Heraclea

My opinion is that you should only take the fear aura (costs a lot of endurance) or the stun aura (costs a bit of health while running) if you have something in your attack set that has some synergy with them. I skipped them both happily on my dark/ice tanker. My impression is that alone, both are rather weak in magnitude. If your secondary adds to what they do, take them.

For Dark/Dark, this means you might want to take the fear aura, since you do have a single target fear in your attack set. If you take that attack, you should also take the aura. That attack is also skippable, though, but I've never skipped it on any of my dark melee characters. It has the biggest to hit debuff of all the attacks, as well as the fear.

You most definitely need Obsidian Shield and your damage aura.

I have a classical symphonic playlist that I use for gaming once I've heard the game soundtrack too often. Mostly Slavs and Eastern Europeans: heavy on Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky, Stravinsky, Dvorak, Smetana, Bartok, some Tchaikovsky. A fair amount of instrumental Wagner, some individual Beethoven movements. Some Bach organ pieces.

If I have to pick one, I'd have to go with my Dark Melee/Invulnerability tanker. Not my fastest killing machine -- that honor would go to my Electric/Mind blaster or Spines/WP scrapper -- she doesn't need to be, because she has all the time in the world.

I like stealthing as a roleplaying option. If I build a stealth capable character, it's a given that such a character has a different relationship with the objectives than a simple one of beating up or arresting goons. Sometimes you're made to arrest all the bad guys in the compound, but if you're objective is to access some code or device, who wouldn't want to be able to slip in unnoticed, grab it, and leave the same way?

Of course, you realize this means the Sun is exploding.

Was wondering when that was going to happen.

The sets I'd recommend for a pure level 1-50 experience are Willpower, Fire, and maybe Invulnerability and Electric.

The slow teen levels grinding to Stamina aren't as big of a problem on a Willpower tanker, because you get something better than Stamina at level 12. My recommendation is to skip most of the toggles and aim for a normal build with Stamina at 20 anyways. The toggles simply don't add a whole lot to your survivability before you can put SOs in them. And that gets you to 22.

Fire is similar. Every single power in your primary that actually helps keep you alive is available by level 12. I have a Fire/DB tanker that's been specifically built to play well exemped to 25 or 30. Most of her IO set bonuses are available at 25, and all of them are there at 35.

There are some kinds of music I can live without: show tunes, Tin Pan Alley stuff, soft jazz, and pop-country do very little for me, and I don't even think I perceive gangsta rap as being music.

Judging from my CD collection and what's on my iPod, I would say my tastes in music have a number of fairly clear centers of gravity:

• Classical, with a particular focus on baroque and medieval early music. Renaissance vocal material does not figure all that strongly, nor do the nineteenth century symphonic chestnuts. Twentieth century composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, and Orff are better represented than Mahler or Brahms.
• Psychedelia from the 1965-1975 decade. Doors, Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and many lesser known performers. Some progressive rock as well.
• British folk rock: Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, Strawbs, etc.
• Dark alternative from the punk/new wave/post punk years. Patti Smith, Television, Cult, Echo and the Bunnymen. Post-punk and classic goth: Fields of the Nephilim, Love and Rockets, Siouxsie, Cure, Joy Division. Most industrial leaves me cold, though, but I do like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult; they have a sense of humor.

My favorite contemporary bands all seem to be continuing one or more of these categories: Espers, Dandy Warhols, Black Mountain, Wolfmother, Black Angels, The Warlocks, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Darker My Lovely, Six Organs of Admittance.

It.