Elaith

Posting from work so I don't have access to the set bonus listings, I personally think the armors are overslotted BUT if you are going to 5 for a particular set bonus that can be a good reason to overslot.

Don't really have any experience with NB but heres my EA thoughts for the build.

Energy drain is much more potent of an endurance recovery tool then it is a heal. The heal is fairly minor (I believe it's about 35 HP per target base at lv 50) and I personally prefer to slot it for end mod so I can get a full end bar off 2 enemies. Overkill you say? possibly but:

Energy drain, especially slotted out, eliminates the need for stamina. Also, when you're fighting AVs you are unlikely to have multiple targets to drain off of, and getting half an end bar back every 30 seconds is usually enough to keep me going. I like a full set of efficacy adaptor in energy drain personally.

Other then that, you got all the key powers, and I'm pretty sure the ones I would say are overslotted you have that way for set bonuses.

Oh and on combat jumping, it's not that the slotting you have there is bad, from a defensive standpoint I'm pretty sure it's good, but I'm a fan of sticking a jump enhancement in there :P

Slot some endmod into it, it still won't kill them but if my blaster can turn TB into a full drain attack by itself a defender should be able to as well. Bonus points: TB hits them with a recovery debuff as long as the one it hits you with, so it's effectively a mez when it bottoms out their blue bars. And since it's not magnitude based, works on bosses (but not AVs.) Admittedly most enemies get back into the fight quickly once the debuff wears off (assuming you know, survival) but it still takes a couple ticks of end before they can ramp up to their big hitters again.

[edit] added boss comment

Can I nominate the blaster version of frozen aura?

A PBAoE minion only sleep. Don't let the large (and admittedly cool) animation fool you, it only extends out as far as ice patch. I would be so happy if the blaster version got the tank version treatment.

Admittedly I don't have much room to compare (besides a very short lived MA/Regen) but I love my DM/EA/Lev stalker. Hits like a speeding semi and never stops.

I can see this working but it sounds...off to me. Mostly because of the presence of masterminds. A Ninja MM is effectively +5/+6 pets in range, and if a merc hits gang war. It just feels a little "too good to be true" for pets to count, maybe if there's a cap.

I don't believe TB returns endurance to you, that is limited to the ST attacks. That being said, I AM a fan of endmod slotting in TB because of the full end drain you can reach with it (I don't have PB to boost it.) Sure the bosses are still alive, but they aren't hitting back with no end bar and a guaranteed recovery debuff.

My stalker has this too and so far I've mainly used it to buy some time for an ally over her head to recover a bit. I've also used it a time or two to get through a spawn to a priority target after I've been locked out of jumping. As any stone tank will tell you, when you can't jump and you're being surrounded by minions it's hard to get places. That said, the pulsing for defense thing sounds handy (and it's not the first time I've heard it) and it sits on my list of "things I can use to mitigate more but rarely do" along with waterspout and touch of fear, and to a lesser extent, spirit shark jaws.

I went the dayjob route on my stalker, it really is pretty handy. There is admittedly some startup time since you need 2 day job badges to start getting charges, but I find myself using the charges pretty slowly once I have them. On the plus side, it means I don't need to devote 3 powers to it in my build! (admittedly, I've got a couple "for fun" powers so I could probably fit it in if I tried) I actually need to build up some charges on that again, think I'm down to 3.

I can't really comment on the DB side as my only DB character is a tanker and the stalker version is different. On the EA side here's what I see.

Energy Protection: While it's not going to hurt you any to slot this, I'd probably say it's low priority. The resists are nice but the powerset is primarily defensive.

Conserve Power: Not needed but I can see keeping this for emergencies (or crashes) but I'd probably drop it to the base slot. Energy drain is that good (once slotted.)

Overload: I'd probably leave this at 3 recharge and be done with it, it will cap all your defenses with plenty to spare if you keep your toggles up.

Hide, Kinetic Shield, Power Shield, Entropy Shield, and Energy Drain all look good.

As an aside, I wouldn't consider it a dealbreaker to not have but hasten combines really nice with energy drain.

Just for something different, I love my DM/EA, a lot. One of the big draws was the bottomless end bar even before IOs (no stamina on this build) and despite EAs less then optimal reputation (although I don't really see people calling it outright bad anymore) I found it to be a solid combo.

Pretty sure there's a code reason we haven't seen this. As I recall (not that my memory is perfect, I may be wrong) adding toxic defense to the game was either impossible or prohibitively difficult (pretty sure it was option 1.) Thus, force fields give toxic resist instead of defense. Adding a set focused on dealing toxic damage would pretty much necessitate either A) Adding toxic defense so as not to screw over typed defense sets or B) Giving all typed defense sets toxic resist in their defenses (not that this doesn't exist, but it's generally minor, expecting that toxic attacks will also have another damage tag so the main armors can stop it.) And really, toxic protection even for resist based defenses, is sometimes found in odd places where it probably won't be taken advantage of (dull pain and clones, healing flames.)

All that being said, while I wouldn't expect one it would be nifty

My stalker is a DM/EA and I love him. The DM is specced pure single target (skipped shadow maul) and EA is his defense and a bottomless end bar. He annihilates targets quickly then moves on to the next (I IOd him out for a global damage boost rather then defense.) The tohit debuffs in DM do a lot to make up for the less then capped defense against difficult single targets. I have tanked everything up to and including AVs (I tend to hit kinda hard, if no one has actual taunts, I'm getting aggro from whoever I'm killing.) Admittedly psy EB/AVs can be a problem, defense hole you know, but everything else I've been able to take.

General comments on EA:
I really like the set, there is no need for stamina, it can add a bit of survivability through end drain if the fight drags on, and it's reasonably solid even without that. That said, the psy hole is very apparent at times, you WILL learn to hate Tarantula mistresses, and don't even TRY Makos arc alone. It has some hard to come by mez resists if you PvP (I don't, but repel protection could be useful in AE too...note to self make a high end FF user in AE) Aside from the psy hole the only things that ever get me about the set are that the typed defenses let some debuffs through with no resistance. You'll get webgrenaded (for example) pretty easily. Having noticed that I spent more time on the faults then why I like it let me reiterate, I really like the set. The bottomless end bar is a lot fun (fully slotted it's half an end bar per person nearby, + a small heal.) Repulse is pretty skippable but can be a fun power on occasion. Fairly recently I used it to rescue a melee friend who was in trouble. Hit repulse, ran over, and kept things out of melee long enough for her to get back up to speed.

As has been said, Permfrost is certainly skippable but it does have things going for it.

The slow resist isn't of utmost importance on an ice tank as you already get good slow resist, but it is nice to have more of that slow not require enemies. Say I arrive late to a fight with knives, permafrost helps the caltrops slow me less until I can I can get into EA range, where they stop slowing me at all. The fire resist is nice, helps patch up a hole in your defenses. It will still be a hole of course, just a bit less of one. Is it vitally important to have permafrost? No but it's a non-negligable boost. I personally have it on my ice tank but I just left it at the base slot.

Wether you take it or not would ultimately depend on how tight your build is, just as a comparison. People are advocating taking tough instead, I had a Ice/DB tank and I wanted all the combos (or at least sweep + attack vitals, which means you take about everything :P) so I was running very short on power picks. Permafrost made a great place to stick the unique with minimal investment of my very limited power choices, and even without the unique (which I actually don't have yet, haven't IOd her) it gives tangible benefits.

I believe the chance for +recharge used to boost the attack speed of the pet. Shouldn't now AND I think it had the (amusing but often detrimental) effect of causing the singularity to rush into melee.

All that said, if you don't need set bonuses I find my sing does very well with 3 dam/mez hamis, an accuracy, and the +resist pet bonus. Admittedly I'm speaking from a grav/ff controller standpoint but even when it's not bubbled (and also presumably out of the resist aura range) it does pretty well. Granted, the earliest you can slot that way is 47 but the hamis weren't too expensive when I got them.

And also, did not know that singularities attacks were untyped. That explains sooo much about how those consigliers(sp?) managed to hold my stalker through t9-capped defenses, and why it seems hyperaccurate at times. The times you notice it hitting most is when it's an enemy thats evading everything you throw, and you still see sings damage numbers because it's ignoring non-base defenses.

Going to pretty much echo what seems to be the common sentiment. AP is nice, but ultimately skippable if you need to make space in your build. Once upon a time I used it heavily (approximately every 2 minutes. Hello heart attack tankers!) but now it mostly sits unused on my power bar. Sure 95% of the time I don't need it, but that 5% of the time that it's handy I'm really glad I have it. Admittedly this is AFTER everything is slotted out (not necessarily IOd, just that you have all your slots placed.) At early levels it's very handy to have a second heal, even if you are less capable of mitigating APs drawbacks. As heal other gets better slotting AP's usefulness goes down and the buffs also (greatly) diminish the situations where AP is necessary.

For the record, my empath does still have absorb pain but it's 3 slotted for straight up heal rather then holding a set. This lets it still be a big burst heal but since I rarely need it to begin with and even rarer do I need to spam it I'm not really missing the extra recharge that more slots would bring. That and I was running out of slots to place.

Couple quick thoughts (I'll try to get back later with a bit more detail, on my way out right now)

1-I would move powersink up, a lot. Power sink is VERY nice, fully slotted it gets you half an end bar back per enemy every 30 seconds.

2-In combination with above (and energize) you really don't need stamina. You of course still can take it if you want, but it's far from needed.

I know my energy aura stalker replaced stamina with energy drain, don't see why elec armor couldn't do the same with powersink.