Dark Dove

I understand your frustration. It's okay to prefer an AT over another though because of incentives that are particularly attractive to you, that's usually the intent of AT-based incentives, like Brute's fury, Scrapper criticals and the like. Other people will prefer the incentives of other AT's more, and I think right now there are strong enough incentives on all of the melee AT's to satisfy a wide range of player interests, which is a really good place to be. You clearly are more drawn to the tanker incentives, but large changes to the current incentives will have sweeping consequences for all AT's and the incentivized choice points in selecting an AT, and I think the scope of your suggestions is just too big right now. I still think your suggestions are really fun, but they just don't factor in the effect it will have on the rest of the gameplay experience as a whole, which isn't broken to the point of needing such changes as far as I can tell. Maybe give the other Melee AT's another shot, and try to focus your attention on the incentives they offer instead of focusing on the AoE caps only? There are a lot of good reasons to play a Scrapper, Brute or Stalker that don't require more than 10 targets to be attractive and fun.

I feel like tankers have been incentivized very well and need very little overall tuning now, outside of individual powersets. I sometimes have a hard time not choosing a tanker with how excellent the recent changes have made them. Your ideas are very fun-oriented and I appreciate that, they are good ideas in the realm of having fun, but unfortunately I don't think that they are necessary or balanced changes for the current live iteration of the game. I would suggest trying some other secondary powersets that aren't Super Strength, as that set is the only one that arguably hasn't gotten any better due to the changes, almost every other secondary is much, much stronger now with larger radius AoE's and cones (Super Strength's AoE's specifically state they aren't a part of the changes, try some powersets that have powers that are a part of the tanker changes). Thanks for the interesting suggestions. I hope you find some other fun tanker combinations to enjoy!

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. I do tend to prefer more classic-style themes for the characters I make, "iconic" seems very apt.

Elec secondary feels like the strongest option (for me) due to the mitigation/force feedback of all the knockdown, and the blaster version of thunder strike feels great compared to the others due to the big splash radius. I play a Dual Pistols/Elec that is almost always in melee range and the synergy is strong with the PBAOE nuke that gives defense and all the additional force feedback procs you can slot in the set. Charged Brawl, Thunderstrike, Shocking Grasp and Force of Thunder are all really smooth activations that feel chunky good, Dynamo gives some damage aura goodness too. I tend to not bother with Havoc Punch (it's okay) or Power Sink (don't need it with fully slotted dynamo) but they are options. My DP/Elec is softcap S/L base and softcap vs ranged during the short nuke defense buff, which works out well for survivability mixed with two large PBAoE knockdowns. Suppressive fire and shocking grasp procced also means you have two very high damage stacking holds for any hard targets. Would recommend!

One of my first characters from when the servers went public. (Currently Dark/EM Tanker, but that changes sometimes!)

Yep, I keep the Kismet just because I have a tendency to exemplar well over half of the time and I only tend to get access to Focused Acc a small amount of time. I usually keep my Mids setting to 38 because after level 40 most teams will run at +4 due to the amount of incarnate saturation. So mostly the kismet is for like, Positron and things like that where the bonus still helps out, although it is a wasted slot in the endgame I agree. I'll sometimes do teams at +3/+4 (small four person-five person teams) for low level task forces with the intention of doing things the hard way, it really mixes up the low level TF's when you have a small group of exemplared 50's instead of full groups of underslotted low level characters and gives me something a little more challenging to do without dragging those underslotted low level characters through something that isn't fun for them at that difficulty. Weave for the 20's task forces makes a difference for my "sometimes" play, but I do agree with your sentiments for almost all other play for sure. Everyone has their ways, mine are just as weird as anyone else's! I'm just glad you put your work up here for me to mangle for my own purposes!

I've been running the Fiery Aura / Martial Arts version of this in the past few days, I really like it. I worked off of the template and I did some tweaking for my tastes (pushed the Afterburner replacement to much later, pushed Fiery Embrace to 32 and moved Tough/Weave into the level 30 exemplar range, and replaced Assault with Taunt for endgame needs, some slotting and level changes for powers). I may try a respec moving Taunt and Fiery Embrace back into the sub-30 range instead of tough/weave too or moving fly to much later, I'm a taunty tanker player so I feel a little off without access earlier. I really appreciate the exemplar-fu these builds have though, you've done some stellar work here @Sovera! (My current version)

Poison has fire and forget debuffs and a PBAOE toggle debuff that combined have some similar things going on to Rad. This is probably the best similar alternative. Trick Arrow has a lot going on now and can do a lot of Rad's tricks pretty well, with lots of debuffing and almost all fire and forget powers. Time has a large PBAOE toggle debuff as well, and some -res -regen fire and forget powers. Rad is still probably the strongest at what it does, but the finicky powers are sometimes maddening and not worth the effort when it's driving you crazy or just not a style of play you can get into.

Here's a build to look at, so you have somewhere to start. This is a "pure" build that doesn't take epic pools and relies on p2w travel. You could drop Stone Fist and Vengeance to instead take Elec Fences/Ball Lightning from Mu Mastery or Gloom and Dark Obliteration from Soul Mastery if you really want to. You could also get by without Combat Jumping if you really wanted another power pick. Doing this loses some global recharge, and the point of most of the build is in recharging Radiation's click powers and using them whenever possible, so that's something to consider. There is room to move stuff around though if you want. Whenever you pop Meltdown you're essentially invincible, I personally use it more as a damage buff in rotation (I use it almost every time it's up) but it does come in handy for defensive purposes sometimes. This is not the only way to build, but it is strong defensively when rotating the click powers. Incarnate needs: Musculature Alpha (Damage), Ageless Destiny (Debuff Resist for stuff like ITF, alternatively could use Barrier). Sometimes it's useful to have some unslotters and Sudden KB to KD's in inventory for long engagements with KB weak enemies (clockwork) so that you don't scatter everything all over with AoE's. Build:

39% I would not describe as a small amount of defense either, I would say that is a favorable amount of defense and if you achieved it without even trying, getting the last six percent is not an insurmountable or forgettable option. Prioritizing other things over defense first is also a viable strategy, I just wanted to address the notion that Dark Armor shouldn't prioritize defense. It's clearly a set that can do it and do it well without much effort, even by your own accord. Softcapped melee defense on a melee character is pretty dang good, and anything over 30% is a meaningful amount of defense even when not considering softcaps.

Cloak of Darkness isn't a tiny bit of defense, it's the same value as Weave which the vast majority of high-end brute builds include. Having access to a second weave-level of defense is increasingly useful in the era of IO sets. Dark Armor is one of the few resist based sets that's easier to cap defenses on, or to at least build high levels of defense vs. almost everything due to Cloak of Darkness. Fundamentally Dark Armor should at the minimum consider building for defense, as it is achievable at less cost (in slots and set bonuses, not particularly talking about inf) compared to other Resist based sets. I've built more than ten dark armor characters since the servers went public, every single one of them had at least one softcapped defense stat (S/L/M) without sacrificing much of anything important. The rest of what you say is pretty solid, Dark does give a lot of great utility outside of the higher defense numbers too.

I'm not good with Dominators either, but /Psi Assault's Drain Psyche power, which you can get at level 20, is a great equalizer with a few slots (Recharge / Heal / Endurance) and hasten. It makes me feel viable in between domination cycles more than any other secondary power I've tried, particularly at lower levels like that. If you pair it with something with good fast recharging group control (Dark and Plant seem to work well for me, but there are other good choices) you can do some good work. I suggest playing something/Psi and getting some slots in Drain Psyche and seeing if you can work with that. Like I said though, I'm not good at Dominators, so maybe someone will have a better idea for you.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain's voice actor for Kain is the one. Maybe my favorite performance ever in a game. My crush remains years later. Vae Victus.

Both are great. You can freely select either (and more appropriately, you can choose to play both with your many available character slots), with a couple of minor points to consider: Sometimes, when an appropriate Tanker isn't available, teams and leagues in World Events, Task Forces and Trials will expect a Brute to be able to tank, manage more complex aggro and survive difficult encounters; this is rarely to never expected of a Scrapper. If you don't want any team responsibility other than to deal damage, pick the Scrapper, if you'd rather sometimes have more complex responsibilities, pick the Brute.

It's certainly skippable as cones don't always fit a playstyle or build, but with the Tanker AoE buff it hits a good amount in a crowd and the -res proc is always helpful to add in. Shred doesn't consume stacks, it builds one stack per use, Hemo is the other one that consumes if I recall correctly.

@Onlyasandwich covered most of the highs and lows really well for the Tanker version of savage. You asked about slotting, I think a few of the keys are the -res procs (Shred takes Achilles Heel, and Fury of the Gladiator can go in Rending Flurry or Savage Leap though I tend to choose Rending Flurry) and the Force Feedback +rech proc in Vicious Slash which will keep the mediocre single target chain at least cycling fast (Vicious Slash can be slotted well with Force Feedback, 4x Superior Might of the Tanker and a damage proc like Hecatomb or some other five piece set for bonuses). I like Savage Leap with four procs (Scirroco's Dervish Acc/Dam and Acc/Dam/End and Chance for Lethal / 3 other damage procs). For the other single target attacks (Savage Strike and Maiming Slash) I tend to look for a space for Touch of Death Chance for Negative procs (or whatever proc you like) and a five slot set bonus from another set (Sup Gauntleted Fist or Sup Blistering Cold or Hecatomb kinda deal). Blood Thirst is probably fine with just a Gaussian's proc and/or a single recharge +5 IO. On a Tanker I only skip Hemorrhage, but you could theoretically skip Shred (I wouldn't, it's best on a Tanker compared to all other AT's and fits in a -res proc) and you could skip Taunt if you aren't intending to use it for prime tanking (you can prime tank without taunt but it helps to have it). I'd drop a build for it but Stone Armor is the only set I haven't touched since the earliest releases of CoH, so I can't really confidently help on that side of the coin. Savage is a lot of fun, it just isn't optimal in a few ways. It has a great feel in play, I just wish it packed a little more punch.

Without Bio, my guess would be a combination of Energy Melee and Radiation Armor for additional sources of -regen and strong ST/AE dps options. Scrapper is probably going to work better for DPS on AV's but other AT's would probably work too. Would require breakfrees for certain rad armor holes in specific situations.

I will ignore for egregiously out-of-line stuff, but usually it is only temporary, my ignore list isn't treated as a permanent fixture. I'll remove the names from my ignore list every now and then if there are any (which is rare, it really takes something getting under my skin repeatedly to get me to use the ignore function). Besides, it doesn't seem like the community is big enough to just start ignoring everyone frivolously, would run out of people to team with real quick. If I can't forgive and move on, then how can I expect anyone else to do the same when I'm being absolutely terrible?

Worth what? They play fine, have fun, make some characters to fill your hundreds of available character slots. Or don't, that's cool too. There aren't any powersets in the game that are unplayable-bad, there's just good powersets and really good powersets. If all you want is really good powersets, then you're only going to have like, three options, but do whatever's fun for you, if you like those three options more than anything else.

WM/Rad is very good on a Scrapper particularly. Rad Therapy has a 100% regen buff that other AT's don't get, so you're incentivized to fill it up with damage procs and fire it off every time it's up. Meltdown gives a higher damage buff, and Ground Zero with procs is really strong. War Mace's ability to slot several Force Feedback procs and +rech debuff aura in rad makes recharging your proc nukes fast, and Crowd Control remains a staple. Probably my favorite scrapper set combination currently. Crunchy good ST damage, big time AoE damage and highly survivable, pretty easy to get high resists and softcap S/L/M def (not to mention built-in aura with -tohit) with a backbone of regeneration and absorb as mitigation, plus infinite endurance, it's crazy. If you're set on playing a Scrapper, this is a good route to pick.

FA always seems to work better on a Brute or Tanker. War Mace and most attack sets will probably perform better on a Scrapper. Brute seems like the right compromise to me, but a lot of that hinges on Brutes not having to deal with running mobs as much as Scrappers.

I found adding a fully proc-slotted Suppressive Fire to the ST chain to really make a big difference, it's a heavy hitter. I don't think the narrow cone in Piercing Rounds is that great but I could be wrong, I'm not sure, I've never really put it to use much because of the animation time. I think Empty Clips is okay, it would probably be better with some range slotting but I never manage to find extra room for that, so I agree I could probably go without it too. I guess with enough FF proc slotting Empty Clips might be less useful in general.

Compared to what? And functionally which powerset (if not both) is the culprit of this damage deficiency, and why?

Might be one of the best synergies in the game at this stage. Time gives all of the buff/debuff you need so that you don't have to slot your blast powerset for set bonuses, which allows you to slot an abundance of procs, and Dual Pistols offers some of the heaviest proc slotting capacity of any blast set. It may perform better on a defender due to higher buff/debuff numbers, but it will still work very, very well on a corruptor. Search the defender forum specifically if you need build examples, they will build very similarly either way, the primary difference will be Corruptors will have a harder time reaching incarnate defense levels that defenders can reach, but with Power Boost or Power Build Up, it doesn't really matter much.

Shield is probably the right choice for a secondary to suit your interests since it has healthy DDR and AAO taunts. Be aware that before IO sets, shield doesn't perform that well compared to something like Super Reflexes defensively, so Shield blooms later or requires a lot of investment early for attuned sets and the like. When you do have IO sets though, Shield is pretty amazing, with layers like +HP/Res/Def/DDR/-Dam that really shine in mixed content. Percentages are going to depend on what you want in the end. I build every character to softcap defense of some kind (45% S/L/M or 45%M/R/A) and strive for as much S/L resist (and other res when possible) as I can get, with 75% being the ultimate (rarely reached) goal. You might instead build for less defense and resist in favor of recharge and damage output. It depends on what you want or need for your type of fun. Dark Melee is okay. The single target isn't amazing and the AoE isn't amazing but Soul Drain on a fast recharge can make it competitive. Touch of Fear and Shadow Maul are great for leveling up and the tohit debuff in the attacks and the heal can fix the early problems Shield has before IO's. Overall it is a good pairing for Shield specifically because of these things, and how well AAO and Soul Drain mesh for high sustained dps in large groups. Other options for secondary would be Invuln or Energy, which both have taunt auras and DDR. They have weaknesses to certain damage types (Psi or Tox etc). They're good sets but Shield will do specifically what you want probably a little better on a scrapper. Still worth looking over the powers to see if they suit your needs though. Primary other options to look at pairing with shield would be Mace for all around versatile damage/AoE/control, or Energy Melee for very strong single target damage. Rad Melee has some interesting options if you can stand the animations (I can't personally).