abnormal_joe

Two part question.

1.Is this proc back amongst the working? (used to not fire in Opressive Gloom).

2.Does anyone know exactly what the debuff is when it does fire?

I know you pretty much made up your mind but I had a dm/elec brute once upon a time and power surge+ soul drain even on default colors is so bright it physically hurts to look at the screen.

If you have leveled several tanks and scrappers you probably already have a good feel for the damage difference between the two ATs.
Regarding survivability there are a number of ways to approach the set.
Personally I think electric armor is plenty sturdy, even with SO slotting and the possible addition of the fighting pool.
If you are willing/able to dip into IOs there are a number of options for adding still more survivability.
1.Your heal carries a hefty chunk of +regen, with the addition of health, +regen, and +hp either from sets or accolades you can push the regen level quite high. Doubly attractive since your primary mitigation is +resist which is the flipside of the regen equation.
2.Slot for recharge. You have a very good heal the faster it comes back the better.
This has long been a prefered approach for fire armor which is kind of electric slightly squishier cousin.
3.Slot for s/l or melee defense. Even if you don't push it as far as softcap it will make a large difference. I would recommend aiming for somewhere around 30%
4.Slot for +resist. On my elec tank I was able to cap to energy, s/l, and psi dmg withvery good neg numbers. fire/cold was decent though I havn't bought the purples to finish boosting that stat as yet.

I'm fairly certain you will be happier with a tank if survivability is a concern of yours. Either way enjoy the new alt!

My experience is somewhat similar to Awesome's.
In my case I ran a fire/shield scrapper up to 50 with a focus on softcap, +dmg and a little recharge. He cost a fortune and had the performance to prove it.
I then leveled a shield/elec tank to 50, also heavily IOed. It took almost nothing to softcap so I got the recharge high enough to get the nukes down to about 30 second recharge and built up the damage bonus until my Gaussians proc put me over the AT cap.
For fighting big foes I liked the scrapper better but that has more to do with fire's ST dmg than the difference between the ATs.
For clearing missions full of minions, lts, and the like I solidly prefer the tank.
I would strongly recommend a tank but as you can see from my sig I'm a little biased.

I happen to have a level 50 Ice/Mace who was quite sturdy. I opted to use him strictly for teaming (as opposed to soloing) so I grabbed leadership, built in as much recharge as I could and went to town.
High recharge meant double stacked and saturated EA. Which means well past softcap defense. Hoarfrost became a seldom needed reactionary heal.
That much recharge also means a once to twice a spawn total refill of my blue bar. I ended up ditching fitness completely with no ill effects.
Yes you heard me right, I got rid of stamina.
I would not suggest that route for a soloist but for teaming it worked great.

Just a quick note on brawl use. As previously mentioned it costs zero endurance and recharges fast. With a single level 40 ACC it should hit reliably particularly since you have invincibility and rage to boost your tohit. If you can spare the slots I highly recommend slotting a handful of damage procs. They should boost your ST dmg a tidy bit while having the added benefit of bypassing both your foes resistances and your own rage crashes.

I would lean toward Axe for the IO potential myself.
A recharge build which currently is a favorable way to build a FA (amongst other primaries) can get a tidy return from loading up on Feedback procs.
You can also do sneaky stuff like loading up your attacks with four Kinetic Crashs and a couple generic dmg IOs. good all around slotting dirt cheap to slot and nicely covers any concerns re: you getting KBed.

Just in case it was not mentioned earlier, Cloak of Fear also applies a tohit debuff(enhanceable) which is functionally the same as +def (7% IIRC but feel free to double check that number).
And OG can slot the Absolute Amazement:Chance fo Tohit Debuff proc, though it was broken for a time and I have no clue how reliable/large a debuff it is.

I took it and love it on two of my three FAs. While I have enough experience, inspirations, IOs to make it seldom used. I love it when I do need it.
As mentioned it turns an impending teamwipe into a walk in the park.
It is a great IO mule. And it has a pretty gee whiz cool animation.

Like many other powers in the game it is situational. The bulk of the time it is a wasted pick but every so often it can salvage a situation where almost nothing else could.
While I understand the standard tanker angst re: a power that requires you to die first, I really like to have that rez nuke as an option.
I would love to see a better option for tanking a +4 dark ring mistress :P

Glad the guide is proving helpful. I was hoping as many folks as possible would be prompted to try my favorite AT.
Looking forward to adding energy melee to the list once released and updating some of the info, particularly for Dark Armor.

SR can hit 95% defense debuff resists without the use of elude.
So far I've run SR to 50 twice and I am working on it a thrid time.
Love it great set, but a durable armor set does not a tanker make.

It is not simply a question of how often you get hit.
Sometimes the RNG decides to hate you or a foe has a major tohit buff (quatz emenators or nemesis veng) SR has little or nothing besides player awareness to counter this.
Put an Ice tank in the same situation. He has.

-dmg and-recharge in Chilling Embrace (both effectively acting like +resist).
Dull Pain, which most Icers treat as a massive heal rather than a max hp power.
Much higher HP than a scrapper or brute in the first place.
Some resists which SR only gets after its taking dmg.
And Hibernate which is essentially an I win button. I have heard folks complain about losing aggro while phased but I helped a friend do some testing and discovered that either slotting the heal/recovery portion so you can exit sooner or slotting some taunt duration in taunt and/or auras will prevent you from losing aggro while your catching your breath.

RE the op:

If you have a few minutes check out the guide in my signature.
I have leveled every single tanker powerset to 50 primary and secondary.
The short version is every tank primary is plenty tough.
Which is toughest depends on the situation. Adding a substantial chunk of IOs will greatly increase the number of situations you can shine in. But every set has its kryptonite.
Enjoy your foray into the realm of tankers

I'm holding out for a patron that lets my tanks get their grubby mitts on Darkest Night.

More aggro, -tohit, and -dmg?

YES PLEASE!

Every once in a great while I will ***** myself out to a pug to get those last few bars to a highly desired power.
I always end up feeling tired, frustrated, and more than a little dirty.
Skanking seems a fine name for the practice.

Well if you want to get into the details you also have to consider Stone gets Earth's Embrace which gives even more HP and functions as a perfectly adequate self heal which WP lacks.
For most tank purposes heal>regen.

Minor thread jack but if I had to do all over again I would have gone Stone/DB.
Blinding Feint can easily be permaed and perfectly cancels out the -dmg from granite.
The nature of the armor also means that.....
1.I won't have to break a combo for a heal or somesuch.
2.The rather large attack chains mean I should be able to basically ingore the recharge penalty.

Heck I may roll one up anyway. Already tanked 500 levels whats another 50?

Perspective is a funny thing. You spend all your time running high level TFs you probably insist on taunt.
Run a lot solo/farms/radios you likely have little use for it.

Personally I always take it, but then again I miss gauntlet when I'm on a scrapper or brute.
Something about the zen motion of the spawn AI when you zoom the camera all the way out.

Word on the street has the average IQ level of the asphalt.
For the purposes of reaching an intelligent decision for the OP here are the mids numbers for a SOed stone tank with fighting/fitness.

Def:S/L 33% F/C 8% NRG/NEG 33% Psi 47%
Resists: S/L/F/C 39%
Regen 373%

For comparison.....Willpower with identical pools.

Def:S/L 13% F/C/NRG/NEG 28% Psi 23%
Resists: S/L 70% F/C/NRG/NEG/Tox 12% Psi 43%
Regen 568%

WP is generally consider one of the top tanker choices for a SO build but from where I'm sitting the sets seem fairly similar.
If Granite bothers you but you still want stone for concept reasons consider the following options.

1.Take and slot aidself.
2.IO for regen
3.IO for typed defense.

When I leveled my stone/fire I attempted (succesfully) to undo every granite penalty but the -Jump. I discovered quite by accident that I had a softcap typed defense build and could run without granite at all. Getting much more mileage out of my +rech, +dmg, & +runspeed.

RE:teleport you can either learn to use it efficiently with keymapping and binds or you can learn to navigate the maps without it. Both work but the first option is likely the easier one.

I've got a few I tried as scrankers (what I considered to be that particular hybrid).

SD/Elec: built for aoe nukage, softcapped though +grant cover and taunt so still a perfectly adequate teaming tank.

FA/SS/Pyre:Built for damage but with tough, high rech HF, taunt, and Wedding Band for AVs he tanks everything fine.

WP/SM: more of a ST build, great damage but again taunt and either capped resists or softcapped defense to nearly every damage type so plenty tough for any content I can imagine.

DA/DB: This is the only scranker I have built that felt a bit squishy to me. I have a potential build in the works that will give me extremely good defense while sacrificing very little of my juicy damage.

I guess my point is "scranker" and "team tank" are not mutually exclusive terms. After levelling every tanker powerset to 50 I see no problem with achieving both goals with one build, and its downright simple with dual builds. It would take a very extreme case of specialization (like a AV/Pylon soloist) to require you to sacrifice survivability to the point a team is in jeopardy.

This (Blue_Centurian"s preceding comment) is an excellent example of what I was mentioning in my earlier post.
He (assumption on my part) values the damage potential so highly that a "gone blue" brute is the obvious right answer.......for him. After all why sacrifice so much damage for that extra survivability that you really never need?

I will almost always play the tank (though I have levelled 4 scrappers and am working on my third brute) because I see things the other way. Why waste so much effort survivability and control for the extra damage that you do not really need?

It is a question of the players priorities. Fortunately for both of us the devs were smart enough to put four different melee classes into this game. That way we can all have our own way.

I have to agree nothing is "needed" though a few things are nice to have.
Here's my take on the whole scrapper/brute/tank thing.

The whole game is a balancing act between mitigation and dps.
In the current golden age of IOs willingness to invest time and (virtual) money in a build reduce the necessity of sacrifices. Making it more a choice of convenience.

A scrapper can build for damage cheapily and easily and thanks to AT modifiers can generate pain beyond what a tank can hope for. Building for godmode levels of mitigation without sacrificing damage take planning and an investment.

A tank will out survive a scrapper with minimal effort, and in some cases can achieve with SOs what a scrapper or brute is incapable of at any investment.
Building a tank for damage requires forethought and an investment but rarely if ever requires you to sacrifice durability or team support picks.

The choice boils down to personal preference. The vast majority of content you will face is spawns that contain a few bosses at worst. Hardly a real problem for either AT. Tier 9s and inspirations easily cover the rare fight where your skills and armor are lacking. A teamate or two covers the same holes.
For me personally, the tanks ability to manage aggro is its trump card. For other players that margin of extra damage at the top end of scrapper/brute performance is more important.
Choose what function has the larger impact on your enjoyment of the toon. Then patch the holes and push the envelope. I really don't think other player's expectations have anything to do with the choice unless of course they pay your sub for you.

Want to get a nice defense build without all the pesky IOs? Invest in Vengeance and invite that blaster as often as possible. Every time he or another teamates dies you get free godmode.

:P

I know, I know the tanky ego is offended by a power that requires a teamates death. But let's face it, there is always that one teamate that skill, taunt, and mighty feats of pixel manipulation cannot save from their own stupidity.