Melee AT for me?

All of the defensive powersets have pros and cons. Dark Armor is in a somewhat unique position in that nearly all of its shortcomings can now be mitigated or entirely eliminated using Inventions. This is what gives Dark Armor such strong potential.

Generally speaking, there are three paths to survivability - Defense (don't get hit), Resistance (get hit for less damage) and Regeneration (heal back damage faster than it can be dealt to you). On top of this you have Healing, which is active and by its nature reactive, but can supplement the other three.

Dark Armor combines strong resistances with modest Defense and the most powerful self-heal power in the game. It has very strong resistance to Psychic damage (the weakness of many other sets) and can be made very strong against Smashing, Lethal and Negative Energy damage as well. It has extremely good resistance to endurance drain (not immune but nearly so - Sappers aren't a problem) and offers some control options to further supplement its survivability. Self-rez powers garner mixed reviews, but of the self-rez powers Dark Armor has one of the best - Soul Transfer, which restores your health and endurance based on the number of enemies surrounding your body and deals a mag 30 (yes, thirty!) AOE stun.

So what's the downside? Some of the powers (Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear and to a lesser extent Death Shroud in particular) have high endurance costs. The powerset has no knockback protection. The Resistances are weak against Energy damage (one of the most common damage types in the game, especially in Incarnate content).

That sounds awful! Why is this my favorite defensive powerset?!? It's simple. The endurance costs can be mitigated. Dark Regeneration can be slotted with the Theft of Essence: chance for +End proc which makes the key power of the set much easier to use (sometimes it'll even gain you endurance!). The other powers can be slotted for endurance reduction and Incarnate powers such as Cardiac alpha, Ageless destiny and/or Support hybrid further take the edge off.

But no knockback protection? That sucks! Also easily fixed with -KB IOs. I use three for 12 points of protection, which is on par with what you'll get from powers that do include that protection in other powersets. Problem solved.

Weak against Energy? Noooooo! This is a big one, but again this is where Inventions come to your rescue. If you've spent some time making builds you'll have noticed that it's a lot easier to rack up significant Defense than it is Resistance. So starting off with good Resistance and then building Defense gets you further than going the other way, and Dark Armor already comes with some modest Defense in Cloak of Darkness to get you started. Popular build choices are Smashing/Lethal/Energy/Negative Energy softcap or Melee/Ranged/AOE softcap depending on the offensive powerset and what it lends itself towards (for example Titan Weapons gives a significant help towards Melee Defense, so you would likely go positional if using TW). Either way, the Defense will shield you from most Energy attacks and anything that does get through you can easily heal back using Dark Regeneration. Those numbers for Tankers - for more offensive-minded characters like Scrappers or Brutes, generally I'll go for the 'almost soft cap' of 32.5% rather than the softcap of 45% - that's softcap with one small purple inspiration active. This allows more of a build focus on damage output. That said, my DA tanker routinely does just what you described above - runs up to containers in Lambda and wails on them, sometimes all by himself.

The end result is a character with strong Resistances combined with capped Defenses, immune to the 'kryptonite' damage types, highly resistant to endurance drain - and if anything does manage to get lucky and spike past all that, he can heal himself back up from a sliver of HP to full health every 8 seconds or so. And if you do somehow manage to kill him, he'll just get right back up, hitting you with a mag 30 stun in the process, and you'll have to try and do it AGAIN.

I do love me some Dark Armor.

I think you need to make two ATs: A Claws/Electric Brute, and a Shield/Axe tanker. The latter so you can get a sense of being awesomely mighty at low levels, rather than having to wait.

That's a good point. I should have remembered that, I reviewed it not all that long ago when I was doing research for the PvP beginner's group I was involved in.

I find that 12 points of knockback protection is sufficient for the vast majority of knockback in the game, but you're quite correct that anything above that would affect my DA tank and wouldn't affect another armor with a traditional protection toggle.

Edit: By the way, Easily_Noobed, you should probably count every word of Arcanaville's as worth about a hundred of mine.

From my point of view Electric Armor and Dark armor have some strong similarities. I find it better to compare the differences. Both are Primarily resist sets with some extra stuff. Both have a damage aura. Both sets have good resist to most damage types, unlike Invuln for example which is more of a resist/defense hybrid IMO.

The differences between Electric and Dark are that Electric has better base resists, it's strong vs Energy and weaker vs Negative, which is the better option IMO, and it has some offensive utility in lightning reflexes and better end management tools. Dark has a much better heal, a little bit of defense, and some defensive tools, like Cloak of Fear and OG. One note on the Dark heal. While if you look at the numbers, Dark Regen is hugely better then Energize, in a lot of ways it's overkill. It is a great heal, I won't argue there, but the fact that it can heal huge amounts is a bit wasted since you only have 100% of a health bar.

Both are very strong defensive sets when combined with IOs. It's not super hard to get capped or near capped S/L Defense on both sets. Basically the question I see is do you want some defensive utility, or some offensive utility.

I think that's one of the better comparisons of the two sets I've read. I was actually considering including a comparison to Electric in my reply, but it was a pretty long post already.

As for the overkill aspect of Dark Regeneration, it's absolutely true. It's not a Healing Flames type of heal that you'll want to use to top yourself off, and many times its full power will be unnecessary - where it really shines for me is once I've built up the other Defenses. When I have Resilient alpha-enhanced Resistances and soft-capped Defense in place and Darkest Night running on top of that, it takes a lot to make a significant dent in my health. I've got to the point now where I often don't need to use Dark Regen at all, but if I do I'll usually fire it off at around 1/3 or so health or less, which is something on the order of 1600-2000 hit points per activation.

It occurs to me that I'm somewhat hijacking this thread though, so unless the OP asks for further clarification I think I'll let the matter rest here.

Yes, we may have gotten a bit sidetracked. Basically what the OP's question boils down to is how tough do you want to be and how much damage are you willing to give up for that. If you want to try to fulfill a tank roll, I think you kind of have to go with tank or brute. Some scrapper defensive sets do get a taunt aura, but the lack of taunt itself, taunting attacks, and the lower base hps pushes them down below the "tank" threshold IMO.

So between tanks and brutes, a lot of it depends on what sets you are using. I have a SS/Fire brute who is quite durable, I have acted as a tank on much of the content in the game without serious issues. However I do feel that she is kind of a 'light' tank if you can see what I mean. If you still wanted some damage, but wanted to be tougher, Fire/SS and Shield/SS tanks are both quite tough if built right, and do good damage, though not as much as a matching brute. Shield/SS does have the annoyance of having to manage both active defense and rage.

I'm currently leveling an Electric/DM tank and having a lot of fun with it. The base hps tanks get, and the resist values on tanker Electric Armor makes her very tough even with minimal slotting. The damage on that combo isn't as good as some, but I feel on the high end the damage will be ok, thanks to soul drain, and SL will make for a major boost to Electric. I've been tempted by a Fire/DM tank, but I wanted something a bit tougher then Fire.

Honestly a lot is about preferences. There have been many posts ranking the various primaries and secondaries. The thing to look for is what works well with what. I picked Electric/DM because Electric has really high resists on a tank,and the heal in Siphon Life will make it really tough. Fire/DM or DM/Fire work well too, from an offensive standpoint, because burn fills in the AoE damage hole you get in Dak Melee.

Finally, just to give my opinion/preferences, right now with IOs the way they are, I'm in favor of the resist sets, electric, dark, fire and invuln/WP to a lesser extent. Simply because it's far easier to stack up defense with IOs then it is to stack up resists. Fire is the weakest of those defensively, but adds a huge amount of offense to make up for that. For offensive sets, I like Super Strength, Dark Melee and Fire Melee. Titan weapons is strong, but I'm still on the fence about momentum.

I've seen it mentioned in a couple replies that a brute can match tanker defenses and resists with "outside buffs" now is that referencing IO bonuses or direct buffs from defenders and the like?

Thanks gang!

It's in reference to buffs from other players.

Alright it seems that more or less answers one of questions, brute or tank.

I think I'll eventually be going tanker.

Now it comes down to the combo.

I like the weapon sets, I dunno, something about a sword or hammer or axe appeals to me, but since no one in these threads seems to mention weapon sets I'm going to assume they are underperformers.

Is this true?

So, if I start considering, shield defense, electric armor, dark armor, invuln, (maybe WP but Im not sure) what synergizes well?

The only reason I stay away from fist-to-cuffs melee sets is because the only one I feel is BOOMie enough is stone, but I hear it gets on the lower end of the damage scale. The rest of the fist sets just feel so. . . powerpuff girl and less superheroic.

The weapon sets aren't bad. The newer ones (Staff Fighting and Titan Weapons) include a power that helps you defensively, so that's very handy when going for a tough character. I actually have Tankers of both types as current projects. Working on a new Dark tank that's DA/TW and an Electric tank that's Elec/Staff. As these two powersets are relatively new, I don't have as much experience with them as some others (hence the project characters).

As for the other weapon sets such as Battle Axe, War Mace or Dual Blades, they each bring their own flavor to the mix. Battle Axe offers a lot of mitigation via knockdown. War Mace has a good stun (and a bunch of customization options for just looking good). Dual Blades has the combo system, which offers several different effects including damage over time, mild debuff and knockdown.

You'll get into the redraw issue with weapon sets, but in my opinion that's really an overblown concern. It can be a bit annoying at times but isn't going to hurt the character in a huge way. It's also worth noting that not all of the weapon sets are compatible with Shield if you choose to go that route for your primary (a Shield tank cannot take Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting or Dual Blades - any of the two-handed weapon sets).

DA/Staff is an awesome combo.

Note that Staff and Titan Weapons (and claws etc) cannot be used with a Shield.

I don't really have much experience of the other weapon sets, but I think War Mace had the most recent balance pass.

According to Mids, Invun has 50% DDR, Shield has 56.2%, and WP has 21.6%.

I would like to chime in regarding the OPs search.

Go Tanker. You will not be disappointed in the end if you sink the effort and influence into the build. I really like Brutes and Scrappers too, but if the desire is to eventually crush +4/x8, Tankers have a tremendous head-start on everyone else.

Choice of Armor. Everyone is giving you good feedback here, so I will add my perspective of a player that has seen "awesome" tankers in action. If you want to go Defense based, choose Shields, if you want to go Resist, choose Electric. It really is that simple. I have seen these two sets do incredible things "in-game". You could also consider Dark Armor instead of Electric depending on your "tastes". I have not grouped with a fully tricked Dark tank, but we have a Forumite that has Videos about his exploits, so I know that it would work as well as Electric in a pinch.

Choice of melee set really comes down to personal choice, but you "should" consider the AoE capabilities of each set. My personal favorites are Martial Arts, Super Strength, Street Justice and Staff melee. I am kinda liking Kinetic Melee as well on my Stalker, but thats a surprising developement. If you are aiming for a "Farm-style" toon then the most capable are Fire and Super Strength. They have been for quite some time and for good reason --> Damage.

Good luck in your search