Good secondary for DA?

I was initially gonna pair it with DM because I thought those AoE drains would provide good taunts on everything. But now I'm also considering Mace or EM (preferably EM) to combine with Oppressive Gloom and turn it into a stun bot. Also up for other suggestions.

I don't want to do FM or SS because I've done them before. I'm worried SM is going to be too END heavy with DA.

Also, I'm wondering if maybe I'd prefer DA on a Scrapper instead, since I have no experience tanking. I've wanted a DA toon for a long time now but have never been able to decide what to make it. (A Scrap, Brute, or Tank, or what power set to pair with it).

Was thinking maybe doing a Spines/DA Scrap but I can't see any real reason to choose DA for Spines over FA or especially ELA since it's so great with END in comparison.

Well I will say dark is definately one of the more challenging but fun routes to go whilst tanking.
Your secondary I will say depends on what you are wanting to do, if you are wanting to be a team based main tanker, the I would suggest looking into fire, ice or dark since fire has a lot of AoE type powers for agro gaining, ice has a fair amount of control and slows, and dark has another heal with it (although with dark primary the -tohit wont do you much good since you have no defence).
If you want to solo or PvP then SS or Energy are the best routes generally since they specialise in single target damage rather than AoE damage.
Mace isnt a bad choice when linked with dark since it has a fair amount of mitigation with the stuns, but there are better choices if mitigation is what you were after, although mace isnt too bad of a middleman between mitigation and damage since the changes.

Personally the most fun tanker I ever ran in all my years playing them on EU was a dark/fire. It was great to hold agro with and it had some big AoE capabilities yet still required some challenge to it with timing of dark regeneration in larger mobs, particularly in Cimerora

If you went with the spines scrapper version you would lose some resists but gain a bit more damage, spines is also possible to tank with but on a scrapper its miles harder but solo it would be much more efficient.

As a little tip if you want to tank with Dark primary tanker, with something with a lower mitigation like fire, consider taking aid self and slotting a single interupt IO in it. A few times now its saved my butt in harder hitting mobs because Dark Regeneration is down. Im not saying Dark is squishy, its far from it but it is a heal reliant build for the most part and having a safety heal in case of emergencys isnt a bad thing

As for Stone Melee being too end heavy.. I wouldnt know since I havent played the two together but I have played them both seperately to 50, and I will say both of them can be managed fairly easily following a simple plan of aiming to get endurence cost under 10 or to match recharge time if less than 10s with stone and with dark putting one endurence IO in every armor toggle on 0.33/s plus two in each toggle costing more endurence than that helps a lot. As a rule though, get dark regeneration slotted with 6 slots ASAP. I slotted mine with two accuracy, two endurence reduction and two recharge IOs since the heal portion is basically covered by amount of mobs anyway.

Also Physical Perfection in Epics is your best friend in any dark armor build

In before Dechs

I'd say Fire Melee is very good at holding aggro, from personal experience and feeding right into Dechs' pitch for his DA/Fire.

EM is good for tanking even since the ET nerf, but I will say that EM is a tad slow, and EM may lack a bit in the punchvoke category as a result.

I can say this much though:

Stone Melee: Goodbye Endurance - prepare to IO "like woah" for recov.
Electric Melee: Not bad, has a few AOEs to help with aggro. Lighter on the blue bar.
Ice Melee: Good if you want slows but not much else. A friend of mine has a beastly Dark/Ice tank.
Mace: Dependable if lackluster damage.

Fire, SS, DM, EM, Elec, Axe or the future Kinetic Melee would be my choices. Maybe SS moreso because footstomp is the king of damage mitigation and aggro, in my subjective opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

I have to agree with Finduilas. Clobber is a beast, and crowd control is actually better than footstomp in my opinion. Higher damage, same target cap, much faster recharge. Even though it's a 180 cone instead of a pure pbaoe, you can quite easily hit the full 10 targets. Beyond this you still have a standard pbaoe in whirling mace and a nice chunky melee cone in shatter. Granted, you don't have rage to boost all this, but you get to cycle everything much faster.

Having said all of this, my dark/ is a dark/fire. I probably would have made him dark/mace if my last char hadn't been /mace though. Fire is pretty amazing.

DA/SM as suspected is heavy on the end bar. It is however good fun, and I IOd mine at 32 with a load of kinetic combats and ended up with 45% smashing/lethal defence. The keys are theft of essence proc in dark regen, performance shifter chance of +end in stamina, I used physical perfection and stuffed another pshifter in there plus a miracle unique in health and my end was well under control.

On a team, if you're really suffering for end, you just spam fault, and combined with OG, you just keep stuff stunned.