it really depends on your play style,... i'd suggest you figure out and develope a concept you like first and then find what would best fit that concept... with scrappers there really is no bad powerset combos ... there is alot to learn in building a scrapper, and each power set combo has its own individual learning curve, one word of advice... power pool's are nice, but do NOT get sucked into chooseing too many too early at the cost of neglecting your primary and secondary powers,... if you have any questions about anything in perticular, feel free to ask in these forums, most people here will be glad to help
Hi Arathall, welcome to the game.
Most people around here would suggest something like katana/willpower as a beginner set. It's a fairly straight forward, no maintenance combination that starts off decent and is fairly tough. You basically toggle on your powers and you're good to go.
My first scrapper back in I4 was a Claws/Dark Armor. It's much much more complicated to play, but I think in the long run a learned a lot more about the game mechanics with a more complicated/endurance heavy combination. It also spurred me to learn more about how to make an effective build, as something like Kat/WP is very straightforward.
Basically, it's almost impossible to make a bad scrapper. They are a fairly well balanced class and all cater well to the scrapper playstyle, which is to flip out and kill things.
The main concepts to damage mitigation in armor sets are defense, resistance, healing, and regeneration. Some sets offer a mixture of all of these elements, some are more heavily weighted towards one. The difference between healing and regeneration is healing is an instant HP gain, like I'm sure you've seen in any number of other games. Regeneration is the amount of HP you gain back over time. Sets that rely on Regen drastically improve that amount, as ALL ATs in the game have passive regeneration.
Resistance: You usually get hit, but the amount of damage you take is reduced by how much protection your armors provide to that particular type of attack.
Defense: You have the ability to outright avoid attacks. It basically makes enemies miss you A LOT more often, but when you do get hit, it hurts a lot more.
Invuln: Good resistance against common damage types, the more foes around you, the stronger you get. Built as kind of a hybrid to both deflect attacks, and soften the attacks that do hit you. Mix of defense and resistance.
Super Reflexes: Designed to allow you to straight up avoid attacks. The game rolls a die to see whether or not you get hit. Fully enhanced and at high levels that die usually rolls in your favor. Almost purely defense based, but it does have a scaling built in damage resistance factor where the lower your HP, the more damage resistance you gain.
Dark Armor: Designed to reduce the damage you take from attacks. Enemies will rarely miss you but they deal a lot less damage thanks to your armor. Comes with a HUGE heal and some good AoE control abilities to increase your survivability. Mostly resistance with a self heal and some soft-control.
Willpower: A naturals choice. No fancy graphics. The intended theme was geared more towards a natural strong guy. You have the ability to deflect and absorb some blows, but it's main source of mitigation is through regenerating HP and endurance very quickly. Combination of defense, resistance, and regeneration.
Regeneration: Think your "healing factor" type comic character and there you go. Very clicky and relies on self heals and powers that drastically boost your regeneration. Obviously this set relies on healing and regenerating.
Firery Aura: This set is less durable than others but makes up for it in ways to boost your damage. It's got a toggle that makes flames shoot out of your body that damage the enemies constantly. It's a resistance based set and has decent resists to most damage types, but it's main source of survival is a fast recharging self-heal.
Shield Defense: Kind of a mish-mash of SR and...something else. It's also less durable than others but trades that off with the ability to massive boost your damage with a toggle power that gives you about 10% extra damage for every foe in melee range with you. It's also got a HUGE targeted AoE damage ability. If your goal is to be as damaging as you can be, Shield Defense if your secondary. It's a mix of +HP, defense and some resistance, but mostly defense.
Wow, thanks a lot for the advice.
I'm trying out a BS/SD scrapper out right now. So far it's a lot of fun. I've just gotten to level 6 and i'm wondering what pool set powers would most benefit my character, anything you guys would recommend taking over others?
Once again, Thanks in advance. 
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Wow, thanks a lot for the advice.
I'm trying out a BS/SD scrapper out right now. So far it's a lot of fun. I've just gotten to level 6 and i'm wondering what pool set powers would most benefit my character, anything you guys would recommend taking over others?
Once again, Thanks in advance.
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Fitness Pool is a near must, Stamina will allow you to fight longer and harder and without it, you might bottum out and lose your toggles, also things are much smoother with it.
next you'll want a travel pool, I recommend combat super jump (it's one of the fastest out of the box and combat jumping is a nice addition to defense.) Speed is good as well (very fast and hasten can be very useful.)
o'kay,... like i said, dont go nutz with the power pools at the cost of your primary and secondary powers, but Nog gives good advice...
Fitness is a standard for most every build, reguardless of AT, over 85% (5% dont know what they are doing, 5% dont care what they're doing, and 5% just know what they're doing too dam well) of the player base uses it and there is a very good reason why, you'll want to get Stamina when it unlocks at lvl 20, which also requires 2 choices from the pool before that point, you'll want health as well and that unlocks at lvl 14, as long as you've chosen one of the first two, so decide between swift and hurdle ... swift makes your base movement speed faster, hurdle makes you jump speed and hight faster/higher ... with that option hurdle is faster aslong as you dont mind bunny-hopping everywhere ...
also the leaping pool is one of the better travel power pools for a melee type, combat jump will boost your def higher and cost very very little endurance to keep toggled on, than at 14 you can take super jump which is one of the best travel powers as it allows for both horizontal and vertical movement with that combined with hurdle, your jump speed will be extremely fast and high (leaping over tall buildings in a single bound'ish) ...
if you figure those 5 (combat jump / super jump / hurdle / health / stamina) ... you get a new power every even lvl (until you hit your 30's) ... at lvl 6 to lvl 20, that's 8 power choices, if you devote those 5 choices that leaves you with 3 more which you deffinately want from your primary/secondary ... since you went with the sword&board theme ... i'd suggest Parry (will help your youngling surviveability) Active Defense (your mez protection, Very much needed, two recharge enh's) and Against All Odds (it's just that awesome) ...
also a few other words of advice, dont bother with confront (or really any of the scrapper AT taunts) about 95% of scrappers will tell you it's worthless, leave the taunting to the tankers, no point in wasteing time taunting them when you could be hacking them to pieces, plus AAO has a nice taunt aura in it already,... be sure to research sloting options, lvl 1-11 TO's, lvl 12-21 DO's , lvl 22+ SO's (there's also IO's both basic and set types and HO's... but dont worry about that stuff right now) i'd suggest attacks slot acc first, two slots worth, the damage 3 slots worth, and the sixth slot to your tastes, either rech or endred, ect... def toggles one endred and three def ... there are plenty of guides poping up all the time with lots of info you can read up on... but the best advice i can give is "HAVE FUN"
My first Scrapper and only 50 so far is a Broadsword/Super Reflexes scrapper, so somewhat comparable to yours. I don't know much about Shields, but from what I do know it's defensive like SR, and late-blooming- at the higher levels, these defense based sets are very good and with a little tweaking, number crunching and a lot of money you can push the limits of survivability, but until then, they're kinda squishy.
HOWEVER, we both have one thing in common: Parry. This little power does very little damage, sure, but it gives you a temporary boost to Melee and Lethal defense (two of the most common attack types you're likely to face), that can easily be stacked on top of each other. Once you hit 50 and start tweaking your build, Parry can generally be dropped since it's served its purpose, but until then it'll make your life so much easier. It's good attack chain fodder, and nothing's more hilarious than finishing off a Boss, Elite Boss or even ArchVillain with it.
As said above, skip Confront. By the way, Broad Sword is one of the slowest melee sets in the game (Energy Melee may be the only one slower), but highly damaging to offset it- a critical hit with a Broad Sword attack is just plain nasty (except when it's Parry).
By the way, you can unlock a ton of new weapon skins for your sword, and several for your shield as well. See below:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Weapon_C...ion#Broadsword
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Shield_Customization
You also might wanna bookmark that wiki in general, it's the invaluable source of information on the game besides these forums (and with less flamewars).
Happy scrappin'!
Thanks a lot for the advice guys, i'll try out your suggestions and if I have anymore questions i'll be sure to post them here.
I'm new to the game, I have been playing for just a few days now and I was thinking about trying a scrapper out.
I was wondering if you guys might have any suggestions on what to pick or not to pick.
Thanks in advance.