Kruunch

This is just flat wrong. Sounds to me like you're doing an S/L farm if that's your experience. And my Bio Scrapper is 6x4 Incarnate.

Mmmm I'll disagree with this. Bio always plays like a piano. It's a great set, don't get me wrong but you will not go 10 seconds without hitting a Bio clicky in a mission for one reason or another.

Well all three are an easy answer: positional defense. With Shield, it's your prime mitigation (and you'll hit soft-cap fairly fast). With Fire or Dark, you'll want to plug the resist holes first (e.g. energy resist for Dark) and then go for positional defense. Generally speaking when building defense for a melee based toon, I start with melee, then ranged and then AOE.

Nice. Haven't yet run into a problem needing double stacks, but I'm still putting this build through it's paces. I will definitely keep an eye out.

Depends the attack but generally speaking yes. Depending the primary you're talking about will determine whether ranged defense is needed. For instance, Electric Armor doesn't really need ranged defense as it is a high resist based set. Will Power has typed defenses, so you'd probably be better off adding to that rather than trying to add on a positional defense. However for defense based sets, whether postional or typed defense, you'll want defense corresponding to those attack types (i.e. typed defense will want s/l/e/n/f/c/p/t defenses, and positional will want m/r/aoe defenses). For resist based sets, I view defense as icing on the cake and almost always go for positional when I'm layering over the top of a resist set. Hope this helped.

This looks more like a farming build then an "unkillable behemoth". Actually with those defensive numbers, you'd get creamed in high end content away from the farms. Energy Armor is a decent set (I run it on my Brute) but you need to sacrifice recharge/damage to get it into the area where you're comfortable doing +4/+8s TFs. Also your slotting looks to be out of whack as you're running 2.22% end / sec which is insanely high and why you're having endurance issues (with an EA set no less) as 3:50 in your video shows. Decent farm build but I'd probably stick with Spines/Fire in ComicCon AE if that's your goal.

Yeah the only real downsides to Active Defense is the short animation it plays (can kind of be annoying but doesn't functionally impair Shield Defense), the need to auto-toggle it (normally reserved for Hasten) and in the early levels it being a constant endurance drain (easily offset by Numinas/Miracle/Performance Shifter/Panacea but for newbies who don't have access to those yet, this can make SD feel unwieldy early on).

Just a point of clarification, if you run Hasten you only need one recharge in Active Defense (and make sure Active Defense is on auto-toggle).

Triple telenuke ... don't forget Spring Attack. While it's not in the same damage tier as Lightning Rod or Shield Charge, it's a nice AOE to add to the chain and has a high percentage knock down. One of the points missing about this build, in addition to the absurd amount of AOE damage itself, is the soft control this build brings. Lightning Rod, Shield Charge, Spring Attack and Thunderstrike all have high percentage AOE knock downs. I can run this build with 0% defense and still be very successful with it. **EDIT** Keep in mind that this build demands a ton of -recharge. Currently I'm running about +145% recharge (with Hasten) and still have about another 10-15% to go for perma-Hasten.

I'll post it once I get back to civilization. Currently on a Mac so no Pines 😤

That approach should work. Also don't forget you can run up to three different builds, so you can try both ways and see which appeals to you more if you're still on the fence.

I was referring to the Bio portion. Sorry for the confusion.

Unslotted, Maneuvers gives a Stalker 2.275% defense to all.

I went with Body Mastery (Superior Conditioning / Physical Perfection). Allows you to keep chaining all day long. I'm not a big fan of the Leadership toggles for this build. Makes it too clunky. You should get more than enough +acc through sets, so don't need Tactics. You will hit the damage cap often on a properly built Elec/SD Stalker, so Assault isn't giving a lot of benefit. Maneuvers is the only (semi) worthwhile choice in that line but you can soft-cap (and beyond) without it. YMMV.

Rad melee does the job but I didn't find it very engaging and the Contamination mechanic is not as useful as it reads (imo). Rad Armor is awesome and of all the sets mentioned probably plays the closest to Regen. In its present form, Regen is probably the least impactful secondary of all the Brute secondaries. Try a Spines/Rad Brute.

Yeah I made a Scrapper version of this build, which was derived from an Elec/EA Brute I made. I was so in enthralled by Lightning Rod, I wanted a character that could chain together a bunch of these types of attacks. The Scrapper version works really well, but it felt like more of a minion/LT clearer then the complete package. With Elec having fairly weak single target attacks, mopping up the bosses started becoming tedious. Then I read that the telenukes don't break stealth, which meant guaranteed crits coming out of the telenuke chain and that just seemed flat busted. And it most definitely is 😂 Then I blundered into the Gaussian's trick (single slotting Build Up with Gaussian's Chance for BU + Stalker ATO Chance for BU Refresh) and that was just .... more broke. Just for added brokeness, if you come out of the telenuke chain with Thunderstike, it crits on A LOT of (remaining) mobs. So yeah of the melee ATs, Stalker is far and away the best to carry this combo off.

Smash/Lethal resists to augment Hardened Carapace. Typed defense (e/ne/f/c/psi) to augment Environmental Modification. Also remember that Bio works a lot like a regen set with lots of regen and absorb shields baked into it's cool down clickies.

Bio is a great set. Bit fiddly but wonderfully energetic for those that like to micromanage their builds. I'm of the feeling that this set fits better on a Scrapper (or less tanking inclined Brute) due to this and it's mixed damage mitigation then a Tanker as I like to concentrate on what's going on around me as opposed to the build I'm running. But I'm old and infirm. 😷

Yes both ATO procs (and the whole sets) are worth getting and fairly pivotal to this (any?) Stalker build. I slot Build Up with one Gaussian's Chance for Build Up. It has an insanely high proc rate and with the Stalker ATO for Build Up refresh, it's generally up multiple times per fight.

Yes. Either that or Lightning Rod (if Elec Melee). A lot of times my build up is up multiple times in the same pack.

The good news is that you should have everything defeated before they can do something about it. Also stay away from Regen ... it's bunk in its current form, especially for Stalkers since you lose it's end recovery power.

This.

Yeah Celerity: Stealth has become a staple in my builds.

Might want to fit in Gaussian's Chance for Build Up into your Build Up. It has an insanely high proc rate. I'd probably swap out Focused Accuracy for Stealth to get my 5th LotG +Recharge in there as well as having a bit of utility (combine it Celerity: Stealth in Sprint for near invis). You'll also find adding Panacea +HP/+End in there to be a nice payoff (I run an Elec/Shield Scrapper (and Stalker) with these setups ... makes it very easy to keep up chaining away like a fool 😉 )

Always amazes me when people are having a debate and they seem to only see that, instead of what is actually being said. 😣