Hjarki

For me, the fundamental issue is that Time is really just an armor set in disguise. The primary value of most of its power are to support the user, not their team. Yes, your team can potentially benefit from those long recharge click buffs. In practice, they rarely do because no one 'gathers for buffs'. However, this just doesn't work that well when you're a Defender or Corruptor because armor sets are designed to complement the true power of your build - and the true power of your build as a Defender or Corruptor generally isn't your Blast set. Basically, Time has everything except the key power that makes the set worthwhile to take. This makes it suitable for every build but ideal for almost none.

Because it's the most common damage, it's also the type of damage that people don't need a Tanker for. No one needs a Tanker for Council. They need a Tanker for Carnival. Positional is absolutely better than Typed. There is no Typed defense against Toxic and soft-capping Psi is a challenge. Most Tank armors offer some way of improving your offense. Invulnerability is basically the Empathy of armor sets - it's what a lot of people believe the set should be, but it doesn't match what's useful in game. Having a high End Drain resist does, though. Nor are Resist builds "always getting hit". If you're willing to build for typed rather than positionals, it's pretty easy to soft-cap defenses even on pure resist Tankers with Winter sets. You've got it backwards. Resist >> Defense. First of all, there's the issue of variance. Defense builds are high variance while Resist builds are low variance. That means you get huge damage spikes on Defense that you wouldn't get on Resist. Second of all, while Resist hard-cap is meaningful, Defense soft-cap is mainly something for Blasters and Defenders who don't have to take the focused attention of enemies. Consider your S/L defense. You think it means enemies have a 5% chance to hit you. In most cases, they'll have ~8.5% chance to hit you because most purely S/L attacks have heightened accuracy. Then there's content with enemies who have better +hit (Incarnate content, Lord Recluse) who cut through your basic defense soft-cap like it wasn't even there. There's no such thing as a 'cascading resist failure'. There is a 'cascading defense failure'. Third, you can use your secondary for Defense but there's only one secondary that provides Resist (Staff) - and it's a very clunky mechanic. This is also another reason why typed defenses are problematic. Getting 50%+ Melee Defense from your secondary shreds any argument you might make about typed vs. positional. I think the problem is that what you see as the 'use' for a Tanker is fundamentally incorrect. No one needs a Tanker if they're fight Council. Blasters and Defenders can charge those spawns and blow them up just fine. The value in a Tanker is with the 90% resist cap and broad array of unusual defenses for exceptionally hard opponents. Other than that, they're really just Scrappers.

There's a chart out there somewhere that shows it. Invulnerability is good against S/L (largely worthless due to the fact that you get +12% from ATO and +15% from Toughness) but poor against all other damage types. Its "heal" is actually a 360 sec recharge hp buff. It has no recharge, recovery, regeneration or +damage. It just doesn't bring a whole lot to the table. It's fair-to-middling in terms of durability and it brings nothing else to the table besides merely being somewhat adequate at resist/defense. If you've got an Invulnerability build, it's nearly certain that you could swap out Invulnerability for another power set and you'd end up with a stronger build.

Electric is one of the offensively strongest Tanker sets with its combination of damage aura and recharge bonus. There are two major drawbacks with the set. The first is that Grounded only functions while you're on the ground. This means you probably want to take Combat Jumping (Immobilize protection) and slot -kb IOs to cover Immobilize/KB when Grounded isn't operating (it still gives resists). The more problematic element is that Electric has a Toxic hole and it's nearly impossible to fix a toxic hole. While you'll likely invest in positional defenses, getting enough positional defense to deal with Toxic damage is unlikely. In terms of Staff, it has tremendous AE. It's also the longest range Tanker melee set. On my Staff Tanker, I hover-tank since it optimizes the number of targets I hit with those large arc AE. For single target, Staff is nothing to write home about. You only need one of the first two attacks (Precise Strike is better but costs a power on a Tanker since you're forced to take Mercurial Blow), Guarded Spin and Sky Splitter. Serpent's Reach can be useful for slotting, but it's a particularly strong attack. For multi-target, you can simply rotate Guarded Spin -> Eye of the Storm -> Guarded Spin -> Innocuous Strikes. Lastly, there's very little reason to ever leave Perfection of the Body, although the supplemental effects aren't particularly awe-inspiring.

Radiation on a Tanker is probably the best armor set for pure tanking. Unlike other sets, it gets a broad array of resists so it doesn't really have a 'hole' - when Radiation Tankers talk about their 'Cold hole' they're talking about "oh, I only resist 70% of Cold damage". Radiation also provides significant amounts of healing/regen, recovery and recharge. So basically the only thing you need to bring to the table is damage and defense when choosing your secondary. Invulnerability is what I'd call a 'weak' Tanker set. It has no taunt aura, it's weak to everything except S/L and it's focused on typed rather than positional defenses. It has no bonuses to recharge or recovery with minimal healing. Radiation can do what Invulnerability does better in pretty much every respect except max hp.

Radiation's AE comes much later in the leveling cycle and to make Irradiated Ground worthwhile you really need a lot of procs in it. Spines also provides a degree of mitigation that Radiation does not. As a result, if you're just starting out and want to accelerate your progress, you'd probably choose Spines/Fire because you can just slot it with basic IOs very effectively. I'm not sure I'd take either build into actual content at this point. You can build a full-featured Tanker who is just about as effective in a farm but is a lot more effective in actual content these days.

I think it really depends on your goals. The enduring popularity of Spines/Fire is because it's easy and effective. Maybe you can do a fire farm 10% faster with some other build, but most people aren't interested in hyper-optimizing their farming experience to this level. At this point, I mainly use my farming Brute to level alts. If I just want to make some money, I can do farms just as easily on a Tanker or Scrapper that I actually play. So it's a lot easier to have a basic Brute that doesn't tie up a billion influence worth of enhancements and can fire farm just about as effectively as anything out there.

I think the 'bad press' is less an appraisal of the set's effectiveness than a reaction by other players grouping with a Storm Summoner. If I look at a player's power sets and I see 'Empathy', my initial thought is "well, they're probably useless but they won't hinder me". With KB-intensive sets like Storm, Energy and Warshades, there's almost always a bit of hesitation because, poorly played, they can be actual hindrance to the group rather than a help.

Almost all buffs at 50 run afoul of the problem that you don't know what your party actually needs - and the best buffs at low levels also happen to focus on the attributes that most players are likely to 'cap' at 50. In general, Increase Density at 50 will have no meaningful impact on anyone with an armor set. It will also have limited impact on players without an armor set since they almost always build for defenses that match their playstyle that are more than sufficient to keep them alive. So at 50 it's mostly a power useful for throwing on pets and low level players in your group. So for a non-Mastermind, I'd argue the main reason to take it would be for the slotting opportunities. At the very least, it's going to save you a slot for one of the resist uniques.

It's different because it's not an always on buff like tough, weave and hasten. So it normally wouldn't be quoted as part of your resists, any more than Destiny ability or Inspirations would. Your argument was that Energy Aura on a Tanker would have tremendous defenses and resist. Except it wouldn't. It would have decent defenses and mediocre resists. The fact that you could get soft-capped/hard-capped with enough temporary boosts isn't really relevant to the value of the set as a whole.

Rune of Protection is not part of EA. That's like saying Electric Armor is great for Defense because you can soft-cap all your defenses with Unleash Potential.

Regardless of what you do with set bonuses, EA is still one of the lowest resist sets. Those numbers also sound suspiciously like you're including Incarnates like Destiny.

Capped Resists? Energy Armor gives ~10% to all non-Psi resists. That's a long, long ways from cap. I think the main virtue of Energy Armor is that it's an adequate defense set for a Scrapper/Stalker that also happens to bring the recharge and stealth. That's very different from Super Reflexes on a Tanker where you can get Incarnate level positional defenses (which, unlike typed defenses, affect Psionic/Toxic) and a scaling damage resist that will hard-cap you across the board at some (very low) life total (depending on how much base resist you have).

Fully saturated, EA gives +40% recharge. On a single target, it gives +8.5% recharge. Since the primary use for excessive recharge is AE rather than single target, I think this is a good deal. Energy Cloak gives +4.28% universal defense, which is more than enough reason to take it. Claws/EA is also one of the best pure farmers (although it can be built for general play as well) around.

I'm tempted to say Ice. Basically, your scheme with Gravity is to Wormhole enemies on top of yourself and take them down in a nicely packed fashion while your Singularity does what it can to help. Ice is one of the best at this sort of strategy, since it keeps the Disoriented enemies close and deals quite a bit of PBAoE damage.

I for one will not be happy until I can make my War Mace/Stone Stalker.

I believe it's a MAG 2 Immobilize that only lasts 6 - 8 seconds or so - which puts it firmly in the category of 'useless'. It can Immobilize anything except Minions and it only immobilizes +4 Minions for the blink of an eye. From memory, Achilles' only has ~20% chance to proc in Freezing Rain. Moreover, almost any time it procs on anything short of boss, it's probably a waste - Minions/Lieutenants tend to get overkilled so badly that the fact they've taken 20% more damage isn't meaningful. I think the larger concern is the question of whether you put slow in Freezing Rain. For a Corruptor/Defender, I'd view it as nearly essential. Without hitting the slow cap, all you're going to end up doing is scattering the spawn.

I think this is true for Corruptors/Defenders, but Controllers tend to be more 'sit back and watch'. I guess you can toss off some control effects, but they're not going to do much damage (especially for Dark) in the grand scheme of things - essentially all of your damage is coming from Tornado/Lightning Storm/Umbra Beast. However, I do think it tends to come down to "how will I slot this?". O2 Boost is a reasonable place to dump Numina's or Preventative (or, I guess, 5-slot Panacea), depending on build and it can come in handy from time to time. I do tend to agree with the notion that if you've got all the disruption deployed and your Umbra Beast is still dying, then it was probably meant to be and O2 Boost isn't going to stop it.

I actually started with Rad/MA, but eventually I switched over to Rad/Staff. There were two issues. The first is that while Dragon's Tail is one of the best AE in a melee set, there's nothing to back it up. Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning do a fraction of the dps of the AE in the melee sets due to their relatively long recharge times. In contrast, Staff can just sit there constantly rotating AE that do twice the damage of EF/BL. The second is that Storm Kick's defensive bonuses aren't actually what Tankers need. In most cases, resist-based Tankers don't need AoE defense at all. AoE damage is generally lighter than other forms of damage and - most importantly - rarely carries debuffs that the Tanker particularly cares about. If they do carry those debuffs, they tend to be infrequent rather than piling up on the Tanker. Resist-based Tankers potentially need some ranged defense. Again, it's mainly an issue of debuffs rather than damage. Ranged damage tends to be lighter than melee damage and can be easily soaked by high resists. What you're really worried about are things like Dark Blasts that debuff you - and you can generally just eat an inspiration if you're close enough to soft cap. On the other hand, resist-based Tankers need ridiculous amounts of melee defense. Melee is where virtually all the damage comes from and its where most of the defense debuffs come from (and Lethal is most of the rest). Since it's impossible to build for DDR on a resist-based Tanker, the only solution is bewilderingly large amounts of Melee/Lethal defense - and that's precisely what abilities like Guarded Spin give since (unlike Storm Kick) they can be enhanced and stack on repeated applicable. Having 0% DDR is a big problem when you're stuck at 45% Melee Defense. It's not so much a concern when you've got 70%+ Melee/Lethal Defense.

One thing that did occur to me for Opportunity was to simply change it to 'reverse Corruption'. So at 100% health, a target would have a 100% chance to take additional damage, scaling down to 50% health (where it would have a 0% chance). While the damage multiplier for the AT would likely need to be adjusted downward somewhat, this sort of mechanic seems like a fairly elegant way to give something that makes Sentinels unique without making them 'better Blasters'.

You might consider going with Tanker rather than Brute. Super Strength isn't a very good set for a Brute because its major feature - Rage - is something already provided by Fury. Likewise, I wouldn't consider Radiation a very good Brute set. It's probably the premiere pure tanking set due to its broad-based resists. However, the lack of a damage aura and absence of a focused resist (for easy farming early on) makes it a bit painful on a Brute.

I think 'unenhanced' is a significant wrinkle. Stone Melee is the most direct comparison. With +100% from enhancements, Jab and Stone Fist would deal approximately the same damage. With +145% from enhancements/other sources, Seismic Smash and Knockout Blow would deal equivalent damage and with +198% from enhancements/other sources, Haymaker and Heavy Mallet do the same damage. So I'd argue that Brutes aren't likely to choose Super Strength given the damage bonuses from Fury unless they're primarily concerned about something other than single target damage. Neither set is particularly good at AE, but Super Strength is better even without Rage. However, Rage does increase all the other AE the player does - and there are good options (unlike with single target). I think there's also a 'good against remotes' aspect to this discussion. As noted above, bringing significant +damage from other sources rapidly diminishes the value of Rage. Spending 1/6th of your time in "can't hold aggro" mode is a big problem for most tanks in a team setting. I suppose a farm toon would be possible... if you can deal with over-slotting for defense so you can survive the -20% defense crash. Pylon tests and fights that are like pylon tests - such as AV/GM - would work. But in an AV/GM fight, you're probably the guy who need to hold threat and it's likely you have +damage buffs from somewhere (various Assault if nothing else).

I absolutely would not skip the T1 Immobilize on a Dark/Storm build. It's essential if you're going to fight an AV to lock them in place. It's also generally better than the Hold for neutralizing single targets because (a) it's Mag 4, not Mag 3 (b) -hit + Immobilize is a de facto Hold for most enemies (c) it activates more quickly and (d) it recharges more quickly. Since Dark/Storm isn't about dealing personal damage but arranging the battlefield so your pets can do optimal damage, the T1 Immobilize isn't the 'skippable' power it might be in other combinations. For Dark/Storm, I'd say the core powers are Shadowy Binds, Living Shadows, Haunt and Umbra Beast. The rest are 'skippable' in the sense that they're primarily useful for slotting opportunities rather than useful in their own right: Dark Grasp. As a control, it's only Mag 3 so of limited use. While many sets will proc out their ST Hold for damage, Dark Grasp is not one of the better Holds for this sort of application and the amount of personal damage the Dark/Storm will do is trivial compared to the amount of pet damage. Possess. Another victim of the Mag 3-isn't-all-that-useful issue, this can hold Coercive Persuasion so it's almost always taken for that alone - even if it's rarely used. Fearsome Stare. This can slot Cloud Senses, but it's a bit over-the-top on -hit debuffs and rapidly falls by the wayside at higher levels when you've already got Living Shadows and Gale. Heart of Darkness. Great on a Dominator, but generally just a good way to get yourself killed on a Controller. While you can technically stack two different PBAoE disorient, this is inconsistent with how the rest of the build tends to play (not just strictly at range but mandated at range due to Cones) and unnecessary given the soft control options of -hit and KB. Shadow Field. Undoubtably the best AE Hold received by any Controller, this is primarily useful for its debuff effects. As such, it's a somewhat useful power with great slotting opportunities. However, it's recharge is too long to use every spawn. Umbra Beast does significantly more damage than Singularity (which throws primarily control effects rather than damage effects).

Dark Control is a near-perfect pairing for Storm. Storm really needs a -kb/-fly AE Immobilize and Dark delivers. Dark has excellent slotting opportunities due to -hit and a Confuse. Dark has the best non-Phantom Army pet and it has Haunt to take alpha strikes. It has the most useful AE Hold, since it's also a debuff field. Rotating Living Shadows and Gale effectively neuters most spawns with little risk to the Controller. That being said, it's very late developing. Virtually all of the damage it deals comes from the last three powers you get: Umbra Beast, Tornado and Lightning Storm.

Kinetics' heal is twice as large and twice as fast. The fact that it heals around the target is actually an advantage with the melee-centric Beasts, since you can just target a Beast and heal it at range while you'd need to be close proximity to heal it with Dark.