Claws. Scrapper or brute, /dark or /elec.

Server downtime makes me want to build alts. I want to do claws as I haven't done it before, and the same goes for the two secondaries above. Which AT and set combo is the better idea? I've been out of the game a long time, and the numbers dont mean much to me anymore when I look at them.

Early maturation is a big pro here, I don't have the patience to grind up to a good point these days.

Friends don't let friends play Dark Armor.

Fixer. Don't play Dark Armor.


SERIOUS POST MODE:

Depends on your definition of "Early maturation".

And if you plan on IO'ing at all.

If you're planning on SOing for most of the run..

Dark Armor does have a bit of an early golden period due to Dark Regeneration, but it falters in the mid 30s.

Elec Armor matures later than Dark Armor BUT doesn't suffer from the "ok, wtf am I playing this set" syndrome 35-50.

I recommend Electric Armor!

lol, I remember how very strongly you feel about dark armor. Duly noted. Endless recharge and endurance sound pretty sweet too, and I understand elec comes with a heal now.

As for maturation, so long as I can get it up to and through the 20s without getting bored and making another Mastermind, its good.

Claws progresses nicely from early levels especially well, because you get Spin at level 6. From a min/max building standpoint, since you're looking at /Dark and /Elec as secondaries I would build it as a Brute. Either secondary power's damage aura would help to maintain higher fury levels, thus you'll be doing damage near or better than a Scrapper would and be much sturdier with more HP and higher resistance values. With the proper set IO's Dark Armor is near unkillable as they come in this game but requires a significant budget. Electric Armor provides a nice recharge bonus power in Lightning Reflexes that pairs well with your quick recharging attacks allowing you to double stack Follow Up with ease while the set as a whole is less endurance heavy than Dark Armor. Electric Armor is also a cheaper build with IO's compared to Dark Armor. If you're not looking to use set IO's or at best you're looking at a budget build, go with a Claws/Electric Armor Brute.

There is only one reason to play Dark Armor over Electric, and that is Fear Protection IMO.

That will almost never come up in PVE, sooo...

Dark Armor does have "THE BEST HEAL IN THE GAME!!11" but I also feel it's the anchor that weighs the entire set down and it's innate negatives outweighs it's positives.

Also, do it on a brute.

Claws/Elec is one of these combos where the brute version is much more interesting. Higher damage on powers, and while the recharge is also slower, it's still fast enough to not cause a problem. Higher resistance cap, and you will hit 90% energy with just SOs. Some aggroholding capabilities, so stuff doesn't scatter to the four winds as soon as you kill one minion while Lightning Field is running.

Brute, /electric.

Dark is nice, and both it and electric are serious contenders for the crown with IO's, but I prefer electric. Using Dark Regen often will also cause slightly more redraw.

Most definitely brute over scrapper. Claws has been numerically proven to be better on brutes. And I'd suggest elec. Dark is known for huge end problems, while elec is known for completely UNLIMITED end. Even though end isn't as big of a deal now as it used to be (since you can get a lot of it from IO's), never having to worry about it is very nice.

I have a barely-IO'ed ss/elec brute at 49, and a endurance-IO'ed dark/stone tank at 34. So, I haven't seen the full potential of both, but there are things that i like about Elec armor over Dark armor.

---I love having tons of endurance.

---I dislike being slow debuffed. Dark's heal is amazing, but under a heavy slow debuff, I realize how much i lean on that heal.

---I dislike being -tohit debuffed. Again, Dark's heal needing to hit has sometimes made me sweat under heavy debuff situations.

What do Dark Armor lovers do about the last two things, in particular? Does a decent amount of defense enable one to not really worry about slow or -to hit debuffs?

Microcosm, my rationale for preferring dark is thus. Both of the sets are "easy" to softcap. Both of the sets have some measure of endurance protection which I value far more than I used to given the direction highbie content has gone lately. Elec's advantages are clear - recharge is never bad, and infinite endurance certainly doesn't hurt either. I disagree with you, though, that energy is the damage type least often coupled with smashing and lethal - in my experience, that would be psi. Indeed, not only is it hard for non-positional characters to defend against psi, you get literally no psi defense from set bonuses, whereas e/n defense naturally comes along with s/l defense to a somewhat lesser extent. Dark does have a relative weakness to energy but its relative strength to psi balances this to some extent.

Next, consider endurance. Elec is undeniably superior here as dark has well earned its reputation as an endurance sucker, but cardiac isn't the only way to make up endurance problems. The better option, I find, is ageless. As you say, this enables you to take musculature and enjoy all the advantages thereof while still giving you (and your team) unlimited endurance. Not only that, you get a massive recharge bonus comparable, I suspect, to a handful of force feedback procs going off for ageless' duration.

What do you give up for ageless? Well, depending on your preference, either barrier or rebirth. It is here that dark's real strength over elec becomes clear. Elec benefits greatly from rebirth and is a natural fit for it, but dark just doesn't need* that much extra survival when it already has so much in dark regen.

So, if what I've said so far is relatively uncontroversial, we're left with the dark and the elec both softcapped to at least s/l, with musculature alpha and effectively unlimited endurance and staggeringly good healing. Dark has at least as strong of a recharge bonus as elec despite not having one built in at all. Dark's ace in the hole at this point is that it can completely ignore fear and confuse. "So what," one might bellow. Well, the devs may have forgotten that those effects existed for the game's first six years, but since then they've remembered with a vengeance. Currently that protection is the difference between being able to solo the sabotage on lambda with three or four lucks and needing three or four lucks and a mess of breakfrees, which I personally don't carry on meleers as it strikes me as silly. This is for a chunk of a trial that lasts like five minutes - if in the future our exposure to fear or confuse effects becomes necessarily longer, the gap becomes impossible to make up with inspirations. Something to think about.

Holy words.

*Werner et al feel differently.

I can see where you are coming from. What I said about energy attacks though is not a feeling or anecdotal in any way. There are many and frequent attacks that are pure energy in this game, including the trials, more so than anything else by far, psi included (and electric is no pushover against psi). In a pure survivability analysis you need to make up for that on a dark or you will be in some tight spots, dark regen or no.
Confuse and fear don't bother me much (my electric solos lam collections too) because I tend to take tactics, which offers some confuse protection and some confuse/fear resistance. On my fire brute that lacks tactics it ca be a big problem, especially in baf during the escape.

Actually if anyone has an uber claws/dark build they feel like sending me (regardless of the discussion, I just want a good reference) I'd appreciate it. Only requirement is that it can run followup - focus - slash and has spin.

Edit: brute specifically

If your goal is top end DPS, or top end build performance - you want to go Scrapper.

There is no real reason to go brute at the top end.


If you don't care about that, you should just pick which ever AT fits your concept.