Celidya

I agree on that, by low recharge i mean, 20-30% global recharge and of course 80% + slotted in dark regen. I think it's ok at a 14sec or so recharge if the defense is good. I think it's easy enough to get some +rech with the Lotg uniques in all the defense powers we're forced to take.
Well i think it's a matter of personal perspective. As far as i'm concerned, the build i would be looking for would be something like:

-soft capped to S/L/N/E at least, maybe all positionnals but i fear it costs too much in the other areas
-decent endurance management with conserve power, sustainable by turning off some powers when i need too (i'm used to toggle management with /dark anyway so i often turn off one or two resist toggles, sometimes CoF too). But i have a very aggressive playstyle and i hate downtime.
-CoF rather than OG
-enough ST dps to feel like a scrapper, not looking for something super high but, enough to takes on an AV. I'm not sure, i have never ever build a toon to be focused on ST dps since i'm an AoE fanatic. I think my best ST character is the katana/dark yet she has the cone and pbae. Anyway, something better than spines ST dps for sure: that's the whole point of making something else than spines, i feel a bit useless at the end of a tf when we come to the AV.
-the pbae attack at least, a cone with it maybe to keep some decent AoE output

I would roll the build the second it's posted if:

-Soul transfer can be included
-hurdle/combat jumping/superspeed for my travelling needs

Now of course i'm sure THAT won't happen but heh, why not. I would even pay for the pvp IO with such a build since that would be what i'm looking for for months (years now): high survivability, good AoE and ST dps, and all of that with /dark and the powers i enjoy for the fun factor. That's still a dream, though.

The main problem with the staminaless builds for me is that they can't exemp at all below 40+. And i WILL need to exemplar down at least for the accolades, tfs and stuff, while i don't tend to build with that in mind for set bonuses (i always prefer high level IOs) i like to at least have the powers in a decent order to make it playable through the low levels tfs.

I sure would love a fire/dark with that. I think about rolling a fire something for a while now but couldn't find a decent build. Though of course DB/dark would be awesome as i have a cool concept for her, i'd love to see what can be done with other builds and in the end i'll probably roll everything/dark. I'm now pretty much set on /dark being my favorite powerset in the whole game so, why not.

Btw i already have spines/dark, claws/dark, katana/dark, got a dark/dark tank all to 50 and a 35 SS/dark brute i deleted, now the DB/dark is going well. Whatever/dark coming soon depending on the builds posted here, and i'll sure make more darkity darkness once i can bring brutes on Hero side as well.

And yeah, Iggy's first build is great. It fits most of the points, though not all of them so i'll probably tweak a bit here and there.

To be honest i don't mind for pylons or AV soloing. I just want something that can stand toe to toe against an AV after the tank hits the floor or even a team wipe and maybe finish it off. That's something i miss with all my /dark characters but the katana/dark (and i don't like her. I don't like the divine avalanche animation and it breaks the whole fun i have with her), whenever the AV turns on me, i die in a matter of seconds unless i go through all my inspirations. So as long as i can survive and have enough dps to have a chance to kill it, it's enough, i don't need to be on top of the ladder. About insps, i'd rather do without them as i like to be consistant over time and be at 100% of my power at any time, rather than counting on long recharging stuff, god modes, inspirations (as i can run out of them), etc.

But then, just make builds you find fun and/or effective, i think it will be useful to a lot of readers, or at least a good source of inspirations. I think i'm quite used to builds and Mid's now yet i'm still amazed at what some peoples can make that i would never think about. So even for that it's a very good learning process and i love to see this kind of stuff !

Anyway it's just a try in Mid's, i have no plan to play with such a build but, i'm looking for ways to improve it and maybe reach the soft cap without gimping the build so much that it would destroy the whole purpose of being a scrapper. If softcap to all 3 positions is not possible, i'd like at least melee/ranged as they're more important than AoE, but i can't see how to make something decent yet. Or Smashing/lethal and maybe energy/negative instead of positionnals, but it seems harder.

Any idea to make it look better ?

I see the point and i often considered Energy torrent too, i even tested it a long time ago, however i don't think it does the job well enough. First, the cone is pretty narrow compared to throw spines, so it most likely won't hit all the mobs in a spawn. Hell, i can't even hit all of them with a spines burst because i often jump into spawns with twice more mobs than the target cap allows to hit. On top of that it forces a redraw, some don't bother, i do and i hate that with spines because it breaks the flow of the attacks i think
It's all a matter of experience and playstyle, really. I find dark regen to be a much better heal, it's up every 8sec, the way i slotted it, 2 mobs are enough to have all the heal i need usually. Being in melee has never been an issue at all for a scrapper, in fact the only times Dark regen is disappointing happens when all the mobs die right before i throw it. And i kite often enough to be used to the jumping trick: run past the mob, start jumping, fire the heal and here we go, i heal myself 20m away from the mob while not being hit.

I have stamina 4 slotted, conserve power, ToE proc in Dark regen and i run almost all toggles (with CoF instead of OG), sprint and superspeed half the time. Unless going against endurance drainers or mobs happily spamming tohit debuffs (like a bunch of CoT death mages) i never pay attention to my blue bar. Consume ? With conserve power + dark regen and the proc i can heal half or even all my blue bar... every 8sec and 4 times my health bar in the process, too. I don't think i've ever been waiting for the blue bar for anything but some CoT missions or carnies, and i tend to keep superspeed all the time just because i want to be fighting 95% of the time and not spend time running between mobs.

Based on Mid's data compared to in game data, and taking OG, i would even make a staminaless spines/dark using only PP. It would work well enough, but it would be impossible to mentor and do the lower level stuff so, i leave that out of the way. I think PP + stamina is overkill, i prefer to take something more useful instead. /dark endurance issues disappeared with IOs, and while this set is hell without them, with a good build i think it needs less endurance help than some other sets out there as long as you adapt your playstyle to it (toggle management), at least for farming and normal missions. Not talking about AVs or RWZ challenge or stuff like that of course, i would die very fast

The self rez is arguably better for fire, i think it depends on the situation. For soloing it's a lot better, however for teaming the massive ae stun + regen to full life/stamina of the dark rez is more useful i think as it gives some breathing room for the whole team and can stun anything short of AVs.

Anyway /dark doesn't need at all to stay in melee all the time. I spend most of my time jumping for cones and to forces mobs to switch to ranged/melee so i can delay their attacks and keep up with the heal. It takes a bit more practice and sometimes can be annoying but, 99% of the time it's not an issue at all, just a specific playstyle that won't suit anyone, that's a sure thing. In fact i don't run CoF for defense at all, it's slotted to get a cheap 6,25% recharge and for the damage proc on it, as i like the damage auras and every little bit helps (+ it looks cooler than OG). I couldn't care less for the fear/accuracy debuff that is worthless anyway, and OG was annoying more than anything else, i want mobs around me, not wandering.

But not much point arguing about it really, i think both are good, while being much lower survivability than the soft capped shields or SR of course. So in the end the whole point is to farm stuff we're comfortable with, and when i do that i don't even need to heal, so fire or dark is in the same boat. I think the whole point of /fire or /dark is not to survive and tank stuff like soft capped secondaries but just to kill stuff until you die, self rez, then proceed to kill the stuff you didn't kill before then keep on killing more stuff. And both are very effective for that with their tools for health and endurance.

Perfect, it works for me too !

Thanks a lot for the trick ^^

Yay finally someone understood what i tried to explain

About DM, yes, i stopped my DM defender at around lvl 29 after doing a Citadel TF. I had a 41 merc/DM a loooong time ago as well. Again it's not a bad set or i'll never kick a dark from a team I just think it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" when it comes to keep alive, which is fine when it's the only support in the team, but less effective than "specialized" supports for me since it's usually not a problem at all to find 2 or 3 support characters, one focused on buffing/keeping the team alive, and one focused on offense (typically a /kin or /rad).

Storm however, i have enough experience with it to know why i don't look for storms. Again i'll never kick them but i'll just wish they had something else in their powersets when i team them. I have a 50 fire/storm with a 500M build, had a 41 earth/storm, 50 storm/elec defender, and quite a few more in the low levels just because i love the visuals/thematics of the set. I've tried to like it as much as i could, trying from a soft capped build to perma-hasten recharge, i just can't find any use for those characters since there is always another hero doing a lot better on my character selection screen.

I actually feel bad when joining a tf with them, i know i could just bring a /kin and the tf would be twice as fast, or a bubbler and there would be no deaths at all, or my perma hasten/perma AB empath to make everyone happy, or even my ill/rad to make sure any AV will die fast.

As someone stated above, Storm shines for the "oh crap" moments. That's exactly what i tried to explain above before some posters jumped on me The whole point of having a support character in the team is to AVOID the "oh crap" moments, which is by far not what Storm is the best for. Else i would just invite tanks/scrappers/blaster and just have fun killing stuff.

Of course it will never exemplar below the 40's (i hate exemplaring and i've already done all the low tfs). This looks very similar to what i have with my i14 build when it comes to powers, i just swapped weave/health/stamina for the whole body mastery pool.

The recovery i get in Mid's with this build is actually slightly better than what i have with stamina on my old build (it's not very well IO'd out), with conserver power and blue pills i think it should be fine. However the whole idea of removing stamina on a build well known for being one of the worst end hogs out there seems a little crazy.

I'm used to toggle management so it seems like it could work. On the other hand, i could get rid of tough, not only my EPS spent on toggles would go down, but i could add stamina on top of that and sit with a very nice 4,6 (or something like that i don't remember) end recovery. Or just go back to stamina + blaze mastery.

I can't decide what to do with it, i tried blaze mastery with SO and my cheap build and i just nuked my endurance bar so far it was ridiculous. I felt squishy as well on The Wall without tough, which is why i would love to fit it somewhere in the build.

One little question as well, about Energy torrent : is it a guaranteed knockdown or only 50% chance (or whatever) ? I miss Shockwave on my spines/dark so i even thought about slotting it for KB, although i fear the cone is too narrow to make an effective use of it.

Thoughts on that ?

Again, it's probably useful in a leveling PUG or with a very, very bad tank (or with no tank at all). Any decent tank won't need outside help (or very few) to tank the AV anyway so all the -dmg of the world won't help with the real issue: overcoming the AV regen and killing it in a decent amount of time. That leaves the small -regen and the res debuff which both will be resisted.

Tar patch is great, however with a 90sec base recharge you'll need serious +recharge to have it up every spawn in a fast paced team. Again i'm not talking about the PUG spending 2min per mob but a steamrolling team.

Dark is fine to keep peoples alive most of the time, although i'd still rate it under other powersets for that mainly because it relies on players being grouped together and won't do much when the group is spread. However it doesn't bring much with offense compared to an offensive debuffer and the to-hit is still of a lesser value than +def for the sole reason it can, and will be resisted unlike the buffs. The heals and small buffs can still make up for that and the -regen is why i said it's average. It brings a bit of everything and does quite well at it, it's just that effective gameplay lends itself better to optimized builds. If i need survivability, i'll look for a defender focused on that (FF, empath (and i don't really like them), maybe even cold). If i need offense, i'll most likely look for a kin rad or cold.

For storm what i said about offense was about the debuffs (i consider -res as an offensive debuff). The -res is good and that's it. -def is marginally useful, about the only mobs where i'm happy to have a def debuffer is in Cimerora, again i'm not talking about a lvl 25 team running full SO. -rch is about the most useful things, however it slows down incoming damage, it doesn't help to avoid/recover from it. It helps to some extent but when a def support is really needed (squishy aggro, bad tank or no tank at all, etc) it's not that great.

The tohit is counterproductive to most teams i like to play. I know a stormie can do a good job debuffing while not scattering mobs, however:

-it takes some precious seconds that could be used to just kill stuff
-it doesn't work very well on everything (narrow maps, fast/immune mobs, enough control so the stormie will just be locked and dead, KB happy team...)
-it doesn't work well with +3 or +4 and any AV will laugh at the -tohit anyway

When adding to the equation player skill, incompatibility with other playstyles, etc... that's a lot of hassle for an effect that will at best help to survive.

I'm not saying those tools are bad by themselves, they're just less "good" for me than the other def powersets. It takes a lot more work for a storm and even for a dark to bring something to the table, and often more animation time as well, compared to the buffing primaries who can buff before the fight and then focus on damage/debuffing/support.

Just take Cimerora as an exemple. Usual method (for the teams i like to run) is to have one or two tank/scrapper (buffed if he's not good enough) herding as much romans as they can then just blow up the pile and superspeed to the next one. If the tank needs the survivability, will he survive enough for the /dark to debuff/come and heal at the risk of getting himself killed/fear/whatever ? Not really. That's even worse with a storm, by the time he's done casting debuffs, summoning pets, etc, either half the team will be dead or already in the next room.

Not trying to lower the fun of the sets of the players playing them. I love the looks and feel of storm and dark, but no matter how i take them, i just can't get into prefering them to another defensive powerset. And i had a soft capped stormie who could "tank" and herdicane well enough. It's just a big waste of time in most teams and the most useful thing i could do most of the time was throwing FR then blasting away, and even with some global recharge bonus FR was not up as much as i wanted to.

To sum it up, i consider them as balanced sets. Which is fine by itself, not really when 70% of the powersets are overpowered.