Syntax42

The most effective way to increase survivability is to slot for defense. Some people like 45% defense, but you can get away with 32.5% if you use small inspirations in the tougher fights. I don't use inspirations for anything else, and there are macros to combine for you at the press of a movement key. Also, aiming for 32.5% defense leaves more room for recharge bonuses in the build. Willpower doesn't benefit from recharge, but Spines does. Your build should focus on smashing, lethal, energy, and negative defenses. Fire and cold are rare damage types at 50.

You are using a lot of sets that give more positional defense (melee, ranged, AoE) than typed defense (smashing, lethal, etc.). Willpower gives typed defense and that is what you should be slotting for. The game only looks at your highest applicable defense category when considering if an attack lands and most attacks have one or two damage type flags and one vector flag. Your single-target attacks should have 4 Kinetic Combats slotted. You can add other IOs if you use your single-target attacks enough. Reactive Armor is useful to the 4th slot. Gaussian's is not useful for a typed defense user. Use two rectified reticles (and generic IOs if needed) instead. Multi-Strike is not a good choice. Three Eradications and generic IOs would be better. Scirocco's Dervish is not useful.

Barb Swipe is the worst attack in your arsenal. It does worse damage per second than any of your other attacks. I wouldn't even take it unless you have an extra power choice and plan to use it as a set mule for Kinetic Combat. Even then, you can slot Kinetic Combat in Brawl and Boxing.

High Pain Tolerance should have the healing enhanced. It gives you more maximum HP, which means you heal more when you regenerate health.

The Steadfast Protection would be better to put it in Mind Over Body so you can gain more resistance.

Rise to the Challenge is under-slotted for healing. It is your biggest source of self-healing by far.

Click-powers that can't be made permanent should not be turned on when planning a build. Click the green circle so it turns black for Strength of Will and Build Up.

Combat Jumping is over-slotted. It does not need endurance reduction and the base defense is so low that you don't gain much by going past the 2nd slot.

Hover is a defensive toggle and works with all of your other toggles. Some people don't like to hover in fights, so it is a personal preference if you want to use it for defense or not.

An ancillary or epic pool can help a bit. You could get another AoE attack or a better single-target attack than Barb Swipe. Again, this is a personal choice.

They run because of either morale breaking (watching their friends die) or the code that makes AI run out of patch AoEs. Burn used to cause fear so they would run immediately. Now, they usually attack a couple more times.

Long forum export takes up an excessive amount of space on the page when people are using Mids' to look at the build anyways. Short forum export is fine. Also, the links do not work for some people, so a data chunk helps.

I'm not seeing the IO set build. I clicked on slots and flip all to alternate but that is blank. Try making a new file instead of using the alternate slots. I'm not sure if it works right when importing from forums.



Some tips on your generic IO build:

Combat Jumping does not need more than two defense IOs. The third one does very little and the base endurance cost is so low that the endurance reduction would be better in another power.

Taunt generally does not need to be enhanced on most builds. Some use it for the nice set bonuses, though. One recharge or range is all it needs in your generic IO build. Accuracy doesn't matter unless you PvP or tank Hamidon, and you won't be a main Hamidon tank, most likely. Taunt is auto-hit in normal PvE. Against All Odds is an amazing taunt aura. Even Scrappers with it can hold aggro with little effort, so you won't need Taunt except for initial pulls of AVs.

Aid self isn't very useful unless you slot it for healing and recharge too.

All of your attacks could be slotted better. They are the likely cause of your endurance issues. Use the slots you gain by unslotting Taunt and Combat Jumping to add a second endurance reduction to your attacks. Recharge reduction helps you do more damage by making your best attacks come up more often. Consider reducing the damage IOs to two since you have Rage for damage bonus too.


When you get your IO set build posted, I can try to help you out with that too.

A lot of it depends on the player. I prefer to cover my defense for pure energy attacks because they are so common at 50 and in incarnate trials. Some people may not like having low defense, but I just use two inspirations to soft-cap.

Spines/Fire is a popular choice, but it lacks taunting to keep the enemies from running away. Also, the lack of damage bonus makes it feel weak without a kinetics or lots of red inspirations. Those two big issues led me to make a SS/Fire Brute instead, but I play the game with it instead of farming.

A Gladiator 3% defense IO will cost 2-3 billion INF. A Steadfast Protection 3% defense costs far less than 100 million. It was 20 million last time I checked the market. Definitely slot one if you build for defense.

Your build has zero defense in it. Enemies have a base to-hit chance of 50% and a minimum hit chance of 5%. The closer you get to 45% defense, the less damage you take. It gets to the point where a small increase in defense means a large decrease in damage taken, which is why you see so many builds with people chasing defense bonuses.

Gaining 45% defense means you take 10% of the damage that would have been dealt to you if you had 0% defense. This is basically like getting 90% resistance to a category. Brutes lack the ability to get to 90% resistance in more than their set's specialty, so it is much more effective to build for defense.

My suggestion is to aim for 32.5% defense. That puts you one small inspiration away from the soft-cap. Since you seem to want more offense, your defenses should be focused on S/L and E/N. You could go for melee+ranged+ AoE, but that takes more slots and leaves you with less slots for recharge bonuses. Weave and Combat Jumping are a good start to a defense build. Maneuvers can save you some slots on set bonuses if you have the endurance to run it. On an Electric Armor build, Energize should help you manage endurance well enough to run Maneuvers.

Soloing AVs is a different game than EBs. Their regeneration is higher and their damage output is higher. Fire/SD lacks self-healing so it might struggle to stay alive without inspirations. I'm not saying it is impossible, but that it simply isn't worth doing. No mission requires you to do it because you can drop the difficulty so that it spawns as an easier EB when you are soloing.

You don't have access to any PCs? There are builds on these forums, but you may have a hard time evaluating their effectiveness without Mids. I would suggest that you read the forum posts to see how others react to the build to determine if it is a good build or not.

Also, don't worry about getting into a build until you get closer to 50. A lot of inventions are far more expensive in their non-50 form because the level 50 players only find level 50 inventions.

You can see the base damage per activation of all powers in Mids'. Go to window, then powerset comparison. On the left, select your pools, then select "Damage / Anim" in the bottom-left. Energy Transfer is still your best attack, but the HP loss may make it difficult to use without inspirations or a team.

One thing that may get confusing about the rule of 5 is that you can have up to 10 of 1.875% S/L defense (or other types) without breaking it. If you get five sets that add 1.875% S/L defense and .938% Melee defense, you can still gain the benefit of sets that add 3.75% melee defense and 1.875% S/L defense because they are different bonuses. Slotting using that method is far from optimal, though. You end up spending excessive slots on the set bonus that gives more of the type of defense you are not going for. So, if you want S/L defense, slotting a set that adds more melee defense than S/L ends up using more slots per point of defense for the useful S/L you are gaining.


Electric Armor is an amazing set for Tankers. It is the only set that can compete with Invulnerability and Stone Armor for raw mitigation of damage. If built right, it can reach the S/L resistance hard-cap and easily reach the energy resistance hard-cap. Those damage types are significant because they are far more common than any other damage type in the game, especially at 50. The Cardiac Alpha helps greatly if you are aiming for that. Adding defense on top of resistance-capped characters produces a character you will believe is invincible.

On a Shield Defense Tanker, it should be fairly inexpensive to reach perma-Hasten and the soft-cap. You went over by quite a bit, and that isn't necessary. Your defense debuff resistance should be 95% with Active Defense double-stacked, so you won't see any noticeable drop in defense. The biggest buffer you should need is 1.5% when you consider that debuffs will only do .375%.

Do you use an attack chain when fighting single targets? You left Total Focus out of your build but it beats all of your other attacks except Energy Transfer for DPS.

I don't know if you understand attack chains completely. The goal of an attack chain is to do as much damage as possible using a repeating combination of attacks with no waiting for powers to recharge. If the difference the Spiritual Alpha makes is .2 seconds, but that allows you to run an attack chain seamlessly, it will make up a decent difference in DPS and likely cause you to do more damage per second, even though the per-hit damage will be lower than if you were using Musculature.

The actual damage difference Musculature makes is very small. Assuming your attack is slotted to 95% enhancement, you will also have 75% damage bonus from Follow-Up being double-stacked. That means a 100 base damage attack does (100 * [1 + .95 + .75] = ) 270 damage without Musculature. The tier 4 Musculature will add approximately 35% enhancement to that attack. Your final damage would be (100 * [1 + .95 + .75 + .35] = ) 305 damage, which is just under a 13% increase in damage.

Let's assume an attack chain has a .5 second gap in it due to one power recharging. The entire chain lasts 6.5 seconds and does 150 DPS. These numbers are approximately what you might be experiencing. Let's say the Spiritual Alpha removes that .25 second gap. You now do the same amount of damage in 7 seconds, which comes out to 162.5 DPS. While that is only an 8% increase in DPS, the other benefits of the Spiritual Alpha make up for it. Your build might be different, too.

The optimal attack chain for Claws on a Scrapper is Follow Up -> Focus -> Slash. Since you like Swipe, putting it after Slash in the chain would be the best place for it. You can't really swap out a power without causing the chain to be too short for the amount of recharge required.

Post your build and a more definitive answer for which will help you more can be given.

I have seen people posting Electric Armor builds and calling it "EA" in the title.

With changes in the works, I don't know if it is worth investing in a build for Energy Aura. You would likely have to redo everything anyways.

What are your goals? I can see some things that could be improved, but I don't know if they will take you where you want to go.

One issue I see is the Discouraging Words set. You could use those same three slots in Brawl to add another Kinetic Combat set to push yourself over the soft-cap. The to-hit debuff isn't worth enhancing.

Maneuvers is under-slotted. Generally, it is more efficient to slot toggles before relying on set bonuses.

I think aiming for 45% S/L defense has stretched your build too thin. You don't quite have perma-Hasten with the tier 4 Spiritual Alpha, and your main attack chain will have horrible accuracy against +4's when Soul Drain is not affecting you. Soul Drain's recharge without the Spiritual Alpha has about 10 seconds of downtime. The accuracy on Soul Drain against +4s is so low that you could end up missing entirely against small groups or in single-AV fights and leave your attack chain missing a lot.

Siphon Life could be enhanced for healing but you lack the slots.

Procs in your attacks contribute a decent amount of DPS.

I would aim for 32.5% S/L and E/N defenses. That puts you one inspiration away from the soft-cap and gives you more flexibility in making your build. Getting to 45% S/L defense is overrated when it means you sacrifice your DPS, in my opinion.

When you post a request for help with a build, please try to post goals for your build or character so we can steer you in the direction you want. Some people want to be soft-capped on their Scrappers. Others just want to do as much damage as possible. Your budget can also have an impact on what you use and what goals are actually attainable.

Willpower is all toggles and no clickies, except for the Tier9 power. Redraw isn't an issue, which is why Dual Blades / Willpower was a flavor of the month combination back when Willpower was new and shiny. As long as you avoid using attacks from your epic pool, you will be fine with a weapon-based secondary.

As others have mentioned, knockdowns, stuns, and holds are a Willpower Tanker's best friends. Stone Melee offers two AoE knockdowns, as well as a hold that can work on boss-level foes. Dark Melee has a heal which works fine with Willpower, but the single-target damage potential of Dark Melee is better than most other sets. Add Gloom to a Dark Melee attack chain and you don't need much global recharge to run a great DPS chain. More global recharge is better, though, because Soul Drain can be made almost permanent with enough of it.

Mids either needs a data chunk or a saved file that is generated by clicking on the link. Post data chunks when you post builds. Also the set bonus totals are not useful to display on the forum because the builds have to be opened in Mids to see all of the powers and sets working together.


My advice is to aim for 32.5% S/L and E/N defense. One small inspiration can then get you to 45%, but you will find that 32.5% is enough for a lot of situations. Going past that with Fiery Aura is going to hurt your recharge too much and you won't be able to run a decent attack chain. You will probably want Weave, Combat Jumping, and Maneuvers in addition to Hasten.

EA could be Electric Armor or Energy Aura.

I'm going to wait until Mids' is updated to try to make or review any Energy Aura builds. The changes are not on live servers and they could still adjust the numbers, so power information on test is not worth making a build around.

Stone Armor is a defense-based set without Granite Armor. Defenses have several weaknesses. First, you can be debuffed. Stone Armor doesn't get much defense debuff resistance outside of Granite Armor. Second, enemies can have to-hit buffs. The only way to counter those is by having more defense than their to-hit, but you would be focusing a lot of your build to cover a scenario that you only encounter in 5% of the game's content. Third, accuracy modifiers are calculated after defense and to-hit. That means there is absolutely nothing you can do about them except expect to be hit more often. Foes ranked higher than minion and foes higher level than you get an accuracy bonus. A +4 boss typically has about 10% chance to hit a soft-capped player.

Defense works, though. I have seen some shield defense users tank Lord Recluse when he is buffed by the towers. It just takes a lot more support to keep a defense-based tank alive than one who has defense and resistance. Consider that defense can lower a mob's to-hit chance from 50% to 5%. Accuracy modifiers are applied after that, so you could be getting hit 5% to 10% of the time from typical enemies. That means you are taking 10% to 20% of the damage you would have taken with zero defense.

Stacking resistance with defense is much more effective. You could be taking 10% of the original damage by only having defense, as mentioned above. With Granite Armor, 90% resistance to all but psionic is definitely possible, so that 10% damage taken turns into 1%. Which do you think will have an easier time staying alive against the toughest content in the game?


I suggest that you make two builds. One can be based on being in Granite Armor all of the time. The other can be for situations where you know you can handle things with just defense, but have Granite Armor as an emergency power. The more you play, the better you will get at predicting when to use Granite Armor.

I'm surprised by how many responses have supported the Brute without giving any real numbers to back it up. Typically, powersets with permanent or near-permanent damage buffs cause the Scrapper to do more damage.

For these calculations, I made builds with only three damage IOs in the attacks. Follow-Up is double-stacked in Mids. Triple-stacking is possible for a brief time but Mids doesn't allow it, and I want to keep the calculations simple. Also, the animation time for Brute Follow-Up is incorrect in Mids and it should be the same as Scrappers.

Follow-Up -> Focus -> Slash attack chain
Scrapper: 662.04 damage, 167.18 DPS
Brute with 75 Fury: 646.63 damage, 163.29 DPS
Brute with 100 Fury (not sustainable in most situations): 725.68 damage, 183.25 DPS

But, there's a better attack chain for Brutes since they get Gloom.

Follow-Up -> Focus -> Strike -> Gloom (Strike is used for the faster animation time. It has the same base DPA as Slash, according to Mids.)
Brute with 75 Fury: 905.98 damage, 180.61 DPS
Brute with 100 Fury: 1016.71 damage, 202.69 DPS


So, Claws is the rare case where Brutes perform better DPS in an average situation with a powerset that gives a permanent damage buff.

Would a Super Strength / Fiery Aura Scrapper do more damage than the Brute version?

I would just like to point out that Dark Melee is a much better set on a Scrapper than a Brute. Scrapper's higher base damage means damage buffs work better on them. Brute's Fury damage bonus gets added to any buffs they receive, so damage buffs have their effects diluted.

The math has been done before and shows that any set with a permanent damage buff will do more damage on the Scrapper than the Brute. If you don't believe me, set it up in Mids. Don't forget to enhance the powers.

At 50, fire and cold damage are fairly rare. I would change the Aegis sets out for 4 Reactive Armors and try to get smashing and lethal defenses up to 45%. The 5th Reactive Armor isn't necessary.

Physical Perfection should not be slotted better than your other regeneration or recovery powers because it has the lowest base values. The same slot would give more recovery or stamina in a power with a higher base value.

Combat Jumping does not need endurance reduction. I wouldn't use more than 2 slots usually because the base defense value is so low.

Rage is a great to-hit buff and damage buff. With it, you don't need Focused Accuracy. The defense debuff can be avoided by simply double-stacking it. Even if you activate Rage while it is debuffing you, the debuff will go away.

The words that say "high damage" in the power description do not translate into high DPS. My first post describes how to look at powers' actual damage per activation times and formulate a better attack chain.

A tier 4 Spiritual Alpha is worth the extra effort. It affects ALL of your powers that can accept recharge, not just Hasten. It doesn't require an extra slot in your build to reach perma-Hasten when your slot could be more useful elsewhere. In addition, the tier 4 alpha boosts bypass more of the enhancement diminishing returns and make it easier to run top attack chains as well as make it easier to have perma-Hasten.