Siolfir

EA is easier to softcap in general (it has slightly higher base numbers for everything except Energy Drain vs Energy Absorption); Ice has resistance to back up the defense and a -damage aura which will give you more mitigation once both are at the softcap.

Beyond that, go for looks. EA is pretty. >.>

It's already been mentioned, but I think Dark Assault would be great; the new PBAoE is pretty yummy (think Tremor with a faster animation, added DoT, and -tohit instead of KD), the best attacks are melee-range while still leaving you the option of going pure range effectively, it has a self-heal built into it with Drain Life, you get a weaker version of PBU on Build Up's recharge, and it's one of the secondaries that lets you slot the ATO proc in a good attack that you'll probably want to use often anyway (Midnight Grasp) for the stacking +dam and the rest of the set in the primary for the set bonuses.

And I agree about the Ice APP being better overall than the Fire APP, but my Fire/Fire Dom just had to go //Fire... with Pyronic and Reactive...

TL;DR version: It's viable, but based on specific builds.

Post i22 and with the same primary, the Stalker will usually outdo the Scrapper in single-target DPS - if the Scrapper doesn't have a long-term damage buff there's no "usually" about it, since the unhidden Assassin's Strike is simply that good for DPA (better than old Energy Transfer). But that ignores the secondary - Shields and Fiery Aura provide a lot of extra damage and Stalkers don't even get them, plus Scrappers get damage auras in Electric Armor and Dark Armor that simply add to their DPS as long as something is in range and those auras were replaced with Hide in the Stalker version.

It also doesn't account for the endurance burn of using Assassin's Strike all the time - there isn't an endurance discount on it like the old ET. Since Assassin's Strike outside of Hide follows the damage/end/recharge formula for single target attacks the higher DPS means higher EPS, and the formula goes by damage scale and not actual damage dealt... which means that the higher AT modifier for Scrappers makes them more endurance efficient if both are dealing identical damage. The team critical buff helps here, but when solo against anything you'd be fighting for a long time the critical rate is the same for each (10%) until you start looking at the ATO procs.

Bah, I've already had a Broadsword Defender!

Play the Croatoa arcs. Get the Iron Sword. Use it often. Flashback the arc to recharge as needed. Ta da! Broadsword Defender.

SS/FA runs Lib pretty well - it's not just for AE after all - and realistically anything that you're running the same content with will start to get boring after a while.

If you want something different more power to you, but with the described end goal I think you'll just get bored with the new character once it's built also.

I have a 55" LG passive 3DTV that does 2D->3D conversion and has two systems hooked to it via KVM switch. For giggles, I tried the 3D conversion while running CoH and it did a pretty decent job (as in, better than most of the 3D movies that I watched on Blu-ray 3D), but one of the issues I ran into was a loss of field of view: the outer border of the screen, probably around 50 pixels worth on each border (for roughly 100 pixels lost in both height and width total) was gone - I'm guessing on the actual amount lost but it was enough that in Windows the entire task bar was offscreen and in-game the outgoing chat box was hidden. Yes, I could have pushed the windows further into the center to mask this, but the gimmick wasn't worth the lost screen space to me so I don't bother with it. The other issue was a short but noticeable delay in image processing but this game isn't so hard that a miniscule delay is going to hurt you in most situations.

So if you want to do it, you can right now without doing anything other than image post-processing that most good 3DTVs handle for you. But it has tradeoffs that you may not like.

At this point I'd support porting Ninjitsu to Tankers, and then Brutes before it gets ported to Scrappers. Not (just) to spite all of the Scrappers who have been complaining for years about wanting it, but because if the argument is "everything should be available to everybody" then they should also fully support it going to Tankers and Brutes, right? But I've never once seen a thread in those forums asking for it, it's always people asking about Scrappers - and people who insist that they couldn't possibly want a(nother) Stalker to use the set, it has to be a Scrapper because there's just no way possible to play a Stalker in the manner they want despite all evidence to the contrary. So sure, there's a little bit of spite in it...

But the main reason is because it would be just as conceptually silly as the Fiery Aura or Stone Armor Stalker that I want simply because it's silly. So either (or both) of those secondaries could go to Stalkers at the same time, and I could make the "this is not the huge pile of rock that makes loud thumping noises while sneaking by that you are looking for" or the "flaming pillar of sneakiness" characters. I might even make a Ninjitsu Tanker just because of how much chaos I could cause with Smoke Flash!

To answer the question - although it's already been answered - gauging by what's on beta nothing about Energy Melee has changed thus far for i22.

Onto the tangents!

As for the weapons in the other sets: yes, you can easily skip the swords in Fire Melee but it's not the best way to go about it and you're waiting a while in Stone Melee if you skip both Mallets and also giving up the second-best DPA attack in the set in Heavy Mallet. I haven't played Ice Melee because I don't like playing Tankers, and while Dark Melee has 3 AoEs only one of them is reliably available (Shadow Maul) - that said, it's more than the "none" that is commonly talked about, and it's better than Energy Melee's AoE damage.

If you're unhappy with Electric Melee's single-target damage, try it with a Stalker: after i22 goes live all Assassin's Strike powers will do scale 2.76 damage in an uninterruptible animation that is two seconds shorter than the hidden animation (most are 1 second, but KM, StJ, and all of the blades are exceptions) when used while not hidden. For comparison to another power, scale 2.76 damage is what Midnight Grasp does after it's DoT is complete and Assassin's Strike does it in an animation that is quite MUCH shorter, putting it at the top of single target damage per activation time (DPA) for any Stalker primary power even without Assassin's Focus stacks, which give it either a 33%, 67%, or 100% chance to critical. With 2 stacks of Focus, it's over-time DPA exceeds Energy Transfer's 1-second animation, and that power single-handedly carried Energy Melee to the top of the charts for single-target damage. Plus Stalkers don't lose any of the AoE damage that the set provides, although you won't get Lightning Field in the secondary if you go Elec/Elec.

Echoing what others have said... if you want Ninjitsu, play a Stalker. It's not like Scrappers are hurting as it is with what they have available, and if concept is that important to you, you should've realized that you were making a Stalker with the whole "ninjitsu" thing in the first place.

And I'm in the small crowd that thinks that they should have left at least one set unique to each AT; I understand why they don't make sets that way (why put in all the time for "a small portion of the players") but I find the argument invalid since any and every player could select that set simply by making a character of the AT it was designed for. Numerically you're affecting the exact same number of people, regardless of how many - or how few - ATs get the set, and having some unique sets adds something to the ATs IMO.

Q:

Specifically, Weave has the most base defense and thus grants the most with an extra defense IO. Next is Maneuvers, and then Combat Jumping. If you're taking all three already and just shuffling slots, Weave will get you the most for a single slot.

However, Weave requires two other powers and the others are both available without prerequisites. If you're considering dropping one of those three, then you have to make some decisions: Combat Jumping is a very low cost toggle, Maneuvers helps your team since it's an AoE but has a high cost for its bonus, and Weave may free up two other power choices.