trouble in addition to the above. Pet Gaze will take care of any irritating minion/LT.

I've played an Arch/EM blaster to 50 and am currently working on a Fire/Dark corruptor, 38 as of last night; that's how I'd play the Arch/Dark combination. It should kick much butt and be quite survivable once it matures. I know on my Fire/Dark the combination of Fearsome Stare, Tar Patch and Rain of Fire will by itself wipe out minions... adding Fire Ball and Fire Breath pretty much wipes the spawn.

One of the best things about Archery is how light on endurance it is... I took my Arch/EM blaster to 50 without ever taking or needing the Fitness pool.

I've a few characters who fit the bill of mass carnage.

Fire/EM blaster - massive damage and good survivability since Boost Range allows you to stay out of melee. This is the character I grab when I'm in the mood to just kill things without any other concerns. I've built to near the soft cap in Ranged defense and have little trouble with mobs. The DE Quartz pets are a PITA though.

BS/Shield scrapper - not really what you're talking about but it puts out massive damage while maintaining mid level tanker durability. It's probably second to my blaster for raw damage output and far more durable.

Fortunata spec'd Widow - loads of AOE Psi damage, decent control and status protection with soft capped defense. With double leadership this character doesn't miss and hits hard. It's basically a def capped blaster with status protection. The downside is nearly all the damage is Psi... heavily resisted by several mob types.

I've others that are quite capable of considerable damage output; my Spine/Electric scrapper is an AOE machine and excels at quickly killing large groups of minions/LT's but is less effective against bosses.

If you're building a team of characters there's always the old standby Fire/Rad controller; one of them is very good and adding more of them gets into the range of "game breakingly good".

A Fire/Dark corrupter is also a good choice and does a fantastic job of melting the mobs.

I've a young Fire/Fire dominator that shows promise but is incredibly squishy although at 24 he's a long ways from being mature.

I'm going to have to disagree; while this is considerably better than the first revamp it's still not up with the original. The mobs are way too buff, the spiky bit is overdone and the armored tutu just looks silly IMO. Still, it's unquestionably better than the first new look and at least it looks "mystical" now, if not CoT.

Cut down on the spikes, lower the muscular definition and loose the armor in favor of loose clothes and you've got something. That spiky tutu just really doesn't work. A thigh length robe similar to but slightly longer than the martial arts robe would work much better. They're mages, not warriors so they use their magic instead of their muscles. They'll be slender or slightly overweight but they aren't going to be ripped and cut.

It really depends on what you're looking for. My understanding is that the Warworks are the most damaging... that Vicky is really nasty, particularly at tier 4. I believe that most if not all of them have at least one "damage" tree and one "support" tree, you'll need to weigh the pros and cons of each and make your own decision.

I haven't made a study of the new pets but they're supposed to be pretty equal one to another with different pluses and minuses. So far I have the Warworks on CMA and the Seers on my Fire/EM blaster; both at tier 4. I find the Warworks are considerably better at damage output while the Seer buff pet is quite useful on my blaster.

The last time I started a new character I simply played as normal, sold my salvage/recipe drops at the auction house (drop in, put everything up for a minimal amount and leave... total time to unload my inventory ~2 minutes) and just bought DO's at 12 & 17, SO's at 22 and started IO's at 27. By the time I hit 22 I had about 30 million inf from that strategy; by the time I'd basically finished a mid-level set IO build at 35 I had about 150 million on hand... after buying all the IO's I needed.

If you want an easy, guaranteed way to make a nest egg all you need to do is go to the auction house and bid 100-500 inf on some of the undesirable level 50 recipes, then sell those to the vendor. A vendor pays 5,000 for uncommon and 10,000 for rare level 50 recipes and lots of the "junk" can be had for virtually nothing. Snipe sets, sleep sets, some of the taunt sets and hold sets are good choices for this.

In looking over your build it looks pretty good, albeit expensive. I would reorganize things a bit though, I don't really like the power order. Not a problem at 50 but it'll cause you some issues if you exemp.

First, and I realize that this doesn't really change anything to any level you're likely to exemp to, I'd certainly move Unyielding up to 8. I would also swap Taunt and Resist Elements... Res Elements is your least valuable passive power. In my builds if I take Res Elements at all I get it late, in my current build it's my 49 power.

You also need to be aware that the proc in Foot Stomp isn't going to be running all the time... the rules for it are complicated but there's a period after it fires where it will not fire again. Because of that you'll have occasional 10 second bursts of increased recharge, not anything you could count on being continuous.

I'd be tempted to move Combat Jumping earlier in the build and I'd definitely get Weave before Res Energies.

Some of your slotting is unusual but it does look effective. Oh, I just checked the set bonuses; you're 3 over the "rule of 5" cap on the 1.125% HP bonus with your last 3 sets of Luck of the Gambler. Cut out the Defense IO in those sets and substitute a common Defense IO... it'll save you a lot of inf and you aren't getting the 3 slot bonus anyway. Alternately toss in a Def/End from another set for more endred at the cost of a little less def. On Combat Jumping pull that extra slot entirely; it's really not worth it for the def the power grants and it uses virtually no endurance.

On your quandary of what to take in place of Unstoppable if you're sticking with the Energy Mastery pool I'd get Laser Beam Eyes and toss a couple of Nucleous HO's into it. A ranged attack is highly useful as another attention getter.

I hope you've a pretty good bankroll because this build isn't going to come cheap. The 5 LotG +recharge IO's alone will be close to a billion inf and there's several other 100 million plus items. Also, and this is just a suggestion, but I'd slot lower level IO's so everything doesn't go poof below level 47. I always design my builds around level 30-35 IO's so I keep my bonuses down to those levels. The small loss of enhancement value is really negligible. Take the Reactive Armor for example. Dropping from level 40 to level 30 costs you a bit over 1% in resistance yet it will cut the cost by 2/3 at a minimum and you'll keep the bonuses to level 27.

In any case enjoy your tanker!

I've had an off/on/off relationship with Unstoppable; back in issue 3-4 when I was leveling CMA it was pretty much a complete waste of a power since Invuln in those days could easily hit 90% resist to all but psi with perma hasten and perma Dull Pain. Well, nerf-a-geddon hit with issue 5 & 6 and left in it's wake a powerset that was a bare shadow of it's former glory... most players dumped the passive resists for Aid Self and Unstoppable was a very useful thing to have.

Then we got issue 9 and IO's; at that point things started to shift back. With issue 13 when Invuln and IO's were buffed it became practical to soft cap your defenses Unstoppable once again became an optional power. When I first worked out and respecced into my soft capped S/L/E/N build I kept Unstoppable in the build as an insurance policy. Well, after 6 months of time and innumerable high level TF's tanked having never once used the power it was dumped on my next respec.

As a leveling build there's a decent reason to have Unstoppable, prior to reaching high defense levels (up to the 45% soft cap) Unstoppable is a useful power to have. Once you get your defenses into the high 30% range it looses it's luster and by the time you reach the soft cap it's going to be pointless in 99.99% of the game. An inspiration or two will do the same job without the drawbacks by that time.

It's varied pretty drastically on my characters. My first in issue 4 was roughly 250 hours (CMA)... my latest several have been in the 80 hour range. Of course the game has changed considerably since I started 7 years ago.

Well, first off this is a bit beyond the scope of this guide and more in line with my Soft Cap one but there's some things that jump out at me in a cursory look.

First, dump that Impervious Skin Status Resistance IO... it's a total waste because you already have all the status PROTECTION, which prevents a mez from occurring that you'll need in Unyielding. All status resistance does is slightly reduce the length of the mez effect. As an example of just how slightly we're talking you need 100% status resistance to cut a mez effect in half, for example from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. That proc provides 7.5% resistance, in other words completely worthless even to a blaster. You'd never notice the tenth of a second difference it made.

Also you've greatly over slotted for S/L defense; outside of a very few situations 45% (the soft cap) is as good as having 200%. At the same time your E/N defense is only 35%; focus some of those extraneous bonuses for that instead of excess S/L. The Kinetic Combat set is good (if VERY expensive) but with leaving your attacks 4 slotted you're considerably shortchanging yourself in accuracy, damage and recharge. Add a 5th slot for an Acc/Dam/Recharge IO to frankenslot.

I recommend getting RPD prior to Res Energies but it's not a huge deal. Your slotting of Resist Elements is again a waste of IO's... status resistance is useless to you as is knockback protection... anything that knocks you through Unyielding isn't going to be affected by another 4 points of protection. The only thing I can think of offhand that's capable of that are the bombs from the Rikti raids and their KB is unresistable. Cut your slotting to only the Steadfast 3% defense unique or use a set of 3 Aegis for a F/C defense bonus.

Why are you slotting Rage with 5 Gaussian's? The set bonus you want is the 6 slot one for the defense bonuses... either stick with 3 common recharge or, if you're using Gaussian, take it to 6 slots.

Do you realize that the Obliteration set is a MELEE defense set? Dump it for 3-4 Eradication and finish with Scirocco's Dervish.

Your APP slotting is rather unusual, and your power choices don't really make sense. The gems in the Pyre APP set are Fire Blast and Fire Ball; Melt Armor is the turkey and Ring of Fire is less useful than Char. I would 6 slot Thunderstrike into Fire Blast for another 3.75% E/N defense; your Fire Ball slotting is good.

As another thought you're going to have considerable endurance problems with this build... you have little end reduction in your heavy cost attacks and with only the Performance Shifter proc in Stamina your recovery is only half of what it should be. You WILL want to invest a couple of slots into Stamina; Invuln is moderately end heavy to start with since you'll be running SIX toggles plus dealing with the Rage crash and the Hasten crash. At a guess this build is good for 3 - 4 attack chains before it's dry on endurance and the crash of Rage or Hasten takes down your toggles.

All in all you've some considerable rethinking to do with your slotting and while your power order will work it isn't what I'd do... it's your character though. Some things, like your slotting of Kick I disagree with; I dislike expending slots on a power that isn't going to be used and Kick certainly should be in that category on a mature character. Use the slots elsewhere, particularly since the set bonus is highly extraneous.