I'd either go dark/ice or ice/ice. Ice melee has lots of good controls in it, which sounds like what you're looking for. Several powers are AoE as well.
I'd suggest /dark melee for your secondary, and dark/, ice/, or willpower/ for your primary.
Dark melee gives you an opportunity to slot up several procs that are somewhat off the beaten path for melee sets, as do dark/ and ice/ armors.
Willpower is somewhat more conventional, but after they frankenslot for +healing and endurance, and get two generic Taunts in, Rise to the Challenge is a good place to stick the surprisingly affordable Dark Watcher Despair Chance for Recharge Slow proc. All of my high level WP characters get one eventually.
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I'd go ice/stone. EA will make the endurance have effects of stone trivial.
dark/ has more mezz type primary powers, but with a corresponding higher endurance use (esp with dark regen and cloak of fear). But you'll probably get board of being out of blue all the time.
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
ice/stone. AE damage & recharge debuffs, ae knockdowns, ae disorient, excellent single-target damage capabilites, and the endurance to fuel it all for as long as you like.
I'd throw in another vote for Ice/Stone (given your criteria) although Ice/DM has more flexibility in the build I think (more skippable powers when combined).
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I'd throw in another vote for Ice/Stone (given your criteria) although Ice/DM has more flexibility in the build I think (more skippable powers when combined).
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Ditto
Another vote for Ice/Stone
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
I'll vote dark/ice or dark/mace
I've been trying to like dark...so much...at these are the 2 I'm currently trying to work with. Stun stacking for mace and lots of tools from ice are pretty cool and may be what you're looking for.
If you're going to go Dark Armor, I'd go Dark/Mace over Dark/Ice as you can stack the stuns between Mace and OG in Dark.
Heraclea has a Dark/Ice (iirc) and she seems to be having a hard time marrying those two together.
Thanks very much for all the suggestions! Yeah, those suggestions sound good (and I might try both Dark/Mace and Ice/Stone).
I gotta throw a vote out to my favorite tanker combo that induces my favorite effect: Fire/Fire/Pyre. Fire off BU+FE+FSC+Combustion+Fireball and maybe throw in Burn, and you get my favorite effect: A ton of mobs all lying around you waiting to be teleported to the Zig! 
Seriously though, Ice/Stone (and maybe throw in earth epic with AoEs) would probably be fun.
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Hee hee! Yes, I'm quite familiar with the excellency of defeat as the ultimate debuff.
Anyway, yeah, I'm going to do Ice/Stone. It surprised me how many recommendations that combo got in this thread, and when I think about it, I can see why. Energy Absorption goes a long way to addressing one of Stone Melee's biggest issues (endurance consumption), and it combines that with an armor set that has a nice debuff aura and a fun damage aura.
Actually I'm gonna disagree with the majority here. As I was reading through your post, an awesome combo continually came to mind and I think it'd really suit you well: Dark/Stone.
Stone Melee is a lot TON of fun, IMO. Even from the aesthetics alone: huge, beastly sound effects, rock chunks flying off your attacks, lots of knockdown, great animations, screen shaking... It feels so STRONG!
But hey! It is really strong! Stone Fists is quick and good DPA; the stone mallets feel like your pounding your enemy with all the weight of the earth! Seismic Smash is superawesome- HUGE damage and a mag4 hold (huge end cost, though). Tremor is your only AoE damage but it's fun! Huge slow-mo animation knocking down most nearby enemies.
And then there's Fault, the true gem of the set, which synergizes perfectly with Dark Armor! If you've never tried this power before, you will love it: a huge stomp causing PBAoE knockdown, mag 2-3 stun, good duration, quick recharge. This will stack with your Oppressive Gloom for some ridiculous mitigation, stunning most enemies in a spawn, even bosses. You'll be a tanktroller!
Yes you are correct about the endurance problems- I have a dark/mace (fit my concept) and it has been challenging to keep that blue bar up, but totally rewarding and super fun. To alleviate early game woes, I'd suggest holding off on death shroud until you get stamina, and slotting your attacks with mostly acc/end. This will keep you in the battle longer to soak up all that aggro while your friends tear the enemies apart, and you'll likely need that end for your expensive full heal. I also suggest Tough for Dark Armor, but with all your mitigation you prolly don't need it.
I know you already decided, but consider rolling one of these too!
So, I've been thinking of trying out a Tanker. Interested in suggestions of powersets. Here's some of my experiences of what's generally been fun for me short and long term.
I took Provoke on one of my MMs and had fun using it (I'll probably take it on the others). That's making me seriously consider rolling a Tank, to help both manage aggro and laugh off attacks on me.
In terms of melee I've played one Fire/Dark Scrapper (24) and one SS/Elec Brute (19). Neither really interested me--playstyles consisting of 'jump in and smash smash' tend to bore me after a while. Mind, I probably simply haven't played them high enough to get the really good stuff (notably, the Fire/Dark isn't high enough to get OG or CoF). I suspect part of the problem was my choices of attack sets--not enough of the stuff I find cool. As for what I find cool, I'm about to get to that.
My favorite toons (I've tried most of the ATs) are consistently the ones who can cause enemies to run around at a slow crawl, make them fall down enmass, trap them or otherwise leave them helpless, have them cowering in fear, get them staggering around in a daze, and so on. You guessed it, I play a lot of controllers (though I'm really getting into Dominators as well after their recent buff).
That's not all, though. I like to cause large-scale suffering in my enemies. I.e. AoE effects. I like damage auras (a large part of my enjoyment of my Fire/Rad stems from my habit of constantly running her auras, making her a hazard to be even close to). I like playing with my enemies as they try to kill me, though if it takes too long, I tend to get bored of it. It doesn't have to be uber-fast soloing speed, though.
For those reasons, I'm considering Ice Armor and Dark Armor. Honestly, I'm leaning toward Dark Armor simply because I like the aesthetics, even if they do obscure my costumes. Well, I can just switch the powers off to RP anyway.
However, Ice Armor has going in its favor that I enjoy seeing messages for enemies missing me, and it does have the slow aura as well as a damage aura.
I'm not sure about secondaries, though. Stone melee looks like a nice array of effects, but endurance-heavy (especially problematic if combined with Dark Armor) and I'm not 100% sure about the looks. War Mace looks interesting but I'm generally not big on weapon sets for the most part (though I could imagine having fun with this). Ice Melee looks fun with the KD patch and the hold. A lot of the rest seem to be too straightforward "smash smash" for my tastes.
Any thoughts? Suggestions for sets I'm overlooking, or advice about the ones I'm considering?