Erratic1

It has been a bit of time but IIRC, the thinking was that while not quite capped to S/L resist: The build is close to S/L resist cap The scaling resistance IO in Weave needs something to do The ATO would also pretty trivially get there All the above would apply without paying the endurance cost of Tough By having both Boxing and Kick, Cross Punch's damage and recharge bonuses are both improved. Certainly, Tough could be used. I just didn't think it was absolutely necessary. I have never been a big fan of Proton Sweep (though it is not so completely horrible that there is agreement it should be skipped--some like it, some do not) and figured there was more mileage to be had out of Cross Punch. It has comparable damage and speeds recharge. The primary benefit of Proton Sweep is Contamination, which you can get elsewhere, and you should not need the healing from consuming it. Some parts of builds are aspirational (i.e., something you work towards after other things are in place). While waiting to collect the pieces of Avalanche, Obliterations were slotted and the only thing of significance which were missed thereby was 6% Fire/Cold resistance--not likely something you are going to be defeated by.

This is my retired Elec/Rad Tanker:

TL;DR: A tier, feels good. In the past few weeks I got my EM/Elec brute to 50, significantly IO'd him, and started the Incarnate process. He's solid fun to play and does a superior job compared to most other brutes I've made, working well against both groups and solo targets. Why A tier and not S? While Electric Armor is a decent set as goes survivability, Bio, Invulnerability, Radiation Armor, and Stone are better and Bio in particular comes with a damage aura and recovers endurance only slightly less well (pushing it to S Tier in my guesstimation). Even so, EM/Elec is no slouch and I look forward to seeing how far I can take it. Edit: Should have noted Bio's got better survivability tools than Elec.

Admittedly it is on a Brute, but my EM/Electric Brute melts through crowds with Whirling Hands and Power Crash (supported by Lightning Field). Definitely recommend having both.

Without Shadow Meld, it looked like your positional defenses were all in the mid-30s, and your S/L/E/N were roughly 40% (with F/C being 45%). As for Perma-Hasten, Hasten default rechare time is 450s and you need to get it down to 120s. So you need 450/120 - 1 = 275% recharge. Hasten itself will be giving you 70% and slotting it with the +5 Recharge Reductions you have is worth another 95.9%, so that leaves 109.1% to be provided globally. As Mid's display tosses in the 1 previously accounted for, you would need it to be showing 209.1% as opposed to the 178.75% it does. Keep in mind, sometimes perma-Hasten is not strictly needed depending on goal. If with Hasten toggled on its recharge time was 125s it might not be worth the cost to push to actual perma-status. But that depends on exactly what you are shooting for. Shadow Meld cannot be made perma as its base recharge time is six times its duration. So pushing to perma-Hasten is not going to get you that and if that is your primary reason for Hasten, then I would probably not worry about true perma-status on Hasten.

Without perma-Hasten, Shadow Meld is up for 15s every 45s--without which the defense numbers are about 55% of what is shown. Shadow Meld as an, "Oh @#$@!" button strikes me as potentially fine if the default numbers are sufficiently high to guarantee survival between cycles of Shadow Meld, but I am not sure they are generally, let alone against foes with defense debuff.

Think he said he was done with melee for now. Ninjitsu blaster does fit the theme. So too Ninjitsu Sentinel (got a Dark/Nin Sent I am currently working up). But I think since Snarky has been diving deep into Blaster for a while he is wanting something a bit further removed (though honestly, Sentinel...Fortunata....there are certain similarities there).

While the right controller is a beautiful thing, I would put my money down on Fortunata as you have protections your other options either don't get or only visit from time to time.

Hurl Boulder is the only knockback power with magnitude high enough to actually knock something back. The rest knock foes down.

Bio/Staff. Used to run early morning radio missions with one. She was a beauty to watch grind through foes.

SR has three Auto powers which duplicate the functions of its toggles. I am not sure that makes easier rather than it becomes pretty obvious one could do about it. But you have so many options through your offensive powersets that to my view, those auto powers are really kinda traps--you don't need to slot them for defense or the set values so much as use them for one-off slots like LotG:Recharge, or Shield Wall:+Res. The tradeoff between the two is really higher DDR vs lower DDR plus +Health/+Endurance.

If you don't mind, what was off-putting about it?

It was the topic of the moment. The thread is about Defense sets and SR is being championed beyond its pairing with Dark.

While Dark does have a healing attack (1) a person may not be pairing Dark with their SR and (2) the heal at default value is pretty minimal and if you're investing to make it heal better you are forgoing damage on an attack power. As goes ease of use, clicking a green inspiration is functionally the same as clicking a power--you are clicking something. But the power does not require playing inspiration Tetris to make sure it is available. I could probably make a serious argument that if you're not having endurance problems you're either (a) underinvested in recharge, (b) overinvested in recovery, (c), resting too much/not pulling enough, or (d) not using Radiation Melee (WM either if I am being honest) or Dark Armor. But again, different strokes. As goes Sentinels, last night my Dark/Nin repeatedly used her endurance recovery to keep pushing forward without needing to take a knee. But I will have to see how things shake out at higher levels/difficulties. I admit, I have no particular love or willingness to use RoP and that is purely on me.

Not having a heal or endurance recovery click is easier in the sense of not ever having to take those actions but I think I far more enjoy the ability to continue attacking when foes aren't dead yet and staying alive due to the endurance recovery and large heal I have on my Dark/Nin. But different strokes for different folks. If you go SR, I'd definitely invest in the healing proc from Power Transfer (and Reactive Defenses Scaling Resistance).

There is Fault at level 8 but it has lower chances to hit than normal. Guess you could load up Accuracy early on then swap to something else once you have better ways to up your likelihood of hitting. As for getting past Hodgkins, solo...well, that is going to be a challenge no matter what isn't it? His regen is far from minimal.

Yeah, I did go with the non-weapon animations. Not sure how I am summoning up sapphire boxing gloves, but I am just going with it. 😁

Going to guess I never made much use of Stone Melee before because of the aesthetics of the powerset. Not a big fan of the stone look of the attacks and a crystal mallet was not a big improvement. But I was looking for something different to make and justified crystal fists to myself in order to create my latest Scrapper. The set is like the offspring of Super Strength and Radiation Melee (which I know came after it). Very satisfying, big damage and OMG, Seismic Smash...you shall be my new cheat mode. It is somewhat of a shame I am on a break from Ninjitsu as the on-crit effect of double stun begs to be abused. But I am also looking at secondary sets I do not use often, and I have only done Super Reflexes twice before. Still, if I can get her recharge time down.... Wondering if I can abuse Force Feedback towards that end, but not sure what her end build is going to look like yet. But having a lot of fun with Stone Melee.

I looked for zodiac symbols and not finding any decided the ankh was as close to theme as I was going to get. Of course if they had zodiac symbols I'd want a character with 12 costumes. As for people not getting the reference, yeah it makes one feel old. Have a co-worker who had no idea who Paul Simon is. Not even going to get into the movies he's never seen.

Bio does an unusual split, leaning into Smashing/Lethal resistance with Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative Defense. That is not to say you should utterly ignore F/C/E/N resistance or S/L defense, but rather it is easiest to push the noted resistances/defense to cap. Importantly, it leans into being a hybrid set, so to get the most mileage out of it you also need to learn when best to use you ablative shield, heal, and regen/recovery boost--though you are a bit freer in not deeply investing in any of them.

I was driving home the other day, listening to a soul music of the 60-70s radio and a song came on talking about the dawning of a new age which inspired me to a new character...

I would expect F/C/E/N defense for a Bio Brute to be pushing 45%+. I suspect you may have shorted those by focusing on pushing your non-S/L resistances up. But a few more hits being resisted a bit more....cannot say it won't work decently.

Indomitable is a low population server and getting TFs going sometimes feels like the work of pulling teeth. So often I go with fewer than I'd like. Case in point, the Posi 2 I started earlier with 3 people--two widows (including myself) and a controller (Dark/Dark). And yet we did incredibly well up to the penultimate mission when the other widow had to go. But the controller and I figured we'd see what we could do with just the two of us. We had two wipes in that penultimate mission due to exploding cadavers, but we were pretty sure we could keep going. We did and made it to the final mission.... We stealthed the initial bombs, made it inside, and confined our fighting to what had to be fought. Wasn't too bad. Again stealthed the bombs out back and for the final bomb, had the fight. No problem. Then came Vahzilok. Really wondered if we could do him. Only way to know was for me to leap in. Got him to about half but I was out of inspirations and managed to get myself dead twice (rezzed once by controller) with him at half life. So off to the hospital I go while she keeps him occupied. Made it back and he was back up to 3/4ths. Start working him down but there is a full heal. Figured we would keep going. Again I blow through my inspirations and periodically now I am having to step back, kneel, and then rejoin the fight. But we keep working it. Then he leaps off the bridge, the filthy cheater! So we fight him below along with more of his minions. But I get low on life and have to fly up to bridge to recover. Of course he follows. His mistake. We get back to working without his minions pounding on us. Still, I have to back and kneel...and he's so close. Just kept praying he would not full heal. And then he was down! No IO sets...heck, I don't even slot enhancers until level 23, so no enhancements on my part at all. And we put him down. So some PUGs are just incredible.

Marine. Marine buffs resistance, endurance, damage, and provides an absorb shield on top of debuffing enemy damage, speed, and hp. It's not flashy but is amazingly potent.

Oh...I wasn't trying to do that. There are definitely trade-offs. But it has been working (or at least not not working) for me. Please let me know how it works out for you.