Emberly

I've only got one /DA scrapper and he's Dual Blades. He's a whirling death machine. Two cones and a PBAoE, plus combos, I love it! Downsides I notice: Lethal damage makes me cry when I fight CoT. Robots I have not noticed as much but the ghosts seem to laugh off both Death Shroud and my attacks Also sometimes combos can frustrate, with positioning and misses. However now with proper slotting I am generally at the hit cap, and I find myself positioning and re-targeting much more smoothly now that I have some hours under my belt.

Katana, as mentioned, would be great because of Divine Avalanche. It's also pretty stylin'. Dark Melee is great because it has both a fear to stack with Cloak of Fear (although I personally went with Opressive Gloom, needs less slots to be awesome) and it also has a nice endurance tool in Dark Consumption. Claws, I am not sure, but it might be cool, plenty of AoE and an inherent end discount. Martial Arts, I can't address at all, it's the one set that I absolutely cannot stand to play. That doesn't mean it's not good, just that I am not informed about it at all.

I guess numbers don't relay the "feel" of a set for everyone. I have never seen the numbers before, I didn't think they were that short. Sure feels like forever when my /rad starts the Cosmic Burst animation and the mob is long dead before the damage actually occurs. Same with Electron Haze and Neutron Bomb, seems like forever before anything actually happens. Having multiple defenders at 50 with each set (well, only one /elec at 50), the /rad secondary "feels" the slowest to me. It's definitely not the worst set overall though, that totally goes to /elec

Oddly I have never felt Shout was slow, not sure why. How long is the animation on it?

Rad. Oh dear. Low damage, long animations, terrible secondary effect. On the other hand, kickass sound effects, slotting Achille's Heel in AoEs, better than /elec. I'd call it a wash!

edit: Now /sonic, that's the best. Endurance efficiency and stacking -res easily overcome the absolute worst animations in the game. Or /ice. Blaster level nuke? Great secondary effect? Creamy goodness!

I found that smash/lethal defense helped me out a lot. I didn't bother to aim for +hp because I got tons of that out of my secondary, and there's lots of regen to be had in WP without aiming for more. Standard disclaimer: YMMV and others might not agree with me.

Well it actually is kinda important to differentiate between a proc and a global because as mentioned upthread the procs are available as long as you have the power but the globals only work as long as you don't exemp down too far. Makes a difference if you are building for exemping or something. Just because some procs have a 100% chance to fire and the effect lasts 120 seconds doesn't mean it ignores the rules that special IOs follow, so it's not merely semantic to correctly label them.

Another vote for the overrepresentation of min/maxers on the forums compared to the game.

I'm a min/maxer in Mids, and a cheapskate in the game. I view the two as separate exercises, especially seeing as all my characters perform fine despite my own failings as a player I have one character that I softcapped, a BS/SD scrapper, and that's all I ever wanted out of the whole min/max thing.

I think there's nothing wrong with powergaming/minmaxing your characters. It's your money and your good times! Plus there are things out there that my casually tossed together characters just can't handle: RWZ challenge, soloing pylons, that sort of thing.

I cannot imagine the thought process or personality style that causes one to become enraged when given assistance with trivial, if any, downsides. How do you people live in the real world?

In days of yore, when the Hollows was a very active zone (yes, newer players, this really occurred!) I would sit in the entry area, SBing people. Those missions were far away and you were slow. I would jump around, Fulcrum Shifting people who were in big fights, or throwing Transfusion around. Only once did anyone tell me off for it, and boy did they tell me off. Local was filled with rage of the nerdiest sort. I'm sort of afraid to roll a Cold defender in case I accidentally shield the wrong person, and they make an incoherent forum post about me.

It's been a long time since I used the search to form a team, but when I do I make use of search comments a lot more than LFT flags.

Hot damn that really is a nice costume. Five stars!

Anyone who says Dark Miasma isn't awesome is a scrublord.

I have a claws/electrical armor brute that I am running up the ranks. She's only 23 or so, but it's lots of fun. Spin ought to be illegal! However I am very squishy, I hope Energize makes this problem less of a problem.

AR is my favourite blast set. The lethal resistance issue isn't an issue.

This is an impossible question to answer. What do you want out of your character? Maximum damage? More AoE? Buffs? Debuffs? Both? Neither?

I expect scrapperlock, or an analogue thereof, from all my teammates. Nothing warms my heart like entering the third mission of an ITF and having a defender run off to begin soloing the computer, or better yet, Rommy + Requiem. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing the words "follow the tank" in teamchat.

I play every character I have like a scrapper: my aggro is my own problem and I don't start a fight that I don't intend to finish. I assume that's how everyone plays, because the alternative seems selfish, demanding and rude. Nothing wrong with tagging along with some other teammate in a tough mission or whatever, but I would certainly never criticize someone for running off on their own if they can handle it (or if they think they can!).

My wife runs the ITF with me every night that we play. She has many characters, but one of her favourites is a claws/SR scrapper, built to the nines and softcapped all around. We decided to spawn the ambushes in the first mission. We had a teamwipe almost immediately. Well, not quite a teamwipe. My wife stood amongst the fallen, leveraging the scaling resistances of the SR passives, using Aid Self, and tearing apart every one of those boss Khelds while we cheered her on. After the dust settled, she had a half empty insp tray and the rest of us had a sense of awe. I have never run an ITF since where we didn't spawn that ambush, and every time I am reminded of my wife's epic one woman stand.