Erratic1

I have no experience with claws, but I am running a Savage Melee/Bio Armor scrapper and it is (at level 29) plenty of fun with nice, quick animations. I was running him through Brickstown this morning against oranges and yellows while on Offensive Adaptation and was surprised how well that worked.

I think the entire, "...click on one power to a guarantee a condition is created by another power, click on that second power (and hope it makes the acc check), to then click on a third power for the heal" is, in the larger context" oversold. As a radiation melee you will be attacking with powers which each have varying chances to Contaminate. I am put in mind of builds which function best somewhere between foes being too weak for the chain of powers they rely on to come together for the foes being dead already and foes pushing into the impossible for anyone to put down realm. Contaminate based healing does not do you a bit of good if in the act of contaminating the target you kill it, leaving nothing to get healing or splash damage from. Assuming a target is going to survive a few hits, what are the odds it is not contaminated when you use Radiation Siphon? I wish I knew how long Contaminated last. But as I noted above, you can pretty much have Devastating Blow ready to go with very little wait every time Radiation Siphon is available, giving you a roughly 60% chance of having your target Contaminated if Devastating Blow lands. Of course a lot depends on how likely you are to hit. Might do some math on that later.

Yes, but one doesn't simply choose when they need the heal. By that criterion every heal in the game sucks. They all have cooldowns and are not necessarily up when you need them.

Even so, you'd still be at the mercy of Fusion being up when you need to use RS. Again, it's still a great power, but one shouldn't use it as a reliable heal. Not like you would with DM's Siphon Life. I am not sure how much mercy is required given you choose when to activate Fusion. Fusion lasts long enough that you should always have a chance to use Radiation Siphon. So on top of random contamination occurring you have at least one chance every 45s (assuming you slot Fusion for max recharge) for Radiation Sipon to be targeted on a contaminated target. I agree, it is a bit random and seriously doubt the worth of trying to force situations where it will go off beyond popping Fusion every time it is up and Radiation Siphon each time it is up. Edit: Devastating Blow has a 60% chance of applying Contaminated. Slotted with 2 Recharge SOs you can toss it every 12s. So using Radiation Siphon immediately following Devastating Blow means a 60% chance of healing every 12s. I will try this routine out and report back on how it works.

According to City of Data, while under the effects of Fusion anything you hit gets Contaminated. So you could pop Fusion, hit with any other Radiation melee attack then use Radiation Siphon. I do not have Fusion on my Rad/Fire Brute yet, so cannot confirm this actually works.

He has clarified he wants to go the "not get touched" route as opposed to the. "Your puny blows mean nothing riute". I had an Ice/Stone tanker I enjoyed back in the day, but I enjoy working around problems. It might not be your cup of tea. Ice, and Willpower would seem to be your choices here. The issue with Defense based sets is that you can be plenty fine until you get a series of blows which get through. Also some opponents are good at debuffing and/or have good accuracy. What this means is you will want to grab some resistance backup via Tough (but hey, resistance tankers do this too) in addition to padding your defense with Weave.

I've been wondering when Tanker Tuesdays would start up. I'm certainly down to do one.

The "very high defenses" is the easy part. There are several valid ways to build a ludicrously tough tank, and most Tanker primaries can be built to insane levels of defense and/or resistance without too much difficulty (some easier than others, of course). The "without exhausting endurance" is what will be tricky. But, you might want to be more specific with your question. When you say "without exhausting endurance", do you mean without the use of a "crash" power like Unstoppable, or do you mean without endurance problems in general? If what you are looking for is a Tanker primary that is tough enough to fill normal Tanker expectations while not really having to worry much about Endurance, give Electric Armor a look. Power Sink is great. I see your Powersink via Electric Armor and raise you... ...Dark Consumption in Dark Melee. No, not instead of, but in addition to. Hear me out. Pre-shutdown I ran a DM/Elec Brute. I already had a DM/Inv Scrapper from the month CoH was released, hate repeating powerset combinations, and so went Electric Armor instead of the more popular Invulnerability route. Turned out to be an incredibly good choice as on top of having great defenses, self-healing, and area damage you also get to drain the endurance out of your toes and literally are never at a loss for endurance. Sappers? Pfff...no problem. Did I mention that Soul Drain lasts 30s and like Dark Consumption can be slotted with damage enhancements? I probably should have mentioned that. After I got into playing Tankers the only reason I did not make an Elec/DM Tanker was that old hangups about repeating powerset combos. Given how stupidly survivable the Brute was (and stellar damage output) I am certain the combo will yield a rock solid Tanker.