Heraclea

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Not sure about that. IIRC the Ramiel arc was just agony to do on a tanker, especially when the Trapdoor strategy that actually worked was removed. Fortunately I had done it on most of my melee 50s first back on Victory. Had to beg a controller to come to the mission the few times I tried afterwards. As to the OP, my contribution would be a WP/Mace/Earth Mastery tanker; Quick Sand actually helps on BAF. Archery/Devices blaster, Water/WP sentinel, Spines/Bio scrapper, Anything/Time MM, and Rad/Anything controller.

Very nice! Remembers Spandau Ballet, and was also a heavy reader of Arthur Machen back in those days, Ah, the eyeliner years.....

For what? Characters have a max of 12 ATOs. I have more than enough to catalyze every fresh 50 soon as they ding. The rest are gravy. I do tend to view inf as greasy kid stuff and a poor store of value. The game economy is ultimately inflationary, though I'm surprised it's taken this long given all the farming. I will turn any inf buildup into an attuned IO on the AH as soon as a character gets much above 15M. But stuff like Panacea and so forth that you want at level 10 is a lot easier for me to acquire with merits than with inf, especially since the salvage needed to make them are probably also in the stockpile as well.

There is another use for catalysts that I didn't mention. Some recipes you want in your final build have a wide level range, say 20-50. You got a lucky drop of a recipe in the set, but your drop is level 23. Craft that one and catalyze it so it scales across its range.

I use them regularly. There are many IOs that I regularly craft and use like Panacea, Stealth procs, Miracles, and so forth that leveling characters benefit strongly from, but the ones in base are level 50s. I also try to build 'whole game' characters, since the odds are good that weekly TFs cap below 50 too, and I want my set bonuses working when exemped. Catalysts further these goals; they're not just for ATOs. Catalysts are also costly when bought with merits, but each 50 gets a free one just for playing. So I rotate my 50s (have 18) to claim catalysts which I stockpile in base. I use one or two 'odd' merits (anything not a multiple of 20 or 50) to buy unslotters, and the rest to buy converters for crafted drop roulette. So I catalyze and unslot an IO, then catalyze a fresh one at 50.

Something seems to be off. I try to get on all of my sturdier 50s and run them until they get a catalyst. Usually it only took a couple spawns on the Cimeroran wall before that one was done and it was time to switch to another. More recently I've run whole task forces without getting one. This makes it hard to tell which characters have their drop and which I should be playing.

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I would prefer Rad over Bio purely on esthetics. Even on minimal FX settings Bio surrounds you with a cloud of dirt. Picking dark colors on bright settings with Rad turns your character into an atom from a 1950s science book, with little electron balls orbiting around you. I think that is cooler. Both can be made quite sturdy. Both offer substantial relief from the endurance mechanic. I have a bio spines tanker and a kinetic/rad scrapper at 50, and a rad/street justice tanker on Everlasting at around 34.

My experience is almost the opposite: it's the levels below SO levels where regen is at its best and tends to excel. Quick Recovery at level 4 is the most important thing it has over other armor sets. It's easy to start a Regen character, much harder to finish one. Like I said, I have Regen as an armor set on two characters, scrapper and brute. The scrapper is made for efficiency running story arcs and doing under-30 TFs for the merits and works very well for that purpose. The brute was made to see if Regen could be turned into a tanking set, and it doesn't really work; you start from too far behind. The brute has Tough and Weave, since the experiment was to see if regen could be made tough enough to wait out animation lag so the heals could save the character. The scrapper doesn't, they'd negate her real advantage, and from the out of the box numbers that little bit of resistance and defense would be lipstick on a pig. The brute has set bonuses; the scrapper mostly frankenslots yellow sets for efficiency. The scrapper has a role to play. The brute is a much poorer fit, although she took Taunt and has a taunt slotted aura, she has to use them very situationally.

The character Heraclea should be played by Gina Carano. Better yet, let this be an animated feature, Currently I'd let her be voice acted by Jennifer Hale at her most FemShep soldierly, but really, the best voice actor for Heraclea would have been the late Lynne Thigpen, the Chief from the Carmen Sandiego game show.

I have not tried the Sentinel version, but I understand that it works much better than the Brute/Scrapper version, due to an absorb toggle that expands available HP. Never tried it on a Stalker, either, but theirs are often quite different as well.

The scrapper I am talking about is Fire/Regen. All damage, no control; I did take Air Superiority on the character to give a little. Basically a melee blaster with mez protection. Definitely a glass cannon. I also take Caltrops to try and mitigate burst damage. Never attempted to solo an AV; that's why I run Old Posi which doesn't have them. Like I said, I knew exactly what I was in for creating this character. I have not tried to collect multiple set IO bonuses on this character; her reason for being is to farm low level content to earn merits and drops that will be used by other characters, so she is slotted mostly with un-catalyzed, frankenslotted hand me downs. The experimental brute is Staff/Regen. Primary chosen mostly because I didn't have a Staff character yet. I also wanted an attack set with slow animations, the better to test Regen with. With heavy IO investment including all the Brute ATO set bonuses, Tough, Weave, and Combat Jumping, and catalyzed Kinetic Combats in every single target attack, she has around 55% S/L resist and 35% defense; all else is much lower. In other words, with heavy IO investment she gets to be about where a Willpower character would be on generic SO/IOs. The click heals do not do enough; they are not instant, they wait out animations, and by that time it's too late. Debuff resistance is a problem; again, by IOs I've gotten her to around 405 recharge slow resist. You will not persuade me that Regen is anything other than seriously underperforming. Fire may also be almost as unimpressive out of the box, but there isn't really a way to build an AE farm to play to Regen's strengths, either.

Regen remains worthwhile in the under-40 game, although its flaws tend to become more obvious in the upper levels of that range. I have a regen scrapper as well as the regen brute I mentioned. The scrapper did not take Fighting pool. Tough and Weave on the character would be lipstick on a pig. Running them would negate the character's one advantage: plenty of endurance at the early levels. She does fine at what she's made for, which is stuff like soloing Ouro Positron and farming Synapse. But she doesn't belong on incarnate raids. Way too much burst damage she can't handle. Way too much debuff she has no resistance to. I knew what I was getting into when I made the character here and have no regrets. But as a scrapper or secondary Regen is enticing to start but seriously underperforms in high level content.

I really miss Dr. Vahzilok's sewer mad science lab. Boss room is one of the coolest in the game. Not a fan of the blue caves, especially when they might spawn the cake room. But even worse than the cake room is the Arachnos base multi story water room.

My regen scrapper uses invisibility and Caltrops for a similar effect. Caltropped mobs run away very slowly and don't attack as much. This helps spread it out a bit. I did not bother taking fighting pool on this character; Tough and Weave would be lipstick on a pig. She is basically a melee blaster with mex protection and solid stealth.

I have a double ninja stalker, so I went out of my way to break the mold on concept. Gave her a French name and French themed costumes. She continues my character 'Mlle. Marianne' from Victory. One thing I have always found curious. In the Sentinel Ninja Mastery epic pool, the Caltrops power is named 'Tashibishi' or something similar, which is apparently incorrect in Japanese (I wouldn't know). But in Ninjutsu as a stalker secondary, the Caltrops power is named 'Caltrops'.

It remains the case that the set needs serious help, especially, as you note, in the 40+ game. There has also been a longstanding desire to make Regen a tanker primary. I rolled an experimental /Regen brute about a month and a half ago to see if such a character could be made sturdy enough to tank for teams. With HEAVY investment in set bonuses and incarnates geared only towards survival, I was able to get the character to a place where a Willpower character would be on generic enhancements. Instant death is a major problem. So are click heals that don't work immediately when clicked. It will not work as a tanker primary in its current state,

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I can vouch for: Invulnerability/Dark Melee - all the survivability of Granite, none of the drawbacks. Bio Armor/Spines - you just stand there and mobs die. Willpower/Mace - Now that aggro auras have been equalized, this brings a lot of soft control. I took Quicksand and Salt Crystals on the character, which bring useful debuffs. Shield/Fire - another DPS tanker.

There was a brief time on old live when AV and GM class enemies had so much HP and regeneration that they became all but unkillable without Radiation debuffs. Dozens of Radiation characters were made back then because they were needed.

For general mission running, I would suggest pairing a debuffing armor set like Bio (your self heal does -REGEN, which will be very handy trying to do what you want) with a debuffing melee set like Kinetic (-DMG), Dark Melee (-ToHit), Radiation (-DEF). The more interesting question is which AT to put them on? Scrapper and brute are the obvious choices, but I would instead suggest Stalker. Stalkers excel at running story arc style content by their ability to beeline to mission objectives while avoiding unnecessary combat. Their single target burst damage capacities won't allow you to one shot any AVs but can't hurt either.

Tankers are always going to be my first love. Top survivability - whichever armor set you choose, it will be at its best on a tanker - and adequate if not earth shaking damage. The number one thing I want from a character or from a game is to avoid frustration. Tankers are the least frustrating AT. The other thing I want from a character is as much immunity as possible to forced AFKs - i.e. mez immunity is a big deal to me. This means that tankers, brutes, scrappers, stalkers, and sentinels all have the inside track. Blasters, I tend to play like stalkers. I don't have a blaster without Stealth. Stealth is how I cope with the lack of mez immunity. I run those characters with small spawns and try to neutralize them first. Not terribly different from the stalkers, who take a minimalist approach to running missions. Characters outside this comfort zone tend to languish. I have a controller that's fussy to play, brings value to teams, but I don't really enjoy the style. Same with a dominator, who is quite fussy to play and whom I learned I didn't really like the style all that much. I have a corruptor who I rolled in May and just hit 50. A bit easier to understand than the controller, but playing her seems to involve concentrating on the secondary and spamming the snipe. I don't think I have rolled a defender anywhere. The mastermind is probably my favorite among these, but since I find them somewhat annoying on teams I am reluctant to bring that one, even though I chose what in my opinion are the least annoying pets (Beasts). And then again since Banished Pantheon, Vanguard, and Arachnos lore pets are crowd favorites, every vet leveled character can be an annoying Mastermind.