/SD Weakness?

I am still relatively new so I hope this isn't a dumb question, but I've been playing with the various scrapper secondaries in Mid's and all seem to have their weakness except shield defense. Am I missing something? I mean, I'm guessing it's something that I'm missing "on paper", because it has very good defense combined with good resistance, all status prot covered, and a boost to offense. All this with reasonable endurance toggles. I did a quick and dirty build of /SD and got capped melee and ranged def w/40% AOE def; 30% s/l res w/20%(approx) res everything else, 10 or more status prot in all but taunt,placate, and teleport; 65% res def debuff; and 220% Regen/155% Recov. All this with a built-in (Against All Odds) boost to primaries. I really hope I'm missing something. *scratches head and wonders why first char was /SR*
*scratches head and wonders why I didn't download Mid's sooner*

Defense debuffing mobs are incredibly common?

^ Defense debuffing mobs aren't much of a threat when you're running at ~90% DDR and 45% defense.

The only thing you're missing, vinque, is it's actually possible to get more DDR than 65% (doublestacking AD with HOs). It's really a perfect build from a minmaxer PoV given unlimited budget, the only downside is it can't be paired with every primary.

If you got the dough shields is the way to go. I don't dump billions into most builds so I went BS for parry so that I wouldn't need to focus as much on jamming melee def into the build.

Some weaknesses though?
No perception
No -rech protection or slow protection
Moderate DDR protection unless you double stack active def and use HO's in it
No end drain protection

But these things become much less of an issue with high def, the only things that have personally bothered me is the lack of perception (rarely) and the lack of slow protection more often. I really like that my SR can just stroll through debuff patches like quicksand with barely noticing.

I don't have max DDR achieved yet so something like an earth thorn caster can pretty much single handily cause my death by drastically reducing my def and slowing me to a halt. ie sitting duck.

That said, if you have the inf you can actually build those very few weaknesses right out more or less.

Yeah, I think the "unlimited budget" thing is the drawback. It's harder to softcap than /SR, and therefore more expensive, or at least so I've found. You also don't get that recharge buff /SR does.

Yea... when you add in IOs, it's pretty hard to see any drawback to */SD (which was intended to be a lower level of survivability offset by the increased level of damage output) because IOs are so good at completely glossing over the comparatively low native survivability of */SD. Of course, it doesn't even take all that much inf to nearly completely offset the weaknesses of */SD (because it's a positional defense set and positional defense bonuses are all over the place), and you're still getting all of the tangential benefits (and then some).

Another weakness I can think of is non-positional attacks, especially of a psionic nature. But then, most everyone has the hole in their armor anyway. The other secondaries have their place and uses, but I just live Shields because the drawbacks hardly outweigh the benefits.

Math:

100 damage attack every 3 seconds, 100/3 = 33dps

20% haste = 2.5 seconds = 100/2.5 = 40dps, 23% gain

20.6% damage boost (3 enemies) = 120.6 = 40dps, 23% gain

So any time you're fighting more than 3 mobs the damage boost aura is going to outweigh the dps gain of having Quickness. That's until you hit the 400% damage cap anyway. Or if you're stuck fighting a single mob. Quickness also makes it much easier to get perma-hasten. That and it's vastly easier to soft cap SR than it is with Shields. You also have the choice between a static 35% S/L (17% other) res vs. the scaling (up to 50%) resistance of SR to consider. There's greener grass to be had on either side really.

Yeah, a Kin will usually do that on the damage end, but is there a recharge cap? I know a single SB isn't quite enough to get you there if there is. In that situation SR will shine a little brighter.

The situation I like quite a bit about Shields is the fact that I can herd with AAO. Very very handy for those AoE fests. Something SR just plain can't do.

Edit: Redundant words are redundant.

No spines, claws, katana or dual blades. Thats the only thing holding the set back from epic levels of awesomeness.

No heal. Yes the tier9 grants extra heal, but no extra heal component with it. IT is also a end heavy set. With Body Mastery: Conserve Power and the new Physical Perfection, it's not so bad.

End heavy set? Dark is an end heavy set, sir. Shields are middle-of-the-road end use at best. Currently at level 38 on my ElM/SD (yes, me too) I don't really have any end issues going from mob to mob killing while I have both SJ and Sprint going. I do have a PShifter and a Numina, but I wouldn't call those a major save.

No heal kind of sucks, but SR doesn't have a heal either. Must be a defense set thing.

Also... /Shield does suffer from the same problem as /SR, though less so. If you trick out a /DA, /Fire, or /Willpower well enough... you could ask "why play shields."

+ AaO
+ DDR

It could be me sucking at DA, Fire and WP, but I can't get anywhere near Shield level of performance with any of these secondaries. Survivability ? It'll never even be close unless I fight the very specific foes who haven't defense debuffs. Damage ? Not close either, AaO-fueled Shield Charge is as good as a damage aura against multiple foes (without considering AaO also boosts every other attack you have), and AaO is better than a damage aura for ST damage.

If anything, everytime I roll a new scrapper the question I ask myself is "from a performance point of view, why play anything that *isn't* Shield ?", and I still haven't any answer to that.