Scrapper vs Tank...

In terms of taking advantage of what Elec Melee has to offer, other than Shield Defense, between a Scrapper and Tank what's the best AT and defensive set to use with it for PVE?

I was leaning towards a Tank, but I had no idea what to pair it with. I initially asked this in the Tank forum and got 4 different answers, so nothing conclusive came of that. Scrappers are the other option. Brutes are out as I have enough, and Stalkers don't fit the concept.

good luck D.B.B.

Maybe you didn't get a conclusive answer on the Tank forum because there isn't one "best" primary to go with Electric Melee. It depends on what you like and what sort of build you're aiming for, neither of which you specified.

Do you prefer defense, resistance, extreme survivability, extra damage? Do you want a natural-looking character or are Fire, Ice or Stone options for you?

I'm not sure why you expected one definitive answer, it rarely works that way unless there's a clearly favored min-max favorite. In this case, Shield Defense is closest to being FOTM to combine with Electric Melee; other than that choice it's mostly personal preference.

There's something to be said for all the combos...

First off, do you even want to tank? If you want to tank, you're better off with a tank. Taunt beats Confront on tanking (though a SHield Scrapper holds aggro rather well).

Yes, yes, I know, people have tanked missions with just their aura and punchvoke, on tankers, but I've never seen one keep high level threats attention with just those two powers.

Shield is easy to softcap (for tankers even easier), but there's some things to be said about Fire Armor's Burn and Fiery Embrace for even more yummy damage numbers.

And judging by some Pylon numbers in the Scrapper thread, I'm wondering if Fire Armor won't come out ahead of Shield for damage. :O Still to early to tell of course, but I don't know...looks to be close either way!

I personally tend to favor defense-based sets for Scrappers/Stalkers and resistance-based sets for Tankers/Brutes

This may seem like an odd bit of advice, but if you want AoE from your epic set, you're much better off with Tanker than Scrapper.

I had enough fun on my SD/EM tank (I know, fotm - ick!...) that I made an EM/SD scrapper, too. I know SD is specifically what you did not want, but it's the only experience I have of having a tank and a scrapper with the same powersets. The scrapper wasn't as much fun as the tank - and I'm a huge scrapper fan. I guess this is because I ended up playing the tank like a scrapper (solo only! I do Tank for the team when I'm on a tank, of course!). It was SO much fun playing at /x8 and taunting bigger and bigger groups, then herding them all into yet another group who was ignoring me due to ED, and bashing bejeebers out of this huge group with Shield Charge and Lightning Rod. HUGE fun! (with extra fun bonus points if there was anything that blew up, like Rikti drones!). Though positionally soft-capped, the scrapper did not survive this process as well, I have to say. :/ That made the scrapper less fun (but still fun!).

So, any advice you get from anyone is going to depend on what you're looking for. Do you want to do tanking (the verb), as opposed to possessing a tank (the noun) who scraps?

It sounds like you want to scrap, rather than tank (but I could be wrong). Your point of choosing a tank is that you want to stay alive while doing said scrapping.

I've had the best results for staying alive on tanks with a defense-based primary (shield, ice are the ones I've tried). I have thus far not had any luck with damage aura scrappers - they're far to squishy for my taste. Have not yet tried one, but a damage aura tank (elec, fire, dark) might be just the thing for you to get the most damage out of your tank along with EM. But if you want to stay alive really, really well, do a defense-based armor set. If you don't want Shield, try Ice.