Siolfir

Personally, I discount Shields as a top tier set since I don't feel like spending more on a Shields Brute than on all of my other characters combined in order to get it from what I consider "worst survivability evar" to near best. Sure, if you spend enough inf to provide +25% defense to all 3 positions and perma-Hasten-level recharge so you have enough defense debuff resistance to hold onto that softcap you'll do okay, but when a Willpower with Tough and Weave, using 4 Reactive Armors in the resistance toggles and ED-limited defense slotting in the defense toggles can get the same or better survivability it seems a complete and total waste of inf.

With SOs only - and only including the sets I've played to at least level 40, since it wouldn't really be fair to rank them without having played them to the point where you have the whole powerset and a chance to fully slot it - I'd rank them more along these lines:

1. Stone Armor (which really doesn't get decent until this point)
2. Willpower (dropped below Stone because of the number of powers needed)
3. Electric Armor
4. Fiery Aura
5. Energy Aura
6. Shields

The sets that were not included due to not having one high enough: Invulnerability (she's 32), Dark (I've never liked the look enough to get one past level 9), and Super Reflexes (she's 29). Were I ranking them based on their appearance thus far, I'd put SR just below Willpower, then Electric, with Invulnerability very close behind. Pre-Energize I would've reversed Electric and Invulnerability - but having a nearly-constant endurance discount means that I can use Power Sink offensively without ever worrying about my endurance bar, which means mobs often don't get to attack more than once or twice. Edit: The Random Number Generator hates me today, and I was nearly constantly hit with my just-SOs DM/SR. Shuffling things around a bit to put it below Invulnerability with just SOs.

And no, I don't have some spreadsheet or metric - that list is purely subjective. Shields is dead last because in my playstyle, I die the most often on my level 43 SS/SD (who has no IOs) than any other Brute, including the Elec/Elec and EM/Elec that I levelled to 50 prior to IOs - the Elec/Elec didn't have Tough or Aid Self, either.

Now, counting IOs I'd have to rank them in terms of expense to build to get something capable of doing +3/x8 - once again putting Stone and Willpower at the top, followed by SR (cheaper to cap than Shields by a lot), Shields, Invulnerability (for scaling), Energy Aura (because soft cap defense > not soft capped and resistance), with Dark (AoE mez toggles + 0->full heal every 10 seconds), Electric (better resistance than Fiery so able to withstand more initial punishment) and Fiery Aura (uh... it has Burn!) bringing up the rear.

And not that anyone cares, but my baby Earth/Earth Dummynator (Surface Disruption) hit level 8 in a couple of hours thanks to a dUmb newbie team. I don't think the mayhem will be out of reach at all.

Enjoy... I'm off to go get edumacated.

As has been mentioned above - it's not the best for ST or AoE, and the sets that it's behind in AoE are also ahead of it for ST. I have a level 50 Elec/Elec/Mu, and find that most of my AoE damage is coming from Ball Lightning and Electric Fences.

Chain Induction's jumping issues were fixed, but the power still costs too much endurance with too high of a recharge for an AoE with max 5 targets that stops if it kills any of them. The bright side is that you can still (with enough recharge) use it to boost your single target damage, since it's far and away the best DPA in the set.

Lightning Rod has issues that Ethric went into, add to that the stupidly long recharge and low damage cap (+300% vs +750%), then stir in the fact that for the port to Scrappers and Tankers the base damage was modified so that the worst possible version is the one provided to villains... when I first saw the numbers on test for the Scrapper version I was hoping that was an all-AT change that would've had it doing roughly the same damage as Shield Charge to the 20' AoE and bonus damage to the 3' as a "fix" for it, but no. *sigh*

Jacob's Ladder is a small cone, 5 degrees wider than Shadow Maul with the same endurance cost and recharge with roughly 70% of the damage. But hey, it's a higher DPA attack than Havoc Punch, so you can use it for single target also!

Thunder Strike is far too slow of an animation, but at least the 18 second recharge means it only eats up roughly half of any attack chain that includes it.

Wow, this thread is still going? Yeesh. I think everyone who's still reading this can agree that Stalkers aren't useless and have a place in a team.

But one thing I did want to poke fun at:

You might be an AE baby if...

...you don't realize that there's more than one AT that can be a Fire/Kin.

Is that anywhere near Atlas Park?

Have you tried a large hammer?

With absolutely no apologies whatsoever to Amy Grant (for torturing listeners in the 80s with this tripe):

bAEbie, bAEbie, I'm taken by emotion
of how to play you do not have a notion
bAEbie, bAEbie, your farming's getting old now
you didn't learn from bubbles or meows
stop for a minute
bAEbie, I'm so glad you're dying

bAEbie, bAEbie, the questions never ending
what's Ouroboros and why did the sky turn green
bAEbie, bAEbie, try walking through the city
but then you'll die since your skills are a pity
stop for a minute
bAEbie, I'm so glad you're dying

and ever since the day
you left the AE building
bAEbie, I realize that there's
just no way to team with you

bAEbie, bAEbie, in any kind of mission
you just have no idea of your position
bAEbie, bAEbie, say hi to that masked girl now
Vengeance is recharged and you can help the team now
stop for a minute
bAEbie, I'm so glad you're dying

and ever since the day
you left the AE building
bAEbie I realize
there's no way to team with you

and ever since the day
you left the AE building
bAEbie, I realize that there's
just no way to team with you

What's skippable from Dual Blades comes down to what you've already taken because of how they interact for combos. If you don't care about the combos at all, just look at the DPA listing below.

You'll pretty much get Sweep by default, since it starts with BU + Assassin's Blades and ending on Ablating Strike. I tend to put Placate off on my defense-based Stalkers, though, so you may end up missing Empower for a while.

If you took Power Slice you're very likely to get Weaken (the other two attacks in the chain are Sweeping Strike and 1k Cuts - both worthwhile on their own), but skipping Nimble Slash makes Vengeful skippable also - both are only used in Attack Vitals with Power Slice, Vengeful has by far the worst DPA without AV, and Assassin's Blades is much better as a guaranteed critical.

If you just care about DPA, the order (with damage scalar/sec noted afterwards) is:
Assassin's Blades critical (2.210)
Ablating Strike + Sweep (1.591)
Sweeping Strike (1.171)
Ablating Strike (1.111)
Vengeful Slice + Attack Vitals (1.000)
Assassin's Blades (0.789)
Power Slice (0.732)
Nimble Slash (0.707)
One Thousand Cuts (0.688)
Vengeful Slice (0.621)

From SR, the "skippable" powers are Quickness and/or Elude. You'll want everything else to get your defense as high as possible.