ninja surprise

That's only 6 combos, try them all! Then you'll notice differences between the combos, how rugged each feels, how much aggro each gets, and whether you think it's fun. For example, I prefer Scrappers out of those three. Stalkers can do a good burst, but minimal AoE and no taunt effect means chasing down every single foe to punch it. With the Stalker ATOs though you can reliably do fantastic damage. Brutes are aggro magnets but always have to ramp up damage. So every time you enter a spawn and punch the boss it turns around like "who tapped me on the shoulder?" Scrappers, especially with the Scrapper ATOs increasing Crit frequency, can often crit on demand, are always at max damage, and are tough enough to take on x8 spawns.

By definition, if you can't do something, isn't it impossible?

Sure, you and I know TA is awesome sweet but it doesn't fit OP's definition of healing-maximized defender.

What's up for debate is the opinion of what a person considers a challenge or an annoyance. Or if something is just plain impossible it's not really a challenge because it can't be overcome. Nemesis or his Fakes in their bubble, Paragon Protectors in their MOG state, Council Ascendant guys behind their shield, a crowd of Tsoo Sorcerers with Hurricane on, etc, are in the same category: impossible or difficult to hit while in their buffed state. IMHO it doesn't make the game more difficult when there's nothing I can to do make them hittable. It's just a time-sink waiting for the effect to wear off so I can hit them in the face with a stone mallet again. On my All Shield ITF there were times where we had all the aggro in a room. Every attack produced dozens of "Deflected!" messages instead of damage numbers. We couldn't hit them and they couldn't hit us. That's a stalemate, not a challenge. Sure the challenge could be that there's just certain things in game that are impossible for certain ATs or powersets to do. Like my Super Reflexes guy can't take on a horde of Rularuu no matter what he does. They just chew him up. In that case the challenge is to run away fast enough to survive.

This is only true if the tanker isn't using any IO sets and the tank took one of the weaker armors that requires you to take all the primary powers. It is not true at all if the person knows how to build a good tank, skips the useless powers, and gets the set bonuses from IO sets in the attacks that add survivability. It's annoying when I get a "heals only" Defender on the team. This is just sad, laboring under the old mistaken notion that "defender" means "healer". It would be so sad to roll a Dark Miasma or Kinetics that does nothing but sit there and fire off the one heal all day. A Stormie who just runs around throing O2 Boost like there's no tomorrow. Or a Sonic, Force Field, or Trick Arrow who just cries in the corner because they can't heal. Cold is one of the strongest Defender sets and it doesn't really heal, just adds some HP occasionally on top of the ice shields. Buffs/debuffs are better than heals and it's much better to build a fighting Defender than a millstone who follows the team hoping someone gets hurt. Heck, extending this paradigm to make a Scrapper put everything into the Attacks and ignores their armor would make a gimped toon indeed.

Is there any point in adding /8 if you're already on a 8 person team? I finally got around to organizing an all SD ITF and we ran it at +4 defeat all since we were all aggro-magnets. We really did defeat-all, including the Cyst map rooms that only had Romans and no cysts. Team was: Tank Stone Melee <- my toon called Ground Combat Energy Melee Brute Dark Melee War Mace Psionic Melee Electrical Melee Scrapper Electrical Melee Electrical Melee One of the Scrappers DC'd as we exited the first mission so it was the 7 of us from then on. As far as I can recall only the Scrappers ever died and the one who stayed with us was 46 at start and I don't think he had any set bonuses yet. He had a super cool name though: Ohm Depot for his Elec/Shield with a costume that looked like a certain home improvement store employee. We had a blast and it was amazing with all the Shield Charges going on. Defense was always high and but the Romans had high def too, so there were lots of times where we had the whole room herded and "Deflected" scrolled up more than any orange numbers. I had Focused Acc running and still missed quite a bit. Only one person had Leadership. I wish someone had Radiation Melee.

We don't discriminate based on Body, AT, base defense, max resist, or DPS.

I think we should form an all-Shield ITF and give them a taste of their own medicine.

Right it doesn't have end-drain resist, but the Sappers will hardly ever hit you. Neither will Carnies, when they die and do that PBAoE endurance drain. Everyone fears carnies, but you'll be all "eh, lets punch their stupid face masks". BUT if you're worried, just take Elude. Single-slot panic button. If you get drained you do a double-backflip and suddenly it's like you got a Speed Boost, Accelerate Metabolism, Force Fields, and a couple other buffs - you'll be back at the soft-cap, recovering endurance, and running twice as fast as normal, so you're instantly back in the fight and recovering endurance while not running ANY toggles. Or just save a blue insp for emergencies. The other amazing thing about SR and Shield is that since hardly any attacks land on you, you won't get hit with as many mez effects. Like, after playing SR and Shield for years I finally started trying Fire Armor, Bio, and Radiation and couldn't believe how many times I'd get held by the Vampires on Moonfire, feared, or some other funky mez effect because every single mez was landing and could stack enough to hold through the mez protection. BUT the trade-off is that Rularuu and those toxic monsters in the Apex TF get cheap shots right at your HP. If you didn't know, you can go on the Test server, roll your toon, use the chat menu to boost it to 50, give it a crapton of IOs, and then run some missions to see how you like it. That's quicker and less expensive than doing a powerlevel to just try out a powerset. Another super fun combo is Bio/Dark Melee but you need a good/expensive build to soft-cap the defense, maximize resists and slow resist.

There's a few good builds in recent threads. You just have to change the primary to Radiation.

Same, I teamed and task force'd to get an Invuln/Staff tank up into the 20's or 30's and then stripped and archived it when I couldn't defeat stuff while street sweeping.

Does Willpower do OK against a bunch of ranged enemies? Do you have to be surrounded for the stats to be good, or does it do OK when the critters are spread out?

If you really want the opposite of Stone/Stone, go Super Reflexes / Claws. You'll be super speedy, lots of AoE and still with single-target enough to take down tough targets. You can even skip one of the AoEs and with the two left do tons of AoE.

I can totally vouch for WM/Energy Aura being Strong & Pretty!

Wow, I'd never noticed because it seemed like my SRs never got slowed. No matter how many caltrops those Knives throw! I just verified it on my SR/Elec Tank though. And also surprised myself, I got a temp boost from logging out in Ourobos: That's a nice little buff to recharge and slow resist!

With Invuln you get the standard Taunt sound effects, you can completely turn off the visual effects, and can use any secondary. With Shield, if you make a female toon, the Taunt sfx change from the "Ha!" to more of a guttural scream. It can be annoying. Also Shield limits your secondaries to the one-handed attack sets.

That's just the buff to Tanker AoE and target caps that Homecoming did. I didn't think it affected temps like Sands though, but Shadow Maul has about 180 degree arc so you barely have to aim it anymore to hit max targets when you're surrounded. You can see the Gauntlet effect when you do a single target attack, you'll see little animations on the heads of all the critters around your target, like a bunch of exclamation marks or a sort of sunburst around their heads, that's the gauntlet-taunt. Any Tanker power that draws aggro should have the gauntlet effect as far as I know.

Isn't SR already at or close to max -rech resist? What was the base and what did you get it up to with set bonuses?

Right - Bio needs a lot of sets to be strong. I'll dig out my Bio/Dark Melee build and post it. You'll be able to cap resist to Smash/Lethal, but you'll have defense vs Energy/Neg/Fire/Cold and no debuff resistance. Your heals and absorb are what keep you alive. If you get slowed or a bunch of defense debuffs it's hard to stay alive. So a bunch of super expensive Winters and other sets plug your holes but it takes a long time to get there. I'd be kinda reluctant to do Bio and TW because momentum is kinda unpredictable. If you need a heal or to move when TW decides you need to build momentum you'll be stuck rooted for a seemingly long time. BUT if you enjoy it that's the key! You can be awesome and tank and do damage and have a lot of fun doing it.

This is why I've kinda slid into having a Bio/Dark Melee and Fire/Savage as my two main tanks. They aren't the toughest tanks in the game, but they can still survive if I pay attention and they do enough damage to keep my Scrapper-brain happy.

It's kinda hard to follow the stream of thought... were you on an Ice/Ice Scrapper with a Fire/Something Tank? If so, it's a given that the Tank will take Aggro from a Scrapper, regardless of the Scrapper's powersets. Tanks have the highest threat level and every Tank attack pops an AoE taunt which pulls all the aggro their way. If you were both on Tanks then it just boils down to whichever was attacking the most. Burn + Blazing Aura > Icicles + Chilling Embrace. However, Burn patches don't move, vs your Ice tank can run around and "tag" a bunch of mobs with the double auras to get aggro and pull spawns.

What's that mission called in Ouro?

I never noticed it bink. But since only one ambrosia can be active at a time it was good enough to have the insp tray right next to my attacks so I could click one when they lit up and became clickable.

It does good enough damage. Not so much burst though, but good AoE. I really like Savage Leap with the +Crit proc, then the next 2 - 3 attacks crit too. Word on the boards is that Hemorrhage is defective and doesn't crit properly. I plan to respec out of it and into the other ST attack + Blood Frenzy. But mostly I really like the sound effects and visual effects. It's easy on the ears but still sounds like you're solidly slapping things around, and the big red claw marks on the screen really dress it up. Heck, it's good enough to take down a Crystal Titan!

How's your build coming? You should be able to soft-cap smashing/lethal by now and should be really close to E/N cap with a build similar to this. Burst with three Eradications gets you to the E/N cap. Energy Absorption will cap you if you use it when entering a spawn. My standard flow is to enter a spawn, EA to cap defense. Fight 'till nearly everything's down and you're almost out of endurance. Run to the next spawn (the critters that are left will follow you) and pop EA on the fresh spawn to top up end and cap defense.