Generalissimo

I'd drop Spine Burst before I'd drop Quills if I was intending to do zone PvP. Without +perception Quills is your only warning that you're about to be AS'd and a warned scrapper is a prepared scrapper. Also, the animation time of Spine Burst will likely kill you as you won't be able to use Dull Pain or pop a respite while it's activating. The only plus Spine Burst has in PvP is when you have someone down to a sliver of health and you haven't anything else to use (particularly if you're Confused and have someone down to a sliver of health).

Yup, the one-two of Ripper at 26 and Invincibility at 28 really make a huge difference to the way Spines/Inv plays

A lot can depend on how attacks are slotted when deciding on slotting of other powers. I only have one slot of endurance reduction in Tough (same as all my other toggles) but I do have my attacks slotted for endurance reduction as doing damage is not a priority for me whereas efficiently holding aggro is.

Why is everyone saying that tough needs 3 slots for endurance reduction? It's not that costly to run, especially for a tanker who isn't chaining large attacks the whole time.

I blame Laustin personally - my post was in reply to his

Spines/SR is supposed to be quite good. Spines/DA is the king of aoe dealing spines scrappers. Spines/Inv (which is what I have) is good at taking alpha strikes but can run into trouble after that on large teams unless you're well supported.

I'm planning on going with the Ice ancillary pool too once I get my Ill/FF to that level Hibernate fits with my plan to be the most annoying opponent possible in PvP and Ice Armour will stack with my Dispersion bubble. Plus, most importantly, it fits my character's concept best of all the pools

Some defender powers are less effective when used by a controller (due to the Primary/Secondary aspect).
Some defender powers are equally effective when used by a controller due to the nature of the power (e.g. Empathy's rez).
Some defender powers are by design more effective when used by a controller (those powers with a control element).


LINK

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"Invincibility (Inv) provides 5% defense to smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, and negative energy
plus another 1.5% for each foe in melee range (max 10). It also adds a 3% to-hit bonus for every foe
in melee range (max 10) and provides a melee taunt-effect"


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So facing 2 opponents I'm getting 8% def from Invincibility plus an additional 5% from Weave I would have 13% def which would not be too shoddy.

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Depends on whether or not you have Tough Hide to cancel out the defense debuff from Unyielding. Here are some power/slotting combinations from the same link I posted earlier:

Defense to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, and Negative Energy:

Uny, Inv (0 SO DefBuf) - Total 1.5% (1 foe), 15% (10 foes)
Uny, Inv (1 SO DefBuf) - Total 2.8% (1 foe), 19% (10 foes)
Uny, Inv (2 SO DefBuf) - Total 4.1% (1 foe), 23% (10 foes)
Uny, Inv (3 SO DefBuf) - Total 5.1% (1 foe), 26.2% (10 foes)

Uny, Inv (3 SO DefBuf), TH (1 SO DefBuf) - Total 11.1% (1 foe), 32.2% (10 foes)
Uny, Inv (3 SO DefBuf), TH (3 SO DefBuf) - Total 13.1% (1 foe), 34.2% (10 foes)

Uny, Inv (3 SO DefBuf), TH (1 SO DefBuf), Weave (3 SO DefBuf) - Total 18.9% (1 foe), 40% (10 foes)
Uny, Inv (3 SO DefBuf), TH (3 SO DefBuf), Weave (3 SO DefBuf) - Total 20.9% (1 foe), 42% (10 foes)

"Invincibility (Inv) provides 5% defense to smashing, lethal, fire, cold, energy, and negative energy
plus another 1.5% for each foe in melee range (max 10). It also adds a 3% to-hit bonus for every foe
in melee range (max 10) and provides a melee taunt-effect"

From HERE

That's the base, unslotted figure. I don't know if it performs differently in PvP (I doubt it) so in most PvP circumstances where you're only facing one or two people you'll be getting only about 10% defense or so. I dropped Invincibility from my scrapper's Siren's Call build as I thought other powers gave more benefit (it would be handy for when I accidentally end up in a hotspot battle though). I did pick it back up at lvl 35 though for PvE reasons.

Yup, it says "Only Affecting Self" when it's active

I think Aerie's planning on being the drainer rather than the drainee

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Level difference matters little in the zones [u]as long you are properly slotted[u]. That it'd matter is one of the urban legends im growing tired with.

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That's a pretty big "as long as" - it's a lot easier for a lvl 50 to be slotted properly than a lvl 30 or a lvl 40. For me on my spines scrapper a lot of the powers I use in Sirens won't be fully optimised until I get into the late 40's as it's only then I can afford to add the last slots for things like end reduction or slots into my unsupressable movement powers or make use of the stash of damage/range HO's I'm holding on my controller. Those last few levels gained on my scrapper will make a fairly large difference to how my guy performs in Sirens.

As far as I'm concerned a duel against a perma-granite tanker/brute should end in a draw before it ends in the defeat of the tanker/brute's opponent - anyone with an ounce of mobility should be able to stay out of the tanker/brute's melee range.
I tried out two tanks during the test server lvl 40 RV event - a Stone/SS and an Ice/Ice. The Ice/Ice was 1,000 times more enjoyable than the Granite build I had for the stoner. Hibernate, Ice Patch, Chilling Embrace and the other ice powers combined for a lot of fun whereas using Granite all the time sucked the fun out of playing the stoner. If I ever get my live server Stone tanker to lvl 32 I'll only be using Granite as a panic button, not as a perma-shield.

If you don't have +perception then Quills is your best bet for showing you when a stalker is standing next to you. It probably won't hit the stalker and interupt AS but it will show a "MISS" message every time Quills pulses on them. What I tend to do if there are stalkers about who aren't working as a team is stand somewhere with quills running and my pointer poised over Dull Pain. I have one of my side mouse buttons bound to target nearest enemy. When I start seeing MISS's I hit Dull Pain (I usually wait for the AS to hit first, unless I know it's a good, high damaging stalker then I hit it right away) then hit target nearest enemy when the AS hits followed by build up followed by Ripper and then as many attacks as I can use before they run, die or defeat me. Most times a solo stalker will end up running to be honest - a built up Ripper from a dull pained scrapper is probably more of a reaction than they were expecting. If there are stalkers working as a team then under no circumstances use that tactic - you will get slaughtered. The key to surviving against multiple stalkers is to stay very mobile at all times. Of course it's not always possible to stay mobile either - just do your best to adapt to whatever's going on. Don't lose heart - the more time you spend in the zones the more knowledge you gain and the better you get at adapting and reacting.

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Wouldn't be putting ToHit's in invincibility, the boost is pretty small AFAIK. Might want to consider taunts there instead.

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The idea of putting taunts into Invincibility as a scrapper gives me the shivers. In my experience I tend to attract a lot of aggro on teams due to my spines attacks and I find I only survive through very careful use of insps, aid self, dull pain and unstoppable. The last thing I'd want to do in general team play is keep all the bad guys around me perma-taunted on me - if I found myself on a team short on buffs and heals I'd never survive Maybe for katana or broadsword scrappers with the extra defense buff it'd be a better option but if I was going to put extra slots in Invinc. on my scrapper it'd be tohits slotted, not taunt. Other inv scrappers experiences/opinions may be that taunts are fine of course.

Cool, good to know it's still progressing

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Now, Shannon.. sigh. pftt. *facepalms* sigh.. Okay, two questions. One, prove why this is a bad build for taunting and Two, provide me with a solution. Go on. hehe.

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No recharges slotted in either taunt power with little slotting for taunt duration combined with the recharge penalty from Granite will result in very slow recharging taunts that don't last long. That'd be my guess at the problem anyway.

Using Invoke Panic on enemies flopping about on an ice patch seems kinda counter-productive to me - unless you're looking to cover the knockdown resistant, easily feared niche? Also, won't mudpots break the fear? I haven't used Invoke Panic in combination with mudpots or ice patch so I couldn't say what effect they'll have on the fear - something to consider/check into though.

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My Tank runs without TI, and people are always shocked. I'm trying to work on an "always unstoppable" build...

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I'm not sure how you're planning on doing that. You do know that perma-unstoppable isn't possible, right? 1,000 second base recharge, 180 second duration.

On topic, I currently have 1 end reduction in each of my inv toggles and 1 in each of my attacks so I can keep up a good attack rate in PvE. Once I get to 50 I'll be replacing the end reds in my attacks with accuracy and I'll be slotting a second end red in my toggles to maximise my burst damage for zone PvP.

It was a fight against a dominator and a corruptor that went on for a few minutes and I was TK'ed a couple of times (one time for about 45 seconds, maybe longer). I was able to attack throughout so I assume my mez protection was still up - I assume the dominator would have used a hold on me at some point during the fight so I'd have been held if it had dropped. I don't know if the dominator had domination running or not - the fight lasted long enough for him to have built it up.

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Once dead they logged out so I couldnt advise that TK doesnt work on INV

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Strange, I've been TK'ed on my /Inv scrapper - does the magnitude of Telekinesis fall somewhere between the magnitudes of protection scrappers and tanks get? If so, anyone know how many break frees a scrapper would need to pop to get up to tank level protection?

Congrats

Read THIS absurdly long thread and come to your own conclusions

Personally my rule is:
Teaming tank who can handle aggro well - pick up taunt as a priority
Teaming tank who can't handle aggro well - pick up taunt, but not as a priority
Soloing tank - don't pick up taunt
Soloing tank who I'll be PvPing with - pick up taunt, but not as a priority

Thanks for that Kinslayer - much appreciated