Here's my version of BrandX's build I made for my scrapper. Swapped out the hold for parasitic aura. It's also not perfect, but it can do s/l farms just fine and is a huge powerhouse for ST.
Alpha-Gal - Scrapper (Energy Melee - Bio Armor).mbd
IIRC, there is another build somewhere on these forums that does have soft capped defs but you sacrifice a nontrivial amount of damage for it.