Mr_Grumpums

Meh. If you never Use Placate then it's your choice. My DM/Nin Stalker rarely uses it unless it's fighting an EB or AV. Solo, I usually don't need it (though it does make for a handy escape power if I do something stupid. On teams, I rarely have the time because the team will kill any target I pick out before I can Placate+AS unless it's an AV or EB.

DM/Fire, DM/Shield, DM/WP and DM/SR are your choices.

DM/Fire will take more damage than the other two, but it adds an Aura and gives two Self Heals and two PBAoE Endurance recovery powers, so you'll be hard pressed to run out of endurance. You also get variety in your build up powers: Soul Drain and Fiery Embrace, and you can stack Midnight Grasp and Burn for big time damage.

DM/Shield gives The -ToHit debuff stacking, the heal, and the PBAoE Endurance recovery power along with Against All Odds, Shield Charge, and the /Shield power that boosts team defense. In other words, the unique attractions here are boosting your friends' defense, the boost from Against All Odds, and Shield Charge.

DM/SR will make you pretty-much invincible, but it's fun to level at times, and you won't have as much fun in PvP (or at least that's how it was explained to me).

DM/WP will get you more PvP time. Is's all-over solid, and the benefits of Dark Melee do a lot to make this one sturdier.

I would pick DM/Shield, but that's because I like having a Teleblast and hate dealing with more Build up powers than I have to. Also, I drool at the thought of a whole eight person team full of /Shield Brutes. If all eight of them have Grant Cover, you're looking at a combined 67.52% Defense. Unslotted. Put in two Defense IOs, it goes up to 100.8%! Cool, huh?

Assault Rifle, Sonic, and Archery are decent AoE Blasters. I have a lot of fun on my Sonic/Mental Blaster. It has four ranged cone attacks and two PBAoE Attacks, including my nuke.

Fire/Elec is probably still the AoE king, though. The damage is hard to beat.

Wouldn't a DB/Invuln Scrapper have endurance problems? I run out on my DB/WP Scrapper now and again, and it has Quick Recovery to lean on. Granted, I also spam the heck out of Sweep combo....

Elec/Thermal sucks out Endurance and kills resistance. Very useful in the new PvP.

Personally, I play a Dark/Ninjutsu Stalker in PvP. I do well enough, and I'm thinking about having a /kin buddy of mine camp behind the drones and load me with Inertial Reduction and Speed Boost, if those movement powers are unrestricted.

Heh. Willpower sounds about right, then. Anyone who hasn't slept for a year must be so tired that an explosion could slam them through a wall and they wouldnt' feel a thing. XD

Willpower/SS really is a great combo. My Tanker, Just a Flesh Wound, was able to tank AVs on SOs, and dealth damage comparable to a scrapper. It also looks less flashy than Invulnerability, which may or may not be what you're looking for.

From what I can tell, the key to a Snipe is its range, yeah? If it were able to take out a boss or Lieutenant in a single hit, then there wouldn't ever be any risk to the game, and the devs work off of a Risk Vs. Reward system. That's also why the interrupt time and animations are so long; they don't want players ramping up their recharge and chain-sniping a mob from a hundred feet away.

On my alternate build on my Fire/Kin Blaster, I use my snipe to kill irritating minions like Malta Sappers before I engage and to pull mobs towards where I have a strategic advantage (Doorways, around corners, and other ways to lower the amount of them are able to kit me at once). If I were playing a Fire/Traps Corrupter or Fire/Devices Blaster, I could probably get more out of it, since I could set traps for opponents.

My Plant/Trick Arrow Controller is awesome. I hold bosses, confuse the rest, and then keep them where I want them with Roots and Carrion Creepers while I hit them with -Res debuffs and then an Oil Slick Arrow ignited with Fireball.

That's Seeds of Confusion+Strangler+Ice Arrow+Roots+Carrion Creepers+Acid Arrow+Disruption Arrow+Oil Slick Arrow+Fireball.

And I still have Vines, EMP Arrow, Poison Gas Arrow, Flash Arrow, and Glue Arrow for the next group. Cool, huh?

TA is a great secondary for building up your control and debuffing. I think that it's actually better for a controller than for a defender, since it fills in all the cracks in most controller sets. I attribute its lack of popularity to other players. I had a lot of trouble finding a team because I didn't have a heal or a direct buff.

Depends on what you prefer. This game lets you play just about any combination of healing, ally buffing, and enemy debuffing that you could want.

I'd suggest an Earth/Thermal Controller or an Empathy/Sonic Defender for a new player.

Once you get the hang of a controller, a Mind/Kinetics controller is a real beast for controlling and buffing.

A Plant/Empathy Controller gives plenty of control with only a few powers, letting you focus on healing. I have a friend who swears by it for team support.

It really depends on what you want. Sonic will give more -Resistance to throw around and stack with Freezing Rain. Ice will give you more -Speed and -Recharge to stack with Freezing Rain and Snowstorm.

Since you solo, I would pick Ice Blast. Sonic takes longer to wind up its damage, and its super cool cone sleep power isn't going to work well with the storm primary. Ice, on the other hand, has solid Single Target damage and Ice Storm, which you can stack on top ot Freezing Rain. Freeze Ray also lets you hold minions or lieutenants which are being trouble, and Freeze Breath stacks -Recharge and -Speed again, which might help on TFs to make your powers more effective on big mobs.

I used to have a Stalker Duo with a friend of Mine. I played a Dark/Ninjutsu Stalker, and she played an Elec/Dark. The Elec/Dark used AoEs out of hide to mess up Minions and lieutenants, plus debuffs that reduced ToHit. My job was to rip up the remaining lieutenants and bosses and grab her aggro. We managed to duo almost every AV we came across, and the Elec/Dark's problem with squishiness was solved with her patron pool. Also, Stalker teaming gives interesting tactics.

On Blue side there are a lot of safe combos. I had a lot of fun duoing with an Ill/Rad Controller and a WP/SS Tanker. The troller makes chaos and debuffs while the tanker pulls and slams enemies around in their radioactive haze, with the Illusion pets slapping things around from outside. The Radiation buff and healing made the early levels much easier for the both of us. We were in the 20s in two afternoons.

I also had fun duoing a Kinetics/Archery Defender and a Peacebringer. It was a pretty cool team because we seemed to have to remade our strategy every ten levels or so. By the time we got into our 30s, we were a well-oiled team. We could heal each other, and my buffs affected us both. The PB was a triform with multiple AoE damage chains that made the best of my buffs, and could also tank effectively for a two person team. My defender, when not healing and buffing, has respectable damage and extremely high recharge to keep Rain of Arrows coming up as much as possible. Alternatives to the /Archery would be /Sonic or /Radiation, for the added debuffs.

Awesome powers that you'll probably want to get:
-Psychic Shockwave
-Fireball
-Fire Blast
-Mind Probe
-Psychic Scream
-Blaze
-Drain Psyche

Kind of a long list, eh?

Scare, Telekinetic Thrust, Fire Bolt, and Fire Breath aren't really useful. Scare isn't strong enough and has too long of a recharge. Fire Bolt is a decent snipe, but you deal much more damage with close range attacks. Fire Breath has a long animation, short range, and a big endurance cost. Telekinetic Thrust doesn't do any damage.

All the other powers are pretty-much fair game. Aim, Concentration, World of Confusion, etc.

From what I've been told, Defender Snipe attacks are only good for pulling. Boost the -ToHit on Radiation Infection and focus on close up blasting with Cosmic Burst, Irradiate, X-Ray Beam, and Electron Haze. Enemies won't be able to touch ya.

I only have 2 level 50s, but I've got a growing pile of toons in their upper 40s that will HAVE to hit 50 eventually.

The characters I've had the most fun with are:

DB/WP Scrapper
Fire/Kin Corr
Dark Melee/Ninjutsu Stalker
Sonic/Mind Blaster
Plant/TA Controller
Kinetics/Archery Defender

Heh. Go Mind/Kinetics and get Telekinesis. You can use Transfusion on your opponent whenever you get low on endurance and hold him/her indefinitely. XP

I was surprised how well my Earth/Thermal Controller performed in PvP. I use my pet as my main means of damage after locking down and debuffing. I summon it in place, buff the heck out of it, and then try and keep my opponent from moving while Rocky smacks him/her around.

Plants/Fire has great damage (for a Dom), but little damage mitigation. It will be easier to level than Psi, and it has Consume, which will be easy to use with Seeds of Confusion to keep you at full endurance.

Plants/Psionic takes much longer for the secondary to take off, but once you have Psychic Shockwave at level 38 you'll feel like Captain Awesome of the USS Awesomesauce. The Single Target attacks are also good, but Psychic Shockwave at lv 38 is why people play /Psi doms. Also, there's Drain Psyche, which boosts Regen and recovery.

Both are good, and both will be great Dominators by the time you hit lv 50. The rest is personal preference.

For the record, I play a Plants/Fire Dom. I like it for the even-ish mix of AoE and ST damage and the relative ease I had in getting to lv 50, as well as the very idea of being a walking forest fire. :P

One of the god thing about this game is that the roles aren't always set in place like some other MMOs. It's kind of flexible depending on your powers, you know?

That being said, most Stalkers on teams consider their role to be "Take out the biggest annoyance in the mob with AS, protect the squishies, and clean up the leftovers."

As for your question on /Nin Stalkers, I think that the current most popular one is Dark Melee/Ninjutsu. Dark Melee's attacks have a -ToHit Debuff that makes your defense more effective against the enemies you hit, and its powers also have a melee attack with a self-heal (Siphon Life), a melee immobilize with solid damage (Midnight Grasp), and a Melee fear (Touch of Fear) what can be used to thin the number of enemies attacking you. In fact, you can stack Touch of Fear and even Fear an Elite Boss (I LOVE doing that, too!). It also deals Negative Energy damage, which many enemies don't have protection against.

The biggest drawback to a Dark/Nin Stalker is the lack of AoE damage. Most of its attacks are Single Target only.

Ninja Blade/Ninjutsu is also popular because of Divine Avalanche, a weak attack that adds 15% to your melee defense, and can be stacked to give you a whopping 30% melee protection on top of your armors. It has a bit more AoE than Dark Melee, as well.

From what I've seen, you can't go wrong with either. I personally play a Dark/Nin stalker, and I've managed to solo Mako, Positron and Vakyrie as AVs (though they sure as all heck weren't easy, and Mako killed me 3 times before I beat him). I have a buddy who has a Ninja Blade/Ninjutsu Stalker who soloes EBs pretty easily, too.

I tend to favor builds that can deal out or directly heal damage. I also tend to shy away from builds that I feel are overplayed to the point that the game stagnates from the lack of variety.

My favorite defender is my Kin/Archery defender. It can heal, recover endurance, has unrestricted SS and SJ, and can recharge Rain of Arrows in less than 17 seconds when maxed out on Hasten and Siphon Speed. I can't exactly farm EBs, but I can clear out the anything else ridiculously quick, and being able to zip around a mission while tearing away the power of my enemies and shooting them full of arrows makes me feel super!

There are some defenders that are a lot more fun solo than on teams, and this one definitely qualifies. It doesn't get big boosts from FS that the team-sized mobs can give, but it makes it easier for me to use the other fun powers, like Telekinesis.

Have you ever used Telekinesis on a mob for over 5 minutes just to prove you could? I have. Every time I got low on endurance I'd just use Transference. XD

Then I sniped them all to death, one by one. >

SS/SD Brute. Footstomp and Shield Bash give plenty of strong AoE goodness, and you have strong ST damage as well. You'll be squishier than some brutes, but you have a whole lot of Knockdown powers to keep them from being able to touch you in the first place.

SS/Fire is another good choice. Blazing Aura and Footstomp give more solid DPS than SS/Shield, but the burst damage isn't as high.

I hear good things about Elec/Willpower Brutes, too. They have good AoE damage And decent St damage, and both types can have another attack added from the Mu Mastery epic pool. It's also sturdy, and recovers endurance quickly.

None of these are a Spines/Dark or Spines/Fire scrapper. There just isn't a brute set that has that kind of constant AoE dps.

Fire/Dark is a cool combo. The powers look sweet, the damage is awesome, you can heal, you can rez your whole team with a wave of your fingers, you have debuffs out the yin gang, and you have a pet whose control will keep enemies even more locked down while you set them on fire. It's awesome PvE Corrupter goodness, and it's relatively easy to play.

Fire/Kin has INSANE damage and unlimited endurance, but it doesn't have a whole lot of protection.

Fire/Storm will eat up your endurance like crazy, but it certainly has a lot going for it when played by an expert herder. Good damage and damage mitigation.

I also saw that you mentioned you're enjoying your Elec/Therm. I'm not a big fan of elec, personally, but I've heard good things about that build in PvP.

WP/SS. Tank hard, punch hard, and never drop unless someone does something catastrophically stupid.

I'll make you one right now. Just for you.

Step one: level up until you get Taunt. Pick powers from your primary that resist damage and heal you. Get hurdle or swift. Get your travel power prerequisite. Get another attack, if you can squeeze it on.

Step two: Turn on your toggles, use taunt, and hit things until they fall down. Rest when you run out of endurance, and then get up and use taunt again.

Step three: Keep leveling with the pattern I set up until you have your travel power and stamina. Then get Rage and hit things harder.

Step four: Get footstomp.

Step five: Use taunt and footstomp and your toggles. Maybe your other attacks too.

Step six: Hit lv 50, respec for your IOs, and farm until you have all said IOs crafted and slotted.

Honestly, I think that guide is needlessly complicated if one takes into consideration how mind-numbingly simple it is to level an Invul/SS tanker. I'll simply it.

Step 1: Use Taunt. Wear your toggles.

Step 2: Hit stuff while using taunt. Repeat until level 50.

There we go.

The choices are Cold, Force Field, and Sonic.

Or the three, I personally would choose either Sonic or Ice because they offer options and comparable protection.

Sonic lets you give roughly 45% resistance to your team, and you can also debuff enemy resistance significantly, letting your team mates take down enemies MUCH faster. A team with two Sonic Defender/Controllers is a team with a win button in virtually any mission or TF.

Cold Mastery gives 15% base defense buffs, same as Force Field, but its PBAoE power gives some resistance, stealth, and a small amount of defense (Though Dispersion bubble does offer Mez protection and pure defense, which is probably more useful in the long run). It also has Frostwork, a power that lets you buff the MAX HEALTH of a team mate. Tankers and Scrappers LOVE this power. You also have debuffs to speed, recharge, resistance, damage, AND your level 38 power lets you recover endurance for the whole team!

Force Fields lets you put bubbles on people and knock enemies back. That's it. The Defense boost is nice and solid, but I find the gameplay boring. There are some people who like the set for Personal Force Field, though. It basically makes you invincible, but you can't use any powers other than those that affect you for the whole time you have the toggle on.

For theme and effectiveness, I'd suggest a Cold/Ice Defender or Sonic/Sonic Defender, since the benefits of the primaries and secondaries stack.

A Cold/Radiation defenser would give LOADS of defense debuffs on top of Cold's defense buffs and its debuffing powers. Cold/Dark will debuff ToHit, as well, letting you do a double whammy of raising your friend's abilities to dodge and making enemies more likely to miss.

I dunno if I gave a solution, but I hope some of my rambling post helps you make a decision.

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I'm debating between ss/sd and elec/ sd.

I make farm toons... What's better damage? Lightning rod with the shield charge or footstomp with with the shield charge? Over time of course.

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I don't know about the numbers, but Foot Stomp is a much faster animation than the Electric AoEs, especially Thunder Strike (3.3 second animatino time). There are a lot of times that I find myself attacking a group of mobs that are already defeated with an AoE.

For Farming purposes, I think it mioght be better to have Footstomp and Shield Bash. Footstomp doesn't have as much damage as Lightning Rod, but it recharges SEVENTY seconds faster than Lightning Rod.

I combined Touch of the Nictus with Efficiencies. I think 4 efficiencies and 2 Touch of the Nictus. It doubles the bonus I get from the Efficiencies I put into Stamina, and adds to my max HP total, as well as pretty much maxing out the enhancement on the power in all aspects. I mostly went in to enhance it, instead of putting in some mega crucial IO set bonus.