ShadowBeast_NA

Not sure how you can say you can't get enough defense with SD/MA. For tanks MA is all about defense now.

With Deflection + Battle Agility you get +15% to melee/ranged/aoe. Toss in Weave and you're upto 20%. That's around 31% with so's. With Phalanx fighting and the +10% to defense from Storm kick you're pretty much at the soft cap.

DM/FA can melt foes pretty quickly. Mine is at 43 and is pretty rugged.

Still not sure if it's better to go for as much s/l defense as possible or to try and go for perma hasten to spam heals and endurance recovery.

Currently I'm going to the s/l defense route and it seems to be pretty viable.

Full agreement here.

Conditioning should be in the +5% to +10% range for Regen, and +10% to +15% for endurance.

IO'd out your crab will be a machine.

My crab is at the soft cap, 40% resist to energy/neg/fire/cld, 50% vs. smash/lethal. I've got a little over 90% global recharge (with Mental Training). This lets me keep Spiderlings out perma and Reinforcements are out for 4 minutes, down for 1.

I was more interested in sinlge target DPS for going after AV's so my attack chain has alot of single target attacks.

Currently the attack chain is Arm Lash-Slice-Channel Gun-Slice. I've got Achilles Heel Chance for Dmg resist Debuff slotted in Slice and Channel Gun.

One interesting thing I've discovered is that with the Alt build you can go Wolf Spider. You keep your crab legs, but you get the mace. Kind of crazy.

Hope this helps! Good hunting and Good crabbing!

you might want to give dark/invuln a look too. Good synergy in that mix.

you can get to the def soft caps on your crab, it's not too hard, but it is expensive. I went with fighting and leadership pools for weave and manuevers.

With capped defenses, 5 pets and good aoe dmg you're a death machine.

I will be there!

Can you slot Achilles Heel Chance for Debuff Procs in Slice? It's such a fast attack I would think that you could get a lot of mileage out it.

my only suggestions are these:

6 slot KO blow with 5 crushing impact and then add in either recharg/end reduction IO or a straight end recudtion. KOB blow eats crazy end.

Maybe steer clear of hasten? I have a fire/ss tank with hasten and the Rage and Hasten crashes combined are painful even with combustion. You can run up pretty good recharge numbers, so ask yourself if you really need it.

Just my 2 cents, hope it helps

Ok, for people claiming Dark Armor is impossibly intensive I just solo'd a Rikti Pylon on my 50 Katana/dark. It took forever (29 minutes) but I did it running--Tough, Weave, Cloak of Darkness, Combat Jumping, Obsidian Armor, Death Shroud and Dark Embrace, hitting conserve power whenever it was up.

for the record I used 2 small blue inspiration as well.

my Katana/DA just hit 49. I'm at the soft cap for ranged defense, and about 30% vs AOE.

I can take out groups of +4 Rikti pretty easily, alot more easily than my DM/SR scrapper can. One interesting thing I've noticed is that with CoD up I can jump a boss on one side of the group and only aggro the nearest mobs, the rest of the group doesn't notice. I guess stealth is a form of mitigation.

As far as AV's go, I've only been able to solo Battle Maiden, Bob Cat and infernal. Infernal took an incredible amount of time (and attempts).

For endurance I've slotted all of my resists with 4 Impervious Skin IO's. This helps a ton, not only does it increase your recovery it also increases your base endurance as well. With all 4 resists slotted thats +10% recovery and +9% to base endurance. And of course I've got Conserve Power which is the real tier 9 power for DA.

I'm really happy with my guy to date, just need to tweak him a little (drop Death Shroud I suppose) for AV hunting.

I would disagree that SS is better than Electric. If you dislike the rage crash, or being perpetually out of endurance in the the first 20 levels of the game, then Electric might be for you.

hmmm Granite Armor for the win?

well Granite Armor + a huge amount of recharge for the win.

Great Guide.

I'm trying something of an 'experimental' build right now. I have a lvl 50 dm/sr scrapper, so I thought I tried to max out my defenses with my Katana/Dark scrapper.

using IO's (4 sets of Mako's, 2 Red Fortune, 3 Scirocco, +3% IO) + weave (5.88%def) CombatJumping (2.33%) Cloak of Darkness (5.88%) and Cloak of Fear (7.5%) = +44.5% vs ranged (if CoF hits) and 34% vs ranged. Toss in Divine Avalanche and you come pretty close to maxing out melee/ranged defense.

There's still a hole in AOE defense, but one thing people seldom notice is that alot of AOE's are actually melee AOE (foot stomps being a good example). Or maybe I'm just lucky and Divine Avalanche has nothing to do with them not hitting me

Also relying on Cloak of Fear for that 7.5% def is a little tricky sometimes, alot of running around corners to get ranged mobs to stack up.

At 43 he does pretty well, still tweaking him though. the downside of going for +defense is that resistances suffer, still haven't slotted up my shields. Also the extra toggles play hell on endurance. Still once I get him all slotted out he should be pretty tough with the +defense and standard DA resists with Dark Regen as a fallback.